chapters from my memories

FERENC MOLNAR

a celebrated raconteur narrates some episodes about artists and money from his recollections

■ Thank God, the time when artists were recognized by their patched shoes only has passed. This, however, does not necessarily mean that all artists are wealthy. There are many artists even to-day who have to wage a constant battle with misery. And they are perhaps the truest of them. But, on the whole, the majority of the famous artists are wealthy. Or, at least, they live as if they were. As far as they are concerned, the romance of poverty and of misery no longer exists. To-day, the artists are no longer proud of the fact that they have nothing. On the contrary, they are proud of "making plenty of money." The motion pictures, the theatre, music, novelwriting, painting have created quite a number of millionaires. Therefore, one has to be in a hurry to tell those amusing and romantic anecdotes which concern poor artists. I am afraid that, in a few years, the new generations will not understand these stories at all. Why, they read in the newspapers how luxuriously famous authors, actors, and singers live, and in what gorgeous" castles they dwell! How far we are from Murger's bohêmes, from the artists who were so poor that they burned up their chairs in their fireplaces and, when they were hungry, went for a walk instead of eating a dinner! In those days, money did not like the artists, although they loved it well enough. What an unhappy love that was! In those days, artists did not want to compete with bank presidents. In those days, their greatest ambition was to be different from bourgeois society. Jean Richepin, the great French poet, in his later years an Academician and a much respected, dignified old gentleman, walked around in Paris, when still a young man, in yellow boots, red trousers, and a green jacket just to demonstrate that he did not belong to the society of commonplace, bourgeois citizens. To-day, poets are proud when they are mistaken for members of the Stock Exchange or for heads of great banks or corporations.

■ Consequently, I am going to present— necessarily in a great hurry—a few humorous anecdotes from my memoirs—before it is too late!

In front of the railroad station at Salzburg (this happened in Summer, during the Reinhardt festivals)—I met Max Pallenberg, the famous German comedian. He was redfaced and highly irritated—it was obvious that something particularly exciting or particularly aggravating had happened to him.

"What's happened to you?" I asked him. "Some policemen arrested me and I was fined two schillingshe answered in a quivering voice.

"Two schillings isn't so much money," I said. (It is about 28 cents in American money.) "You earn something like $2000 a week. Why do you worry so much about these paltry two schillings?"

He told me what had happened.

Upon arrival, he had hurried to the baggage-room to get his trunks. But the customs officials were slow and made him wait for a long time. For quite a while he waited without a murmur, but finally he lost his patience and created a disturbance the like of which had never broken the quiet of the Salzburg railroad station. The customs officials were not playgoers, therefore they did not know who the noisy gentleman was. They sent for the police. The policemen were not patrons of the drama either; consequently, they were also unacquainted with Pallenberg. They seized him and dragged him into the office of the railroad police. The desk lieutenant— not a theatregoer either—fined the actor 28 cents for having "disturbed the peace."

When he finished his tale, I asked him:

"Why didn't you tell him who you were? If they had known that you were Max Pallenberg, the celebrated actor, they would have treated you more politely."

"I purposely did not tell them who I was," he answered. "I wanted to find out how the police would treat me if they did not know my name. The experience cost me 28 cents."

"Be glad that you've gotten off so cheaply," I said. "I know of an artist who paid very dearly for failing to disclose his identity."

And I told him the following anecdote, which might be entitled: "The Green Goose, or: Incognito Occasionally Has Great Disadvantages."

■ In the little town where my father spent his childhood there lived a man whose business it was to go around all day long in the town, to visit every house, and to buy up everything that was for sale. Remnants, old clothes, puppies, kittens; in one word: everything that could be had for very little money. One morning, this man bought a green parrot and forthwith sent it home to his wife. She, however, had never yet in her life seen a parrot. She thought it was some very fine and expensive poultry, therefore she proceeded to butcher and to roast it. At noon, when the husband came home for dinner, she served it. While they were eating the roast fowl, he suddenly remembered his purchase and turned to his wife.

"By the way, where is the parrot I sent home this morning? " he asked.

"What parrot?" she asked. "I don't even know what a parrot is."

He explained to her: "A parrot is a nice, big, green bird with a crooked beak."

"Oh yes?" she said. "You mean that green goose? I roasted it, it's on your plate, you're eating it now."

He was so shocked by the revelation that he dropped his fork on the floor beside him.

"Great God!" he cried. "You stupid woman! You've roasted the parrot! Why, parrots aren't to be roasted! That was a clever bird, why that bird could talk like a man!"

"Then why didn't he say so?" the woman answered.

Moral: even the greatest of artists have to introduce themselves.

■ When I was a child, an actor lived in Budapest who was a well known portrayer of Shakespearean roles. He was, of course, continually in debt. His creditors never gave him a moment's rest. They pursued him even into the theatre where he was working, and used to upset the rehearsals. Finally he evolved the following plan. He invited the creditor who happened to visit him while the rehearsal was in progress, on to the stage and offered him a seat in a large comfortable armchair. The creditor sat down, but the moment he asked for his money the actor gave a sign to the stage-hands who opened a trap-door and the creditor suddenly found himself in the cellar. Thus the actor arranged that his creditors no longer molested him during rehearsals. . . .

There is one more anecdote: French authors who had known the elder Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, personally, told me this moving story which, I believe, also belongs to this chapter on artists and money.

When Dumas came to Paris, he was very poor; his entire fortune consisted of a twentyfranc gold piece. But soon he rose to world fame, made immense sums of money, and lived like a king. He spent money profusely, he played the Stock market and won and lost hundreds of thousands from one day to another. But, after forty years of luxury, he became a poor man once more. When he was lying on his deathbed, a friend of his visited him. The dying man lay on a simple iron cot in a modest, poverty-stricken little room. The doctor had just left him, and Dumas showed his guest the prescription the doctor had written for him.

"I shall have to take this medicine right away," the sick man said in a weak voice.

The friend took the prescription and started to take it down to the pharmacist.

"Wait a second," Dumas said. "You'll need money,too; medicine costs money like everything else in the world!"

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And he opened the drawer of his night cabinet.

"I think I still have enough money for medicine."

After a long search, he did find one single twenty-franc gold piece in the drawer. That constituted his entire fortune. He gave it to his friend, with a sad smile playing on his lips:

"Forty years ago, I arrived in Paris with twenty francs. What a lucky man I am! Look how much I have played the market! And, as you see, I haven't lost anything in forty years!"

Where are the happy times when such stories as these were still everyday happenings? I do not wish to exaggerate, but lately I have attended quite a number of parties given by feted and rich actors or popular painters at which bankers adversely treated by the whims of the Stock market walked around among the art treasures with just as much envy and jealousy as the artists once felt in the salons of the financiers. As if this foolishly changed world were trying to render some slight satisfaction to the artists who, at the beginning of their careers, were only the unhappy lovers of money. . . .