HOW RANDALL GOT INTO THE SALON
It was fully a minute before Joe Randall could summon up his courage to knock. He was ordinarily a phlegmatic Englishman, not easily moved, but to-day he was out of breath from an exceptionally long walk, and the excitement which invariably attends the first visit of an inconsequential young art student to the studio of a world-renowned painter. At length he resolutely pulled himself together and rapped. He received in reply a command, rather than an invitation, to enter. In obedience to the imperative summons he slowly pushed the massive door ajar and the next instant perceived he was standing in the actual, awful presence of the famous Master. The shock produced on him by the sudden change from the comparative darkness of the hall to the fierce, out-of-door light of the studio, blinded and troubled him nearly as much as did the contrast of his own littleness and poverty with the evidences of oppressive affluence and power before him. In his confusion a large, weather-beaten canvas, ill-tied and wrapped in an old journal, which he had carried under his arm all the way over from the Latin Quarter to far-away Montmartre, slipped from its flimsy envelope and fell with a resounding bang upon the floor, thereby adding to his already great embarrassment. He stooped nervously to pick it up, giving vent at the same time to a half audible “Bon jour!”
He had timed his visit so as not to interfere with the Master’s morning work, and noticed with a feeling of satisfaction and returning confidence, that the model had gone, and that the Master himself was languidly engaged in cleaning up his palette. The Master, on his part, was evidently used to visits of the kind from other shabbily-dressed young men, for he promptly roared back, “Bon jour,” and even added “mon ami!” in tones in which it would have been difficult to detect a single friendly note. The unexpectedness of the second part of the greeting served partially to reassure Randall, and enabled him to explain the cause of his intrusion.
“I have come,” he began in halting, broken French, “to ask you if you will criticise a picture which I intend to submit to the Salon jury next month? I am not a pupil of yours at present, although I have studied for a short time under you at Julian’s,—before I entered Monsieur Rousseau’s class at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, where I am now working. I have been told that you are always willing to give advice to young men of your profession, and especially to those who, like myself, have once been members of your school.”
The Master, who was a fat, energetic little man of about sixty, glared at the intruder from under a pair of bushy eyebrows, as though he were trying to look him through and through and read if he had any other motive in coming to call upon him; and then, with a movement bordering on brusqueness, whisked the canvas from his trembling hand and placed it on a vacant easel by his side. He intended no unkindness by his action, as Randall soon found out for himself. He was only authoritative, and this was his habitual manner towards friend and foe alike, as well as the secret that underlay his success and power in the artistic world. For power he certainly had; not the kind perhaps that comes from fine achievement or a noble personality, but a sort of brutal, political,—and as he put it, “administrative”—power, which caused him to be courted and feared, and enabled him to make and unmake the reputations of countless of his fellow craftsmen. It was an open secret that he managed the only Salon then in existence practically as he pleased, and put in or put out all those whom he happened at the moment either to like or dislike; that he medalled, or left without recompense, whomsoever he chose; and that on more than one occasion (it must be confessed to his shame) he had even unjustly withheld the official honors from those who were most eminently entitled to receive them.
He regarded the picture with the stony stare of the Sphinx for what appeared to Joe Randall to be an eternity, and then, turning suddenly towards him, said, with astounding candor—perfected by a long and constant cultivation,—“Personally, I don’t like your picture at all: It is a landscape, even if there are two unimportant little figures in it, and landscapes, however well done, are of little consequence and prove nothing. This one, with the exception of the distance, which is passably good, is not comprehensively treated; the foreground is not at all right in values and doesn’t explain itself; it is, in fact, a wretched piece of work and spoils whatever small merit there may be in the picture. Can’t you yourself see that it does so?”
Randall had thought his picture fairly good when he had taken it away from his poor little studio in the Latin Quarter that morning, but here, in the midst of all these gorgeous surroundings, he had to admit that it looked insignificant enough.
“If I were in your place,” the Master continued, “I should not waste any more time on that production, but would paint a figure piece—a Jeanne d’Arc, or some classical, or Biblical subject: pictures of this kind always create a sensation in the Salon, and—get three-fourths of the recompenses besides,” he added shrewdly.
“But it is too late to do that this year,” answered Joe; “there is barely a month before the pictures must be sent to the Palais de l’Industrie.”
“That is true,” admitted the Master wearily.
“I must send this picture in,” continued Joe, “or nothing.”
“Then,” replied the Master promptly, “I would send in nothing.”
Randall was silenced and thoroughly discouraged by this rejoinder. He thought bitterly over his want of success. He had sent pictures to the three preceding Salons, and all of them had been declined. If he followed the advice just given him he would have to wait a whole year before he would have another chance to make his bow to the public as a real, a professional painter. It was too maddening and the more he thought about it the more miserable he became. He showed this state of feeling plainly in his face, and the Master forgot himself long enough to notice it, and to his own very great astonishment was touched.
“Is it very important that you should exhibit something this year?” he inquired in a kinder voice.
“Yes,” replied Joe, nearly bursting into tears, “it is of the utmost importance to me. I have been refused for three years in succession, and if I do not get something into the Salon this spring, my father will think that my picture has been rejected again, and will probably send for me to come home and make me give up art.”
“In that case,” said the Master firmly, “we must get you in.”
He walked over to his Louis XV desk and picked up a small red note-book, bound in Russia leather, which was filled with the names of his private pupils and alphabetically and conveniently arranged.
“What is your name, young man?” he asked; and on receiving his reply, he turned the page reserved for the R’s and wrote down hastily, “Randall, J.—landscape.” “Now,” he went on, “do what I tell you! Go home and paint up that foreground more carefully. Even I could not get my associates to vote for it as it stands. I will see to the rest—don’t worry! You can count on me!”
Randall, light-hearted once more, expressed his thanks profusely for these highly comforting assurances, and was on the point of departing when the Master abruptly demanded, “Why didn’t you go to the Pere Rousseau, instead of coming to me? He is your teacher now, not I!”
“I did go to him.” admitted Randall, blushing deeply, “and he said my work wasn’t half bad, and⸺”
“But did you ask him to speak a good word for you to the jury?” inquired the Master maliciously.
“Yes,” nodded Randall, smiling but blushing still more deeply. “I felt that so many of the professors protected their pupils that it was only fair that I should receive the same treatment.”
“Well! what then?” demanded the Master, ill-concealing an irrepressible tendency to laugh.
“He became very angry and ordered me out of his place,” responded Joe. “He said that any man who was not strong enough to get into the Salon on his own merit, ought to be thrown out.”
The Master was rolling over and over on his divan in a most indecorous way, holding his plump hands on his plump sides, in an explosion of merriment. Then, suddenly realizing how undignified his behavior must appear, he recovered his composure with a jerk, and remarked thoughtfully, with just a tinge of pity in his voice, “The Pere Rousseau—the dear old man—always acts like that when he is requested to protect anyone! He is a sort of modern Don Quixote and can’t understand how matters are arranged to-day. If it weren’t for me—his best friend—he wouldn’t see the work of many of his pupils in the Salon; and let me add, young man, that it is a mighty good thing for you that you could say just now you were a pupil of his and not of some of the other so-called artists I could name to you if I chose.”
The Master’s eyebrows became ominously contracted again, and he only deigned to snap out a ferocious “Bon jour!” to the departing Randall, omitting the more cordial “mon ami” of the first salutation.
The annual banquet given by the Alumni and the present students of the Atelier Rousseau, was offered to that distinguished artist, as was usual, just before the opening of the colossal Parisian picture show. It was also, as usual, a very gay affair. The Pere Rousseau himself, affable and stately, appeared punctually on the scene of the festivities and was promptly ensconced in a huge armchair, thoughtfully placed half way down a long vista of coarse, but snowy, tablecloth. Opposite to him, in another similar armchair, sat his best friend—the Master, to whom Randall had so recently gone for advice. He was radiant and happy; a sense of duty well done pervaded his entire personality. The dinner—a truly marvelous production at the price—was eaten with avidity by the younger men, who were not used to such luxury every day, and with a good-natured tolerance by Monsieur Rousseau, the Master, and those few of the guests who had been born with silver spoons in their mouths, or whose feet were, by their own creditable endeavors, firmly planted on the highroad which leads to fame and fortune. Such small formality as existed at the commencement of the feast gradually disappeared and, when the inevitable champagne was finally brought forth, there were not over a hundred individuals with a hundred diverse interests present, but one great human family, presided over by a dearly loved and affectionate father. Then speeches were made, and Lecroix, the most irrepressible, fun-loving man in the school, became bold enough to produce a Punch and Judy booth from a room nearby and proceeded to give an audacious parody on the Atelier and its illustrious chief.
Randall not having heard from his picture, and dying to know its fate, managed, under the pretence of seeing the performance better, to work his way up close to the Master’s chair. The Master saw him and smiled: “It is all right,” he whispered, “you are well placed, nearly on the line in the Salle d’Honneur. Why, however, did you change your picture so much? The distance was fairly good when you showed it to me at my studio, and you ought only to have worked on the foreground. The changes you have made in the composition were so badly done, and ill-advised, that I had to fight hard, I can tell you, against a pack of over-conscientious fellows, before I could get them to vote for it at all. If it hadn’t been lunch time, and so many of them were hungry and wanted to leave, rather than to dispute over pictures, I don’t think that even I could have managed them satisfactorily.”
“But,” interrupted Joe in astonishment, “I didn’t change the composition a bit. I only altered the foreground as you told me to do.”
“Then there must be some mistake,” said the Master uneasily. “But no! Here we are.” He produced his faithful note book from his pocket and fumbled its pages until he came to the one devoted to the R’s, and pointed to the words he had written over a month before, “Randall, J.—landscape;” after which he had scribbled with a blue pencil the words “Accepted” and “John.” “You did not give me your first name when I wrote this here, so I copied it down afterwards from your picture when I saw that it was safely and desirably hung. You see that it’s all right after all: you almost made me feel for the moment as though there were some error.”
“But there is a mistake!” groaned the young man in his agony, “my first name is Joseph, not John, and you have protected some body else whose last name and initial happen to be the same as mine.”
“’Cre nom de nom!” whistled the master profanely.
John Randall—an American from Vermont—returned from the Salon on Varnishing Day. He sat down and wrote to his people across the water, telling them triumphantly the news of his acceptance—the bare fact of which he had cabled to them the week before. He described graphically the memorable opening day, and thus ended up his letter:
“You have heard no doubt long ago that I have passed the difficult test of the Salon jury, and that my very first picture has been accepted. I am all the more pleased and proud over the result because it was received solely on its own merits. I painted it by myself, without any outside advice or criticism, and did not solicit the protection of the professors of the school, as I found, to my disgust, so many of my comrades were engaged in doing. Besides the fact of getting in under these circumstances, I am also pleased to be able to tell you that the hanging committee have seen fit to give me one of the very best places in the whole Salon—in the Gallery of Honor. Having done so well with my first picture, I feel that I am fully justified in anticipating a like measure of success with my second.
Give my love to all at home, and believe me,
Most affectionately your,
JOHN RANDALL.”
—Clinton Peters.
