When I was young, I saw a short film of O. Henry's story, The Last Leaf. The film wouldn't have won an Academy Award, but to a child, the obvious characters so roughly drawn out probably told the story better. Anyways, I got it - it was a great message. Such that I am really glad I shared it before I die! (Everything on this blog I'm glad is there in case I get wiped out.)
Just for busy modern people I will summarize the amazing story so you won't miss it.
Two girls are living in a New York apartment building during the turn of the century or so. They are talented artists and have set up a studio together, Sue and Johnsy (nickname for Joanna). But pneumonia ravages Johnsy. Johnsy dreams of painting in France. But she gets so ill and weak, she becomes fixated on a vine outside her window - how the vine struggles on the bricks, but each leaf eventually dies and falls away. She watches them die, tired of struggling - and becomes convinced that when the last leaf falls away, she too will let loose her grip on the world.
A neighbour lives downstairs, Old Behrman, an old man who is a failed painter, obsessed with one day painting his great masterpiece. Behrman curses, with his heavy accent, struggles with himself and never completes it. "He had been always about to paint a
masterpiece, but had never yet begun it." In the film I saw, he is shown as talking to his dead wife, dreaming of the past, grand days. But now, he drinks too much and is cranky with everyone. Sue goes to ask him to be a model for her painting of an old hermit miner, telling him also about Johnsy and her morbid fixation. He curses, and calls Johnsy foolish. Then she gets upset with him, and tells him what she thinks of him. He then agrees to come pose for her painting. Sue shows her the ill girl. She is now sleeping, but Sue shows him the bare vine, with the last leaf only barely clinging on. They fear that when Johnsy sees that the leaf is gone, she too will give up the struggle.
The old man poses for Sue, and that night there is a big storm. When Johnsy awakes, as Sue fears she demands hoarsely to see the ivy vine. The last leaf is still there. Repeatedly, Johnsy asks to see it - and eventually when she sees the courage of the last leaf to hang on the vine, she decides she too can make it.
After Johnsy is out of the danger zone a few days later, and is getting better they find out that the old man had just died of pneumonia...
"The janitor found him the
morning of the first day in his room downstairs helpless with pain. His
shoes and clothing were wet through and icy cold. They couldn't imagine
where he had been on such a dreadful night. And then they found a
lantern, still lighted, and a ladder that had been dragged from its
place, and some scattered brushes, and a palette with green and yellow
colors mixed on it, and - look out the window, dear, at the last ivy
leaf on the wall. Didn't you wonder why it never fluttered or moved when
the wind blew? Ah, darling, it's Behrman's masterpiece - he painted it
there the night that the last leaf fell."
I remember so vividly this totally realistic beautiful painting of an ivy leaf used in the short film, with apparent shadow and all, despite being painted on brick it looked totally real. To my child's eyes, it was a miracle.
The message of the story hit home to me (especially hammered in with the Christian take of the film), as it shifted the focus - to show the moral. The greatest masterpiece is not necessarily some image on a canvas, which is meaningless on its own - it's in the context of life that art has meaning - the decisions of your life, your life is the greatest masterpiece.
This is what guides me every day I leave some project I am crafting to perfection - to give my time to my children for example.
Courtesy of the online Literacy Network, the original story by O. Henry - The Last Leaf:
In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run
crazy and broken themselves into small strips called "places." These
"places" make strange angles and curves. One Street crosses itself a
time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this
street. Suppose a collector with a bill for paints, paper and canvas
should, in traversing this route, suddenly meet himself coming back,
without a cent having been paid on account!
So, to quaint old
Greenwich Village the art people soon came prowling, hunting for north
windows and eighteenth-century gables and Dutch attics and low rents.
Then they imported some pewter mugs and a chafing dish or two from Sixth
Avenue, and became a "colony."
At the top of a squatty,
three-story brick Sue and Johnsy had their studio. "Johnsy" was familiar
for Joanna. One was from Maine; the other from California. They had met
at the table d'hôte of an Eighth Street "Delmonico's," and found their
tastes in art, chicory salad and bishop sleeves so congenial that the
joint studio resulted.
That was in May. In November a cold,
unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the
colony, touching one here and there with his icy fingers. Over on the
east side this ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but
his feet trod slowly through the maze of the narrow and moss-grown
"places."
Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric
old gentleman. A mite of a little woman with blood thinned by California
zephyrs was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed old
duffer. But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her
painted iron bedstead, looking through the small Dutch window-panes at
the blank side of the next brick house.
One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a shaggy, gray eyebrow.
"She
has one chance in - let us say, ten," he said, as he shook down the
mercury in his clinical thermometer. " And that chance is for her to
want to live. This way people have of lining-u on the side of the
undertaker makes the entire pharmacopoeia look silly. Your little lady
has made up her mind that she's not going to get well. Has she anything
on her mind?"
"She - she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day." said Sue.
"Paint? - bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking twice - a man for instance?"
"A man?" said Sue, with a jew's-harp twang in her voice. "Is a man worth - but, no, doctor; there is nothing of the kind."
"Well,
it is the weakness, then," said the doctor. "I will do all that
science, so far as it may filter through my efforts, can accomplish. But
whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral
procession I subtract 50 per cent from the curative power of medicines.
If you will get her to ask one question about the new winter styles in
cloak sleeves I will promise you a one-in-five chance for her, instead
of one in ten."
After the doctor had gone Sue went into the
workroom and cried a Japanese napkin to a pulp. Then she swaggered into
Johnsy's room with her drawing board, whistling ragtime.
Johnsy
lay, scarcely making a ripple under the bedclothes, with her face toward
the window. Sue stopped whistling, thinking she was asleep.
She
arranged her board and began a pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate a
magazine story. Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing
pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way
to Literature.
As Sue was sketching a pair of elegant horseshow
riding trousers and a monocle of the figure of the hero, an Idaho
cowboy, she heard a low sound, several times repeated. She went quickly
to the bedside.
Johnsy's eyes were open wide. She was looking out the window and counting - counting backward.
"Twelve," she said, and little later "eleven"; and then "ten," and "nine"; and then "eight" and "seven", almost together.
Sue
look solicitously out of the window. What was there to count? There was
only a bare, dreary yard to be seen, and the blank side of the brick
house twenty feet away. An old, old ivy vine, gnarled and decayed at the
roots, climbed half way up the brick wall. The cold breath of autumn
had stricken its leaves from the vine until its skeleton branches clung,
almost bare, to the crumbling bricks.
"What is it, dear?" asked Sue.
"Six,"
said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. "They're falling faster now. Three
days ago there were almost a hundred. It made my head ache to count
them. But now it's easy. There goes another one. There are only five
left now."
"Five what, dear? Tell your Sudie."
"Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too. I've known that for three days. Didn't the doctor tell you?"
"Oh,
I never heard of such nonsense," complained Sue, with magnificent
scorn. "What have old ivy leaves to do with your getting well? And you
used to love that vine so, you naughty girl. Don't be a goosey. Why, the
doctor told me this morning that your chances for getting well real
soon were - let's see exactly what he said - he said the chances were
ten to one! Why, that's almost as good a chance as we have in New York
when we ride on the street cars or walk past a new building. Try to take
some broth now, and let Sudie go back to her drawing, so she can sell
the editor man with it, and buy port wine for her sick child, and pork
chops for her greedy self."
"You needn't get any more wine," said
Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed out the window. "There goes another. No,
I don't want any broth. That leaves just four. I want to see the last
one fall before it gets dark. Then I'll go, too."
"Johnsy, dear,"
said Sue, bending over her, "will you promise me to keep your eyes
closed, and not look out the window until I am done working? I must hand
those drawings in by to-morrow. I need the light, or I would draw the
shade down."
"Couldn't you draw in the other room?" asked Johnsy, coldly.
"I'd rather be here by you," said Sue. "Beside, I don't want you to keep looking at those silly ivy leaves."
"Tell
me as soon as you have finished," said Johnsy, closing her eyes, and
lying white and still as fallen statue, "because I want to see the last
one fall. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of thinking. I want to turn
loose my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of
those poor, tired leaves."
"Try to sleep," said Sue. "I must
call Behrman up to be my model for the old hermit miner. I'll not be
gone a minute. Don't try to move 'til I come back."
Old Behrman
was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. He was past
sixty and had a Michael Angelo's Moses beard curling down from the head
of a satyr along with the body of an imp. Behrman was a failure in art.
Forty years he had wielded the brush without getting near enough to
touch the hem of his Mistress's robe. He had been always about to paint a
masterpiece, but had never yet begun it. For several years he had
painted nothing except now and then a daub in the line of commerce or
advertising. He earned a little by serving as a model to those young
artists in the colony who could not pay the price of a professional. He
drank gin to excess, and still talked of his coming masterpiece. For the
rest he was a fierce little old man, who scoffed terribly at softness
in any one, and who regarded himself as especial mastiff-in-waiting to
protect the two young artists in the studio above.
Sue found
Behrman smelling strongly of juniper berries in his dimly lighted den
below. In one corner was a blank canvas on an easel that had been
waiting there for twenty-five years to receive the first line of the
masterpiece. She told him of Johnsy's fancy, and how she feared she
would, indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float away, when her
slight hold upon the world grew weaker.
Old Behrman, with his red eyes plainly streaming, shouted his contempt and derision for such idiotic imaginings.
"Vass!"
he cried. "Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness to die
because leafs dey drop off from a confounded vine? I haf not heard of
such a thing. No, I will not bose as a model for your fool
hermit-dunderhead. Vy do you allow dot silly pusiness to come in der
brain of her? Ach, dot poor leetle Miss Yohnsy."
"She is very ill
and weak," said Sue, "and the fever has left her mind morbid and full
of strange fancies. Very well, Mr. Behrman, if you do not care to pose
for me, you needn't. But I think you are a horrid old - old
flibbertigibbet."
"You are just like a woman!" yelled Behrman.
"Who said I will not bose? Go on. I come mit you. For half an hour I haf
peen trying to say dot I am ready to bose. Gott! dis is not any blace
in which one so goot as Miss Yohnsy shall lie sick. Some day I vill
baint a masterpiece, and ve shall all go away. Gott! yes."
Johnsy
was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade down to the
window-sill, and motioned Behrman into the other room. In there they
peered out the window fearfully at the ivy vine. Then they looked at
each other for a moment without speaking. A persistent, cold rain was
falling, mingled with snow. Behrman, in his old blue shirt, took his
seat as the hermit miner on an upturned kettle for a rock.
When
Sue awoke from an hour's sleep the next morning she found Johnsy with
dull, wide-open eyes staring at the drawn green shade.
"Pull it up; I want to see," she ordered, in a whisper.
Wearily Sue obeyed.
But,
lo! after the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind that had endured
through the livelong night, there yet stood out against the brick wall
one ivy leaf. It was the last one on the vine. Still dark green near its
stem, with its serrated edges tinted with the yellow of dissolution and
decay, it hung bravely from the branch some twenty feet above the
ground.
"It is the last one," said Johnsy. "I thought it would
surely fall during the night. I heard the wind. It will fall to-day, and
I shall die at the same time."
"Dear, dear!" said Sue, leaning
her worn face down to the pillow, "think of me, if you won't think of
yourself. What would I do?"
But Johnsy did not answer. The
lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when it is making ready to
go on its mysterious, far journey. The fancy seemed to possess her more
strongly as one by one the ties that bound her to friendship and to
earth were loosed.
The day wore away, and even through the
twilight they could see the lone ivy leaf clinging to its stem against
the wall. And then, with the coming of the night the north wind was
again loosed, while the rain still beat against the windows and pattered
down from the low Dutch eaves.
When it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless, commanded that the shade be raised.
The ivy leaf was still there.
Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to Sue, who was stirring her chicken broth over the gas stove.
"I've
been a bad girl, Sudie," said Johnsy. "Something has made that last
leaf stay there to show me how wicked I was. It is a sin to want to die.
You may bring a me a little broth now, and some milk with a little port
in it, and - no; bring me a hand-mirror first, and then pack some
pillows about me, and I will sit up and watch you cook."
And hour later she said:
"Sudie, some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples."
The doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue had an excuse to go into the hallway as he left.
"Even
chances," said the doctor, taking Sue's thin, shaking hand in his.
"With good nursing you'll win." And now I must see another case I have
downstairs. Behrman, his name is - some kind of an artist, I believe.
Pneumonia, too. He is an old, weak man, and the attack is acute. There
is no hope for him; but he goes to the hospital to-day to be made more
comfortable."
The next day the doctor said to Sue: "She's out of danger. You won. Nutrition and care now - that's all."
And
that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay, contentedly
knitting a very blue and very useless woollen shoulder scarf, and put
one arm around her, pillows and all.
"I have something to tell
you, white mouse," she said. "Mr. Behrman died of pneumonia to-day in
the hospital. He was ill only two days. The janitor found him the
morning of the first day in his room downstairs helpless with pain. His
shoes and clothing were wet through and icy cold. They couldn't imagine
where he had been on such a dreadful night. And then they found a
lantern, still lighted, and a ladder that had been dragged from its
place, and some scattered brushes, and a palette with green and yellow
colors mixed on it, and - look out the window, dear, at the last ivy
leaf on the wall. Didn't you wonder why it never fluttered or moved when
the wind blew? Ah, darling, it's Behrman's masterpiece - he painted it
there the night that the last leaf fell."
