"See here," we expostulated, "really you should not arouse expectations, and then evade the logical conclusions. It's not fair." "I didn't care to explain to those other fellows," was the reply. "They are too cynical for my taste. They go to the holy of holies of art to pray, and come away to scoff. Materialism, rather realism, as you call it, is the canker of modern art. Suppose I told you that here, now, in this noisy Tophet of New York, there lives a man of genius, who paints like a belated painter of the Renaissance? Suppose I said that I could show you his work, would you think I was crazy?" He paused. "A young genius, poor, unknown? Oh, lead us to him, Sir Painter, and we shall call you blest!" "He is not young, and, while the great public and the little dealers have not heard of him, he has a band of admirers, rich men leagued in a conspiracy of silence, who buy his pictures, though they don't show them to the critics." We reiterated our request: "Lead us to him!" Without noticing our importunities, he continued: "He paints for the sake of beautiful paint; he paints as did Hokusai, the Old-Man-Mad-for-Painting, or like Frenhofer, the hero in Balzac's story, The Unknown Masterpiece! He is more like Balzac's Frenhofer--is that the chap's name?--than Browning's Waring. He is the lost master, a Frenhofer who has conquered, for he has a hundred masterpieces stored away in his studio." "Lost master?" we stuttered; "a hundred masterpieces that have never been shown to critic or public? Oh! 'Never star was lost here but it rose afar.'" "Yes, and he quotes Browning by the yard, for he was a close friend of the poet, and of his best critic, Nettleship, the animal painter, now dead." "Won't you tell his story connectedly, and put us out of our agony?" we pleaded. "No," he answered; "I'll do better. I'll take you to his studio." The evening ended in a blaze of fireworks.
The afternoon following we found ourselves in Greenwich Village, in front of a row of old-fashioned cottages covered with honeysuckle. You may recall the avenue and this particular block that has thus far resisted the temptation to become either lofty apartment or business palace. But the painter met us here, and conducted us westward until we reached a warehouse--gloomy, in need of repair, yet solid, despite the teeth of time. We entered the wagonway, traversed a dirty court, mounted a dark staircase, and paused before a low door. "Do you knock," we were admonished, and at once did so. Approaching footsteps. A rattling and grating of rusty bolts and keys. The door was slowly opened. A big hairy head appeared. The eyes set in this halo of white hair were positively the most magnificent I had ever seen sparkle and glow in a human countenance. If a lion were capable of being at once poet and prophet and exalted animal, his eyes would have possessed something of the glance of this stranger. We turned anxiously to to our friend. He had disappeared. What a trick to play at such a moment. "Who do you wish?" rumbled a mellow voice. "Albertus Magnus?" we timidly inquired, expecting to be pitched down the stairs the next minute. "Ah!" was the reply. Silence. Then, "Come in, please; don't stumble over the canvases." We followed the old man, whose stature was not as heroic as his head; and we did not fail to stumble, for the way was obscure, and paved with empty frames, canvases, and a litter of bottles, paint-tubes, easels, rugs, carpets, wretched furniture, and all the other flotsam and jetsam of an old-style studio. We were not sorry when we came into open space and light. We were in the room that doubtless concealed the lost masterpieces, and there, blithely smoking a cigarette, sat our guide, the painter. He had entered by another door, he explained; and, without noticing our discontented air, he introduced us to the man of the house. In sheer daylight he looked younger, though his years must have bordered upon the biblical threescore and ten. But the soul, the brain that came out of his wonderful eyes, were as young as to-morrow.