New York Sunday newspaper! So much for the quality of his soul. He made vindictive accusations against the bourgeoisie which grated on my nerves. Middleclass people grate on my nerves equally when they make vindictive remarks about Labour. He gives me the impression of having deliberately chosen to pass his life shining shoes, riding under railway waggons, sleeping in the open, and snarling at the bourgeoisie for keeping him starved and consumptive. I helped him, but felt that his object in life was to arouse sympathy simply that he might have a theatrical occasion to say, 'Damn you and your pity!' And when he departed, tucking his complaints into his cud, the little painter sidled out of his constraint and showed me a series of sketches which proclaimed a painful struggle towards an individuality of expression, which he is scarcely likely to achieve.
"We chatted in a dim candlelight, surrounded by rags and tags, dusty windows, a dilapidated bed and wet canvases, including an agonizing Christ flanked by a Barrabas who suggested a boozing taxicab driver.
"Flavouring it all was Karl's thickish, German-Swiss French, his shiny, round, plain features, his gentle eyes, his simple, warm, considerate sincerity. Not once did he complain of his penury, his chagrins, his amorous betrayals, nor boast of his gift—he merely stated them all, laying his emotions one by one on the table in a hope that I, practised in speech, would build them into an edifice for him; and I did, like a house of blocks for a child. Then he guided me down the steps, through the alley, and I particularly remember the warm, dry, compact stubbiness of his hand, as we parted, the determination in the line of his jaw. The greenish light from a street lamp over his shoulder made a circle around his dimple, and he anxiously told me what to do for my cough. There was a daub of chrome yellow on his nose and he wore no collar.
