The steps by which Fenton attained to this proud eminence were obvious
enough. In the first place, he persuaded Mr. Calvin to sit to him. Mr.
Calvin always sat to the portrait painters whom he endorsed. This was a
sort of official recognition, and the results, as seen in the
needlessly numerous likenesses of the gentleman which adorned his
Beacon Hill mansion, would have afforded a cynic some amusement, and
not a little food for reflection. Once launched under distinguished
patronage, Fenton was clever enough to make his way. He really was able
to paint well when he chose, a fact which was, on the whole, of less
importance in his artistic career than were the adroitness of his
address, and his ready and persuasive sympathy. The qualifications of a
fashionable doctor, a fashionable clergyman, and a fashionable
portrait-painter are much the same; it is only in the man-milliner that
skill is demanded in addition to the art of pleasing.
As usually happens in such a case, Fenton's old friends avoided him, or
found themselves left in the distance by his rapid strides toward fame
and fortune. Then such of them as still came in contact with him made
his acquaintance in a new character, and learned to accept him as a
wholly different man from the one they had supposed themselves to know
in the days when he was never weary of pouring forth tirades against
the Philistinism he had now embraced.
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