Millet to Stoddard: May 10, 1875
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Ubi Bohemia Fuit
Monday, May 10
Dear Old Chummeke: --
Mrs. Harris and the perambulating corpse, the Dr., have just gone away and the old lady charged me to give you a scolding for not calling to say adieu.[1] Please consider the scolding delivered. The time is 6 p.m. and 36 hours ago I was reading your letter from Pisa, having mailed previously one to you at Livorno enclosing an envelope from Paris directed to you in a feminine hand; all of which speriamo nella sanctissima etc . etc. you will receive in due time.[2]
Now I haven’t got so doggoned much to say because I let out (it?) in my first letter and it possibly duplicate it, simply [page 2] because I am once more a complete Venetian.
I have seen the Adamses several times.[3] Donny is indignant because you neither left your photo nor your adieux.[4] Mrs. A. is calm and collected. I told them that I had named the new dog Charles Warren Stoddard Venus, that it wasn’t that kind of a dog but it was not a question of sex but of appropriateness. By the way, the pup has developed great natural talent for imitation. Whenever a bugle sounds or a whistle blows, he howls in the same key and does in the same key and does it splendidly:
“Listen to the Mocking Dog” etc. etc.
What do you suppose induced Mrs. Harris to come down. She asks me to sit up tonight with a sick man. She doesn’t consider that I have worked ten long hours today having transferred my cartoon to my canvas etc. But of course I can’t well refuse to do such [page 3] a service because I may sometime be in need myself – to look at it selfishly. She said she had never had read anything of yours. I asked if she hadn’t read the book Eh---r--r---no. “Well you may take it” – “From what they say” she said. “I don’t think I should care to read it” – a maiden blush mantling her brow. I had given her the volume and she handed it back to me after a sly glance into it where she saw several naked figures dancing. She positively considers it immoral. Probably Miss Arbesser has put ideas in Mrs. H’s head.
Two women have been here today who are going to hire the house. They want to come in on the first of June and occupy our spare rooms. Can you believe that I refused this offer? I did ‘pon honor. Tom sleeps in your place now and fills it all up – that is, the material space he occupies crowding me out of bed very often.[5]
[Page 4] I’ve just had a letter from Jacksib. He has seen your Padua letter and admires it. He is running the Herald office in London now. Call on him. Wetherbee has at least written. Both he, Champney and myself are refused of course. Sic transit Gloria.[6]
If you see Joaquin give him my love.[7] I shall certainly be in Lunnun [Note: London? A play on words?} by July 10 or 15 & hope you will manage to stay.
Miss you? Bet your life. Put yourself in my place. It isn’t the one who goes away who misses it – it is he who stays. Empty chair, empty bed, empty house. But enuf ced for tonight. I hope to hear immediately on your arrival.
I call you chummeke diminutive of chum for you are already “chum” but have never been chummeke before. Flemish you know.
So, my dear old cuss, with lots of love I am thine – as you need not be told –
Frank.
Notes
- ↑ Mrs. and Mr. Harris have not been identified. They are not mentioned in Peter Engstrom, Francis Davis Millet: A Titanic Life (East Bridgewater, Massachusetts: Millet Studio Publishing, 2010).
- ↑ Stoddard's letter from Pisa and Millet's earlier letter are not known to exist.
- ↑ The reference is to Charles Francis Adams, Jr., and his wife and family, good friends of Millet's
- ↑ "Donny" was ..........
- ↑ "Tom" was another dog.
- ↑ There is much correspondence with <FIRST NAME??> Champney in the Millet archives.
- ↑ Joaquin Miller was the pen name of the Western American poet Cincinnatus Heine (or Hiner) Miller (September 8, 1837 – February 17, 1913), nicknamed the "Poet of the Sierras". See entry on Wikipedia.
