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Marion, the Story of an Artist's Model

<h2>XXVII</h2> I HAD been posing for various artists for nearly two months, and I not only was used to the work but beginning to like it. How else, except as a model, could I have seen all I did at close range, and, in a way, assisted in the making of many great paintings by the best artists in Boston? Also I learned much from them, for nearly every artist I posed for talked to me as he worked. Some would tell me their hopes and fears and stories about other artists. I have even been the confidante of their love affairs. One well-known painter proposed to a girl upon my advice. He told me all about his acquaintance with her, and of the opposition of her family as if he were telling a story, and then he asked: “What would you do if you were the man in the case?” I replied: “I’d go right over and ask her to-night.” Whereupon he picked up his hat and said: “I’ll do better than that. I’ll go this minute.{163}” One artist, famous for his paintings of sunlight, used to talk all the time he worked, and I realized that he was not talking to me but at me, for when I answered him he didn’t hear at all. I didn’t make, of course, more than a living posing in costume, but for a time I got about four hours’ work a day. It was not always regular, and sometimes I didn’t even get that much time. Then there were days when I had no work at all, so I barely made enough to pay for my room and board. I realized that I would have to do something to increase my earnings, and I tried to get work to do at night schools. Miss St. Denis had told me there would be little chance there unless I would pose in the nude, and that I was determined not to do, but as the summer approached my work grew less and less, for the artists began to go away just as Miss St. Denis had told me they would. Though Mr. Sands had said I was an exceedingly pretty girl, I found that beauty was by no means an exceptional possession, and especially among the models. There were much prettier girls than I, to say nothing of the many girl friends and relatives of the artists who were often willing to pose for them. So my good looks did not prove as profitable as I had hoped. Moreover, I was new at the work, had an acquaintance{164} to build up, and at first tired quicker than the older models. However, I made a number of good friends among the artists. One of them, dear old Mr. Rintoul, who had a studio in that long row of studios near the art gallery. One day, I knocked at his door and applied for work as a model. He opened the door and peered out at me in the dark hall. At first he said he was sorry, but he couldn’t use me. He was a landscape-painter, and he said he guessed I had come to the wrong man, as there was another artist of his name on Tremont Street who painted figures. Then he said: “But come in, come in!” He was a little man of about fifty, and his face had the chubby look of a child. He wore the funniest old-fashioned clothes. He peered up at me through his glasses, and seemed to be examining my face. After a moment he said: “Having a hard time, eh? Or are you extra busy now?” I told him I was not extra busy, and he rubbed his chin in a funny way and said: “I believe I can use you after all. Now I’ll tell you how we’ll arrange it. I’m a pretty busy man, so I can’t make any definite engagement, but you come here whenever you have nothing else to do, and I’ll use you if I can. If I’m too{165} busy, I’ll pay you just the same. How will that do?” I thanked him, and told him I was so glad, for work was getting scarcer every day. He pointed to a big armchair and said: “Now sit down there and rest yourself. Be placid! Be placid!” He waved his hand at me, and went to see who was knocking at the door. Then he came back and said: “Too busy to use you to-day. Here’s the money,” and he handed me seventy cents, as if for two hours’ work. “Oh, Mr. Rintoul,” I said, “I haven’t worked at all.” “Now don’t argue,” he said. “That was our agreement, so be placid!” One day when I went to pose, he said that all the people in the studios were giving a tea, and they had asked him to open the doors of his studio, so the visitors could see it. He remarked that he would take that day off. I said: “There must be an awful lot of artists here.” He chuckled, and making his hand into a claw, said: “Not all artists, but folks hanging on to the edge of art, and cackling, cackling! Now run along, and keep placid!” and he handed me a dollar for my “time.{166}” I never really posed for him at all, for he always had something else to do, but he would make me sit in the big armchair and “be placid.” He is now gone to the land where all is placid, and whenever I hear that word I think of him, and my faith in good men is strengthened. But not all of my experiences with the artists of Boston were as pleasant as that with Mr. Rintoul and Mr. Sands and some others. I had one terrible experience from which I barely escaped with my life. I had posed several times for a Mr. Parker, who did a rushing business for strictly commercial firms. He made advertisements such as are seen on street-cars, packages of breakfast food and things like that. I had posed for him in a number of positions, to show off a certain brand of stockings as a girl playing golf, to advertise a sweater, and other things too numerous to mention. He was a large, powerfully built man, devoted to sports, and he used to tell me about his place at Cape Cod, and how he fished and rode. He discovered that I could paint, and he let me help him sometimes with his work. We got to be very friendly, and I really enjoyed working for him and liked him very much. His wife was a sweet-faced gentle little woman who occasionally came to the studio, and she would sometimes put{167} an extra piece of cake in his lunch box for me. He said she was a saint. Of all the artists I worked for my best hopes rested on Mr. Parker, for he had promised, if certain work he expected came, he might be able to employ me permanently—not merely as a model, but assisting him. One day after I had been working for him all morning, and we had lunch together, I sat down on a couch to glance over a book of reproductions, when I felt him come up beside me. He stood there, without saying anything for a while, and then, stooping down, brushed my cheek with his beard. I was not quite sure whether he was leaning over to look at the pictures, but I did not like his face so close, and half-teasingly I put up my hand and pushed his face away, as I might a fly that was in my way. Suddenly I felt a stinging slap on my face. Surprised and angry, I leaped to my feet. “Mr. Parker, you are a little too rough!” I said. “That really hurt me.” I thought he was joking, but when I saw his face I realized that I was looking at a madman. “I intended to hurt you,” he said in the strangest voice, and then he cursed me and struck me again on the cheek with the flat of his powerful hand. “Take that, and that, and that!” His voice{168} rose with each blow. Then he took me by the shoulders and shook me till my breath was gone. “Now I’m going to kill you!” he raved. I fell down on my knees, and screamed that I had not meant to offend him, but he caught hold of my hands and dragged me along toward the window, shouting that he was going to throw me out. We were seven stories up and he had dragged me literally on to the window sill. I tried to brace myself for death, as all my resistance seemed as nothing to his awful strength; but even while we struggled at the window, the door of his studio opened and some one came in. Like a flash he turned, and dragging me across the room, he literally threw me into the hall and shut the door in my face. To this day I do not even know who had entered his studio, but I believe it was a woman, and sometimes I wonder if it could have been his wife. In the hall I gathered myself up. My clothes were nearly torn off my back, and I was black and blue all over. My hair was down, and blood was running down my chin. I climbed upstairs to the studio of another artist I had posed for, and when he opened the door to my knock, he was so startled by my appearance that he called to his wife, a sculptress, to come quickly. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/i_201_sml.jpg" width-obs="372" height-obs="500" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /> <div class="caption">He caught hold of my hands and dragged me along toward the window shouting that he was going to throw me out. </div> </div> {169} “What is the matter? Whatever is the matter?” she asked, drawing me in. “You poor girl, what has happened to you?” I could not speak at first. I tried to, but my breath was coming in gasps, and I was sobbing. For the first time in my life hysterics seized me. They chafed my hands and brought me something to drink, and then she held my hands firmly in hers, and bade me tell her what had happened. Between sobs, I described the treatment I had received. I saw husband and wife exchange glances, and I ended: “And now I’m going to have him arrested.” “Listen to me,” said Mrs. Wilson. “I know you have suffered terribly, and that man ought to be killed; but take my advice, keep away from the police. Remember you have no witnesses. You could not prove the assault. It would be your word against his and you are only a model. Let it pass, and hereafter keep away from Mr. Parker.” Her husband said: “I’m surprised at Parker, the damned brute! I’ve heard of queer doings down there, and I knew he had beaten messenger boys, but, by Jove, I didn’t dream he’d beat a girl. You must have aroused his temper in some way. You know he’s unbalanced—of course you know that—every one does.{170}” No, I did not know that. He was worse than unbalanced, however. He was a madman. I went home bruised and sore and, as they advised, let the matter drop. As Mrs. Wilson had said, I had no witnesses, and I was just a model!{171} <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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