His very inarticulate tongue gave promise of greatness. One saw all this life-stuff entering into him. He could never express it in speech. It was a necessity of his being to express it somehow. It would have to come out on canvas.
Oh, once in a great while the curtain would be dropped. Some lucky turn of conversation would relax the inhibitions and liberate his tongue. Then for a few minutes, perhaps for an hour, one would be shown the treasure house within. What shall I say of those glimpses? There are times to walk fearfully lest one smash something which cannot be replaced, and these occasions were of them. Treasures not of this world; possessions which honored the possessor by being held in honor; bins heaped, as it had been, with jewels and brocades; others which gaped with a sacrificial emptiness; spaces eked out with the heroic poverty of one dedicated to the monasticism of a creative career.
Enough.... I saw—what I saw.
And withal he was half pagan. The physical gratification with which he drank in the beauty of the world reminded me of that statuette by Roderick Hudson, Δίψος ("Thirst")—a boy, feet planted wide apart, head thrown back, slaking his throat out of a gourd held in both hands. Fritz was that boy. The ugliness of modern clothes disgusted him. He was alert for chances to take off his own: impromptu baths in cold brooks on walking trips, or long days of summer sunshine on lonely stretches of sea beach with gleaming yellow sands. There was some place among the mountains of West Virginia where he used to go: ledges of flat rock above a rushing river. All day long they gathered warmth from the sun, retaining it well into the night. When the moon had risen he loved to steal away for a plunge in the river, then lie out naked in the moonlight on these great slabs of warm rock, alone with the magic night.
VIII
In May, 1917, he came to Boston from Pittsburgh. I was in Parkersburg, West Virginia. He came there.
Conscription impended. Under his composure the struggle was going on. Tolstoy had converted him. What was he to do?
"If there were no one but myself to consider...," said he, "But the suffering which you would have no hesitation in imposing on yourself you hesitate to impose on those dearer to you than yourself."