How nice it must have been to know that one self, at least, was humble.
And he felt the democratic American tomahawk wheeling over his uncomfortable scalp all the time.
The great American grouch.
Two monsters loomed on Cooper's horizon.
| MRS. COOPER | MY WORK |
| MY WORK | MY WIFE |
| MY WIFE | MY WORK |
| THE DEAR CHILDREN | |
| MY WORK!!! |
There you have the essential keyboard of Cooper's soul.
If there is one thing that annoys me more than a business man and his BUSINESS, it is an artist, a writer, painter, musician, and MY WORK.
When an artist says MY WORK, the flesh goes tired on my bones. When he says MY WIFE, I want to hit him.
Cooper grizzled about his work. Oh, heaven, he cared so much whether it was good or bad, and what the French thought, and what Mr. Snippy Knowall said, and how Mrs. Cooper took it. The pin, the pin!
But he was truly an artist: then an American: then a gentleman.