The main concerns of Francis’s March 17th letter are the walls and floors at the Station that Mabel wants painted. The work can begin around April 1st, he assures her. He has two good men who “will work for 25¢ per hour there will be no transportation charges as they will hoof it out there and a regular union man would charge you for teams and you know what this expense is… you would have to pay just what it cost and no more there would be no teams no padded pay roll or graft of any kind just a square honest deal.” But getting the painting done not only right but to Mabel’s satisfaction (seldom the same thing, apparently) would eventually become a major concern for Francis. Seemingly, the job was still well under control when he wrote on April 10th: “I forgot to mention the shade of paint for the floors I sent you a color card sometime ago will you please select the number you want and state the number of coats you want on the floor I think you would have to give it two where it is a new job.” In Provincetown as a Stage (1994) Leona Rust Egan describes this paint job. The oak floors were to be “a translucent blue” and the walls white—reflecting Mabel’s “stylistic signature, a startling decorative style attributed to Whistler”—white; and “to meet Dodge’s sophisticated tastes,” Francis had to carry “out the meticulous job of seeing that the walls were precisely covered with layer after layer of white glistening paint.
Francis’s April 21st letter opens with bad news about the mattresses in the Rogers rental. “Mr. Rogers was here,” he begins,
and made the report that the party that had his cottage last season put their children in the beds and spoiled the mattresses he did not know about this until his wife started to clean I told him I would take the matter up with you as I told him you were accustomed to sleep on the best there was there might be a possibility that you might bring one for your own personal use if not he would put in new ones but his means are limited and the kind he would put in are just the ordinary kind I await your reply in this matter.
He then turns to what is going on out at the Station. The painting is not going along as well as he expected, so he has had to hire “a man that has got a lot of push.” His pay is “35¢ per hour instead of 25¢ the price the others are getting,” but with him out there “handling the matter,” he quickly adds, “there will be no waste of time or stock leave the place.” “There is one more thing that should be attended to,” he concludes, “and that is the outside closet or toilet this is an outdoor affair in one of the outer buildings this has been used by the men for a long time and needs cleaning out and the seats should be painted and the thing put in condition for a lady to use.”
In the last of these letters, written in time to reach Mabel before she leaves for Provincetown, Francis reports that everything is in order. He has found her “a nice clean woman with sewing machine to do the sewing,” he will “attend to the boxes as they come in,” and he can rent her “a good shed” for an automobile.
I always get three dollars a week for the use of each stall but if you want one for the season you can have it for the whole season for $12.00 if this is not good enough for you you can have the machine taken up town but the charges are a great deal more and it will be unhandy, however do as you think best.
In her memoirs Mabel recalled her season of bossing Francis around: “He had been very diligent and faithful in carrying out orders and had suffered, as much as any three men would have, from the awful responsibility combined with his usual melancholia and anxiety. I think it took at least ten years off his life!”
By summer’s end in 1915, John Francis was familiar enough to the Players group to be incorporated into their plays. “The character of the beneficent landlord who took his pay in paintings was easily recognized as the beloved John Francis, the friend of writers and artists,” recalled Mary Heaton Vorse in Time and the Town (1942). Francis appears most prominently in George Cram Cook’s “Change Your Style,” where, echoing John Francis’s father, his character is named “Josephs.” A grocer and a landlord, Josephs is offered a painting in lieu of the rent owed him by a young post-impressionist painter. At first Josephs refuses the trade because the painting puzzles him, but when he connects the painting with some sort of recognizable realism, he changes his mind. It happens that Josephs, whose English is poor, mishears the wealthy art patron’s explanation for her decision to return the painting. She had bought it, thinking, mistakenly, that it was a “shaping of the sacred umbilicus.” When Josephs accepts the painting, he remembers it as that of “a heathen billigoat.” He will hang it in his store; it “might be good for trade.” Josephs represents the common man, uninformed about art but naively receptive to it in his own simplistic way. Needless to say, Josephs is used by Cook much in the way the Players group and their friends used Francis—friend-in-need, handyman, gofer, stooge. Incidentally, like Francis, Mabel, too, inspired the playwright. Cook theatricalizes her as Myrtle Dart, a “Lover of the Buddhistic” attired in turban and East Indian robe.
For his pains and considerable efforts—managing the make-over of the Peaked Hill Bars Station—Francis was given, according to Mabel Dodge Luhan’s memoirs, “a gold watch with an inscription inside the cover.” This gift came from Sam Lewisohn, not Mabel, though it was she, of course, who initiated the matter. It used to take fifty years of service on the railroad to get someone a gold watch; Francis earned his watch for one season with Mabel. To put this gesture into perspective, recall that O’Neill’s one recorded gift to Francis was a picture of himself. “I certainly appreciate the present,” Francis wrote back, “and I have had it framed and have it in my office.” Who knows—perhaps it was good for business.
Mabel, of course, was not the only Player to take advantage of Francis’s willingness to serve. With nary a second thought, you can be certain, Susan Glaspell counted on Francis to meet her at the train whenever she arrived in Provincetown. On one such occasion, writes Barbara Ozieblo, a Glaspell biographer, “the unexpected bustle of the station disconcerted her, and it took longer than usual to find John Francis. He gathered her bags and asked after Jig, his blue eyes twinkling.” Of course he was happy to see her, or so Susan implies. Revealing of just how much Susan counted on Francis is her letter dated only May 11th.
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