Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 190, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 August 1917 — GENIUS IN GUTTER [ARTICLE]

GENIUS IN GUTTER

□reat Artist Made Drawings on Pavement for Pennies. ' Many Famous Writers Spent the Later Years of Their Life and Died in Abject Poverty. It has sometimes been said that It Is mediocrity that makes money, and while this may not be true, it is certain that genius is not unacquainted with the gutter, observes a writer in, London Tit-Bits. Everybody knows, that Francis Thompson, the poet, sold patches on Ludgate hill among thei venders of penny toys, and that James! Thompson, the author of the “City of Dreadful Night,” made his regular dormitory the Thames embankment. No wonder he found so apt a title for hlsi masterpiece I One of the most tragical Instances of. genius In the gutter Is presented by! Simeon Solomon, the pre-Raphaelltei artist, friend and comrade of Rosettl,. Burne-Jones and Swinburne, and of. every artistic and literary notability’ of his day. Perhaps he had gypsy blood as welli as Jewish blood In his veins, or InherIted some wild strain from nomadlcl forbears. Be that as It may, he went, down and down till the man who had exhibited In all the galleries and salons became a pavement artist, begging pennies for crude chalk drawings on the flagstones! And he was a failure at It. Many a man born and bred, to It could beat his head off. He died in the workhouse. Stephen Phillips, the poet and dramatist, who wrote “Paolo and Francesco" for Sir George Alexander, who staged it lavishly, and “Herod” for Sir Herbert Tree, who -’ag. It gorgeous-, ly, and who ’"a -»j tot universal renown ijui.e* lately, leaving only oi £5. He was never actually . iue gutter, but he must have been occasionally over the poverty line. Paul Verlaine, the Parisian poet, woke up one night to find a couple of burglars In his room. Shortly before he had been driven by poverty to sell every stick of furniture, and was reduced to sleeping on a sack. His visitors were so touched by this evidence of his dire poverty that they gave him a franc apiece and took their departure.-—: —— r Goldsmith lived in a slum for years, and had often not a stiver to bless himself with. He would perforce spend days together In bed, afraid to stir out on account of the bailiffs. If St. James’ square could tell Its story It would reveal Samuel Johnson, the sage of Fleet street, walking round and round, with the prince of literary vagabonds, Richard Savage, talking the night away, because neither of them could raise the price of a night’s lodging! So, though things are' infinitely better than they were, It Is evident that the eighteenth century had not the only Grub street, and that it is still possible to combine poverty and genius.