Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/243

Rh I must explain, mon cheri, that George is not well bred. About twelve years ago a portrait painter of my acquaintance ran across him selling papers on Broadway. George was then only seventeen. At first sight, the artist felt George's unique beauty and asked him to pose. Later other artists did George in oils and with the chisel.

He has never known who his parents were. For he was a foundling. When discharged from the orphan asylum at fourteen, he was apprenticed to an upholsterer. But on account of George's quick temper and nasty tongue, he could hold no position more than a month. When my friend ran across him, George's thoroughly bad record had left him only one means of earning his bread: selling papers. But ever since his ideal physique was discovered by my friend, George's path through life has been strewn with roses.

Four years ago I happened to lay eyes on George as he posed in my friend's studio. Right away his lines of face, head, limbs, and body—hitherto even un-dreamed of—held me spell-bound and I took him into my home. For I thought George was Michelangelo's Adam stepped down into flesh and blood out of the painting on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. Angelo's nude figures of youthful men have alone approached George's ideal lines.

But he has been such a drunkard and high-liver in general that his beauty—particularly his head and face—is now far below par. For two years he has not been hired as a model. And he does not want to earn in any other way. He has leaned wholly on me to keep up his life in the Rialto as all-around sport.