USA > Oregon > The Oregon native son, Vol. I > Part 11
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As such things made up the greater part of his antecedents, upon which his interviewers delighted to dwell. the opin- ion became prevalent that his case lay
Young men just beginning to encoun- ter the earnest tug of existence and want- ing to find an easier way of making a living, and boys who had seen Davenport's pictures in the Examiner and Journal and were stirred with emulation, these brought samples of their art yearnings to be examined by the celebrated cartoonist during his short visit in Salem two years ago. One hopeful woman desired him to leave the train and go six miles into the country to see the work of her dar- ling boy, who had been drawing for only three months, and never made a line un- til he was 12 years old. One of Homer's early companions, now editor of a Seattle paper. said "it is too bad so many young people should abandon pursuits in which they can make a living, and spend their precious early years in drawing hideous pictures and dreaming of brilliant suc- cess in art." To satisfy his regret of such a condition, he proposed to publish his opinion that Homer's success is the worst calamity that ever befell the boys of the Pacific coast. Such a statement, how- ever emphatic, will not deter any anibi- tious boy, for has not everybody seen the catchy write-ups of Homer, who was pictured in spicy phrase as a queer, jolly fellow; a veritable freak of nature, given
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HOMER C. DAVENPORT.
to all sorts of vagaries and having a dis- relish of book learning, as well as any remunerative employment, and that his present success is the result of one or two lucky incidents?
One that he painted on the outside of a Henhouse, a gamecock so lifelike that his Willdog thought it a veritable live cock and bristled for a fight every time he passed that way; another that of a friend having confidence in the sagacity of the dog. suggested to Homer that he had better work at art for a living.
There is plenty in all this to rattle the boys and make them believe there is an easy way to fame and fortune, such as Homer had found or strayed into. But the dear school of experience is a very effective teacher, and two years of expe- rimenting and cartooning has convinced most of the boys that the hill of art is as hard to climb as the hill of science, which they abandoned to loiter in the royal road to fame. Only here and there an art scribbler is left punishing himself in the vain endeavor to evoke a faculty too weak for self-assertion; very much like making something out of nothing.
The plain, unvarnished truth as re- spects Homer's early years would have saved the boys from the unlucky diver- sion, but his interviewers were not in- formed thereof. In fact. Homer himself attached no importance to his early hab- its, nor had he considered the controll- ing impulse which prompted them. It is doubtful if he could have given as good a reason for himself as Topsy did, that he "just grow'd."
The common mind everywhere takes but little account of what is most influ- ential in the formative period of human character. Unless a person has received an academic education, he says at once. "I am uneducated." and considers as un- worthy of mention the carly, constant
ties, the only true and reliable education. And it is owing to the omission of the basic conditions, the absolutely essential antecedents, from the biographical sketch that make of Homer an inexpli- cable personage. Very creditable ac- counts, however, have been written within a year by Allan Dale, Julian Hawthorne and Arthur McEwan, but they contain no antidote to the irrational intoxication which possessed the young. would-be artists of Oregon. . If they could have been assured for a fact that although Homer never attended an art school or had an art teacher, he had spent his whole life in the daily and almost hourly practice of art, not as technically understood, but of drawing such pic- tures as suited his fancy, not because any one else was an artist, or to satisfy an ambition to be an artist, for he was void of purpose, but from an inherited en- dowment of special faculties, and an irre- pressible desire to exercise them, they would have dropped their pencils in ut- ter amazement, to think of following in the track of such a being. He didn't wait until he was 12 years old before he began to trace his mental pictures on pa- per. Before he was 3 years old he was observing and drawing, rudely but con- tinuously, subject to such intermissions of play as children take. It is nothing uncommon for young children to draw. but it is very rare to see one absorbed in the work hour after hour, putting his observations to paper as though it were a devotion.
His extraordinary love for animals, and especially of birds, was exhibited when only a few months old. Unlike other babies, toys afforded him but little amusement. Shaking rattle boxes and blowing whistles only fretted him, and his wearied locks and moans seemed to
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OREGON NATIVE SON.
MRS. ELIZABETH ECKERSON A Pioneer of #1549
MAJOR THEODORE J. ECKERSON. A Pioneer of .1849
Photo by Moore. . JUDGE M. C. GEORGE. A Pioneer of 1952 ..
Photo by Moore. CAPTAIN GEORGE POPE. A Pioneer of 1856.
OREGON PIOVEER
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HOMER C. DAVENPORT.
Carrying him around into the various rooms and showing pictures soon be- came irksome, and in quest of something to relieve the monotony of indoor life, his paternal grandmother found a con- tinuous solace for his fretful moods in the chickens.
It was worth the time of a philoso- pher, to observe the child drink in every motion of the fowls, and witness the thrill of joy that went through his being when the cock crew or flapped his wings.
Such a picture is worth reproducing. Old grandmother in her easy chair upon the veranda: baby sitting upon the floor by her side: the little hands tossing wheat, at intervals, to the clucking hen and her brood, the latter venturing into baby's lap and picking grains therefrom, despite the warnings of the shy old cock and anxious mother. This lesson with all its conceivable variations learned. ceased to be entertaining. and a broader field was needed. So grandma or her substitute carried baby to the barnyard. and there, sitting under the wagon shed, acquaintance was made with the other domestic animals, which afforded him daily diversion. At first their forms and quiet attitudes were of sufficient inter- est, but as these became familiar, more active exhibitions were required, and the dog, perceiving his opportunity, turned the barnyard into a circus of animals.
Whether this was the cause and be- ginning of Homer's love for dogs is probably not material, but unlike Mad- ame DeStael. who said "the more I see of men the better I like dogs," he has love enough to go all around. All this seems very commonplace, as any child would be likewise entertained, but it is a very rare infant to whom such scenes and acquaintances are a necessity. And that the forms and actions of his speech- less friends were being photographed upon his brain, was shown by the fact
that as soon as he could use a pencil he began to sketch them, very imperfect in proportions and form, but exhibiting them in action with sufficient accuracy before long to label one as untamed, an- other mad, and another frolicksome.
After his mother's death, from small- pox. as stated, the family was subjected to several months of social isolation. during the rainy season, when Homer. just recovered from the dread disease. was kept indoors. During these dull months he worked . more as-
siduously at drawing than ever
since for pay. Sitting the at desk, or lying prone upon the floor. it was draw, draw, draw. Fearing the effect of such intense application upon the slimsy fellow, his grandmother tried various diversions, without much suc- cess. She could interest him with In- dian or ghost stories, but such gave him no bodily exercise, and only set him to drawing "how granny looked when tell- ing ghost stories."
(Among Homer's subjects for illus- tration was his father, whom he pictured in various ways upon the fences, barn or wherever he could find a board large enough to accommodate the scene he" wished to portray. For years this habit brought about no ideas in his father's mind of a some day future prominence for his son, but rather a feeling of irrita- tion at being drawn as he was, and in ludi- crous positions. As a result he put in con - siderable time in trying to develop, with the aid of a branch of hazel-bush, a more matter of fact manner of action in Homer. He had to finally give it up. however, for the latter kept on making his cartoons, often showing "what father did when he got mad at them." These incidents the now justly proud parent has seemingly forgotten, but this article would not be complete without giving
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OREGON NATIVE SON.
them mention, so the liberty has been ta- ken to supply the omission .- Ed.)
Plainly observable, even thus early, was his love of the dramatic in every- thing having life. Though much at- tracted by beautiful specimens of the an- imal kingdom, his chief satisfaction came from representing them in their moods. His pictures were all doing something. Horses, dogs, monkeys, chickens, ducks, pigeons, were exhibiting their peculiar characteristics, and so fitted to the occa- sion as to awaken the supposition that the artist must be "en rapport"with all animated na- ture. Of course, his artistic crea- tions were wide . of the mark, as respects confor- mity to natural proportions, which his visit- ing critics unfail- ingly pointed out. "Homer, this horse's legs are too long for his body: his back is too . short, and his neck too long. And this dog, chasing the horse, is too long- bodied and short-legged. Nobody ever saw a dog like that." His reply was. "that is a bench-leg dog, and the horse can't kick him." The real excellence of the disproportioned animals, which the voluntary critics did not see, lay in the fact that they were truly acting out their natures, under the circumstances, and exhibiting the same controlling animal desires in every limb and feature. ,
A mad horse was mad all over, and an ardent dog showed it in every part. re- gardless of proportions.
It may be said that these are a fond parent's after-thoughts, or the result of
his own suggestions at the time, but neither of these suspicions can be true. The suggestion as to harmony in dra- matic compositions and co-ordination of details might be elaborated to a student a thousand times, and yet, without the natural faculty to perceive, without the sympathy with nature, the suggestions would result in a mere artificiality, as de- void of life as "a painted ship upon a painted ocean."
Art education at the highest schools can not supply an artist's natural defi- ciency in me- chanical apti- tude, or give him a receptive sympathy with life.
HOMER WATCHED HIS FATHER HOEING CORN. AND REPRODUCED THE SCENE ON THE BARN DOOR.
A highly ac- complished Pa- risian artist. working on the Examiner, saw a cartoon by Ho- mer, represent- ing the havoc created a mon g the animals of a barnyard by the passing of the first rail- road train through it, and remarked: "No man who was not born in a barnyard could do that."
Evidently that artist was off in his cas- uistry, for he, too, had seen ducks and geese, cows and calves, goats and sheep, horses and mules, all of them in action, and while he could represent them in ac- tion with far more accuracy as to propor- tion of parts, his animals in such a scene would be doing some very poor acting: in fact. not looking and acting like thent- selves. If an early acquaintance and continuous existence with domestic ani- mals could make an artist, then all farm- ers' boys would be artists. The poor Trish who raise pigs and chickens in
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HOMER C. DAVENPORT.
the house, and the Arabs who tent their horses and children together from birth, should be artists. Such incidents do not make artists; they merely furnish oppor- tunity for the exercise of birth endow- ments.
And Homer's early method of work, if an impulsive employment, may be dig- nified by the term method, was "sui gen- eris," and probably unique, if not won- derful. Coincident with the drawing of a mad horse, was the acting by himself. The work would be ar- rested at times, seeming- ly for want of apprecia- tion or mental image of a horse in that state of feeling, and then he took to the floor. After vic- iously stamping, kick- ing. snorting and switch- ing an improvised tail. which he held in his hand behind his back, until his feeling or fancy became satisfied, the pic- ture was completed and referred to me with the question, "Is that the way a mad horse looks?" "Yes, he appears to be mad through and through."
DAD FOUND THE PICTURE, THEN FOUND HOMER.
Granting that the importance of har-
. mony in a composition was frequently spoken of in his youth, I lay no claim to being his teacher, for he was moved by an impulse that paid but slight re -. gard to the technical restrictions of scribe and rule.
And although it has been said by a writer in The New York World that he "has a robust contempt of art." his nat- ural ability and aptitude for accomplish- ing such results as the critic would call artistic are unsurpassed. The mechani- cal aids and dilatory processes of the schooled artists are never resorted to by
him. He does not use a snap-shot cam- era, or wait for a dead-rest pose. but sketches on the spur of the moment, and "shoots folly as it flies." Under such circumstances, faultless art is out of the question. nor does a daily newspaper need it.
During the Columbian exposition at Chicago in 1892, a famous horse race oc- curred, and all the great newspapers sent artists to sketch the winning horse. Hc- mer's picture for the Chicago Herald easily surpassed all com- petitors. What other artist in America can study a man's features for a minute or two, then walk a mile to his studio and draw a better like- ness of him than was ever done by an artist having a pose?
Sam Rainy's picture was taken in this way, and he was so pleased with it that he procured the original from the Ex- aminer and has it framed in his office. And still Homer makes no pretensions to serious art, as taught at the schools. His forte is caricature, though Clara Morris says it is not, but that he is a great actor.
He fell in love with the beautiful beasts and birds at first sight, and the at- tachment continues unabated.
His fondness for dramatic scenes, first noticed in connection with them, did not end there. Very early, even at 3 years of age, he was experimenting with his playmates, for no observable reason. ex- cept that he desired to see them act. People said he was a hector, a tease, and few of them discovered the cause. as there seemed to be no connection with anger or ill will. Many a delightful play
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OREGON NATIVE SON.
Photo by Cronise. JUDGE GEO. H. BURNETT.
Photo by Moore. FRANK C. BAKER.
Photo by Cronise.
JOSEPH D. LEE.
Photo by Moore. JOHN C. LEASURE.
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NATIVE SONS OF OREGON.
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HOMER C. DAVENPORT.
ended in a rumpus, which he eagerly eyed, the only placid and sweet-tempered one of the company. One woman said she believed Homer loved to see chil -. dren quarrel and cut up. Indeed, she had come very close to the truth, but the motive she had not divined. Likely he was probing human nature and assimi- lating its moods. I do not take him to be a philosopher. "His peculiarities in this respect are referred to his mother, who was the most consummate repro- ducer of social scenes. No person, how- ever old in feature, form, voice or ges- ture, was beyond her powers of imita- tion. And it was all so natural that I did not call it acting./ Rather, it was being. I asked her once how she could do this, and she said, "I feel like them." I have often thought, when seeing Ho- mer immersed in his work, that he, too, feels like his subjects.
All through his boyhood days he was fond of pictures, and spent much time in poring over illustrated books and pa- pers, and in visiting art galleries, but he was never known to copy from them. His innate desire and tendency, as well as my advice, was to illustrate his own conceptions and fancies. His first ob- servations, as before narrated. were at home in his father's barnyard, but as he grew he began to roam in quest of something new, and when he heard of any strange breed, or any extraordinary specimen of the animal creation, he was at once seized with what ordinary peo- ple would call an irrational desire to see it. And to see. in his case, meant the most intense study, not for a few minutes or an hour, but continuously. until the subject became a part of him. Of scores of pigeons, he knew every individ- ual, and discovered that the old story of their marital faithfulness is a myth; above it in colored letters this legend: that they have their little jealousies and love intrigues like human beings. Of be!"
his visits over the country, people said they were idle, purposeless; that he was sowing wild oats, a mere pleasure-seeker. but I noticed that he came to me full. not of book learning, but of the only kind of acquisitions for which he cared. new birds and beasts, new men and their character manifestations, as he could prove with his ever-ready pencil.
They were as much voyages of dis- covery as Columbus undertook in 1492. Unlike the great navigator, his cruisings were not for wealth or power, or the in- troduction of religion to heathen lands: they had no ulterior purpose of financial gain, for the thought had never crossed his brain that he was. in this spontaneous and almost unconscious way, preparing himself for gainful occupation.
But he was approaching manhockl. and I occasionally remarked to him that he had so far been acting as though life here is a holiday or a visit, when in fact it is a very serious matter, and requires earnest effort to get a good living. He did not dissent from my view of it, but seemed at a loss in deciding for what he was best fitted.
We had a general merchandise store. and he had experimented enough in selling goods to know that his mind could not be tied to the business. Cus- tomers buying tobacco got it at their own price, and shopping women objected to his habit of stretching elastic tape when selling it by the yard. There was fun in such things, but no perceptible profit. He opened the store in the morn- ing while I was at breakfast, and took his afterwards. Upon going in one morning and finding the floor unswept, I soon saw what had engaged his atten- tion during the half-hour. A magnifi- cent carrier pigeon on the wing, and "How glorious the flight of a bird must
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OREGON NATIVE SON.
My mind was made up: Homer is an artist or nothing; he shall fly. As a preparatory step, he was sent to the com- mercial college in Portland, which was of great advantage to him, although he spent considerable time in his lifelong habit. The principal reported him bright, but not studious of the works in vogue, and mildly suggested that book- keeping by double-entry was not, as a rule, illustrated by animals, wild or tame. Receiving a letter from me containing a reprimand for his want of earnestness, he no doubt gave an hour or two to retrospection, and passed in review his various attempts at the employments which afford other men a living, and wisely regarding them as hopeless for him, he turned to the only thing he could do, and applied for a position on the West Shore, an illustrated monthly pub- lished in Portland. The publisher sent him to the head artist, a Mr. Smith, who eyed the young man rather contempt- uously. "Then you think, Mr. Daven- port, that you have a natural talent for drawing?" Mr. D-, somewhat with- ered, thought he had some. "Do you see that man across the street, leaning against a drygoods box? Draw him." And the artist went down stairs and across the street to where the leaning in- dividual was, thinking, as he went, that one egotistical greenhorn was effectually disposed of. . He was surprised upon his return to
find the greenhorn had finished
two pictures, the leaning person and Mr Smith. "Where did you take lessons in art?" "I never took any," said Homer. Thinking there was a misunderstanding. he asked. "What art school did you .at- tend?" "I never attended an art school." Mr. Smith slowly and musingly ejacu- lated. "Well, young man, you are either a liar or a fool." Homer felt let down' at such abuse, but I consoled him, say- ing it was the only genuine compliment
he had ever received from a professional, though couched in rough language.
Shortly afterwards I said: "Homer. the fates are against us; we must sep- arate: here is some money, go to San Francisco, and, recollect, it is art from this on." We had supposed that the head of an art school would be glad to welcome a young man with such de- cided predilections as Homer had shown, and be willing, as well as able, to add improvement and give discipline without attempting to destroy his indi- viduality, but in this we were completely in error. Homer was soon informed that his art was not art at all, but an uncouth vagary, which must be forthwith aban- doned. Henceforth he must drop his fancies and draw by scribe and rule; ev- erything must exist in natural, and there- fore proper proportion; expression with- out it is a veritable nightmare, and the boy who would undertake to draw a fig- ure without, in the first place, blocking it in proportion, is a fool from whom nothing excellent can be expected. This lesson was dinned, with so much rudeness and so continuously, that the benefit hoped for was impracticable. Homer was too long for the teacher's Procrustean bed, and, therefore, spent very little time in that school. As be- fore, the city with it's zoological garden and heterogeneous population, became his school, at which he was not laggard in attendance.
A siege of la grippe sent him home, and soon after he got a position on the Portland Mercury, and worked several months for that paper, using star plates, the abomination of all artists. While working there he was sent to New Or- leans to sketch the Dempsey-Fitzsim- inons fight, and made some very clever drawings of the combatants.
The short time he was in the South was very valuable, as it introduced him to a new world, and one rich in that un-
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HOMER C. DAVENPORT.
restrained and exhuberant abandon of the negro race. He returned with his . head and heart full of it, and for several days was oblivious to all surroundings, until he had put into form the queer characters. he had observed away down in Louisiana. He has never produced anything better than the darky preacher, traveling on the train through Texas, engaged in his pastoral work. It was equal to anything from A. B. Frost, and with the addition of Homer's humor. which is extravagant enough for any dar- ky. was superb. In sanctimonious well, the negro divine far exceeded the Rainsfords and Talnrages of the North. Though his plug hat was somewhat bat- tered by long and rough usage. his clothes seedy and threadbare. and his patent leather shoes really spurning his ample feet. and grinning with more teeth than a shark. they did not prevent a lugu- brious flow of religious unction, all im- possible to the thin-lipped Caucasian.
If I were inclined, like some of Ho- mer's interviewers, to distrust the force and persistency of inherited genius, I might say that if he had not made that picture, he would not have obtained his present place upon the New York Journal, and the CON- clusion would not be as vio- lent an assault upon human nature as much that is written about him. That picture was an evidence of his ability to go up much higher, and I thought so well of it that I sent it, with some others, to C. W. Smith and William Henry Smith, our cousins living in Chi- cago, who received them in the pres- ence of the head of the art department of the San Francisco Examiner, and by the aid of those gentlemen, Homer was forthwith employed upon the great daily. But that was only an opportunity, and one so hedged about with unobserv- ing control. that his expressed desire to begin the work to which he is by na- ture best adapted was unheeded. He is a humorist and caricaturist. but at that
time Mr. Hearst was absent in Europe, and his art manager had either not made the discovery, or was doubtful of that sort of work being a paying investment. Being tied up rather sternly, and his pet yearnings often rebuked, he went to the San Francisco Chronicle, where he was allowed more liberty, and was fairly be- ginning to show how the world of hu- manity looks, stretched in the line of its tendencies, when the desire to see the World's Fair took him to Chicago.
At its close he returned to the Chron- icle, and the Mid-Winter Fair coming on soon after, he found therein an ample field for the use of his faculties, and ex- ercised them with but little hindrance from the kind and appreciative art man- ager of that paper. At that time he was getting but $35 a week, and when W. R. Hearst returned from Europe and took in the situation by personal inspection, he saw what all others, managers and artists alike, had failed to see, viz .: That a caricaturist so affluent in imagination, so overflowing with distinctly American humor, so fertile in artistic expedients, and withal so rapid in execution, could be put to a higher and more extended use than merely making people laugh. The result of Mr. Hearst's discovery was the employment of Homer upon the Ex- aminer at $roo a week. Everybody knows the rest. The purchase of the New York Journal by Hearst, the trans- ference of Davenport to that paper, in which the unschooled Oregon boy has proved himself equal to the ambition of his employer.
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