De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period (Salinger)
from the Collection “Nine Stories”
Short Summary
New York and Montreal, 1939. Nineteen-year-old Jean de Daumier-Smith returned reluctantly from Paris after his mother's death to live with his stepfather. Feeling lonely, superior, and alienated, he enrolled at a disliked art school and was obsessed with painting self-portraits, envisioning himself akin to El Greco.
To escape the dreariness, Jean applied and lied elaborately to become an instructor at Les Amis Des Vieux Maîtres, a correspondence art school in Montreal run by the quiet Yoshotos. Among his incompetent students was Sister Irma, an earnest nun from a Toronto convent, genuinely talented despite lacking art training.
Jean focused passionately and obsessively on Irma, believing he discovered great artistic potential in her. When the convent abruptly withdrew her enrollment, upset, he dismissed his other students in anguish. Attempting distraction, Jean dressed formally and ventured outside. Passing an orthopedic shop window display, he had a startling experience of profound clarity:
Suddenly, the sun came up and sped toward the bridge of my nose at the rate of ninety-three million miles a second. Blinded and very frightened—I had to put my hand on the glass to keep my balance. The thing lasted for no more than a few seconds.
Awakened by this vision, Jean realized he could not direct Sister Irma's life and returned to teaching, humbly reinstated his dismissed students. Shortly thereafter, authorities closed the school for licensing issues, prompting Jean to join his stepfather in Rhode Island. He never contacted Irma again.
Detailed Summary
Division into chapters is editorial.
The Narrator's Background and Family
The narrator began his account by considering dedicating it to his late stepfather, Robert Agadganian Jr., who died of thrombosis in 1947. He described Bobby as an adventurous, magnetic, and generous man, qualities the narrator had previously been reluctant to acknowledge.
The narrator's parents divorced in the winter of 1928 when he was eight years old, and his mother married Bobby Agadganian that spring. A year later, during the Wall Street Crash, Bobby lost almost everything he and the narrator's mother had. However, Bobby quickly reinvented himself, transforming from a failed stockbroker into an agent-appraiser for American art galleries and museums.
Returning to New York and the Struggle to Adjust
In early 1930, the family moved from New York to Paris to help Bobby establish his new career. The narrator, then ten years old, took the move in stride. It was the return to New York nine years later, three months after his mother's death, that proved traumatic for him.
Shortly after arriving in New York, the narrator had an unpleasant encounter on a crowded bus. When the driver ordered passengers to move to the rear, the narrator responded to the driver's rudeness by insulting him in French. This incident marked the beginning of his difficulty adjusting to life in America.
At nineteen, I was a hatless type, with a flat, black, not particularly clean, Continental-type pompadour over a badly broken-out inch of forehead. He addressed me in a lowered, an almost prudent tone of voice.
The narrator's alienation intensified. He began to pray for solitude in the crowded city, and his wish was quickly granted as everything he touched "turned to solid loneliness." He attended an art school he disliked, spent afternoons at the dentist having teeth extracted, visited art galleries where he criticized American art, and read through all fifty volumes of the Harvard Classics.
At night, the narrator set up his easel between the twin beds in the room he shared with Bobby and painted. In one month alone, he completed eighteen oil paintings, seventeen of which were self-portraits. As roommates, he and Bobby were incompatible, and their relationship grew more strained when they realized they were both grieving the same deceased woman.
And when, as the weeks went by, we gradually discovered that we were both in love with the same deceased woman, it was no help at all. In fact, a ghastly little after-you-Alphonse relationship grew out of the discovery.
Creating a New Identity and Applying to Les Amis Des Vieux Maîtres
In May 1939, about ten months after returning to New York, the narrator spotted an advertisement in a Quebec newspaper. Les Amis Des Vieux Maîtres, a Montreal correspondence art school, was seeking instructors fluent in both French and English. Applicants needed to submit samples of their work to the director, Monsieur I. Yoshoto, formerly of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in Tokyo.
Feeling qualified, the narrator immediately wrote an elaborate application letter in French, creating an entirely fictional persona. He claimed to be twenty-nine years old and a great-nephew of the artist Honoré Daumier. He fabricated a story about leaving his estate in the South of France following his wife's death from cancer to stay temporarily with an invalid relative in America.
I said I was twenty-nine and a great-nephew of Honore Daumier... I had been painting, I said, since early childhood, but that, following the advice of Pablo Picasso, who was one of the oldest and dearest friends of my parents, I had never exhibited.
The narrator spent days creating commercial art samples and selected some of his paintings from France to include with his application. He also wrote a casual note further embellishing his fictional life story. A few days later, he received an acceptance letter from M. Yoshoto, offering him a position at the summer session starting June 24th with a salary of twenty-eight dollars a week, including room and board.
Arrival in Montreal and Meeting the Yoshotos
When the narrator arrived at Windsor Station in Montreal, he was wearing a beige gabardine suit, a navy-blue flannel shirt, a yellow tie, brown-and-white shoes, a Panama hat borrowed from Bobby, and a three-week-old moustache. M. Yoshoto met him at the station. He was a tiny man in a soiled linen suit who neither smiled nor spoke as they shook hands.
During the bus ride to the school, the narrator talked incessantly, elaborating on his lies about his kinship with Daumier, his deceased wife, and his friendship with Picasso. M. Yoshoto remained largely silent throughout the journey.
Les Amis Des Vieux Maîtres occupied the second floor of a small three-story building in the Verdun section of Montreal, above an orthopedic appliances shop. The school consisted of one large room and a small bathroom. The walls were hung with water colors painted by M. Yoshoto, including an impressive painting of a white goose flying through a pale-blue sky.
When they entered, Mme. Yoshoto was sweeping the floor. She was a gray-haired woman, taller than her husband, with features that appeared more Malayan than Japanese. After brief introductions, M. Yoshoto showed the narrator to his room, which had recently been vacated by his son. The room had no chairs, only floor cushions, which the narrator pretended to prefer.
First Day as an Instructor and Discovering Sister Irma's Talent
That night, the narrator was kept awake by moaning sounds coming from the Yoshotos' bedroom. The next morning, after a fish breakfast, the three of them went downstairs to the instructors' room. There, M. Yoshoto assigned the narrator to his desk and asked him to translate his written corrections from French to English, rather than teaching or correcting student work.
The narrator was disappointed to discover that M. Yoshoto, though a good artist, was not an exceptional teacher. He could show students how to draw recognizable objects but not how to create truly beautiful art. At lunch, the narrator declined to join the Yoshotos and instead went to a lunch bar where he ate four hot dogs and drank three cups of coffee.
Upon returning, the narrator worried that M. Yoshoto had seen through his deception. However, M. Yoshoto soon assigned him three English-language students to instruct. The first was Bambi Kramer, a 23-year-old Toronto housewife who submitted a glamour photo of herself along with poorly executed drawings. The second was R. Howard Ridgefield, a 56-year-old society photographer whose work included obscene religious imagery.
The third student was Sister Irma, a nun who taught cooking and drawing at a convent elementary school near Toronto. Unlike the other students, she had submitted a snapshot of her convent rather than a photo of herself. Her questionnaire revealed that she had little formal education or art training but had been assigned to teach drawing after another sister had passed away.
Sister Irma's work immediately stood out to the narrator. Her best piece was a water color on brown paper depicting Christ being carried to the sepulchre. Despite its small size, the painting was highly detailed and showed remarkable talent. The narrator was particularly struck by a figure he believed to be Mary Magdalene in the foreground.
It was an artist's picture, steeped in high, high, organized talent and God knows how many hours of hard work... One of my first reactions, of course, was to run with Sister Irma's envelope over to M. Yoshoto. But... I didn't care to risk having Sister Irma taken away from me.
The Letter to Sister Irma and Growing Obsession
The narrator decided to keep Sister Irma's envelope separate from the others, planning to work on it that night in his own time. After dinner with the Yoshotos, he excused himself and went to his room, where he spent until past four in the morning creating pencil sketches and writing an extensive letter to Sister Irma.
In his letter, the narrator offered detailed feedback on Sister Irma's painting, suggested art supplies she should purchase, and asked several personal questions, including her age and whether she was allowed to have visitors at her convent. He mentioned that he was an agnostic but admired St. Francis of Assisi, and compared her painting style to St. Francis's speech.
You paint slightly the way he spoke, in many pleasant ways, in my opinion... Frankly, I think you are greatly talented and would not even be slightly startled if you developed into a genius before many years have gone by. I would not falsely encourage you in this matter.
The narrator lavished praise on Sister Irma's talent, suggesting she was too passionate to work only in watercolors and should try oils. He asked about her religious vocation and mentioned his own interest in various religions. He also inquired if she spoke French, as he claimed to be more comfortable expressing himself in that language.
After mailing the letter around 3:30 in the morning, the narrator went to bed overjoyed. As he fell asleep, he heard the moaning sound again from the Yoshotos' bedroom and fantasized about helping them with their problems. He imagined showing them Sister Irma's work and having them share in his joy.
Sister Irma's Withdrawal and the Narrator's Despair
The next morning, M. Yoshoto brought the narrator two new student envelopes. The narrator was dismayed to discover that these new students had even less talent than Bambi Kramer and R. Howard Ridgefield. He spent the next few days working diligently on his students' assignments, creating exercises and writing letters to them, all while anxiously awaiting Sister Irma's next envelope.
On Friday afternoon, M. Yoshoto handed the narrator a letter from the Mother Superior of Sister Irma's convent. The letter informed him that Father Zimmermann had changed his decision to allow Sister Irma to study at Les Amis Des Vieux Maîtres and requested a refund of the tuition payment.
Devastated by this news, the narrator immediately wrote letters to his four remaining students, telling them they had no talent and should give up art. He wrote all the letters in French and mailed them right away.
The mouse, I've been sure for years, limps home from the site of the burning ferris wheel with a brand-new, airtight plan for killing the cat. After I'd read and reread... the Mother Superior's letter, I suddenly broke away from it and wrote letters to my four remaining students.
That evening, the narrator skipped dinner with the Yoshotos, claiming illness. In his room, he wrote a second letter to Sister Irma, asking if he had said something offensive in his previous letter that might have caused Father Zimmermann to withdraw her from the course. He offered to teach her for free if the issue was financial and again asked if he could visit her at the convent.
Epiphany at the Orthopedic Appliances Shop
After writing the letter, the narrator put on his dinner suit, intending to get drunk at the Windsor Hotel. He left the school while the Yoshotos were still in the kitchen and looked for a cab. Unable to find one, he ended up at a lunch bar where he had eaten earlier in the week. After a simple meal, he decided to return to Les Amis to revise his letter to Sister Irma.
As he approached the school building in the twilight, the narrator noticed a light on in the orthopedic appliances shop below. Inside, a young woman was changing the truss on the wooden dummy in the display window. When she realized she was being watched, she became flustered, stepped back onto a stack of irrigation basins, and fell. She quickly got up and continued her work, embarrassed.
At that moment, the narrator had a profound experience. He felt as if the sun had suddenly risen and was speeding toward him at ninety-three million miles per second. The experience lasted only a few seconds, but when it ended, the shop girl had gone, leaving behind what appeared to the narrator as a field of beautiful enamel flowers.
The thought was forced on me that no matter how coolly or sensibly or gracefully I might one day learn to live my life, I would always at best be a visitor in a garden of enamel urinals and bedpans, with a sightless, wooden dummy-deity.
The School's Closure and Return to Rhode Island
After this experience, the narrator walked around the block twice until his knees stopped buckling. He then returned to his room and made a brief entry in his diary: "I am giving Sister Irma her freedom to follow her own destiny. Everybody is a nun."
I made, in French, the following brief entry in my diary: 'I am giving Sister Irma her freedom to follow her own destiny. Everybody is a nun.' (Tout le monde est une nonne.)
Before going to bed, the narrator wrote letters to the four students he had dismissed earlier, reinstating them and claiming there had been an administrative mistake. He also brought a chair up from downstairs to his room, abandoning his pretense of preferring floor cushions.
Less than a week later, Les Amis Des Vieux Maîtres was closed down for operating without a proper license. The narrator packed his belongings and joined Bobby in Rhode Island, where he spent the remainder of the summer studying "that most interesting of all summer-active animals, the American Girl in Shorts." He never contacted Sister Irma again, though he occasionally still received correspondence from Bambi Kramer, who had begun designing Christmas cards.