Millet to Stoddard: July 9, 1876

[Letter 17: Letters of Frank Millet to Charles Warren Stoddard: May 10, 1875 - January 3, 1900

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[Note: Location not given, but it is Boston]

July 9, 1876

My dear Chummeke: --

You are an old humbug, a butterfly – a good for nothing humming bird that flutters about living only in the present. Didn’t you know that I looked and looked for a letter from you and never got one the whole winter long? Can I forgive such neglect I wonder? I’ve written you and read loads since you wrote me before your flight into Egypt. But I won’t waste paper in scolding you for I hope to have the pleasure of giving it to you viva voce before many weeks or months. Your note from Venice made me very unhappy. I was homesick, miserable and hated everybody and everything. I was at work on a portrait of a lady when it came and from that time forward I had no heart in the work and the canvas suffered. At last after I had tried every dodge and as a final resort had moved my sitter into the open air the spell was broken by a violent gust of wind that took easle (sic) canvas and all and threw it over upon an arm chair and smashed the arm right through the picture. Rage! Despair! [page 2] and finally joy! And then I picked up my palette and went at it as if there had been no picture on the canvas and now there is a fair chance of success. But I am anticipating a little.

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You’d like to know what I am doing all this time. First, I have been painting portraits all winter and have settled all back debts and have a thousand francs ahead and lots more unpaid as yet for work done. I had two pictures in the N.Y. Academy and have three in Philadelphia, two of which you know (the nigger and “Bay of Naples”). I began to paint Mrs. C. F. Adams weeks ago and it was her portrait that your letter busted. Now I am stopping at their house in Quincy and am at work on her portrait and one of him and also am to begin one of a little child of theirs. With my usual luck I am in clover. Larger house, plenty of servants, high living and not a bit of formality. Never was an artist in a more luxurious place – good things to eat, good drinkables, a fine library and the best of society, and perfectly at home. Still I’m not happy and have to come to [page 3] Boston once in a while to the bosom of my dear old Bohemian family and imagine I am in Europe which it is not difficult to do and talk Italian and try and believe that I can smell the breeze from the Adriatic. That same family of which all members are talented and one especially is a favorite singer here already (18 yrs old) will, we hope, get over to Milan in the fall and it is my plan to take them there and settle there and then go away and paint. Since you say you are going to come to America this summer, which I do not for a moment believe, there exists in my mind a faint hope that you may see these people whom you will enjoy as much as I do for they are of the sacred (may I call it so?) order of true Bohemia and artists everyone.

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When your letter came saying you were in Venice I was, as I have said too impatient to breath and even now I have it always in mind. The only things that keep me here are the Adams’ portraits and a scheme or two which I shall write Miss Adams [page 4] (Donny) and she’ll tell you if she thinks worth while, because I want to talk with you about matters. It strikes me, dear old boy, that you do quite wrong to come home. I have a good constitution, a mercurial temperament and a naturally hopeful disposition yet I can tell you that I have never suffered so much, mentally, as in this place. Kick, kick against the pricks of popular ignorance, conceit and worst of all – politics. The last stroke was two much for me. I was named as juror of Fine Arts at Philadelphia and as I was intimately known by most in authority there it was thought certain that I should have the place. But Gov. Rice of this State had a friend and he stuck him in the position much to the disgust of everybody, especially the artists who had in a body signed a paper for me to be appointed. The idea that politics should affect the arts!! Sac—but I won’t swear in a letter. Then here in Boston where they should know better they do cater so to riches and Harvard College that it quite disgusts me. To be asked “What class did you graduate [page 5] in” makes me mad and always although I am a graduate. In fact, although it would much surpass the limits of a letter to give you a hint of the causes that keep a fellow constantly in the tenterhooks of disgust and impatience it will be plain to you from the tone of my letter that this beastly country does not by any means please me. I have been as I have several times said very anxious to leave it and I have taken various ways to cure myself not the least successful of which was a good deal of physical exercise gained by building a sandolo after the Venetian pattern. 18 ½ feet long with everything complete and in high perfection.

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If you come to this country before I leave it which I hope and pray; my dear old chummeke, you will do if you are to come at all for the present we will spend some happy days together. The Centennial exhibition you would find most interesting. I have been there a month for the Advertiser ($40 a week and all expenses) and shall go again. How I should like to take you along! By the way I tried to find your brother Fred and have even delayed this letter a week – he hopes to be able to report an [page 6] interview. In the new directory this evening I have found his employers name and in a day or two I shall hunt him up. Look, Charlie, there is so much to talk that I don’t dare tackle it and am going to stop. I’m writing this Sunday eve after a day’s painting and an evening in the Advertiser office and I shall write Miss A before I go to bed as you may consult her for further news for the present. You don’t know how much I am disturbed at the idea of your being ill. I hope Venice will drive all maladies away. Your most interesting journey I shall hear about from your own lips shall I not? Oh! What wouldn’t I give for a letter from you with the announcement that you would soon be here! But then I sincerely hope for your own sake that you may not be obliged to leave Europe for some time yet. Stay and go round the world with me! Do write me. Tell me all about yourself for that will interest me most. I rub old Father Anthony in my watch chain and wish you all sorts of prosperity and happiness and especially a constancy to me whom I am afraid you don’t altogether gauge in his affection for you.

Yours always with all my heart.

Frank

(Direct as by envelope)

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