I had an afternoon off from the hospital the other day—I'm still a probationer in a pink and white uniform, you know—and I went up to town and flew about the shops and lunched with a college friend, Helen Davis, at the Ritz and had a wonderful time.
And who do you suppose I ran into? Oswald Grismer! Jim, he certainly is the best-looking fellow—such red-gold hair,—such fascinating golden eyes and colouring.
We chatted most amiably and he took us to tea, and then—I suppose it wasn't conventional—but we went to his studio with him, Helen Davis and I.
He is the cleverest man! He has done a delightful fountain and several portrait busts, and a beautiful tomb for the Lidsey family, and his studies in wax and clay are wonderful!
He really seems very nice. And the life he leads is heavenly! Such a wonderful way to live—just a bed-room and the studio.
He's going to give a little tea for me next time I have an afternoon off, and I'm to meet a lot of delightful, unconventional people there—painters, writers, actors—people who have done things!—I'm sure it will be wonderful.
I have bought five pounds of plasticine and I'm going to model in it in my room every time I have a few moments to myself. But oh, it does smell abominably, and it ruins your finger nails.
After that, Oswald Grismer's name recurred frequently in her letters. Cleland recognized also the names of several old schoolmates of his as figuring at various unconventional ceremonies in Grismer's studio—Harry Belter, now a caricaturist on the New York Morning Star; Badger Spink, drawing for the illustrated papers; Clarence Verne, who painted pretty girls for the covers of popular magazines, and his one-time master, Phil Grayson, writer for the better-class periodicals.
It's delightful, she wrote; we sometimes have music—often celebrated people from the Metropolitan Opera drop in and you meet everybody of consequence you ever heard of outside the Social Register—people famous in their professions—and it is exciting and inspiring and fills me with enthusiasm and desire to amount to something.
Of course there are all kinds, Jim; but I'm old enough and experienced enough to know how to take care of myself. Intellectuals are, of course, broad, liberal and impatient of petty conventions: they live for their professions, regardless of orthodox opinion, oblivious of narrow-minded Philistines.