The two panels were painted in my studio with the help of my assistant, Ira Remsen, and in 1914, before the fair opened, all of the artists assembled in San Francisco to add the finishing touches and see their work placed. It was my second visit to the Coast, and my earlier memories of the good times, hospitality, and generosity were repeated. Childe Hassam and Robert Reid were among those who helped beautify the buildings, Hassam proving that he was a decorator as well as a picture painter, and Reid making one of the hits of the fair by those fine things in the Fine Arts Building which the city of San Francisco has seen fit to preserve for all time.
Our membership in the Lambs’ Club gave us the privilege of enjoying the Bohemian Club, with whom courtesies are exchanged, and in the summer we made the trip to the Bohemian Grove to see the annual play produced. Here in the Outdoor Theater, with the giant redwoods forming a background, one gets a unique impression, if not purely artistic. The proscenium is two hundred feet high and the stage too large for the human animal, making an effect (as the play which I saw was based on purely modern ideas, fit only for an intimate audience) rather disappointing. Like everything else in California, however, it is overwhelming.
Over in the Greek Theater in Berkeley, during this summer, it was my good fortune to see Gilbert and Sullivan in the right setting for the first time. The idea of “Trial by Jury” (with the inimitable DeWolf Hopper), played in this theater which has been copied from one of classic times, seemed rather incongruous. But to my surprise it was as Greek as Aristophanes.
One is always having surprises out West. I saw one of the three or four best decorations in America, painted by a Californian and totally unknown. They say that a prophet is never respected in his own land, so, instead of giving Charley Dickman, the artist, one of the important jobs at the Exposition, the committee came east to New York and even went to Europe for painters.
The decoration that I speak of is across the bay from San Francisco in Oakland, in the office of a Borax company. Dickman has given a picture of the desert, where the product is found, using that Corot gray of Death Valley as a basic color harmony, making the figures and a horse, all of the same tone, chime in with no discord. It shows an unusual ease of treatment of a very difficult question. Again he has managed to turn two corners (which is supposed to be against all laws of decoration) so successfully that one is unaware of the fact. To me, it was a remarkable work of art, but no one in town seemed to know about it.
I had hoped to stay in California; every one dreams of dying there, I suppose, but I found it would be impossible to make a living. They will not purchase anything that has not already been hallmarked by New York or European approval. Then, too, the climate produces a strange effect upon the Eastern temperament. I saw an apple tree with fruit larger and different from any I had ever eaten. The farmer assured me, upon his word of honor, that he had brought it from New England as a young tree and that it had been a true Eastern russet.
EDWARD SIMMONS
At the age of seventy
After my return to New York I carried out two ceilings for Mr. Rockefeller, which were placed in the tea houses at the entrance to his Tarrytown home; I made a decoration for a lumber man down in Mississippi, and then came the War. I was too old to go; they even refused me in the Camouflage section, although I insist I would have been of use.
Although I was not allowed to take part in the War, my whole world changed. The color of everything—we were enmeshed in khaki. To eyes accustomed to riotous shades, this deadening of the whole tone of things was tremendously depressing. And then the strides—machine guns, tanks, bombs, poison gas, everything came tumbling and tossing, one over the other, in a mad strife for something to end it all. But all the time they were only getting farther involved. I wanted to keep step, and felt as if I were marching, marching, marching—until I would suddenly become conscious that I was only sitting still. I had never found the necessity of realizing the meaning of the old saying, “He also serves ——.” For the first time I was forced to acknowledge that it was the age of the young. I saw a picture of myself as the perfect Uncle Sam, his long legs stiff, his gray hair flying in the wind, his coat tails standing out farther than they had ever done, struggling to keep his footing; while all about him, over him, and under him were a mass of young men and boys in uniforms of tan, bearing the modern equipment of war and heeding not at all this old-fashioned figure who was gradually being left behind.