Those lines stung Fritz as the whip stings a mettled horse. His flesh rebelled, but the poet in him leaped to the truth.
On March 20, 1913, the colony at 94 Charles Street adjourned to a performance of Man and Superman. Fritz kept his room-mate up until two in the morning discussing it. The next night he routed me out of bed at ten and quizzed me about it until three in the morning.
He had had his glimpse of the collision between sex and ambition; between the impulse of the woman to create children of flesh and blood, with the man as adjunct and provider; and the impulse of the man to create children of the spirit independently of the woman. He was quick to realize that he had struck something which he had to settle, and he was settling it. The thing was deliciously transparent. Here was a young gentleman tremendously in earnest about being an artist. Being an artist he loved beauty. Hitherto, in his shy way, he had secretly been rather tickled by the flutter which his striking head created in the dove cots of pretty girls. But after March 20, 1913, the tune changed. He was affable, delighted to make their acquaintance—but on his guard. He had not the slightest intention of letting sex thwart his ambition.
"Yes, but...?"
"Yes, but...." He played the game. A commercial society decrees that the artist cannot have a livelihood until his work is accepted at a commercial value. Pending that acceptance, if he assumes the responsibility of wife and children he also assumes the risk of shackling himself to pot-boiling work for life.
Society also decrees a standard of prenuptial chastity for the male. Suppose the male happens to be more interested in art than in domesticity. He must then ask himself whether he shall abide by a decree which bourgeois society promulgates with more emphasis than sincerity. With his eyes wide open to the fact that the very society which promulgates this decree openly winks at its evasion, Fritz abode by it. A slightly sterner set to his jaw; a slightly darker flash in his eye; a slightly grimmer stoicism in the grip on his emotions were all that betrayed the battle which had raged in him between the two creative forces: sex and intellect. He never pretended that the battle was won for keeps. The crust on which he walked he knew to be thin. But it was won for the present. He well knew that there are no bargain days at life's counter: he had come there to purchase one of the most precious commodities—a creative career—and he was willing to pay the fee. If he found the fee somewhat high (and I have reason to know that he did) he never complained. It was his reward to enjoy that supreme luxury of conduct—to be the thing he seemed. He lived in that kind of glass house which is not damaged by any amount of stone-throwing, because there is nothing to hit: a glass house with all the curtains up. "Naked and unashamed" could have been written over the door of his mind. Time and again he quoted a passage from Trilby in which Du Maurier says that mental chastity begins in the artist when the model drops her last garment. He was frank to add that this was strictly true; that in the intense concentration of his mind on problems of form and color he had found in painting from the nude no room for images of sex but on the contrary an actual release from the heats and fevers which plague young men. The remedy he proposed was: "Get rid of mystery."
There is a portrait painted at about this time which tells the story of the inner struggle which he was fighting and winning. It is of a young girl, about his own age, with a wondrously sweet expression and sparkling eyes. The delicacy, the spirituality which shines through it makes it hard to believe that the portrait could have been painted by a young man. Not a hint of sexuality. He later told me that the girl was afflicted with a lameness and he told how grateful he was to her for valuing him for his mind and not obtruding sex. I doubt if he knew how publicly yet with what delicacy he had thanked her.
There were moods of him, as when he stood silently drinking in a landscape, which made me think of that fine old chant which one hears in the churches:
"O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness."
