Millet to Stoddard: March 11, 1877

[Letter 19: Letters of Frank Millet to Charles Warren Stoddard: May 10, 1875 - January 3, 1900

Paris, March 11 ‘77

My dear Chummeke: Your letter came to me all right as fresh and as full of you as I could desire and I have lugged it around with me ever since. It was my intention to have it answered long ago but I have been driven to death searching for a music professor for one of the girls of whom I have often spoken. I had a letter from Donny Adams yesterday and dined with Anderson last evening and from both these sources I learn that it is your intention to leave Rome soon. If anything I can say will cause you to come the quicker, do consider it said. There is no reason why you shouldn’t be here in our neighborhood or even our house for there are plenty of rooms here about and very reasonable ones too and you know you would work better up here then in the Italian climate. D.A. [Note: evidently Donny Adams] wrote me a very good letter but I am afraid she is not doing as well as she would if she were in a colder climate. Do you know that I always said a too long stay in Italy was hard for any American mentally and physically. Benise (?) who saw D.A. a short time ago says she is very pale and thin and doesn’t look healthy at all. I am very sorry for this, for she has so much talent, such unusual dispositions to become an author that it is a pity she should grow up in the shade. I am here to work and although circumstances have been such that I couldn’t help devoting all my time and thought to the other sex (you know how imperative their demands are) I now hope to get to [page 2] work on my own account.

Do then, my dear Charlie, write me that you are coming up here. You can occupy a room with me. I dare say I can so arrange it with Withaim (?) who now is my bedfellow and roommate. It will shortly be warmer weather and Paris will be delightful. Anderson’s wife (a very charming person) is going away to America and he is off for Spain in a week or two to see the pictures there. He speaks of you with the greatest kindness and joins me in asking you to come up here. You can’t help liking my people if you try ever so hard, and they will like you. I can write you nothing, only to repeat come. But then I have little new to tell you only that I am beginning to like Paris and that I haven’t a single artistic idea. Such is the state of my mind that I cannot get it into the proper mood for composing a picture or selecting a subject. However the moment will come I am sure and when it does come your uncle (?) will go to work and when he works he works. So, old boy, you want to work too now don’t you? I saw Bloomer the other day, went & hunted him out because I knew he was a friend of yours. Do write me at all event, my dear Chummeke, and let me have another of the sunny Italian letters which make me warm even in this cold weather.

With very much love Yours always as you know

F.D.M.