Read Online The Night Listener and Others by Chet Williamson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Chet Williamson
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But dear God, what wonderful text. Here was romance, here was adventure, here was balm for the soul jaded by the tired and stolid fictions of society life. His gaze hung upon the frontispiece, wherein Jack Binns, the desperado, sat by the midnight campfire with Maria Prescott, the Eastern heiress, touching her hand with wonder. Eustace didn’t need to read the caption below—
“Yore skin’s jes’s soft ‘n purty…” he said.
—and below, the page number on which the illustrated scene appeared.
Again he blessed Arthur Hampton at Harper’s for giving him the assignment. Not that he had needed it from a financial standpoint, for he was far busier than he had ever been, regularly doing illustrations for McClure’s, Leslie’s Weekly, The Century, and The Red Book, as well as books. Indeed, even though pictures bearing the signature of E.P. Saunders had appeared in the popular magazines since 1883, these first few years of the new century had been more rewarding than ever, artistically as well as financially. The black and white washes he had done for last year’s new Robert Chambers novel had been among his best, as was the gouache work he had done for the F. Marion Crawford short story collection. And then… The Desperado !
Arthur, God bless him, had seen something in Eustace’s work that he felt might complement M. Taggart Westover’s first book. It still amazed Eustace that Arthur had not gone after an artist who had already proven himself competent with Western-themes, like Keller, whose work for The Virginian had been so fine. Still, Arthur had thrown down the gauntlet, and Eustace, welcoming a change from the crinolines and frock coats of contemporary city novels, took it up, but with more than a touch of hesitancy.
Still, the final results were admirable. Arthur called them Eustace’s best work ever, and Eustace had to agree. It was because he worked them in oils, he felt, and also because he gave them his soul.
He had originally intended to do them in gouache, but, upon reading the book and falling utterly in love with it, decided to work in oils instead, even though the reproductions would be monochromatic. There was more color in this book, he thought, than any other he had illustrated, indeed than any other he had ever read. Then too, the fact that they were done in oils made them easier to repaint when they came back from Harper’s .
For repaint them he did, placing his own face and form over that of one of the main characters. It was not Jack Binns, the desperado, whose visage vanished beneath layers of paint, but Maria Prescott, the heroine, for Eustace P. Saunders was a mental practitioner of what he considered a Secret Vice, referred to, when it was done so at all by people of breeding, as The Love That Dares Not Speak Its Name. Only in the case of Eustace P. Saunders, it was so secret that Eustace had never practiced it, save in the darkened boudoirs of his imagination. It was not that he had never had the opportunity, for he suspected that a number of his colleagues shared the same predilection, and had even received a proposal of an illicit, illegal, and societally perverse nature from one of the younger illustrators who was as open with his brush as he seemed to be with his longings. Eustace, out of fear of exposure, had tactfully refused. Indeed, Eustace had been chaste with both sexes for all of his forty-three years, and had intended to remain thus until The Desperado seduced his mind and turned his fancies to outdoor love of a most healthful and manly nature.
He placed the book down upon his reading table with a sigh of regret that he had finished it once again, then brightened as he realized that its grand adventure could begin again as well. All he need do was turn to page one. Dear God, what a place—the West, where a man could act as he pleased without fear of polite society’s repercussions, where his fancies could come to blazing, lusty life, a land where the pseudo-life of
“Yore skin’s jes’s soft ‘n purty…” he said.
—and below, the page number on which the illustrated scene appeared.
Again he blessed Arthur Hampton at Harper’s for giving him the assignment. Not that he had needed it from a financial standpoint, for he was far busier than he had ever been, regularly doing illustrations for McClure’s, Leslie’s Weekly, The Century, and The Red Book, as well as books. Indeed, even though pictures bearing the signature of E.P. Saunders had appeared in the popular magazines since 1883, these first few years of the new century had been more rewarding than ever, artistically as well as financially. The black and white washes he had done for last year’s new Robert Chambers novel had been among his best, as was the gouache work he had done for the F. Marion Crawford short story collection. And then… The Desperado !
Arthur, God bless him, had seen something in Eustace’s work that he felt might complement M. Taggart Westover’s first book. It still amazed Eustace that Arthur had not gone after an artist who had already proven himself competent with Western-themes, like Keller, whose work for The Virginian had been so fine. Still, Arthur had thrown down the gauntlet, and Eustace, welcoming a change from the crinolines and frock coats of contemporary city novels, took it up, but with more than a touch of hesitancy.
Still, the final results were admirable. Arthur called them Eustace’s best work ever, and Eustace had to agree. It was because he worked them in oils, he felt, and also because he gave them his soul.
He had originally intended to do them in gouache, but, upon reading the book and falling utterly in love with it, decided to work in oils instead, even though the reproductions would be monochromatic. There was more color in this book, he thought, than any other he had illustrated, indeed than any other he had ever read. Then too, the fact that they were done in oils made them easier to repaint when they came back from Harper’s .
For repaint them he did, placing his own face and form over that of one of the main characters. It was not Jack Binns, the desperado, whose visage vanished beneath layers of paint, but Maria Prescott, the heroine, for Eustace P. Saunders was a mental practitioner of what he considered a Secret Vice, referred to, when it was done so at all by people of breeding, as The Love That Dares Not Speak Its Name. Only in the case of Eustace P. Saunders, it was so secret that Eustace had never practiced it, save in the darkened boudoirs of his imagination. It was not that he had never had the opportunity, for he suspected that a number of his colleagues shared the same predilection, and had even received a proposal of an illicit, illegal, and societally perverse nature from one of the younger illustrators who was as open with his brush as he seemed to be with his longings. Eustace, out of fear of exposure, had tactfully refused. Indeed, Eustace had been chaste with both sexes for all of his forty-three years, and had intended to remain thus until The Desperado seduced his mind and turned his fancies to outdoor love of a most healthful and manly nature.
He placed the book down upon his reading table with a sigh of regret that he had finished it once again, then brightened as he realized that its grand adventure could begin again as well. All he need do was turn to page one. Dear God, what a place—the West, where a man could act as he pleased without fear of polite society’s repercussions, where his fancies could come to blazing, lusty life, a land where the pseudo-life of
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