all over the globe. Every important public library in this country and abroad has been presented by Mr. Freer with fac-similes of the Biblical manuscripts discovered by him in Egypt about seven years ago, so far as these have been published. The original manuscripts will ultimately go to the National Gallery, at Washington.
Mr. Freer's later life has been one long treasure hunt. Now he will be pursuing a pair of mysterious porcelains around the earth, catching up with them in China, losing them, finding them again in Japan, or in New York, or Paris; now discovering in some unheard-of Chinese town a venerable masterpiece, painted on silk, which has been rolled into a ball for a child's plaything. The placid pleasures of conventional collecting, through the dealers, is not the thing that Mr. Freer loves. He loves the chase.
You should see him handle his ceramics. You should hear him talk of them! He knows. And though you do not know, you know he knows. More, he is willing to explain. For, though his intolerance is great, it is not directed so much at honest ignorance as against meretricious art.
The names of ancient Chinese painters, of emperors who practised art centuries ago, of dynasties covering thousands of years, of Biblical periods, flow kindly from his lips:
"This dish is Grecian. It was made five hundred years before the birth of Christ. This is a Chinese marble, but you see it has a Persian scroll in high relief. And this bronze urn: it is perhaps the oldest piece I have—about four thousand years—it is Chinese. But do you see this border on it? Perfect Greek! Where did the Chinese get that? Art is universal. We may call an object Greek, or Roman, or Assyrian, or Chinese, or Japanese, but as we begin to understand, we find that other races had the same thing—identical forms and designs. Take, for example, this painting of Whistler's, 'The Gold Screen.' You see he uses the Tosa design. The Tosa was used in Japan in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and down to about twenty years ago. But there wasn't a single example of it in Europe in 1864, when Whistler painted 'The Gold Screen'; and Whistler had not been to the Orient. Then, where did he get the Tosa design? He invented
it. It came to him because he was a great artist, and art is universal."
It was like that—the spirit of it. And you must imagine the words spoken with measured distinctness in a deep, resonant voice, by a man with whom art is a religion and the pursuit of it a passion. He has a nature full of fire. At the mention of the name of the late J. P. Morgan, of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or of certain Chinese collectors and painters of the distant past, a sort of holy flame of admiration rose and kindled in him. His contempt is also fire. A minor eruption occurred when the automobile industry was spoken of; a Vesuvian flare which reddened the sky and left the commercialism of the city in smoking ruins. But it was not until I chanced to mention the Detroit Museum of Art—an institution of which Mr. Freer strongly disapproves—that the great outburst came. His wrath was like an overpowering revolt of nature. A whirlwind of tempestuous fire mounted to the heavens and the museum emerged a clinker.
He went to our heads. We four, who saw and heard him, left Mr. Freer's house drunk with the esthetic. Even the flooding knowledge of our own barbarian ignorance was not enough to sober us. Some of the flame had gotten into us. It was like old brandy. We waved our arms and cried out about art. For there is in a truly big human being—especially in one old enough to have seemed to gain perspective on the universe—some quality which touches something in us that nothing else can ever reach. It is something which is not admiration only, nor vague longing to emulate, nor a quickened comprehension of the immensity of things; something emotional and spiritual and strange and indescribable which seems to set our souls to singing.
The Freer collection will go, ultimately, to the Smithsonian Institution (the National Gallery) in Washington, a fact which is the cause of deep regret to many persons in Detroit, more especially since the City Plan and Improvement Commission has completed arrangements for a Center of Arts and Letters—a fine group plan which will assemble and give suitable setting to a new Museum of Art, Public Library, and other buildings of like nature, including a School of Design and an Orchestra Hall. The site for the new gallery of art was purchased with funds supplied by public-spirited citizens, and the city has given a million dollars toward the erection of the building. Plans for the library have been drawn by Cass Gilbert.
It seems possible that, had the new art museum been started sooner, and with some guarantee of competent management, Mr. Freer might have considered it as an ultimate repository for his treasures. But now it is too late. That the present art museum—the old one—was not to be considered by him, is perfectly obvious. Inside and out it is unworthy. It looks as much like an old waterworks as the new waterworks out on Jefferson Avenue looks like a museum. Its foyer contains some sculptured busts, forming the most amazing group I have ever seen. The group represents, I take it, prominent citizens of Detroit—among them, according to my recollection, the following: Hermes, Augustus Cæsar, Mr. Bela Hubbard, Septimus Severus, the Hon. T. W. Palmer, Mr. Frederick Stearns, Apollo, Demosthenes, and the Hon. H. P. Lillibridge.
I do not want to put things into people's heads, but—the old museum is not fire-proof. God speed the new one!
CHAPTER VII
THE MÆCENAS OF THE MOTOR
The great trouble with Detroit, from my point of view, is that there is too much which should be mentioned: Grosse Pointe with its rich setting and rich homes; the fine new railroad station; the "Cabbage Patch"; the "Indian Village" (so called because the streets bear Indian names) with its examples of modest, pleasing, domestic architecture. Then there are the boulevards, the fine Wayne County roads, the clubs—the Country Club, the Yacht Club, the Boat Club, the Detroit Club, the University Club, all with certain individuality. And there is the unique little Yondatega Club of which Theodore Roosevelt said: "It is beyond all doubt the best club in the country."
Also there is Henry Ford.
I suppose there is no individual having to do with manufacturing of any kind whose name is at present more familiar to the world. But in all this ocean of publicity which has resulted from Mr. Ford's development of a reliable, cheap car, from the stupefying growth of his business and his fortune, and more recently from his sudden distribution among his working people of ten million dollars of profits from his business—in all this publicity I have seen nothing that gave me a clear idea of Henry Ford himself. I wanted to see him—to assure myself that he was not some fabulous being out of a Detroit saga. I wanted to know what kind of man he was to look at and to listen to.
The Ford plant is far, far out on Woodward Avenue. It is so gigantic that there is no use wasting words in trying to express its vastness; so full of people, all of them working for Ford, that a thousand or two more or less would make no difference in the looks of things. And among all those people there was just one man I really wanted to see, and just one man I really wanted not to see. I wanted to see Henry Ford and I wanted not to see a man named Liebold, because, they say, if you see Liebold first you never do see Ford. That is what Liebold is for. He is the man whose business in life it is to know where Henry Ford isn't.
To get into Mr. Ford's presence is an undertaking. It is not easy even to find out whether he is there. Liebold is so zealous in his protection that he even protects Mr. Ford from his own employees. Thus, when the young official who had my companion and me in charge, received word over the office telephone that Mr. Ford was not in the building, he didn't believe it. He went on a quiet scouting expedition of his own before he was convinced. Presently he returned to the office in which he had deposited us.
"No; he really isn't here just now," he said. "He'll be in presently. Come on; I'll take you through the plant."
The machine shop is one room, with a glass roof, covering an area of something less than thirty acres. It is simply unbelievable in its size, its noise and its ghastly furious activity. It was peopled