He pulled me out of many a financial hole, doubtless sometimes with much work for himself. It is not always easy, even for rich men, to get sums of money on the spur of the moment. Once he lent me three thousand dollars on an order I was carrying out, and when I paid him, he returned me the interest money the next day, with the words: “I give you this on one condition, that you use it to go over to Europe and visit your family. You need a vacation.” Dear old Stanny, it wasn’t the money help that he gave his friends that made him so charming, but it was the little things that require so much delicate thought. I do not think he spent ten minutes a week thinking about himself.
One memorable Easter Sunday (the Ten were to open a show next day, and we were hanging our work) Stanny appeared. I had two marines which he liked, but he was greatly taken with a portrait of my grandmother which was not yet framed and was leaning against the wall in the corner. I had intended to get some inch-and-a-half molding for it. He could never bear to have a work of art improperly dressed. I can see now how he looked, beautifully groomed with top hat, frock coat—evidently on his way to some smart affair. He looked at me a moment, then grabbed the portrait and rushed from the place. Needless to say I followed. Outside was a fine equipage, his own, and, taking it, we ended at his office, where he had a floor stored with all kinds of valuable antiques, draperies, frames, statues, which he had chosen in Europe—not because they were old or only one of a kind in existence, but because they were beautiful—and brought over here. Keeping up his two characteristic gestures of scratching his head and rumpling his hair with one hand, and slapping his thigh with the other—his office force knew that if he ever did the two together it was time to flee—he dove into dozens of frames which were piled for at least fifteen feet away from the wall. Ignoring his clothes, he dashed in and was covered with dust in two seconds. In five minutes he had tried all the frames and found two that fitted the portrait. Telling me to take my choice, he turned around and was gone. I had barely made my selection and turned to go when a flunky from his Gramercy Park home ran in, out of breath, and grabbed the picture. When we got to the street there was no sign of Stanny or his carriage, but a large hired vehicle was waiting, ready to take me back to the gallery. He was doing that sort of thing all the time, but would have been very cross if anyone had mentioned it in public.
May I tell of a small matter which, until the death of both men, I have kept to myself? Once Stanny came to me acting rather strangely, and asked me if I would take a trip uptown with him. When we alighted at a studio building where many of my friends lived he asked me to show him the way to X’s rooms—an artist I remembered leaving behind us at the club. It seemed strange that Stanny intended calling upon a man he knew not to be at home, but I kept still. Kneeling down on the floor, he shoved under the door a roll of bills which looked big figured to me, and we fled. In the cab outside, I inquired what it meant.
“You know he needs it. I have it. Why shouldn’t I give it to him? But you must never tell.”
I asked how much it was.
“Oh, I don’t know.”
The next day I heard X telling a friend that he had gone home the night before, ready to pack his things, as he was to be kicked out of his studio in the morning, but a most miraculous thing had happened. He had found a roll of bills under his door.
I never told, and he died without knowing who had helped him.
One could hardly tell about the work of Stanford White without including something of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, for America is richer by many works of art which are the combination of the genius of these two men. Saint-Gaudens was the son of a cobbler. I believe that if an exhaustive history of the clever people of the world were written, it would be found that a large percentage had been sons of cobblers. As a boy, I used to be fascinated by a certain cobbler of the town, and while listening to his words of wisdom I learned to make, entirely with my own hands, a pair of boots. He was a socialist and, I suppose, an anarchist, but the joy of life was in his heart and I am sure that fashioning a beautiful covering for the human foot is as near making a statue as anything could be.
It was funny to watch the French or the Irish crop out in Gussy. The French was always on the alert for something beautiful. I remember being taken by him and several architects up to a place in Cornish. They had found a charming view. After climbing away up to the top of a hill—mulleins, granite stones, and not much else in the foreground—I was told to look off over the landscape and rave. They called it “Too Good to be True.” I can visualize a farmer, an old resident of the place (call him Haskins), coming in with the wood which he throws into the woodbox, saying to his wife: