I remember walking with Lowell and my uncle when the conversation drifted to walking sticks. My uncle said he had cut his on the grave of Wordsworth. I sniffed and said it was not half so good a stick as mine and that if it had been cut on the grave of Shakespeare it would have no added value for me. Lowell turned and said:
“My boy, you are like most of the great men of the world—lacking in one quality, that of deference—and all the fools.” Considering that I had heard of this poet in his youth, marching through the streets of Cambridge with the young woman to whom he was betrothed, draped in white, with wreaths upon their heads, and the people in the procession cheering, as a tribute to virginity, I could not help but think: Is it better, I wonder, for a young man to be lacking in deference or a sense of humor?
Leslie Stephen was an editor, and used to get his friends to look over some of the manuscripts submitted to him before he gave his final opinion. One day his friend, Robert Louis Stevenson, ran in, on his way to Scotland, to say good-by, and he asked him to take some poems by an unknown writer along with him and give his criticism of them. R. L. S. wrote a most enthusiastic letter, saying he was so interested that he had hunted up the author, in the hospital, and taken along his best beloved book, The Viscount de Bragelonne.
“If he did not like that, I did not want to know him,” he said, “but he knows it better than I do. Publish his work at once.”
This was the first the world ever heard of the Hospital Sketches of Henley, who showed his gratitude after Stevenson’s death by coming out with a statement publicly criticizing him for his debts.
Anders Zorn and his wife, who was the daughter of a wealthy merchant of Stockholm, came over from Spain to St. Ives. He was known principally as a watercolorist before this, but had painted portraits of some of the royal families of Europe, and was patronized by the king of Sweden. Zorn had a disposition of sweetness and light, and, although he had inherited a great charm and delicacy from the paternal side of his family, he cared nothing for society and manners, and thought like a simple peasant; therefore, like a child.
He was large, fattish, built on a small skeleton—a man who would break easily—and had the head of all the colorists—that is, a square forehead, delicate but square jaw, slight aquiline nose, and enormous pale-blue watery eyes. His drooping yellow mustache was long but not thick, and his hands were of the softest, most personal and interesting character. He was a man with a great hypnotic quality who did not talk much, but dominated without speaking. When he got into a tea fight, he would stand around a short time, listening, then saying, “Yes, I agree,” saunter over to the window to the light and, taking a ring off his finger, begin to carve. He had many of these in all states of completion, and one I recall as especially clever was of two little girls with feet twisted and hands holding the jewel.
Zorn loved beautiful women and the human body from an artistic standpoint. His wife understood him as no other being could, and his unrestrained, childlike disposition and natural manners were never misinterpreted by her. In fact, she took care of him as of a most valued property, and added much to the success of his career as an artist. She and his mother seemed to be the two great influences in his life. Every year he sent a lovely sealskin wrap to his mother back in Sweden, and the dear old woman had chests in her garret full of these coats which she evidently delighted to take out and show to her less fortunate friends.
I never knew Zorn to get angry; he was as smooth as cream, but always gave his absolute opinion when asked for it, and always expected others to do the same. Quite a contrast to a well-known American artist who wanted to turn me out of his house because I did not praise everything he showed me. I asked:
“What did you ask me here for, to give you compliments?”