The truth is, of course, that Mr. Freer's gallery is not merely the "finest private gallery in Detroit"; not merely the finest gallery of any kind in Detroit; but that it is one of the exceedingly important collections of the world, just as Mr. Freer is one of the world's exceedingly important authorities on art. Indeed, any town which contains Mr. Freer—even if he is only stopping overnight in a hotel—becomes by grace of his presence an important art center for the time being. His mere presence is sufficient. For in Mr. Freer's head there is more art than is contained in many a museum. He was the man whom, above all others in Detroit, we wished to see. (And that is no disparagement of Henry Ford.)
Once in a long, long time it is given to the average human being to make contact for a brief space with some other human being far above the average—a man who knows one thing supremely well. I have met six such men: a surgeon, a musician, an author, an actor, a painter, and Mr. Charles L. Freer.
I do not know much of Mr. Freer's history. He was not born in Detroit, though it was there that he made the fortune which enabled him to retire from business. It is surprising enough to hear of an American business man willing to retire in the prime of life. You expect that in Europe, not here. And it is still more surprising when that American business man begins to devote to art the same energy which made him a success financially. Few would want to do that; fewer could. By the time the average successful man has wrung from the world a few hundred thousand dollars, he is fit for nothing else. He has become a wringer and must remain one always.
Of course rich men collect pictures. I'm not denying that. But they do it, generally, for the same reason they collect butlers and footmen—because tradition says it is the proper thing to do. And I have observed in the course of my meanderings that they are almost invariably better judges of butlers than of paintings. That is because their butlers are really and truly more important to them—excepting as their paintings have financial value. Still, if the world is full of so-called art collectors who don't know what they're doing, let us not think of them too harshly, for there are also painters who do not know what they are doing, and it is necessary that some one should support them. Otherwise they would starve, and a bad painter should not have to do that—starvation being an honor reserved by tradition for the truly great.
Very keenly I feel the futility of an attempt to tell of Mr. Freer in a few paragraphs. He should be dealt with as Mark Twain was dealt with by that prince of biographers, Albert Bigelow Paine; some one should live with him through the remainder of his life—always sympathetic and appreciative, always ready to draw him out, always with a notebook. It should be some one just like Paine, and as there isn't some one just like Paine, it should be Paine himself.
Probably as a development of his original interest in Whistler, Mr. Freer has, of late years, devoted himself almost entirely to ancient Oriental art—sculptures, paintings, ceramics, bronzes, textiles, lacquers and jades. The very rumor that in some little town in the interior of China was an old vase finer than any other known vase of the kind, has been enough to set him traveling. Many of his greatest treasures he has unearthed, bargained for and acquired at first hand, in remote parts of the globe. He bearded Whistler in his den—that is a story by itself. He purchased Whistler's famous Peacock Room, brought it to this country and set it up in his own house. He traveled on elephant-back through the jungles of India and Java in search of buried temples; to Egypt for Biblical manuscripts and potteries, and to the nearer East, years ago, in quest of the now famous "lustered glazes." He made many trips to Japan, in early days, to study, in ancient temples and private collections, the fine arts of China, Corea and Japan, and was the first American student to visit the rock-hewn caves of central China, with their thousands of specimens of early sculpture—sculpture ranking, Mr. Freer says, with the best sculpture of the world.
The photographs and rubbings of these objects made under Mr. Freer's personal supervision have greatly aided students, all over the globe. Every important public library in this country and abroad has been presented by Mr. Freer with fac-similes of the Biblical manuscripts discovered by him in Egypt about seven years ago, so far as these have been published. The original manuscripts will ultimately go to the National Gallery, at Washington.
Mr. Freer's later life has been one long treasure hunt. Now he will be pursuing a pair of mysterious porcelains around the earth, catching up with them in China, losing them, finding them again in Japan, or in New York, or Paris; now discovering in some unheard-of Chinese town a venerable masterpiece, painted on silk, which has been rolled into a ball for a child's plaything. The placid pleasures of conventional collecting, through the dealers, is not the thing that Mr. Freer loves. He loves the chase.
You should see him handle his ceramics. You should hear him talk of them! He knows. And though you do not know, you know he knows. More, he is willing to explain. For, though his intolerance is great, it is not directed so much at honest ignorance as against meretricious art.
The names of ancient Chinese painters, of emperors who practised art centuries ago, of dynasties covering thousands of years, of Biblical periods, flow kindly from his lips: