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. [1] 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. Bunce 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 William 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.
Next: Letter 20: Millet to Stoddard: April 24, 1877
Notes
- ↑ Evidently he means Donny Adams