Post Impressions Part 4

VII

MORGAN

We were speaking of the man whose career was written in terms of huge corporations and incomparable art collections.

"What a life it was!" said Cooper. "From his office-desk he controlled the destinies of one hundred million people. His leisure hours were spent amidst the garnered beauty of five thousand years. Isn't it almost an intolerable thought that the same man should have been master of the Stock Exchange and owner of that marvellous museum in white marble on Thirty-sixth Street?"

"Cooper," I said, "you sound like the I. W. W."

"I am that," he retorted. "I express the Inexhaustible Wonder of the World in the face of this thing we call America. A nation devoted to the principle that all men are born equal has produced the perfect type of financial absolutism. A people given up to material aims has cornered the art treasures of the ages. Need I say more?"

"You needn't," I said. "You have already touched the high-water mark in lyricism."

But Harding waved me aside.

"I have also been thinking of that marble palace on Thirty-sixth Street," he said. "I can't help picturing the scene there on that critical night in the fall of 1907 when Wall Street was rocking to its foundations, and a haggard group of millionaires were seeking a way to stave off ruin. I imagine the glorious Old Masters looking down from their frames on that unhappy a.s.sembly of New Masters--the masters of our wealth, our credit, our entire industrial civilisation. I imagine Lorenzo the Magnificent leaning out from the canvas and calling the attention of his neighbour, Grolier, to that white-faced company of great American collectors. The perspiring gentleman at the head of the table had one of the choicest collections of trust companies in existence. The man at his elbow was the owner of an unrivalled collection of copper mines and smelters. Facing him was an amateur who had gone in for insurance companies. Others there had collected railroads, or national banks, or holding companies. No wonder old Lorenzo was moved at the prospect of so many matchless acc.u.mulations, representing the devoted labour of years, going under the hammer. Around the walls the wonderful First Editions stood at attention and some one was saying, 'Naturally, on the security of your first mortgage bonds--'"

"Putting poetry aside," I said somewhat impatiently, "what I should like to know is whether this garnered beauty of five thousand years, as Cooper calls it, really has any meaning to its owners. I understand that most of our great collections are bought in wholesale lots, Shakespeare folios by the yard, Chinese porcelains by the roomful. Does a man really take joy in his art treasures in such circ.u.mstances?"

"Of course he does," said Cooper. "If we buy masterpieces in the bulk, that again is the American of it. I am certain that this man's extraordinary business success is to be explained by the mental stimulus he derived from his books and his pictures. His business compet.i.tors really had no chance. Their idea of recreation was yachts or cards or roof-gardens. But he found rest in the presence of the loveliest dreams of dead painters and poets. Can't you see how a man's imagination in such surroundings would naturally expand and embrace the world? No wonder he thought in billions of dollars. Why, I myself, if I could spend half an hour before a Raphael whose radiant beauty brings the tears to your eyes, could go out and float a $100,000,000 corporation."

"Having first dried your tears, of course," I suggested.

"Well, yes," he said.

Harding had been showing signs of impatience, a common trait with him when other people are speaking.

"When a rich man dies," he said, "the first thing people ask is what will the stock market do. They were putting that question last week.

Your Wall Street broker is a sensitive being. Nothing can happen at the other end of the world but he must rush out and sell or buy something.

Returning, he says to the junior partner, 'I see there has been a big battle at Scutari. Where's Scutari and what are they fighting about?'

'Search me,' says the junior partner, 'but I think you did right in buying.' 'I sold,' says the broker. 'Who won the battle?' says the junior partner. 'I don't recall,' says the broker. But he is convinced that no big battle should be allowed to pa.s.s without being reflected in Wall Street.

"But that is not what I wanted to say. Suppose the market does go up two points or loses two points. What is the effect on the Stock Exchange compared with the crisis that ensues in the art world when a rich American dies? There's where things begin to look panicky. The quotations on Rembrandts and Van Dycks are cut in two. There is consternation in London auction rooms and Venetian palaces. In some half-ruined little Italian town the parish council has almost made up its mind to s.h.i.+p to New York the thirteenth-century altar piece which is the glory of the cathedral. The news comes that Croesus is dead and the parish authorities see their dreams of new schools and a new chapel and a modern water supply vanish. That is the crisis worth considering."

"Not to speak," I said, "of that little shop on Fourth Avenue where they paint Botticellis."

"I admit that Harding has made a very interesting suggestion, though probably without any deliberate intention on his part," said Cooper.

"This steady drain by Wall Street upon Europe's art treasures is a civilising process which scarcely receives the attention it deserves, except when some Paris editor loses his temper and calls us barbarians and despoilers. I am not sure who is the barbarian, the American trust magnate who thinks a million francs is not too much for one of Raphael's Madonnas, or the scion of Europe's ancient n.o.bility who thinks that no Madonna is worth keeping if you can get a million francs for it.

According to the European idea, the proper place for a masterpiece is a corner of the lounging-room where the weary guest, after a hard day with the hounds, may be tempted to stare at the canvas for a moment and say, 'Nice little daub, what?' Their masterpieces are made to be seldom seen and never heard of.

"Now see what we do with the same picture over here. Before it is brought into the country all the papers have cable despatches about it, and they have impressed its value on the public mind by multiplying the real price by five. Then we advertise it by raising the question whether it is genuine or a fake. Then we put it into a museum and countless thousands besiege the doorkeeper and ask which is the way to the million-dollar picture. Then the Sunday papers print a reproduction in colours suitable for framing, but it isn't framed very often because the baby destroys it while papa is busy with the comic supplement. Then the New York correspondents of the Chicago papers write columns about the picture. Then it is taken up by women's clubs, the reading circles, and the Chautauqua. Before the process is completed that picture has entered into the daily thought and speech of the American people."

Harding interrupted.

"The members of the European n.o.bility have seldom been interested in art. They have been too busy wearing military uniforms or pursuing the elusive fox all over the landscape."

"But that is just the point I was making," said Cooper indignantly.

"Yes, but not so clearly as I have formulated it," said Harding. "The fact is that art has always flourished under the patronage of the merchant cla.s.s. The Athenians were a trading people. Lorenzo the Magnificent came from a family of p.a.w.n-brokers. Rembrandt sold his pictures to the st.u.r.dy, and quite homely, tea and coffee merchants of Holland. It is preposterous to suppose that because a man is lucky in the stock market he is incapable of appreciating the very best things in art. He is not incapable; only he keeps his interests separate. From ten o'clock to three our patron of the arts is busy downtown attending to the unfortunate financiers whom he has caught on the wrong side of the market. If Cooper here were a Cubist painter, and you gave him the run of a great art collector's front office on settlement day, he could produce any number of pictures ent.i.tled Nude Speculator Descending a Wall Street Staircase."

"The European aristocracy doesn't always despise us," I said.

"Occasionally an American will be decorated by the Grand Duke of Sonderkla.s.se-Ganzgut with the cross of the Bald Eagle of the Third Cla.s.s, the person thus honoured being worth nine hundred million dollars and the area of the Prince's dominions being eighty-nine square miles."

VIII

THE MODERN INQUISITION

QUESTIONNAIRE: _A favourite indoor amus.e.m.e.nt in uplift circles._

His eyes were bloodshot and he stared forward into vacancy.

"We were married," he said, "shortly after I was graduated from law school. For just five years we were happy. We were in love. I was making good in my profession. Helen took delight in her household duties and her baby. Then one day--the exact date is still engraved in letters of fire on my memory--I received a letter. It was from the Society for the Propagation of Ethical Statistics. It said that a study was being made of the churchgoing habits of college graduates, and there was a printed list of questions which I was requested to answer. I cannot recall the entire list, but these were some of the items:

"Do you go to church willingly or to please your wife?

"Do you stay all through the sermon?

"What is the average amount you deposit in the contribution plate (a) in summer; (b) in winter?

"Is your choice of a particular church determined by (a) creed; (b) the quality of the preaching; (c) ventilation?

"Are you ever overtaken by sleep during the sermon, and if so, at what point in the sermon do you most readily yield to the influence? (Note: In answering this question a state of recurrent drowsiness is to be considered as sleep.)

"Do you go to sleep most easily under (a) an Episcopalian; (b) Presbyterian; (c) Methodist; (d) Rabbi; (e) Ethical Culturist? (Note: Strike out all but one of the above names.)

"Is your awakening attended by a sensation of remorse or merely one of profound astonishment?

"What do you consider to be the ideal length for a sermon, leaving climatic conditions out of account?

"I tossed the letter across the breakfast table to Helen and intimated that I couldn't spare the time for an answer. But Helen insisted it was my duty as a college graduate. If the science of sociology couldn't look to us men of culture for its data, whom could it go to? So I telephoned down to the office that I would be late and sat down to draft my reply.

It was much more difficult than I imagined. I was amazed to find how little I knew of my own habits and processes of thoughts. It took the greater part of the morning, and when I finally did get down to the office I learned that my most important client, an aged gentleman of uncertain temper, had gone off in a rage saying he would never come back. He kept his word.

"That letter was the beginning. I had no leisure to worry over this loss of a very considerable part of my income, because the next morning's mail brought a letter from the a.s.sociation for the Encouragement of the City Beautiful. It contained a very long questionnaire which I was requested to fill out and forward by return mail. I was asked to state whether the character of the telegraph poles in our neighbourhood was such as to reflect credit on the civic spirit of the community, in respect to material (a) wood, (b) ornamental iron; and secondly, as to paint, (a) yellow, (b) red, (c) green, (d) no paint at all. I was also to say whether conditions in our neighbours' back yards were conducive to the propagation of the typhoid-bearing or common house-fly and to give my estimate of the number of flies so propagated in the course of a week, in hundreds of thousands. Finally, was the presence of the house-fly in our community due to the negligence of individual citizens, or was it the direct result of inefficient munic.i.p.al government? And if the latter, was our munic.i.p.al administration Republican or Democratic, and what were the popular majorities for mayor since the Spanish-American war?

"With Helen's a.s.sistance I managed to send off my reply within two days. But when I came down to my place of business I found that I had missed an important long-distance call from Chicago which the office-boy had promised to transmit to me, but failed to do so because he did not understand it in the first place."

He sighed and stared at the floor. His emaciated fingers beat a rapid tattoo on my desk. He droned on in dull, impersonal tones, as if this story of the wreck of a man's happiness had no special concern for him.

"Well," he said, "you can foresee the end for yourself. Within less than two months my law business disappeared, because I simply could not devote the necessary time to it. I resorted to desperate measures. I wrote to our alumni secretary, asking him to remove my name from the college catalogue; but it was too late. My name was by this time the common property of all the sociological laboratories and research stations in the country. At home, want began to stare us in the face.

Worry over my financial condition, added to the long hours of labour involved in filling out questionnaires, undermined my health. I grew morose, ill-tempered, curt in my behaviour to Helen and the child. We still loved each other, but the glow and tenderness of our former relations had disappeared.