Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

by Miller, Henry

  Chama meanwhile, seated beside a garrulous old woman with a bag of peanuts, is all agog. The woman is pointing out the high spots and Chama is helping her get rid of the peanuts. “You must keep an eye on your purse,” says the old lady. “New York is full of thieves.”

  “You were a thief once, weren’t you, Dad?” says Tony.

  I try to brush him off but he wants to go into it.

  “You were in prison and you escaped by digging a hole in the wall,” says Val. “That was in Africa, when you were in the Foreign Legion, wasn’t it, Daddy?”

  “That’s right, Val.”

  “But you were a thief, weren’t you, Dad?” says Tony.

  “Well, yes and no. I was a horse thief. That’s a little different. I never stole money from children.”

  “You see, Val!”

  Fortunately, we were just passing Rockefeller Center. I pointed out the ice skaters.

  “Why doesn’t it ever freeze in California?” asked Tony.

  “Because it never gets cold enough.” (That was an easy one.)

  Central Park impressed them. So big, so beautiful. I didn’t say anything about the cops creeping around in the bushes at night, looking for hungry lovers. Instead I told them how I used to go horseback riding every morning before going to work.

  “You promised us a horse, remember?”

  “Yeah, when are we going to get it?”

  Passing an old mansion on the right, I thought of the days when I used to deliver clothes for Isaac Walker & Sons along this forbidding stretch. I thought of old man Hendrix particularly and how he lived all alone with a retinue of liveried servants. What a testy bugger he was, even when his liver gave him no trouble! I thought also of the Roosevelt family, the father, Emlen, and his three tall sons, all bankers, walking four abreast every morning, winter or summer, rain or shine, down Fifth Avenue to Wall Street, and back again after “work.” They wore canes but no overcoats, no gloves. Wonderful to take a promenade like that every day, if you can afford it. My “promenades” up and down Fifth Avenue were of quite another character. More of a prowl than an airing. And without a cane, of course.

  I cut the narrative that evening at the entrance to the Zoo. I forgot, beginning the next instalment, that I had left Chama searching for the elephants. Absent-mindedly I had switched to the Aquarium, down at the Battery. (The Aquarium was quite a hangout of mine in the days of the Atlas Portland Cement Company. Lacking the money to eat lunch, I used to pass the time studying marine life.) Anyway, just as I had worked them up over the ink fish, Val suddenly remembered that Chama was at the Zoo. So, back to the Zoo, where we strolled about for seven nights, not three or four. In fact, I began to think we’d never be able to extricate ourselves from the fascinating haunts of the beasts.

  Thus it went, from one scene to another, including a ferryboat ride to Staten Island (the home of the damned) and another to Bedloe’s Island, where we climbed up the inside of the Statue of Liberty. (Here a digression on the little statue of liberty at the Pont de Grenelle, Paris.) Night after night it went on, with detours and switchbacks, and now and then a trip to Coney Island or Rockaway Beach. Sometimes it was summer and sometimes it was winter; they didn’t seem to notice the sudden changes of season.

  Occasionally they demanded to know where Chama got all the money she was spending day in and day out. I answered (expertly) by explaining that her father was a rich man and that he had entrusted a sum of money to the manager of the hotel to be doled out to Chama as the manager saw fit.

  “Never more than two dollars at a time,” I added.

  “That’s a lot of money, ain’t it, Dad?” From Tony.

  “It’s a lot for a little girl, yes. But then New York is a very expensive place to live.” I didn’t dare tell him what some little girls get for spending money from their rich parents.

  “You never give us more than a quarter,” said Val pensively.

  “That’s because we live in the country,” said I. “There’s no way to spend money here, is there?”

  “There is too,” said Tony. “I spent a dollar once at the State Park.”

  “Yeah, and you got sick afterwards,” said Val.

  “I don’t like quarters,” said Tony. “I like pennies.”

  “That’s fine,” said I. “The next time you ask for a quarter I’m going to give you pennies.”

  “How many?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  “That’s more than a quarter, ain’t it?”

  “A lot more,” said I. “Especially for little boys.”

  When I had about run out of material I decided to fly Chama home to her parents, who were then living in New Mexico. I thought it would give them a thrill to get a description of the wonders of our vast and glorious continent from the air. So I hustled Chama off on one of the cheap lines which make frequent stops and a lot of crazy detours in order to take on freight.

  From the La Guardia airport Chama took off one fine morning in the spring, headed west. I explained that the West only begins when you cross the Great Divide. They didn’t seem to catch on very well, so I said: “The real West is the Far West… where the cowboys live and Indians and rattlesnakes.” That meant California to them, especially the rattlesnakes. Anyhow, as I explained it, Chama would have to change planes at Denver. “Denver is off the path,” I said, “but the plane has to stop there to pick up a live corpse.”

  “A live corpse?” screamed Val. “What’s that?”

  “It’s a corpse that isn’t quite cold,” I said. I could see immediately that that explained nothing.

  “Oh well, let’s skip it,” said I, and I had the plane land right in the center of a band of Indians dressed in full regalia, war paint, feathers, bells, drums, and everything.

  Why Indians? First, to eradicate the live corpse, which was an error on my part, and second, to give Chama a rousing welcome from the true sons of the Far West. I told them that her father, Merle, had once lived with the Indians, that he had brought Caruso, Tetrazzini, Melba, Titta Ruffo, Gigli and other celebrities to meet the Indians—at exactly this spot.

  “Who are they?” said Val. “The Cazzinis and Ruffios?”

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you that. They were all famous opera singers.”

  “Yeah, soap opera,” said Tony.

  “I don’t get it,” said Val.

  “Neither do I, except that Chama’s father, this man Merle … you remember him! … he was once an impresario, a very famous one, too.”

  “Is it something like emperor?”

  “Almost, dear Val, but not quite. An impresario is a man who finds places for singers to sing in—like Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Opera House.”

  “You never took us there!” piped Tony.

  “He’s a man”—I ignored the interruption—“who makes a living taking famous singers around the world. He gets paid for finding them jobs, do you see?” (They didn’t see, but they swallowed it.) “Look,” I said, hoping to make it very clear, “supposing that you, Val, became a great singer one day. (I always told you you had a lovely voice, didn’t I?) Well, you would have to find a hall to sing in, wouldn’t you?”

  “Why?”

  “Why, so that people could listen to you.”

  She shook her head as if she agreed, but I could tell that she was still nonplused.

  “Couldn’t I just sing over the radio?” she asked.

  “Sure you could, but first someone would have to get you the job. Not everybody can sing over the radio.”

  “Did they travel all together?” asked Tony.

  “When?” said I.

  “When they went around the world like you said.”

  “Of course! Sure they did! That’s how Merle got to know the Zulus and the Pygmies. …”

  “Did they sing for the Zulus too?” Tony was real excited now. He remembered the Zulus because one of my fans, a woman living in Pretoria, had sent him a Zulu gun—a wooden one—as well as some other curious gifts of Zulu make. I had
done my utmost, at the time, to play up the Zulus. A wonderful people, the Zulus. It’s not every day that you get a chance to put in a good word for them.

  However. … By this time they had forgotten where the hell we were. So had I.

  Well, there’s always Africa. Why not Africa? (“Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”) It was a wonderful buggy ride, with side trips to the gold mines and a vain search for the Queen of Sheba’s lost kingdom. I took them as far as Timbuctoo, an adventure which entailed a number of wild escapes from the hands of the bloody, fearsome Touaregs. The desert impressed them most of all, probably because there was no end to it; also because we got terribly thirsty and there was not a drop of water in sight. Every now and then we saw cities hanging upside down in the sky. That was fascinating too. Very. And finally we came to the animal kingdom: the lions and tigers, the elephants, the zebras, the ostriches, the gazelles, the giraffes, the apes, the champanzees, the gorillas…. They were all moving together, silently, peacefully, as in a choir. There was plenty of room for all, even for the crickets and the grasshoppers.

  We might have gone on with the story to this day had not Paul Rink begun that Inch Connecticut yarn. Paul, being a teller of tales, knew how to put more oomph in his serial than I. He knew better how to create suspense. Besides, Inch Connecticut was right out of “Superman.” As for my narrative, it belonged in the archives, along with Conan Doyle, Rider Haggard and such like. The wilds of Africa are nothing where Superman is concerned. And Inch Connecticut, from all I was able to gather, was a cut above Superman. So there I was, out on a limb. But happy for the experience. I had learned something. I learned one little thing which holds good even for holding the attention of adults. It’s this: you can’t feed it to them all at once. Even a lion has to take it piecemeal. A writer ought to know this from the start, but writers are funny animals: they have to learn things backwards sometimes.

  Another thing…. When, for example, my son Tony remonstrates because I am about to grab a horror story out of his hand, when he says, “But little boys like murder once in a while!” one must never take such a remark seriously. Of course he isn’t able to read the texts, he gets it from the pictures, and the pictures, as we all know, are thoroughly realistic. But it’s one thing to look at picture books (the comics and the horrors) and it’s another thing to sit through a bloodthirsty movie with a five-year-old who says he likes murder once in a while. Kids don’t like murder. At least, not the way our movie heroes dish it out. They adore figures like King Arthur and Sir Lancelot, as I discovered to my joy and amazement. These heroes give fair fight. They don’t beat men’s brains to a pulp with a rock or a hunk of iron. They don’t kick a man in the teeth when he’s down. They charge with long bright lances, and when they use the broad sword it is a battle of skill as well as of strength. Usually a knight hands his opponent back his broken sword, if in the heat of the fray it is wrenched from his grip. Knights, the knights of old anyway, didn’t stoop to pick up a broken bottle and mutilate a man’s face with it. They fought according to a code, and even five-year-olds are susceptible to the glamour which surrounds codes of honor.

  Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe city kids, even at the tender age of five, enjoy gangster films and all that goes into the making of them. But not country kids….

  4.

  Every now and then, especially if there are no visitors for a spell, the water color mania comes over me. The “mania,” as I call it, began in 1929, just a year before I left for France. Over the years I must have made about two thousand, most of which I have given away.

  I’ve mentioned it elsewhere, but it’s worth repeating, that the desire to paint was born one night when walking the deserted back streets of Brooklyn. My pal, O’Regan, was with me. We hadn’t a cent between us and we were as hungry as wolves. (We had gone for a walk in the hope of meeting a “friendly face.”) Passing the rear show window of a department store, we were arrested by a display of Turner’s water colors. Reproductions, of course. That started it….

  I had never displayed the least ability to draw; at school, in fact, I was so hopelessly untalented that they used to permit me to skip the drawing class. I’m still bad at it, but it doesn’t bother me much any more. Whenever I sit down to paint I feel happy; as I feel my way along I whistle and hum and sing and shout. Sometimes I put down the brush and do a jig.

  I talk to myself too, as I paint. Aloud. (To encourage myself, I suppose.) Yes, I talk a blue streak. Crazy talk, what I mean. Friends have often said to me: “I like to drop in on you when you’re painting, you make me feel good.” (It’s the contrary when I write. Then I’m usually withdrawn, abstracted, silent—often glum—neither a good host nor a good friend, nor even an “object” to communicate with.)

  I say it was Turner’s water colors which started it. But George Grosz had much to do with it too. Just a month or two before we stood in front of that department-store window my wife, June, had brought back from Paris an album of George Grosz’ work called Ecce Homo. It had a self-portrait on the cover. When we came home from our jaunt that night, O’Regan and I, I sat down to copy that self-portrait. The resemblance I succeeded in achieving excited me so much that then and there I lost all my fears and inhibitions about drawing. It was only a year later that I arrived in Paris, where I soon got to know Hilaire Hiler and Hans Reichel. (Both Hiler and Reichel tried to give me instruction with regard to water color technique; they failed, naturally, because I am incapable of “taking lessons.”) A little later I got to know Abe Rattner; watching him work, I was inspired to continue my efforts. Returning to America, in 1940, I had a few shows, none of them of much importance except the one in Hollywood where I almost sold out! It was at Beverly Glen, in “the green house,” with John Dudley observing and criticizing over my shoulder as I worked on into the wee hours of the morning, that I began—in my own estimation, at least—to make real headway.

  But the man I owe most to, in this connection, is my old boyhood friend, Emil Schnellock, who began as a commercial artist and now teaches art in a Southern college for girls. Back in 1929, it was Emil who encouraged me, guided me, inspired me. Droll now to think that he used to say then: “I wish I had the courage to paint like you, Henry.” Meaning “wild and loose.” Meaning with utter disregard for anatomy, perspective, structural composition, dynamic symmetry, and so forth. Naturally it was fun to paint as one pleased. Much better than doing realistic cans of tomatoes, milk bottles, sliced bananas and cream, or even pineapples.

  Even in those days Emil had a wonderful familiarity with the world of art. It gave him tremendous pleasure to bring with him, when he visited me for a session, precious albums of reproductions of the masters. Often we spent the whole evening studying an album. Sometimes it would be a single reproduction of a master which would engage us in conversation of an evening. Say a painter like Cimabue, or Piero della Francesca. At that time my taste was thoroughly eclectic. I liked them all, it seemed, the good and the bad. The walls were always covered with cheap reproductions—Hokusai, Hiroshige, Bakst, Memling, Cranach, Goya, El Greco, Matisse, Modigliani, Seurat, Rouault, Breughel, Bosch.

  Even that far back I was violently drawn to the work of children and of the insane. Today, if I were to choose—if I could afford the choice!—I would rather be surrounded by the work of children and the insane than by such “masters” as Picasso, Rouault, Dali or Cézanne. At various times I have endeavored to copy the work of a child or of a maniac. Studying, with intent to imitate, one of Tasha Doner’s “masterpieces”—she was then a child of seven!—I made one of the best bridges ever. At that, it was not nearly as good as the bridge which Tasha had dashed off in my presence. As for the work of the insane, it takes a master (in my humble opinion) to even approach their style and technique. On days when the zany in me gets the upper hand, I make the attempt-but it never comes off. One has to get really insane to do it!

  Sometimes I feel as if I must be slightly cracked, if not insane, to painstakingly copy a picture postcard which ha
ppens to strike my fancy. These picture postcards are continually arriving from all quarters of the globe. (Now and then I get a real jolt, as the day, for instance, when I received one from Mecca showing the Kaaba.) Often these cards are signed by people I don’t know, by fans living in outlandish parts. (“Just read the Colossus. Wish you were here.”)

  By now I’ve accumulated a rather amazing collection of scenes: holy places, skyscrapers, ports and harbors, medieval castles and cathedrals, Chinese pagodas, donjons, exotic animals, the great rivers of the world, famous tombs, ancient scripts, Hindu gods and goddesses, primitive costumes, Oriental types, ruins, codices, celebrated nudes, the apples of Cézanne, the sunflowers of Van Gogh, every Crucifixion imaginable, the beasts and jungles of Rousseau, the monsters (“great men”) of the Renaissance, the women of Bali, the samurai of old Japan, the rocks and waterfalls of old China, Persian miniatures, the suburbs of Utrillo, Leda and the Swan (in all variations), the Pissing Boy (of Brussels), the odalisques of Manet, Goya, Modigliani, and, perhaps more than the works of any other painter, the magical themes of Paul Klee.

  I honestly believe I have learned more—if I have learned at all—from looking at the work of other painters than in any other way. As with a book, I can look at a painting with the eyes of an aesthete as well as with the eyes of a man who is still struggling with the medium. Even bad paintings, I have found—even commercial art-yield food for thought. Nothing is bad when you look at it hungrily. (The first step in the art of appreciation.) Riding the subway in New York, how attentively—in those early days—I studied the folds and wrinkles of those Arrow Collar men!