The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 2 by Harry Furniss (best ereader for comics TXT) 📗
- Author: Harry Furniss
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My first impression of New York was that of a faded back-cloth in a melodrama; but when you get upon the stage, or, in other words, into the streets, you find yourself amid a transformation scene of wonderful activity and brilliancy. Some of the streets, in fact most of them in which business is transacted, resemble strongly the shop scenes in harlequinades, for the Americans have carried advertising so far that their streets of shops, and especially those in New York, are simply museums of grotesque advertisement.
Gigantic hands advertising gloves, huge hats, boots, and animals form a heterogeneous collection of anything but beautiful models, gilded and painted in all the most flaming colours, piled on top of each other on every house from street level to attic, each tradesman vieing with the other in screeching to the public to "Buy! buy!! buy!!!" by means of the curiosities and monstrosities of the advertiser's art.
A few years ago a celebrated Continental authoress came to[Pg 57] London for the first time, in the height of the season, to stay a week in order to get her impressions for a book she was writing, in which the heroine had flown to London for that period of time. She went everywhere and saw everything; just before she left London I asked her what had impressed her most of all she had seen. In reply she said, "The fact that the drivers of public vehicles never cracked their whips!"
If I were asked what impressed me most about New York, I should not say Brooklyn Bridge, or Wall Street, or the Elevated Railway, but the number of chiropodists' advertisements! They confront you at every turn; these huge gilded models of feet outside the chiropodists' establishments, some painted realistically and many adorned with bunions, are destined to meet your eye as you stroll through the streets. Should you look up, you will see them suspended from the first floor window, or painted on canvas on the front of the house. Avoid the shops altogether, and you are bound to knock up against some gentleman in the gutter encased in a long white waterproof, on which is portrayed the inevitable foot and the name and address of the chiropodist.
Now why is this? The Americans have pretty feet and small hands, both men and women. Is it vanity, and do they squeeze their feet into boots too small for them, or are their pedal coverings badly made, or does the secret lie in the rough pavements of their thoroughfares? I am glad to say that I never required the services of a foot doctor, but I know that my feet have ached many and many a time after promenading the New York pathways.[Pg 58]
New York ought to be called New Trilby.
I was offered more than once an open cheque which I might fill in to cover all my expenses from the time I left England until I reached the shores of the Old Country again if I would supply a journal with one page of impressions of America illustrated. A suggestion of this sort in an English newspaper office would have just about the same effect as a big canister of dynamite! I didn't accept any of these tempting offers. I didn't go to the States on my first visit to paint glaring pictures, or to make up stories, or to marry an American heiress, nor did I go in search of the almighty dollar. I simply went as a tourist in search of health, and with the desire of shaking hands with my many friends on the other side.
I was therefore extremely annoyed on my arrival to find the irrepressible lecture agent, Major Pond, had coolly announced that I was going over to him, and he had actually taken rooms for me at the Everett House! Of course I informed the interviewers that I was not going to tour with Pond or to make money in any way. I was merely a bird of passage, a rara avis, a visitor without an eye on the almighty dollar.
After I returned to England an irresponsible paragraphist[Pg 59] informed the American public that I went home determined to give it to them hot. This contradiction of mine appeared, and was sent to me by the Major. Note in it I contradict his report that I went over in his interests.
Major Pond is a typical American, hospitable, kind, with an eye for business, but I do not appear in his entertaining book, nor was I ever on his business books either. He sat for me on the shoeblack's street chair outside his office when I made a sketch of him, and he was so obliging I believe he would have stood on his head if I had asked him. He managed to get me to stand in front of the camera, but not in front of an audience.
Some day I shall write a paper entitled "Photographers I Have Met," for few people have faced the fire of the camera oftener than I. I am not a fashionable beauty, nor much of a celebrity, neither am I honestly a vain man—I shrink from the rays of the too truthful lens—but I have been dragged into the line of fire and held there until the deed is done, like an unwilling convict. In nearly every town I have visited have I undergone this operation, and the result is a collection of criminal-looking, contorted countenances of a description seldom seen outside the museum of a police station.
I was therefore determined not to incur this risk in America. Photographers sent their cards, but they saw me not (perhaps if[Pg 60] they had they would have repented of their invitation). However, one day I was secured by stratagem.
I was walking along Union Square with Major Pond, whose martial bearing impressed me as much as his 'cuteness fascinated me. He had that morning heard of my determination not to be photographed, and as he walked along he suddenly stepped into a doorway, his arm in mine, touched a button in a side panel, down rushed an elevator, the door was flung open, and I was flung in. "Sarony," said the Major, and up, up, up we flew.
"The photographer?" I asked hurriedly.
"The artist," the Major replied; "one of the greatest flesh drawers" (nude studies) "we have in this gr—e—a—t country, sir. Here he is, deaf to everything but art, and to everyone but artists."
Who can say photography is not high art when you have to go up seven stories to it?
I now stood before the greatest photographer in the world—and the smallest. I stood—he danced. He talked—I listened.
"Come here," he cried; "you are an artist—you can understand genius—you can appreciate my work."
And he produced from a portfolio a quantity of studies, or, as the Major would call them, "flesh drawings," prettily touched in with the stump and chalk with a chic familiar to those who know the facility of the French school. He patted me on the shoulder, kissed his hand to his work, and fell into raptures over the human form divine with an earnestness which showed him to be a true artist. With his sitter in front of him he was even more enthusiastic, placing you into position, and striking attitudes in front of you till you felt inclined to dance "Ta ra ra boom de ay" instead of remaining rigid. I pointed out to him that my hair being of an auburn hue, that on my chin and the remnant on my head came out black.
"Ah, we shall alter that," he said, and he powdered my head. "And now to counteract that—here goes!" and with some soot or charcoal he touched over the scanty parts on my "dome of thought." During this process I noticed that his own luxurious head of hair was not a fixture. He wore a fez, and as he[Pg 61] paused and pirouetted and struck attitudes, he would pull the fez over one eye coquettishly, or over the other one ferociously, and with it went his hair, parting and all. It is no wonder this energetic photographer was so successful with the instantaneous process, or that he so cleverly caught in the lens theatrical dancers and others in motion to perfection. Of the most successful of his photos that I saw was that of a row of comedians dancing together, and although I was not present at the moment the photograph was taken, I have no doubt, from the pleasant smile of their faces and their artistic poses, that all credit was due to the late Sarony.
The Major had his "Bureau" in Everett House. There he arranged for his "stars," and there under false pretences he decoyed me, and there for the first time initiated me into the obnoxious habit of drinking iced water.
Most people are aware that in Nicaragua there dwell a tribe who gradually kill themselves by an extraordinary predilection for eating a certain kind of clay. These people are of the lowest order, and may therefore be pardoned for their foolishness in turning themselves into plaster casts; but why the enlightened Americans choose to convert themselves into walking icebergs through drinking so much iced water is unaccountable to the alien. They certainly do play havoc with their digestions. They eat rapidly and recklessly, and swallow with startling rapidity, for having all the dishes placed before them at once they have no waiting in between the courses to assist digestion, and almost before they have swallowed their food they freeze it with draughts of iced water.
At this hotel in New York there lived for some years an[Pg 62] Italian singer, who was a great favourite in the city, and whose horror of iced water was a terror to all the waiters. They knew that it was as much as their lives were worth, and certainly as much as the glass was worth, to set a drink of this concoction before him. If any new or forgetful waiter offered the obnoxious liquid to the foreigner, it was soon thrown at his head or to the other end of the room. Americans seldom show their feelings, but anything they resent they will harbour in their minds, and never forget.
In due course this singer died. The weather was hot at the time, and the body in the shell was surrounded by ice until the time came to carry it out of the hotel. As it passed through the hall the manager, who had had many and many an upbraiding from the excitable Italian after the latter had been proffered the hateful iced water, rushed out and triumphantly exclaimed:
"'Guess, sir, you've got plenty of ice now, whether you like it or not!'"
I was told that kindness would be showered upon me in America. I lived in a perfect blizzard of hospitality, the force of which was too much for me to stand up against. The poet asks, "What's in a name?" I don't know, I'm sure, but I know what's not in a name, and that's something by which you can identify the owner of it.
You are introduced to a man, his name being given you as Mr. James B. Brown. You could never forget his face as long as you live, but there is nothing in the name of James B. Brown to fix it in your memory. Indians are more practical—they adopt nicknames. Amongst them the gentleman in question would probably be known as "Cherrybeak," "Bleary Eye," or some such descriptive cognomen.
I felt the want of this common-sense system when in America terribly. While there I lived at the highest pressure of hospitality. Breakfasts, luncheons, teas, dinners, suppers, receptions and all sorts of gatherings, sometimes two or three of them in one day.
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