The most exasperating feature of the letter was the offensive position his uncle took in regard to his chosen work. He advised him to give it up “as he did not seem to be a great success at it.” Success meaning to him—as it does to so many other business men—solely and uniquely the possession of the special faculty for making money.
“Yet,” said Little Barlow to his patient little wife, “I don’t think I have been a total failure, and won’t admit yet awhile that—even from his point of view—I am not a success.” “No dearest,” she joined in indignantly, “we won’t admit that at all;” and then she added proudly, “we will show him some day that you will be rich as well as famous, and will prove to him that he might have acquired far more lasting honor, at very much less expense, by giving you a few well-paid orders now—and so helping you over some rough places in your career—than he can ever gain with all his vain-glorious memorials put together.”
Little Barlow kissed his thanks on the lips of his loyal little wife and resumed: “I imagine sometimes that the old gentleman means well but doesn’t understand our case. He went into business as a boy, made all his money himself, and considers struggling was good for him and formed his character, so I suppose he honestly thinks that that is the very best training for an artist also. He doesn’t comprehend that we depend for our actual livelihood on the caprice of the public (and are often undeservedly worried thereby) or that we cannot paint directly for money, or that if we do so our work is tolerably certain not to sell. You can add up a column of figures, or measure calico, or weigh out sugar, or sweep a room, or do a lot of other useful things with the idea of remuneration for your pains in view, but you cannot write a great poem, or compose a great piece of music, or paint a great picture—which must be poetic and musical as well—with an eye solely bent on the acquisition of the almighty dollar. I never in all my life painted but one of those horrid affairs that we so suggestively call ‘pot boilers’ and that—heaven help me!—has been knocking around my studio as a lesson ever since. There seems to be something in it that proclaims it a monster to the least intelligent, something mean about it which says money was the sole object of its being born at all.
“On the contrary, if you paint a subject because you find it beautiful, or interesting, or because you love to do it, it is astonishing indeed if you do not find somebody else who would ‘love’ to have it and be glad to pay what he can afford for its possession.”
Little Barlow had followed this theory consistently and had very little left in his studio to sell. He had found that a great many people “loved” his pictures; the only trouble was that the ones who “loved” and wanted them the most had very little to give in exchange for them; and that after the expenses for frames, canvases, paints, rents, taxes, models and commissions had been deducted, there was scarcely anything remaining for the sweet young wife, the two wee children, and little Barlow himself. Still he hoped for better things in the future and worked on, as he had always done, with a great joy in his heart.
Little Barlow had had a hard life of it and had practically “made” himself, but in spite of all the sordid shocks his artistic nature had received in that process it still remained intact and valiant. He had also had his share of successes as well, although they did not exactly come within his uncle’s definition of the word. He had had two drawings and a prize painting hung on the walls of Julian’s, the title of “Premier” in the admission examination at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and an Honorable Mention and a Third Class Medal at the old Salon. When he received his “Mention” he was so proud and confident of his powers that he rashly rushed off and proposed to a charming little girl art-student just as poor and as ingenious as himself.
It was during his honey-moon—when he was blissfully happy—that he produced his medal picture, and then there came a halt in his affairs for lack of money, and the bills and the babies rolled in on him till they had threatened to drown him altogether, and in sheer desperation he composed his little plaint to his uncle which brought him the saving three hundred dollars and, a week later, the awful letter that made him red with shame for months afterward.
