Rascals in Paradise

  We are still faced, however, with the tantalizing question: Was Leeteg a great artist or was he a hack journeyman? His velvets lack completely the plastic sense and the control of both planes and surfaces that marked the work of men like Rembrandt and Velasquez, and those who would find such virtues in Leeteg’s work cannot know the canvases of the masters. In technique it does compare favorably with the lesser work of French portraitists of the eighteenth century but is immeasurably far behind their British contemporaries like Hogarth, Reynolds and Gainsborough. There Is, though, a curious similarity in both style and concept to the portraits of Raeburn, and had Leeteg lived in that age, he might possibly have painted as Raeburn did.

  How does he compare with Gauguin, with whom he is so often linked? The similarity lies mostly in the dissolute lives the two men led and in their love for the Tahitian people. Gauguin used a strong, brilliant palette; Leeteg’s, when the velvet had subdued it, was almost somber and some of his finest paintings seem monochromatic. Gauguin was a master of landscape; Leeteg stuck mostly to big heads, and when he did try landscape it was apt to be formless and lacking in design. Gauguin rebuilt all he saw and remodeled it into his vision of life; Leeteg simply made his vision prettier than the original and displayed none of the great disruptive force which abounds in original artists like Gauguin. The Frenchman was not a great designer, but he was a forceful one; whereas Leeteg relied mainly on others. Finally, Gauguin was consumed by a personal fire that burned over onto his canvases; Leeteg also had this fire but it never touched his velvet.

  On the other hand, Leeteg surpassed Gauguin in his ability to place a head within a rectangle; he did this as ably as any artist who ever lived, and in this capacity alone he reminds one of Holbein. It is a curious fact that his ability to bring his well-placed head slowly out of a shadowy background recalls Rembrandt’s favorite treatment, though there any analogy ends, for Leeteg’s execution reminds one neither of Holbein nor of Rembrandt. Only his power to evoke the mood of Polynesia recalls Gauguin, for travelers who love the islands do attest to his skill in luring them subtly back into the shadows of remembered lagoons.

  It is totally unwarranted to call Leeteg the new Gauguin, if competence in painting is the justification for the comparison. And to compare him with Hals, Rembrandt, Rubens or Goya is to abandon objective standards completely. He frequently announced that his idols were Rolfe Armstrong and Norman Rockwell, and like them he aspired to be a fine pictorialist: “Decker wrote me today saying he was not satisfied with my last seven velvets because they were too dark, so burning the midnight oil studying up on what is art was a mistake too. However, all painters usually make the mistake of getting too arty and the successful ones are those smart enough to see their mistake and return to what is popular. Norman Rockwell is one such. In future I will do bright ones like those which made my work popular; but even brighter since I found a new color that gives light.”

  Anyone who studies Leeteg soon learns to expect the unforeseen; nevertheless, at one point the authors of this account felt that they had pretty well plumbed the farthest reaches of his art. Then they happened to visit Wayne Decker’s palatial home in Salt Lake, where, in the handsomely fitted-out basement they were shown nearly two hundred Leeteg velvets. All the standard subjects were exhibited, often in a super-duper quality, but as the rich procession came to an end the friend who had seen Leeteg only for a few minutes one hot day in Tahiti said, “Have you ever seen his masterpieces?” And he brought forth half a dozen superbly detailed portraits of Navaho Indians.

  The impact was stunning and we were left bewildered by this contradiction: how did Leeteg, in the South Pacific, create as his finest velvets these portraits of remote Indians? Then Decker explained, “Edgar was always spiritually hungry for America, and begged me to send him reading material. I sent him Time and Newsweek and U.S. News and he devoured them.”

  “But how does that explain the Indians?” we asked.

  “Well, once when I was filling up a bundle I had some empty space and chucked in a copy of Arizona Highways.”

  From the color photographs in this chance-sent magazine, Leeteg had copied his masterworks. As he told all of his customers, “Tell me what you like and send me a photograph and I’ll do it.”

  From such honest statements, and from his worst work, one is tempted to dismiss Leeteg merely as a calendar artist, and many have done so. The present authors believe that he is better than that and expect his velvets to attain a position somewhat like the art of Albert Bierstadt and Frederick Remington—works of authentic Americana. But we believe Leeteg will be remembered chiefly because he lived such an extraordinary life. We must now consider some of the more startling aspects of that life.

  Edgar Leeteg never outgrew his mother, and the tragic sense of loneliness and emptiness that haunted him after the age of forty came from a belated realization that he had clung to her able apron strings too long and that this had vitiated his life and estranged him from all other women.

  Bertha Leeteg, a tall, handsome woman, was twenty-eight when her only son was born, and from that moment her entire life centered in his. Her fear of his becoming entangled with girls probably helped the confusion that led to the disasters of his first two marriages, for no matter what girl Edgar brought home—wife or mistress—he finally got rid of her because the girl could not fit into his mother’s plans. Late in his life, after numerous debacles, he sent a friend the following amazing analysis of the kind of wife he wanted: “Mom is ailing with flu and I want to make her last years comfortable by getting a mate she approves of and who will be kind and helpful to her.”

  At about the same time he wrote to Decker in Salt Lake City, “Sometimes I feel like taking back my estranged wife as she writes that she lost her teaching job because she staid home to nurse our sick baby. She is a very good mother. But I recognize that NO woman could get along with Mama long.… I get discouraged myself at times and say that the 4th commandment is the hardest to keep.”

  Mother Leeteg encountered her most difficult antagonist in a lovely model who came to Mooréa from one of the other islands, and who was by universal agreement the woman the artist should have married. But in the end Mrs. Leeteg forced her away and finally Leeteg retreated to that dismal and unsatisfying procession of broken-down models, wharf girls and chance pickups that characterized his later life.

  But all observers agree that Leeteg’s obsessive love for his tall mother, who stood above him both physically and emotionally, was the most touching aspect of his life. She controlled him, but his affection for her grew constantly. His main concern was to protect her from the unpleasantness of life, and few mothers have ever been treated with the constant and uncomplaining devotion that he lavished on his. “Am just up from the sickbed, heart and kidney trouble. Yesterday I began to put my affairs in order as best I could, just in case.… And in event the gossips are proved correct in their saying that Leeteg is dead, I want you to see that what money remains due to my estate is partly sent to Mom directly by certified check in her name, Mrs. Bertha Leeteg, and later I’ll work out some way to see that my youngest son gets his share in monthly remittances.”

  As the years passed and his mother’s health declined, Leeteg used to cut short even his drunken Tuesdays so that he might hurry home and comfort her.

  This strange dependence possibly also accounted for his building mania. He was aware that some inner compulsion drove him to erect homes, in which he never kept a wife, for he writes: “I may as well confess.… I’m off on another building spree, making a ritzy circular beer-drinking lounge and studio over my fish pond. Goddam. Barney, this building bug has got me, I just can’t stop.”

  Many men experience this uncontrollable urge to build a house in which a family can find shelter from the pressures of the world and at the same time leave a mark to prove that the family once existed. But Leeteg’s mania showed weird overtones: every house he built was a doll house. Here was a little house for himself; there a li
ttle one for his mother; this one a doll house for the wife that never materialized. All visitors to Villa Velour commented on the doll houses, painted in soft pastel colors, and many neighbors protested that with them—they almost formed a village of their own—Leeteg was ruining a fine bay. Action was started against him, but he brazened it out.

  Then there was the matter of the outhouse. He vowed that he would build the most expensive, luxurious, and altogether resplendent privy in the Southern Hemisphere, and not since the days of the late Roman emperors has anyone enjoyed such a toilet. It was built like a low Polynesian temple, with thick masonry walls and massive buttresses. An enormous grille of metal was set into one side, across which swam twenty-six metal fish painted in seven different colors. The interior was imported Italian marble with a seating arrangement that would have satisfied Caligula. It was festooned with flowers and scented by the latest devices from Paris. From its commodious seats one could gaze on Paopao Bay and the softly swaying coconut palms. There were also books and magazines and fretwork to please the mind, and the edifice was painted in such subtle colors that once seen it could not ever be forgotten. The corrugated roof was painted a tile red, and was held up by a beige wall, which rested on a salmon pink base riding on a turquoise blue footing. And up the middle of the grille, holding the entire design together, rose a magnificent metal coral bush through which the dazzling fish intertwined. Bigger than an ordinary house, capacious enough to serve a platoon of men, it was Leeteg’s noblest architectural creation and stands today to confound his enemies. They tried to prevent its building and claimed that it showed the crazy Ainerican had really gone mad, but Leeteg countered that a man ought to enjoy the kind of privy that suited his personality, and he won.

  There is one other clue to Leeteg’s character. He yearned to be held in line by outside pressures. He was happiest when his mother ordered him about, or when he could dedicate his energies to helping a friend who was in trouble.

  When continued sales removed his financial worries, and when public acclaim assured him that he was an artistic success, he relaxed and immediately began to have those strong premonitions of death which fill his later letters. He also foresaw the Korean War and began to hoard huge stores of goods against the Third World War, which he anticipated momentarily. Then he was overcome with ennui and cried, “Barney, don’t send any more money until you hear from me, I have all I need for a while, besides the goddamed stuff only breeds trouble for me. Wish I were a hobo again; they’re a bunch of happy bastards; I no longer am.”

  His fear of disaster began to contaminate even his painting, and then something very good happened. Barney Davis, in building a new gallery for displaying Leeteg velvets, ran into debt and needed help. Suddenly Leeteg became his old energetic self and plunged avidly into his work, for now there was a reason: someone outside himself needed help. “Please, Barney,” he wrote, “get your $20,000 paid off quickly as you can. That’s what I’m working for now—to make it possible for you to get out of hock.”

  He needed restraint and obligation and when he faced none he sought it by sharing the hardships of others. He watched over his mother, loved his children, aided several former mistresses, and lent money to anyone who needed a franc. He was one of the most unselfish men Tahiti had ever seen, and Admiral du Saint Front summarized his character perfectly when he offered this eulogy: “To me Leeteg will always be the family man, the unselfish one.”

  It seems likely that Leeteg is destined to go down in South Seas history as the man who, in the midst of twentieth-century storms, found paradise. It would therefore be both appropriate and instructive to inquire into the definition of paradise and then to see in what degree Leeteg’s experience matched this definition.

  Summarizing the many legends of this great ocean, the authors conclude that when a man from a more mechanical society flees to the South Pacific he hopes to find these things: a land where tensions are relaxed; a more rustic society uncomplicated by modern gadgetry; certainly a less expensive way of living; a quiet retreat where he can escape social pressures; an island home of exquisite beauty; and, whether we like to admit this in public or not, a greater sexual freedom than is customary in Western society.

  As to the relaxation of tension, it is doubtful that Edgar Leeteg could ever have found, either in heaven or in hell, release from the tensions under which he lived, for these conflicts were his nature, and he jealously carried them with him wherever he went. True, he did avoid the exaggerated economic tensions of the American depression, and this was a prime motive in his move to Tahiti, but release from spiritual tensions he never found. He desperately yearned for a wife and home, but these eluded him. Nor did he ever discover any sensible basis for his relationship with his mother, and on this score his journey to Tahiti was disastrous, for island life drove him closer to his mother yet at the same time kept her more at variance with the world he had to live in. The mother-son-sweetheart tension at Villa Velour was always acute; it flamed into open spiritual warfare only when Edgar tried to bring some girl into the household, as either his wife or his mistress. Then the permanent hell that enveloped the place was visible to all, but it was no less a hell when it was hidden. Finally, the essential tension which Leeteg had built up between himself and society was also aggravated in Tahiti, not dispelled. He constantly warred with his neighbors, his friends, his women, his business associates, his rival painters and himself: “I will sink my teeth into any other artist as I love a feud … that’s what gets a guy to the top, by besting his rivals who are trying to get to the top the same way.” Since life in Tahiti was more communal than in the anonymity of San Francisco, the bitterness of Leeteg’s reactions to his society was immediately known to the whole community and was reciprocated by many who would normally not have been involved. The South Pacific has wonderful therapeutic value, but it has never cured a soul which insisted upon reinfecting itself each day.

  In some respects Leeteg did find the rustic life that modern men dream of with nostalgia. His determination to remain on primitive Mooréa when life would have been simpler in gay Papeete is proof that he cherished the less complicated life of the smaller island. Yet one is amazed in reading his letters to find that Leeteg spent much of his time worrying about exactly the same problems he would have worried about in St. Louis. Lawyers are charging him too much for his divorce. He has got to find a house that has electricity. Hadn’t he better recover his children and move to some new location where the schools are better? With ease one can extract from any dozen Leeteg letters a composite that would sound almost as if it had been written by a young married woman in suburban America. The following household lament contains only Leeteg sentences:

  “I busted my store teeth on a piece of French bread so must stay to home until Laverne takes the damned things over to a dentist and gets them soldered. Dentists already hiked prices. In wartime it is hard to get plates here. Mom asks if you can get her a pair of nurse’s shoes size 5, low heels. I want a Maytag washer the worst way and wish I could get hold of a good Zenith radio.… The lumber I got is sap wood so poor I’ll have to get plywood sheathing for the ceiling and walls to cover the cracks and uneven thicknesses of the boards. Otherwise the house is great, but the Chinese gal who sewed the drapes botched them so I’ll have to get new; another $30 down the drain.… I will be glad to get the pinking shears.… I was worrying what to do about Laverne when she gets a little older. She is exceptional in school and should have her chance in life which cannot be gotten here.… Would appreciate your sending me two rubber hoses with spray nozzles attached which can be screwed on ½″ faucet for bathroom use. My two beds and stove arrived and cost me just under $700. Too much. So no more ordering big stuff from America.”

  Life in Tahiti was rather more expensive than it would have been in St. Louis. Leeteg spent enormous sums on postage, air freight, customs and cables. Since he imported much of what he used, he never saved on the cheap local items. For example, since Tahiti is a French colony
, wine was cheap, but he drank whisky, which was very costly. It is true that he paid little for the laborers who built his fantastic creations, but he had to employ many men to get the job done, so that the ultimate cost was high. And of course his building materials were almost prohibitive. Villa Velour, which would probably have cost less than $9,000 in America, cost about $14,000 in Mooréa. And as for the so-called bounty of paradise—free coconuts and breadfruit, fish crowding the lagoon—it never materialized. Most Westerners can eat very little coconut, for the milk gives them diarrhea, and few strangers like breadfruit. Besides, most trees are owned by someone who sells the fruit at a stiff price. There were fish in the lagoon, but Leeteg rarely caught any because his mother could not abide the smell. Two other things were free—lovely flowers and mangoes—and here Leeteg could have saved money, but he never acquired a taste for the fruit which some travelers hold to be the best in the world. The sad fact is that Leeteg ate almost exclusively out of tin cans. He had substantial tinned meats from Australia, tinned soups from France, tinned vegetables and fruits from America. Few housewives in St. Louis eat as much tinned food as Leeteg did in the wilds of Mooréa. Few have so deadly a diet One reason was that he did not like native foods. More important, his mother preferred the ease of cooking out of a can. Since he had to buy his tins at great expense from Chinese merchants in Papeete, he spent more money for food in his lush and abundant tropical paradise than he would have spent in any standard American small town.

  He also worked harder. He probably enjoyed his work more, but he had to spend longer hours than he would have been allowed to spend had he remained a good member of the sign painters’ union in California. There he would not have been permitted to work six days a week, eight to ten hours each day. People who did not personally know Leeteg forget that he worked like a slave. All visitors to his home agree on this. Frequently he would rise at two or four in the morning to handle his extraordinary volume of mail, for he dedicated all good daylight hours to painting. Even on his weekly forays into Papeete he spent about half of each day taking care of his business: mailing parcels, cashing checks, cabling his agents and taking care of his children’s education. From December 12, 1949, to his death 1154 days later, Leeteg painted 294 velvets, or about one every four days. Since it took him up to three weeks to finish each painting, he obviously carried a good many velvets forward at one time. Once he complained to Davis, “You tell me to go easy on the bottle and get down to work. Are you beginning to believe that stuff about me being an alkie? Which I appear to be for the benefit of the tourists. What the tourists don’t see is me hard at it before my easel six days a week every week including Sundays.”