Show j PLAGUE OF MODELS S Artists Are Just Beginning to Suffer from Trilbyism FEMININES WANT TO POSE MANY TRICKS INVENTED TO FRIGHTEN THEM OFF The Order to Take Off Your Clothes Usually Drives the Nor Icc Out on the Street The Torture Tor-ture Pose Is Also Effectual NEW YORK Aug 30The artists of the metropolis are suffering from a strange plague Its all on account of the poor wornout bedraggled Trilby too By this time nearly all the rest of humanity has recovered from the storm of Trilbyism and having passed through the fire can laugh with glee at the writhings of the knights of the brush who are mainly responsible for the perdition of the little girl Briefly this plague Is described in the words of an artist who is building a fine bank account by idealizing portraits por-traits of the rich men and women of I I S f I 1j I I 7 I WOULD LiKE TO POSE SIR the city and their hildren This artist saidAll All summer long my studio has been beseiged by an army of girls who were evidently infatuated by the life supposed to exist in studios and so pleasantly described in Trilby They all want to be Trilbies and said they sought work as models But what under un-der heaven do I want with a lot of giggling girls languishing women who were old enough to know better and most of them with faces which it would be agony to paint Sometimes as many as a dozen would call in a single day and always when the light was just right for my work It took a little time to dispose of each one and many valuable moments mo-ments were wasted I marveled at I first at the great number of models out of work and for a time attributed it to the hard times Then I remembered remem-bered that all of the boys were busy so hard times had nothing to do with it Finally I spoke to several fellows about the plague and found that they I were all suffering from it The next time I had one of the pests call on me I decided to find out all about it 331ilnt Want to Pose Too Much I asked Did you ever pose before No but I think I could I wouldnt like to pose very muchthat is without with-out most of my clothes on she said rather diffidently She was a girl of not more than IS apparently just through school and with a figure all ends and corners no curves or soft lines anywhere She evidently did not have to support herself S her-self as she was nicely dressed and had the look of a homebred girl so I askedWhy Why do you want to do model work workHere Here she became confidential and with a little giggle answered You know Ive read Trilby and so have lots of the other girls and it must be so delightful to work in a studio like she did and I wouldnt charge anything any-thing for posing either I explained to her gently that I did not need any Trilbies except those who could pay 400 for a portrait and when she had went away I went into sign painting nailing the result of my labors in a conspicuous spot on my door This is the tale the sign told Ambitious Trilbies Not Wanted Models Not Employed Here The sign cured me of the plague Another Sure Cure An artist who has won some fame as a painter in Oriental scenes in which the nude figures prominently when asked if he had contracted the plague began to swear almost inartistically inartis-tically before replying Have I he sneered Oh no it hasnt done anything at all to me except ex-cept drive me crazy and almost ruin my business If Du Maurier knew what he was going to inflict upon the craft he would have strangled Trilby in her infancy But I know how to stop it Just you sit here awhile and the first one comes in will be made a horrible example of I In less than half an hour two girls were ushered into the studio by a little black boy wearing a red fez This youngster did everything from dusting the studio to posing He wore a massive mas-sive grin as if he knew what was about to happen One of the gjrls was about 20 and the other a year older They looked like shop girls and were togged out in a mass of gaudy finery The elder of the two did the talking The artist put on a horrible frown and snarled out Well We would like to pose sir said the elder S elderYou You wouldwell take off your clothes and stand on that pedestal andSir Sirtake off my clothes Here Jennie Jen-nie let us get out of here He is not a gentleman And out they went S Once it Didut Work Thats the way to stop them Ife doesnt take much time and its generally gen-erally effectual The only time it failed was one day last week when a woman I think she was a widow called She was not more than 5 feet 2 in height and weighed 160 pounds if she weighed an ounce The first thing she said was I want to learn to be a model I have had no experience but rye got a good figure as you can see I Yes there is plenty of it too I observed and was just on the point to growl out Well take off your cloth sand s-and stand on the pedestal when she blurted out like a blast from a cannon can-non Ill pose for the altogether you know knowNot I Not on your life I shouted out and then we had a hot and heavy conversation con-versation for two minutes Little Caesar there came to the rescue by telling her that an artist upstairs made a spQdaltx of tJw altogether l 1 t S S ru > saying she would call on him If I bad I painted her It would have looked like this I > IF HE HAD PAINTED HER Another artistwho has also been a victim of the plague said that he had suffered in silence for a long time When a visitor appears now who is not pleased by the order to take off her clothes he said I always put her in the most wearisome pose I could manufacture You know that the slightest weight in the hands of a model becomes as heavy as a ton of lead after she has stood in a fixed position I po-sition for any length of time About the most difficult pose any model ever attempted and carried through successfully was that of the I girl who posed for Diana on the top of Madison Square garden To stand on one foot and hold the hands in the position an archer is something awful aw-ful Of course the Diana model was aided by many little devicelike strings suspended from the ceiling for holding the hands and arms in position Neither Nei-ther did she have fo hold the bow and arrow in her hands S But the novice I put through the paces didnt know anything about this I allowed her to wear some drapery although Diana herself would have cast it away I put a heavy bow and arrow in her hand told her to stand on a chair and explained how she must poise herself on one foot I left her and pretended to fumble about getting ready to paint At the end of twenty seconds 1 could see that the new model was growing tired She stood it bravely until a minute had passed and then said How much do I get for this Forty cents an hour replied Heavens was all she said but courageously kept on posing for another an-other minute Then she gave it up Her face looked as if she had posed through the tortures of the inquisition I have had enough was all she could gasp and then dashed into the dressingroom Later when she ap S I IJ1l1q4I IlI J Vu S S THE TORTURE POSE peared gowned and ready to leave she said Was I up there half an hour You posed for two minutes I said Heavens she said and left |