The Two Masons

This is the story of two masons, their names for the purpose of this story are Pierre and Jacques those aren't their real names, and they may not actually be real people. That's for me to know, and for you not to worry about. Your job, if you choose it, is to read, and hopefully enjoy, the story of the Two Masons.

This story starts simply enough with two masons. Bricklayers to the common folk of the world, but they prefer the term mason. It's like saying something is "organic". If you hire a bricklayer you get them cheap, if you hire a mason, you've stepped up a class to impress the neighborhood, and you get the privilege of paying an additional fee. The Johnson's next door need to learn their place, so you hired a mason to do your work, not some low class "brickie" that talks in a funny accent.

Pierre and Jacques did their living, working, breeding, and dying in the same city. A city of moderate size, big enough to accommodate a fair number of masons without being so small that they continually got in each other's way.  It was a city that provided its own set of challenges, it had its toffs who thought that a certain percentage of the population just didn't exist, and if they did exist it was only to serve them in some fashion. It had it pretentious section populated with people who thought the toffs were only there to give them money while they slummed around and "found themselves". It also had it slums, the areas where the people whom the toffs didn't like to think existed struggled to exist. A large(r) part of this particular town than the city fathers would like to admit at fancy dinner parties, but again that's what cities are, good, bad, and ugly.

Each of them had their niche, a set of jobs that they preferred to do, for the most part Jacques worked in the dirtier, less beautiful part of the city. He did good work, and had a considerable number of customers. His theory was that squalid has it own sort of beauty that just needs a little more attention to become breathtaking. He was fond of saying "that any damn fool can make the cathedral of Florence look good, it takes talent to make a stone tower glow".  Maybe he was right, or maybe he was just lazy, or just not quite good enough for the toffs of the city to hire. Either way he made his living with some aplomb, and even had the occasional success that surprised his colleagues and critics (who were generally the same group of people).  He was fond of heights, repeatedly saying that "things always look different from higher up". However, given the part of town, and the types of commissions he usually took, he didn't get to indulge his fondness for heights overmuch. I suppose "a boy's got to pay the rent" was his main theory when it came to his work.

Pierre preferred the toffs, the people who had disposable income that he liked for them to dispose into his pockets. He wasn't exactly the "pretty people's mason" but he was one that at least they used frequently enough to know his first name. He was clever enough to know that most pretty people are fickle, and they liked options. After all, what's the point of having all that money, if you don't have options?  Not a fan of any particular style, Pierre, would build anything pretty much anywhere, if the money was right, and the mood struck him.  He had his moods, did our Pierre, and sometimes he would retreat from his work like Napoleon retreating from the Russian winter of 1812. Rarely did these "retreats" last very long. Pierre liked the work, and the work generally liked him. Because he got bored easily, he liked to have multiple projects going at once. Based upon the theory that "the more the merrier".

Our two masons knew each other, but not particularly well. They worked, drank, and played in different circles, and their paths crossed only occasionally.  They rarely, if ever, bid on the same job. Jacques wasn't good at talking to the toffs, being the first mason in his family, and the offspring of a bricklayer while Pierre was "as smooth as goose shit on glass" and knew when the toffs were vulnerable to his sales pitch, and was an expert in timing and tailoring his pitch to that vulnerability. Neighbors across the street put up some ostentatious piece of frivolity that is throwing shade  (in both a literal and figurative sense)upon your grand estate? Then call Pierre, he can soothe your wounded pride, and help you build something equally frivolous, and maybe even at half the price if you want it enough.

Pierre preferred to work during the summer months the "hot" time of year when the brickwork was pliable and soft and easier to mold. "Heat is a wonderful thing, it increases the ardor, and allows for some truly eye pleasing works of art" he would say.  Jacques, by contrast, preferred the wintertime. "It might be wicked cold, and the brickwork might be a little moody, but who doesn't like a bit of a challenge now and then?" would be his reply when asked why he liked working in the cold. Cold was something he perceived as a challenge an hurdle to overcome in his own fashion, and in his own time.

They both had their successes and they both had their failures. Buildings that stood the test of time, crafted with what passed for love for these two that are still visible in their fair city today even if the mason has moved on to different projects. Nothing that rivaled the work of Brunelleschi, after all he was an engineer and a genius with a flair that our masons were either unwilling or unable to match. If you want a dome call Brunelleschi, if you want an orangery or a stone tower call Jacques, or if you are a toff call Pierre. Of the two, Jacques knew the limits of his talent more clearly, and perhaps that was his problem the self doubt about his limits sometimes kept him from understanding that his mark was lower than the actually talent limit he possessed. Pierre knew no limits. His was a confidence born of both success, and a unshakable self belief that would allow him to attempt almost any project that could hold his wandering interest. It's not that Jacques didn't wander, he possessed a great deal of wanderlust in his own right, it was just his field of wandering was limited by his doubting his own talent.

They had their failures as well, projects that could never get past the foundational stage, projects that after the stone had been dressed, it just refused to come together into anything that any self-respecting (and they both possessed a great deal of self-respect) mason would attempt to build. Dressed stone, the type used in ashlar masonry was a particular weakness with them both. They both preferred the rougher hew of an undressed bit of masonry the type used in rubble masonry, claiming that it was an easier medium in which to work.  Jacques was much more into rubble masonry because he claimed the requirement of regular courses stifled his creativity. 

They weren't rivals and they weren't exactly friends. They knew of each other, and of each other's work but rarely did their paths cross either professionally or personally.  Except on the rare occasion, when a local builder who wasn't a toff or a prole needed a bit of work "done" (as the saying goes). The building itself was complete, but there was some recent expansion that hadn't gone quite to plan, and the builder found themselves with the sudden, unexpected need of a new mason. Sadly, (as it turned out later) Jacques didn't notice the fine cracks that were showing in the facade of the building, and being a mostly honest type told the builder "everything is grand, don't ruin a good thing by complicating the brickwork already in place".  Pierre, being more of a chancer, and perhaps a bit more perceptive explained to the builder the flaws in the building, but at first decided that the repairs were either beneath him, or that he didn't have the proper feeling of the builder's plan to make the building "up to code" again. 

Eventually, Pierre convinced the builder that the cracks were slightly more serious than they actually were, and obtained the commission to make the building "right as rain".  He managed it just, and for a while all was right in the world at least for the builder and Pierre. Jacques, ass out of the commission was at first a bit put out, but eventually started to work on his own grand tower for some towering queen that most people were unable to know. Both of our "heroes" loved stone because of its smoothness Jacques because it was cold, Pierre because of its earthly smell. Neither were above the task of picking pebbles out of a drain, but neither ever claimed they were themselves stones.