September 26, 1903
From Medora Clark, Le Pouldu, France
To Amelia Baker
Dear Mela,
You don’t know how we enjoy McCutchean’s foolishness. He is getting to be as much of a habit and a craving with us now as ice cream soda and golf, and it has been just fine of you to keep us in Chicago papers. I don’t know any greater feeling of luxury than to sit down with a fine pile of American papers beside you.
Just a year ago today was your luncheon and it doesn’t seem possible that it can be more than four months ago. What fun we had that day, and what trials you people had too. Lena couldn’t come up and so Mrs. Clark went right into the kitchen and Ethel and Edith came to fill in at the last minute and Katherine looked so cute in her blue dress, and then it was such fun out at the studio, at the “quilting bee,” and that little quilt has served its duty so steadily all winter as any intelligent little quilt could and everybody has admired it so much—wasn’t it pretty?
Then just after I got home that day I found Mrs. Taylor’s cheque, but the thing I remember most especially was such good salad as we had—in scooped out apple. I wanted a great deal more than I had and I forgot to ask for it afterward.
Jo Sewall’s cards came yesterday to my great surprise, so I thought she wasn’t going to be married until later. I am going to send her a Japanese print when I get back to Paris.
We have been going through the list of painters together, and although we thought of several we would like to add, have only added two, as most of the others perhaps aren’t old enough although they do very good work. You omitted Alson Skinner Clark from your list, but as I know it was just an oversight I shan’t add it.
There are Walter Clark, Walter Appleton Clark, Karl Anderson, Walter Gay (whom I have put down) and several other illustrators, but I don’t know just where you want to draw the line, so shan’t add them.
By the way, Mr. Simonds-Watson—Willy Lymond’s father who lives on Ten Eyck Street—knows Inness very well. They were at school together I believe, so you ought to get some interesting facts from him. I remembered a large exhibition of Inness that I saw in New York about four years ago, and there were some beautiful things in it—a great many landscapes and several of them done in the Adirondacks, just trees, but oh so strongly and stunningly painted with sunlight just breaking through and so true and delicate, that you almost felt the absolute stillness of the forest.
Sargent had a most beautiful thing in the New Salon this year. It was far and away the best in the “show” and was given the place of honor too, which I think was pretty decent of a French government to do, seeing that there are a great, great many good Frenchmen in the Salon. This thing of Sargent’s was enormous, three girls and a dog all life size, but I have no doubt we can get a fine reproduction of it, if you want to attend to some of the pictures again.
Miss Thomasson, who you have often heard us speak of, has George Deforest Brush’s old studio in Paris. It is a charming old place, built originally by a French sculptor who has several things in the Louvre de France, and whose family still keeps the studios he had and sent them to the fortunate. I have no doubt Miss T. will know some things about Brush so I will ask her when we get back to Paris.
I met Church the winter I was in New York, and he was a funny gruff old thing, who hated girls and women, except as they interest him for his art. I was in a friend’s studio and Church came tearing, waving his brushes around, and saying he had the true idea for snow now—“you did so and so and so and so”—but when he discovered half a dozen girls he had the true idea of escaping and did it too.
Alexander Harrison we met the other day at Pont Aven, and also John Lavery. I was quite surprised to find out who was who of the two, for Harrison looked like an Englishman exactly, while Lavery was almost a typical American.
Harrison is tall and dignified with eyeglasses, rather exaggerated English way of dressing and quite an English carriage and way of speaking. He is very nice though and he and Alson had some fun joking about the American Club in Paris. You know it was his place on the Art Committee that Alson was elected to last spring, so Harrison was very amusing about it.
Lavery was especially nice though, and made us promise to “look him up” when we came to London. He rather reminded me a good deal of Mancel, a jolly young bachelor, although I imagine quite a bit older than Mancel.
John Alexander is a great friend of Miss Thomasson’s and just to show you that artists, no matter how artistic they may be, don’t forget the inner man, let me mention that the last time the Alexanders came over to Paris, they went to the very great trouble of bringing over a refrigerator, so that they might have ice, and an ice box.
Walter Gay is from Boston I believe and had six beautiful things in the Salon this year, all interiors. That is his best line and he is very fond of painting interiors. Lots of them are done in his own beautiful French château, which he has most gorgeously furnished with Louis XV things.
I think I wrote you that I knew an American girl who married a French count over here—she was a friend of Edith Sewall’s. I had her address and intended going to see her when we finally arrived near the place.
Last Sunday we floated up the river with the tide and had our lunch, and then floated down.
Well, to my great surprise on the way up, we came across their estate which is a beautiful, enormous place. I inquired of the gamekeeper if they were there and he said no but they would be back later in the month and had just left that day.
I wrote her when I got back home and had such a nice note in reply saying they will be home the 4th, and she hoped to see us, but if we were going away before then, to drive over and her cook would show us the “shanty,” so she called it, but I think we will be here until she comes back.
We enjoyed the story in the “Smart Set” so much I don’t think I ever read anything so funny. We read it out loud, and I would read until I almost choked from laughter and then Alson would take it and do the same thing.
I thought the picture of Hulburt looked fine, and so awfully nice to have, as it took us back to a year ago. Norris’ book was fine—better I thought than “Matrimony,” although lighter of course, but just the kind of story to take along with us when we go out together.
We are going to have it bound, as well as “Wee MacGregor,” when we get back to Paris. You can have things bound so nicely and so cheaply there, as it is such fun doing it.
I do think “MacGregor” is a gem, there is such a lot of quaint humor in it, so very dry. And Mr. Stoddard you know is a Scotchman, so he is fine to read it to us and hear it just as it really was and explain all the tricks of it. I have tried to grasp it, so as to read to you when we come back, as it is twice as funny well “Scotchy.”
We do so enjoy having you send us magazines and books and things. Frieseke takes Harper’s Monthly and he always sends it on to us when he is through with it, so it is just as though we took it.
Frieseke sent me two nice books for my birthday. “Papa Blanchard” by Molly Elliott Seawell, and “The Mettle of the Pasture” by James Lane Allen. Have only read the former, as I am saving the other until we get very hard up for books some rainy day down here, and then I shall produce it.
I liked “Papa Blanchard” very much. It was improbable but amusing and quite fitted only for the stage and not for a book.
We are having the most glorious time here and you have no idea how very familiar everything looks, and Alson is just having the most glorious time taking me around and showing me everything that I have heard about for so long.
Wasn’t it fine that the “Watering Place” is having such success and wasn’t it funny that the news came here where it was done. I hope he has four in the Chicago Exhibition. I think the “Lavoir” will make a fine fourth and that would make quite a showing.
Alson is doing another Lavoir now which I like a great deal better. It is splendid, very unusual, and strong. The best he has done this summer, I think.
I go with him every day. I have a little bag I strap my work up in, and take a camp stool and sit beside him when he paints. Sometimes I take a book and read out loud.
This is the first place I ever found where I can be with him wherever he is painting and it is just fine. The streets of Paris are fine, but somehow they aren’t just the place to take one’s embroidery and sit down and work.
The roar of the ocean is so beautiful.
I think of you so often and wish you were here to enjoy it with us.
We have enjoyed the “Little Journey” so much and shall have them bound. The Philistine we have had only 3 numbers of. Do you think I better write about it.
Love to all,
Medora