Millet to Stoddard: July 9, 1876
[Letter 17: Letters of Frank Millet to Charles Warren Stoddard: May 10, 1875 - January 3, 1900
[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.
[Space added to facilitate reading.]
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 [1] 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.
[Space added to facilitate reading.]
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.
[Space added to facilitate reading.]
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)
Next: Letter 18: Millet to Stoddard: February 21, 1877
Notes
- ↑ This most likely refers to the Merrills. They are Lily, his future wife, and Kate, whom he earlier wrote about as a singer he was accompanying to Europe. Lily (Elizabeth) was a descendent of Governor William Bradford of the Plymouth Colony according to a July 4, 1937 story in The New York Times announcing her granddaughter's wedding.