American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell (17 page)

*   *   *

Although Rockwell was sorely unable to articulate his feelings over Billy’s death, he did paint a moving portrait of him that spring. It ran as a
Post
cover and amounts to a tender elegy. He presumably used his many long-existing sketches of Billy to create it.
Boy with Dog in Picnic Basket
shows Billy sitting in a high-backed seat on a train, his ticket stub tucked behind the red ribbon on his hat. Dressed nicely in a black jacket and knickers, he is traveling with his black-and-white dog and presumably plans to be away for a long while. A large, buckled suitcase is stowed beneath his black-stockinged legs. A package resting on his right is wrapped in white paper and tied in string—a spare and lovely object, its contents unknowable. It reminds us that Rockwell’s art, however accessible, keeps his deepest inspirations hidden from view.

As he sits in his train seat, Billy is a looming presence. His hat extends above the double line of the
Post
logotype and his shoes are cut off at the bottom, as if he is too big to be contained by the edges of a magazine cover. Naturally, the picture comes with a story. Billy has sneaked his dog onto the train in a lidded picnic basket, and now the dog is climbing out and whining, threatening to expose them both. Billy is shushing him as if worried that someone will hear. An honest boy is committing a small crime and you feel he is basically justified in doing it, that maybe the rules about pets are too strict. The dog is a charismatic creature. With its wide brown eyes and dangling pink tongue, its two front paws pushing out of the basket, it is an irrepressible force. It has already broken the twine tied around the basket—a loose strand falls between Billy’s legs.

A manila shipping tag is tied to the basket. It’s the kind with a reinforced hole, a bright red ring that echoes the color and shape of Billy’s shushing lips. Although the shipping tag is curled, you can make out part of the address, which is written in black script: “Billy Pay … 39 Edgew … New R.”

Where is he going? Perhaps he is journeying to the kingdom of heaven, and sneaking along his dog for company. The painting graced the cover of the
Post
on May 15, 1920, just two days after what would have been Billy’s sixteenth birthday.

*   *   *

When you think back to the early years of
The Saturday Evening Post
, two figures spring to mind: Rockwell and F. Scott Fitzgerald. In 1920, by which time Rockwell had been at the
Post
for four years, Fitzgerald, a twenty-three-year-old Princeton graduate, published his first novel,
This Side of Paradise
, and began contributing short stories to the
Post
. George Horace Lorimer believed his stories could bring the magazine a new generation of readers, whose spending habits were giving rise to an advertising market whose dollars he also hoped to attract. Fitzgerald’s famous story the “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” ran in the issue of May 1, 1920, and caused an uproar. Parents who read it took offense, while their daughters thrilled to its implicit endorsement of women who wear lipstick and stay out late. The cover, that week, happened to be Rockwell’s
Ouija Board
, which referred to one of the first crazes of the twenties. In it, a young man and woman face one another over a fashionable Ouija board, resting their hands on that wooden pointer thing (officially, a planchette) that can supposedly summon spirits and answer questions. It is gravitating to the part of the board that conveys an unambiguous, permission-granting, post-war YES.

Boy with Dog in Picnic Basket
ran on the May 15, 1920, cover of
The Saturday Evening Post
and amounts to a tender elegy for a boy who fell to his death.

That summer, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald were living in a rustic cottage in Westport, Connecticut, newlyweds who claimed to be seeking quietude. One night Rockwell and Irene were at a dinner in New Rochelle when they piled into someone’s car and were driven to a party in Westport where the guests were dressed in pink jackets and riding habits. “I thought it was all very grand,” Rockwell recalled years later, “because I met F. Scott Fitzgerald, the famous writer, and heard him sing a rowdy song.”
14

It was their only encounter. Rockwell remained impervious to Fitzgerald’s allure and perhaps disapproved of the writer’s beyond-your-means hedonism. Rockwell always believed it was dangerous to court unwarranted pleasures. He had to hold himself in readiness for the art of painting, his raison d’être. Besides, he continued to prefer the company of kids. That summer, he was inseparable from Eddie Carson, who had been Billy’s best friend and had none of his academic problems. Eddie would be leaving for Harvard in the fall, at the age of sixteen. He posed, that July, for a painting that appeared on the cover of the Christmas issue of
American Boy
magazine. He is shown delivering a pile of wrapped Christmas presents when his mutt plays a little trick on him, yanking on its leash and entangling the boy’s legs.

An article in the same issue focused on Eddie’s experiences as a model for Rockwell. Rockwell drove Eddie to the interview in his new car, a black Franklin touring affair. The conversation began playfully enough, but then Rockwell started talking about his models. “Bad as they are, I like ’em,” he said.
15
“Billy Payne was the worst of all. Full of mischief every minute. A few months ago he started to play one of his good-natured tricks on another boy. He climbed out of one window at his home and started to climb into another. He fell three stories. When they picked him up, they found his skull was fractured.” The original newspaper story had reported that Billy was playing a trick on a girl, not a boy, but Rockwell stuck with the boy version in his future accounts.

The conversation shifted to other subjects and Rockwell made it sound as if his days in the studio passed in nonstop merriment. The banter between him and Eddie was brotherly and relentless. The reporter asked if Eddie has any bad habits. “He has just one that I know of,” Rockwell replied in a deadpan. “When he goes camping, he shoots mud turtles.”

When the interview ended, Rockwell and Eddie headed off together, and the reporter was struck by their closeness. As he noted: “They were clambering into the car like two kids—talking, laughing, taking a swat at each other as the occasion offered.” It was, in its way, an astonishing scene. Rockwell seemed more like a camp counselor than a famous artist.

In the next few years, he continued to be known as the Boy Illustrator. When
The Boston Globe
interviewed him, in 1923, the headline proclaimed
DRAWS BOYS AND NOT GIRLS
.
16
The article reported: “His favorite subject is boys, good, wholesome boys not of the Smart Alec type.” The integrity of the boys was never in question. But his own character was not nearly so straightforward.

EIGHT

MISS AMERICA

(1922 TO 1923)

There are very few photographs in which Rockwell and his wife Irene appear together. The most legible was taken in April 1920, by a society photographer at the first-ever Artists’ Ball in New Rochelle. Rockwell, who loved costume parties, is togged out for the occasion as a Spanish matador. He smiles wanly from beneath a goofy hat with pom-poms dangling from the brim.
1
Irene stands beside him, a large-boned brunette with a huge, lipsticky smile. She is dressed in a festive if generic costume that does not make it clear who she is supposed to be.

Rockwell was not eager to fill in the outlines. What we know of Irene comes mostly from his autobiography, where, fairly or not, she is characterized or rather caricatured as a conventional woman who liked to lunch at the Bonnie Briar Country Club. He drove her there even on Sundays, then turned around and went back to his studio. Items in the society column of newspapers attest to Irene’s love of bridge parties. At various times she was a member of the all-women’s Monday Afternoon Bridge Club, the Thursday Afternoon Bridge Club and the Friday Afternoon Bridge Club. Every so often, she entertained “the girls” at her home. She and Rockwell were then living in a two-family, redbrick house at 218 Centre Avenue, not far from the train station.
2

Rockwell dressed up as a Spanish matador for a costume party in April 1920, with his wife, Irene.
(Photograph by Paul Thompson)

Irene seldom posed for Rockwell, but she did make a memorable appearance on the cover of the January 29, 1921 issue of
The Literary Digest.
It shows a dark-haired woman looking in on her young son and daughter, who are asleep in the same bed. Irene modeled for the mom—a peculiar role for a woman who never bore children. Portrayed in profile, she leans over the daughter’s side of the bed, gently pulling up the edge of the quilt. The boy, slumbering on the far side of the bed, near a window, lies outside the cone of the woman’s gaze. The girl is bathed in adoration, but who will save the boy?

*   *   *

After the death of Billy Payne, Rockwell continued painting scenes of boys and their loyal mutts, and he continued to form friendships with his young models. Initially, nothing seemed to change. His new favorite boy model was Franklin Lischke, a “narrow-shouldered, stringy” boy of twelve and a neighbor of his in New Rochelle. Early in 1921, Rockwell moved his studio into a barn directly behind the Lischke house, at 40 Prospect Street. He rented the second floor from the boy’s father, George Lischke, an accountant whose family was part of New Rochelle’s large German-American contingent. As was his habit, Rockwell renovated his new studio, installing heat, electricity, and a large picture window that faced north and provided the light most artists favor, a light that is even, is not too bright, and casts the least number of shadows.

Irene Rockwell seldom modeled for Rockwell and made one of her few appearances on the cover of a 1921 issue of
The Literary Digest.

Every morning, before the local businessmen were astir, Rockwell left home and walked the four blocks to his studio, “rushing up Centre Avenue as though it were about noon and he had already wasted the whole morning,” as a reporter noted.
3
By now he was a local legend. Schoolboys and their parents recognized him. “Every dog in New Rochelle knew him,” remarked Clyde Forsythe, with only partial exaggeration.

After he had modeled for a few Rockwell paintings, Franklin Lischke was promoted to the position of “studio boy” and paid the princely sum of five dollars a week. He came by every day after school to help out. One of his responsibilities was answering the phone (telephone number 375) and shielding Rockwell from unwanted callers, who included, much to the boy’s amusement, important editors in Philadelphia and New York. When an editor called to inquire into a painting that was due or slightly overdue, Franklin was instructed to say that Rockwell was out. To his relief, Franklin was not charged with cleaning the studio. Rockwell preferred cleaning it himself. He swept the floor several times a day and washed his brushes in an oversized sink with turpentine and Ivory soap. He swore by Ivory soap. “I’m very tidy,” he once said. “I like picking things up off the floor. It’s a rest from working. You get to do something else.”
4