The Genius (48 page)

"There now. Cheer up, girlie, will you! We're going to be all
right from now on."

Angela smiled through her tears. She set the table, exceedingly
cheerful.

"That certainly is good news," she laughed afterward. "But we're
not going to spend any more money for a long while, anyhow. We're
going to save something. We don't want to get in this hole
again."

"No more for mine," replied Eugene gaily, "not if I know my
business," and he went into the one little combination parlor,
sitting room, reception room and general room of all work, to open
his evening newspaper and whistle. In his excitement he almost
forgot his woes over Carlotta and the love question in general. He
was going to climb again in the world and be happy with Angela. He
was going to be an artist or a business man or something. Look at
Hudson Dula. Owning a lithographic business and living in Gramercy
Place. Could any artist he knew do that? Scarcely. He would see
about this. He would think this art business over. Maybe he could
be an art director or a lithographer or something. He had often
thought while he was with the road that he could be a good
superintendent of buildings if he could only give it time
enough.

Angela, for her part, was wondering what this change really
spelled for her. Would he behave now? Would he set himself to the
task of climbing slowly and surely? He was getting along in life.
He ought to begin to place himself securely in the world if he ever
was going to. Her love was not the same as it had formerly been. It
was crossed with dislike and opposition at times, but still she
felt that he needed her to help him. Poor Eugene—if he only were
not cursed with this weakness. Perhaps he would overcome it? So she
mused.

The work which Eugene undertook in connection with the art
department of the
World
was not different from that which
he had done ten years before in Chicago. It seemed no less
difficult for all his experience—more so if anything, for he felt
above it these days and consequently out of place. He wished at
once that he could get something which would pay him commensurately
with his ability. To sit down among mere boys—there were men there
as old as himself and older, though, of course, he did not pay so
much attention to them—was galling. He thought Benedict should have
had more respect for his talent than to have offered him so little,
though at the same time he was grateful for what he had received.
He undertook energetically to carry out all the suggestions given
him, and surprised his superior with the speed and imagination with
which he developed everything. He surprised Benedict the second day
with a splendid imaginative interpretation of "the Black Death,"
which was to accompany a Sunday newspaper article upon the modern
possibilities of plagues. The latter saw at once that Eugene could
probably only be retained a very little while at the figure he had
given him. He had made the mistake of starting him low, thinking
that Eugene's talent after so severe an illness might be at a very
low ebb. He did not know, being new to the art directorship of a
newspaper, how very difficult it was to get increases for those
under him. An advance of ten dollars to anyone meant earnest
representation and an argument with the business manager, and to
double and treble the salary, which should have been done in this
case, was out of the question. Six months was a reasonable length
of time for anyone to wait for an increase—such was the dictate of
the business management—and in Eugene's case it was ridiculous and
unfair. However, being still sick and apprehensive, he was content
to abide by the situation, hoping with returning strength and the
saving of a little money to put himself right eventually.

Angela, of course, was pleased with the turn of affairs. Having
suffered so long with only prospects of something worse in store,
it was a great relief to go to the bank every Tuesday—Eugene was
paid on Monday—and deposit ten dollars against a rainy day. It was
agreed between them that they might use six for clothing, which
Angela and Eugene very much needed, and some slight entertainment.
It was not long before Eugene began to bring an occasional
newspaper artist friend up to dinner, and they were invited out.
They had gone without much clothing, with scarcely a single visit
to the theatre, without friends—everything. Now the tide began
slowly to change; in a little while, because they were more free to
go to places, they began to encounter people whom they knew.

There was six months of the drifting journalistic work, in which
as in his railroad work he grew more and more restless, and then
there came a time when he felt as if he could not stand that for
another minute. He had been raised to thirty-five dollars and then
fifty, but it was a terrific grind of exaggerated and to him
thoroughly meretricious art. The only valuable results in
connection with it were that for the first time in his life he was
drawing a moderately secure living salary, and that his mind was
fully occupied with details which gave him no time to think about
himself. He was in a large room surrounded by other men who were as
sharp as knives in their thrusts of wit, and restless and greedy in
their attitude toward the world. They wanted to live brilliantly,
just as he did, only they had more self-confidence and in many
cases that extreme poise which comes of rare good health. They were
inclined to think he was somewhat of a poseur at first, but later
they came to like him—all of them. He had a winning smile and his
love of a joke, so keen, so body-shaking, drew to him all those who
had a good story to tell.

"Tell that to Witla," was a common phrase about the office and
Eugene was always listening to someone. He came to lunching with
first one and then another, then three or four at a time; and by
degrees Angela was compelled to entertain Eugene and two or three
of his friends twice and sometimes three times a week. She objected
greatly, and there was some feeling over that, for she had no maid
and she did not think that Eugene ought to begin so soon to put the
burden of entertainment upon their slender income. She wanted him
to make these things very formal and by appointment, but Eugene
would stroll in genially, explaining that he had Irving Nelson with
him, or Henry Hare, or George Beers, and asking nervously at the
last minute whether it was all right. Angela would say, "Certainly,
to be sure," in front of the guests, but when they were alone there
would be tears and reproaches and firm declarations that she would
not stand it.

"Well, I won't do it any more," Eugene would apologize. "I
forgot, you know."

Still he wanted Angela to get a maid and let him bring all who
would come. It was a great relief to get back into the swing of
things and see life broadening out once more.

It was not so long after he had grown exceedingly weary of his
underpaid relationship to the
World
that he heard of
something which promised a much better avenue of advancement.
Eugene had been hearing for some time from one source and another
of the development of art in advertising. He had read one or two
articles on the subject in the smaller magazines, had seen from
time to time curious and sometimes beautiful series of ads run by
first one corporation and then another, advertising some product.
He had always fancied in looking at these things that he could get
up a notable series on almost any subject, and he wondered who
handled these things. He asked Benedict one night, going up on the
car with him, what he knew about it.

"Why so far as I know," said Benedict, "that is coming to be
quite a business. There is a man out in Chicago, Saljerian, an
American Syrian—his father was a Syrian, but he was born over
here—who has built up a tremendous business out of designing series
of ads like that for big corporations. He got up that Molly Maguire
series for the new cleaning fluid. I don't think he does any of the
work himself. He hires artists to do it. Some of the best men, I
understand, have done work for him. He gets splendid prices. Then
some of the big advertising agencies are taking up that work. One
of them I know. The Summerville Company has a big art department in
connection with it. They employ fifteen to eighteen men all the
time, sometimes more. They turn out some fine ads, too, to my way
of thinking. Do you remember that Korno series?"—Benedict was
referring to a breakfast food which had been advertised by a
succession of ten very beautiful and very clever pictures.

"Yes," replied Eugene.

"Well, they did that."

Eugene thought of this as a most interesting development. Since
the days in which he worked on the Alexandria
Appeal
he
had been interested in ads. The thought of ad creation took his
fancy. It was newer than anything else he had encountered recently.
He wondered if there would not be some chance in that field for
him. His paintings were not selling. He had not the courage to
start a new series. If he could make some money first, say ten
thousand dollars, so that he could get an interest income of say
six or seven hundred dollars a year, he might be willing to risk
art for art's sake. He had suffered too much—poverty had scared him
so that he was very anxious to lean on a salary or a business
income for the time being.

It was while he was speculating over this almost daily that
there came to him one day a young artist who had formerly worked on
the
World
—a youth by the name of Morgenbau—Adolph
Morgenbau—who admired Eugene and his work greatly and who had since
gone to another paper. He was very anxious to tell Eugene
something, for he had heard of a change coming in the art
directorship of the Summerville Company and he fancied for one
reason and another that Eugene might be glad to know of it. Eugene
had never looked to Morgenbau like a man who ought to be working in
a newspaper art department. He was too self-poised, too superior,
too wise. Morgenbau had conceived the idea that Eugene was destined
to make a great hit of some kind and with that kindling intuition
that sometimes saves us whole he was anxious to help Eugene in some
way and so gain his favor.

"I have something I'd like to tell you, Mr. Witla," he
observed.

"Well, what is it?" smiled Eugene.

"Are you going out to lunch?"

"Certainly, come along."

They went out together and Morgenbau communicated to Eugene what
he had heard—that the Summerfield Company had just dismissed, or
parted company with, or lost, a very capable director by the name
of Freeman, and that they were looking for a new man.

"Why don't you apply for that?" asked Morgenbau. "You could hold
it. You're doing just the sort of work that would make great ads.
You know how to handle men, too. They like you. All the young
fellows around here do. Why don't you go and see Mr. Summerfield?
He's up in Thirty-fourth Street. You might be just the man he's
looking for, and then you'd have a department of your own."

Eugene looked at this boy, wondering what had put this idea in
his head. He decided to call up Dula and did so at once, asking him
what he thought would be the best move to make. The latter did not
know Summerville [
sic
], but he knew someone who did.

"I'll tell you what you do, Eugene," he said. "You go and see
Baker Bates of the Satina Company. That's at the corner of Broadway
and Fourth Street. We do a big business with the Satina Company,
and they do a big business with Summerfield. I'll send a letter
over to you by a boy and you take that. Then I'll call Bates up on
the phone, and if he's favorable he can speak to Summerfield. He'll
want to see you, though."

Eugene was very grateful and eagerly awaited the arrival of the
letter. He asked Benedict for a little time off and went to Mr.
Baker Bates. The latter had heard enough from Dula to be friendly.
He had been told by the latter that Eugene was potentially a great
artist, slightly down on his luck, but that he was doing
exceedingly well where he was and would do better in the new place.
He was impressed by Eugene's appearance, for the latter had changed
his style from the semi-artistic to the practical. He thought
Eugene looked capable. He was certainly pleasant.

"I'll talk to Mr. Summerfield for you," he said, "though I
wouldn't put much hope in what will come of it if I were you. He's
a difficult man and it's best not to appear too eager in this
matter. If he can be induced to send for you it will be much
better. You let this rest until tomorrow. I'll call him up on
another matter and take him out to lunch, and then I'll see how he
stands and who he has in mind, if he has anyone. He may have, you
know. If there is a real opening I'll speak of you. We'll see."

Eugene went away once more, very grateful. He was thinking that
Dula had always meant good luck to him. He had taken his first
important drawing. The pictures he had published for him had
brought him the favor of M. Charles. Dula had secured him the
position that he now had. Would he be the cause of his getting this
one?

On the way down town on the car he encountered a cross-eyed boy.
He had understood from someone recently that cross-eyed boys were
good luck—cross-eyed women bad luck. A thrill of hopeful
prognostication passed over him. In all likelihood he was going to
get this place. If this sign came true this time, he would believe
in signs. They had come true before, but this would be a real test.
He stared cheerfully at the boy and the latter looked him full in
the eyes and grinned.

"That settles it!" said Eugene. "I'm going to get it."

Still he was far from being absolutely sure.

The Summerfield Advertising Agency, of which Mr. Daniel C.
Summerfield was president, was one of those curious exfoliations or
efflorescences of the personality of a single individual which is
so often met with in the business world, and which always means a
remarkable individual behind them. The ideas, the enthusiasm, the
strength of Mr. Daniel C. Summerfield was all there was to the
Summerfield Advertising Agency. It was true there was a large force
of men working for him, advertising canvassers, advertising
writers, financial accountants, artists, stenographers,
book-keepers and the like, but they were all as it were an
emanation or irradiation of the personality of Mr. Daniel C.
Summerfield. He was small, wiry, black-haired, black-eyed,
black-mustached, with an olive complexion and even, pleasing,
albeit at times wolfish, white teeth which indicated a disposition
as avid and hungry as a disposition well might be.

Mr. Summerfield had come up into his present state of affluence
or comparative affluence from the direst poverty and by the
directest route—his personal efforts. In the State in which he had
originated, Alabama, his family had been known, in the small circle
to which they were known at all, as poor white trash. His father
had been a rather lackadaisical, half-starved cotton planter who
had been satisfied with a single bale or less of cotton to the acre
on the ground which he leased, and who drove a lean mule very much
the worse for age and wear, up and down the furrows of his leaner
fields the while he complained of "the misery" in his breast. He
was afflicted with slow consumption or thought he was, which was
just as effective, and in addition had hook-worm, though that
parasitic producer of hopeless tiredness was not yet discovered and
named.

Daniel Christopher, his eldest son, had been raised with
scarcely any education, having been put in a cotton mill at the age
of seven, but nevertheless he soon manifested himself as the brain
of the family. For four years he worked in the cotton mill, and
then, because of his unusual brightness, he had been given a place
in the printing shop of the Wickham Union, where he was so
attractive to the slow-going proprietor that he soon became foreman
of the printing department and then manager. He knew nothing of
printing or newspapers at the time, but the little contact he
obtained here soon cleared his vision. He saw instantly what the
newspaper business was, and decided to enter it. Later, as he grew
older, he suspected that no one knew very much about advertising as
yet, or very little, and that he was called by God to revise it.
With this vision of a still wider field of usefulness in his mind,
he began at once to prepare himself for it, reading all manner of
advertising literature and practicing the art of display and
effective statement. He had been through such bitter things as
personal fights with those who worked under him, knocking one man
down with a heavy iron form key; personal altercation with his own
father and mother in which he frankly told them that they were
failures, and that they had better let him show them something
about regulating their hopeless lives. He had quarreled with his
younger brothers, trying to dominate them, and had succeeded in
controlling the youngest, principally for the very good reason that
he had become foolishly fond of him; this younger brother he later
introduced into his advertising business. He had religiously saved
the little he had earned thus far, invested a part of it in the
further development of the Wickham
Union
, bought his
father an eight acre farm, which he showed him how to work, and
finally decided to come to New York to see if he could not connect
himself with some important advertising concern where he could
learn something more about the one thing that interested him. He
was already married, and he brought his young wife with him from
the South.

He soon connected himself as a canvasser with one of the great
agencies and advanced rapidly. He was so smiling, so bland, so
insistent, so magnetic, that business came to him rapidly. He
became the star man in this New York concern and Alfred Cookman,
who was its owner and manager, was soon pondering what he could do
to retain him. No individual or concern could long retain Daniel C.
Summerfield, however, once he understood his personal capabilities.
In two years he had learned all that Alfred Cookman had to teach
him and more than he could teach him. He knew his customers and
what their needs were, and where the lack was in the service which
Mr. Cookman rendered them. He foresaw the drift toward artistic
representation of saleable products, and decided to go into that
side of it. He would start an agency which would render a service
so complete and dramatic that anyone who could afford to use his
service would make money.

When Eugene first heard of this agency, the Summerfield concern
was six years old and rapidly growing. It was already very large
and profitable and as hard and forceful as its owner. Daniel C.
Summerfield, sitting in his private office, was absolutely ruthless
in his calculations as to men. He had studied the life of Napoleon
and had come to the conclusion that no individual life was
important. Mercy was a joke to be eliminated from business.
Sentiment was silly twaddle. The thing to do was to hire men as
cheaply as possible, to drive them as vigorously as possible, and
to dispose of them quickly when they showed signs of weakening
under the strain. He had already had five art directors in as many
years, had "hired and fired," as he termed it, innumerable
canvassers, ad writers, book-keepers, stenographers,
artists—getting rid of anyone and everyone who showed the least
sign of incapacity or inefficiency. The great office floor which he
maintained was a model of cleanliness, order—one might almost say
beauty of a commercial sort, but it was the cleanliness, order and
beauty of a hard, polished and well-oiled machine. Daniel C.
Summerfield was not much more than that, but he had long ago
decided that was what he must be in order not to be a failure, a
fool, and as he called it, "a mark," and he admired himself for
being so.

When Mr. Baker Bates at Hudson Dula's request went to Mr.
Summerfield in regard to the rumored vacancy which really existed,
the latter was in a most receptive frame of mind. He had just come
into two very important advertising contracts which required a lot
of imagination and artistic skill to execute, and he had lost his
art director because of a row over a former contract. It was true
that in very many cases—in most cases, in fact—his customers had
very definite ideas as to what they wanted to say and how they
wanted to say it, but not always. They were almost always open to
suggestions as to modifications and improvements, and in a number
of very important cases they were willing to leave the entire
theory of procedure to the Summerfield Advertising Company. This
called for rare good judgment not only in the preparation, but in
the placing of these ads, and it was in the matter of their
preparation—the many striking ideas which they should embody—that
the judgment and assistance of a capable art director of real
imagination was most valuable.

As has already been said, Mr. Summerfield had had five art
directors in almost as many years. In each case he had used the
Napoleonic method of throwing a fresh, unwearied mind into the
breach of difficulty, and when it wearied or broke under the
strain, tossing it briskly out. There was no compunction or pity
connected with any detail of this method. "I hire good men and I
pay them good wages," was his favorite comment. "Why shouldn't I
expect good results?" If he was wearied or angered by failure he
was prone to exclaim—"These Goddamned cattle of artists! What can
you expect of them? They don't know anything outside their little
theory of how things ought to look. They don't know anything about
life. Why, God damn it, they're like a lot of children. Why should
anybody pay any attention to what they think? Who cares what they
think? They give me a pain in the neck." Mr. Daniel C. Summerfield
was very much given to swearing, more as a matter of habit than of
foul intention, and no picture of him would be complete without the
interpolation of his favorite expressions.

When Eugene appeared on the horizon as a possible applicant for
this delightful position, Mr. Daniel C. Summerfield was debating
with himself just what he should do in connection with the two new
contracts in question. The advertisers were awaiting his
suggestions eagerly. One was for the nation-wide advertising of a
new brand of sugar, the second for the international display of
ideas in connection with a series of French perfumes, the sale of
which depended largely upon the beauty with which they could be
interpreted to the lay mind. The latter were not only to be
advertised in the United States and Canada, but in Mexico also, and
the fulfilment of the contracts in either case was dependent upon
the approval given by the advertisers to the designs for newspaper,
car and billboard advertising which he should submit. It was a
ticklish business, worth two hundred thousand dollars in ultimate
profits, and naturally he was anxious that the man who should sit
in the seat of authority in his art department should be one of
real force and talent—a genius if possible, who should, through his
ideas, help him win his golden harvest.

The right man naturally was hard to find. The last man had been
only fairly capable. He was dignified, meditative, thoughtful, with
considerable taste and apprehension as to what the material
situation required in driving home simple ideas, but he had no
great imaginative grasp of life. In fact no man who had ever sat in
the director's chair had ever really suited Mr. Summerfield.
According to him they had all been weaklings. "Dubs; fakes; hot air
artists," were some of his descriptions of them. Their problem,
however, was a hard one, for they had to think very vigorously in
connection with any product which he might be trying to market, and
to offer him endless suggestions as to what would be the next best
thing for a manufacturer to say or do to attract attention to what
he had to sell. It might be a catch phrase such as "Have You Seen
This New Soap?" or "Do You Know Soresda?—It's Red." It might be
that a novelty in the way of hand or finger, eye or mouth was all
that was required, carrying some appropriate explanation in type.
Sometimes, as in the case of very practical products, their very
practical display in some clear, interesting, attractive way was
all that was needed. In most cases, though, something radically new
was required, for it was the theory of Mr. Summerfield that his ads
must not only arrest the eye, but fix themselves in the memory, and
convey a fact which was or at least could be made to seem important
to the reader. It was a struggling with one of the deepest and most
interesting phases of human psychology.

The last man, Older Freeman, had been of considerable use to him
in his way. He had collected about him a number of fairly capable
artists—men temporarily down on their luck—who like Eugene were
willing to take a working position of this character, and from them
he had extracted by dint of pleading, cajoling, demonstrating and
the like a number of interesting ideas. Their working hours were
from nine to five-thirty, their pay meagre—eighteen to thirty-five,
with experts drawing in several instances fifty and sixty dollars,
and their tasks innumerable and really never-ending. Their output
was regulated by a tabulated record system which kept account of
just how much they succeeded in accomplishing in a week, and how
much it was worth to the concern. The ideas on which they worked
were more or less products of the brains of the art director and
his superior, though they occasionally themselves made important
suggestions, but for their proper execution, the amount of time
spent on them, the failures sustained, the art director was more or
less responsible. He could not carry to his employer a poor drawing
of a good idea, or a poor idea for something which required a
superior thought, and long hope to retain his position. Mr. Daniel
C. Summerfield was too shrewd and too exacting. He was really
tireless in his energy. It was his art director's business, he
thought, to get him good ideas for good drawings and then to see
that they were properly and speedily executed.

Anything less than this was sickening failure in the eyes of Mr.
Summerfield, and he was not at all bashful in expressing himself.
As a matter of fact, he was at times terribly brutal. "Why the hell
do you show me a thing like that?" he once exclaimed to Freeman.
"Jesus Christ; I could hire an ashman and get better results. Why,
God damn it, look at the drawing of the arm of that woman. Look at
her ear. Whose going to take a thing like that? It's tame! It's
punk! It's a joke! What sort of cattle have you got out there
working for you, anyhow? Why, if the Summerfield Advertising
Company can't do better than that I might as well shut up the place
and go fishing. We'll be a joke in six weeks. Don't try to hand me
any such God damned tripe as that, Freeman. You know better. You
ought to know our advertisers wouldn't stand for anything like
that. Wake up! I'm paying you five thousand a year. How do you
expect I'm going to get my money back out of any such arrangement
as that? You're simply wasting my money and your time letting a man
draw a thing like that. Hell!!"

The art director, whoever he was, having been by degrees
initiated into the brutalities of the situation, and having—by
reason of the time he had been employed and the privileges he had
permitted himself on account of his comfortable and probably never
before experienced salary—sold himself into bondage to his now
fancied necessities, was usually humble and tractable under the
most galling fire. Where could he go and get five thousand dollars
a year for his services? How could he live at the rate he was
living if he lost this place? Art directorships were not numerous.
Men who could fill them fairly acceptably were not impossible to
find. If he thought at all and was not a heaven-born genius serene
in the knowledge of his God-given powers, he was very apt to
hesitate, to worry, to be humble and to endure a good deal. Most
men under similar circumstances do the same thing. They think
before they fling back into the teeth of their oppressors some of
the slurs and brutal characterizations which so frequently issue
therefrom. Most men do. Besides there is almost always a high
percentage of truth in the charges made. Usually the storm is for
the betterment of mankind. Mr. Summerfield knew this. He knew also
the yoke of poverty and the bondage of fear which most if not all
his men were under. He had no compunctions about using these
weapons, much as a strong man might use a club. He had had a hard
life himself. No one had sympathized with him very much. Besides
you couldn't sympathize and succeed. Better look the facts in the
face, deal only with infinite capacity, roughly weed out the
incompetents and proceed along the line of least resistance, in so
far as your powerful enemies were concerned. Men might theorize and
theorize until the crack of doom, but this was the way the thing
had to be done and this was the way he preferred to do it.