The Opelousas courier., 1886-05-08
Ho,n Some Artists Live.

One can live cheaply or the reverse III
New York, as Leander Richi rdson shows,
He relates the fact that many unmarried
artists have rooms opening out OF their
studios making arrangements for the,
sweeping, washing and all that sort of
thing with the j%anitors of the buildings
in which their quarters are situated. The
milkman comes in the morning and leaves
his little bottle of he best milk, the bak-
or around with the mullins and the
janitor's boy runs out to get the other
supplies for the day. When the man in
the house is ready for his breakfast, he
simply goes and cooks it, and there isn't.
anybody to find fault with for making
the coffee too strong or doing the steak
too much. One of the profession who,
makes a large income was found inn
mersed in the duties of the kitchen, and
apparently enjoying himself. He was
covered over with a large white apron,
and his sleeves were rolled up above his
elbows displaying a pair of brawny and
well-shaped arms, while in his mouth
was the regulation artists black pipe.
At that particular instant he was finish
ing up the luncheon, which a few min
utes later the party sat down to demollsh'
It was a very nice affair, consisting of
consomme in cups, broiled oysters, a ten
der fillet of beef, black coffee, cheese and
hard crackers. At Delmonico's it would
have cost 80 or So. In the artists little
suite of rooms the total outlay was less
than fifty cents, and the host, who has a
genuine liking for the preparation of eat
ables, enjoyed the pleasure of doing the
cooking beside. Richardson says furth-
er:
| was surprished to hear my artistic
friend tell the other day how many peo-
pie of high and low degree live in this
way in New York. He declared that
three out of five of the painters car
ried on this existence in a more Or less
modified form, some of them keeping a
servant to run errands and do the mental
part of the houseke, ping, while many
others did it all themselves. Some of
have them deliberately gotten up flats in
which they live in great style, but the bulk
of them carry on their existence in sets of
| rooms opening out of their studios.
That, however, is not a fair example of
the bohemian sort of thing at its best in
New York. Eben Plympton, the actor,
used to run a pleasant little fiat down in
Twenty-ninth street, where he delighted
in inviting his friends and treating them
to lurcheons, dinners or suppers of his
own preparation. I never could bring
myself to think Eben a good actor, but
they do say he is a first class cook, and
perhaps that is the direction in which
hi genius lies. At any rate, Els
rooms were the resort of lots of people
who know what good eating is, and who
always appeared to be very glad, indeed,
to have an i%nvitatiy to a feast made
ready by their host himself. Hillary
Bell, a well-known painter who diversi-
ies his professional career by writing a
portion of the time for newspapers and
magazines, also lives by himself, doing
all his own cooking and oftentimes enter
tanning his friends. He was telling me
the other day how in the early days of
his career, when he used to be sometimes
hard up for money, he found he could
live in really excellent style upon this
system at a total outlay of about So a
week.-Mrs. amount, of course, covering
only the cost of the raw materials and
not including rent. So it will e seen
that a man who enjoys ruttering around
at cooking and all that kind of thing
may combine thorough pleasure with
complete economy.