The story of a summer : $b or, Journal leaves from ChappaquaCleveland, Cecilia Pauline
General
The story of a summer : $b or, Journal leaves from Chappaqua
Cleveland, Cecilia Pauline
Chappaqua (N.Y.); Greeley family
Ida and I then started to walk to the grove, where we thought we would
probably find our guests awaiting our return. Not there, indeed, but
in the vegetable garden we found them, where they were kindly looking
after the interests of the family by weeding the strawberry-beds,
regardless of the Sabbath, and notwithstanding one of the gentlemen was
a grandson of a D.D. In answer to our regrets that we should have been
absent when they arrived, they mildly intimated some surprise, one
having telegraphed his proposed coming, and the other sent a message
through papa the day previous; dear papa, however, had as usual
forgotten to deliver the message, and whither the telegram went, no one
could imagine.
_July 1_.
A visit yesterday from the little colored sculptress, Edmonia Lewis.
Miss Lewis was accompanied by a box of formidable size, containing, she
told us, a marble bust of Mr. Greeley, which she had brought out here
for the opinion of the family; but as Ida was in the city where she had
gone for a day's shopping, we reserved our judgment until she should
return and see it with us.
I was very glad to learn that Miss Lewis was prospering in both a
pecuniary and an artistic point of view. She had, she told me,
received two orders for busts of uncle--one from the Lincoln Club, and
one from a Chicago gentleman. She intends returning to Rome before
long.
Miss Lewis had already opened a studio while we were in Rome four or
five years ago, and I heard much talk about her from her brother and
sister artists. I intended at one time to visit her studio and see her
work, but several sculptors advised me not to do so; she was, they
declared, "queer," "unsociable," often positively rude to her visitors,
and had been heard to fervently wish that the Americans would not come
to her studio, as they evidently looked upon her only as a curiosity.
When, therefore, I did see her for the first time (last summer), I was
much surprised to find her by no means the morose being that had been
described to me, but possessed of very soft and quite winning manners.
She was amused when I told her what I had heard of her, and remarked,
quite pertinently:
"How could I expect to sell my work if I did not receive visitors
civilly?"
Miss Lewis expressed much gratitude to Miss Hosmer and Miss Stebbins
for their kindness to her in Rome, and of Miss Cushman she said
enthusiastically, "She is an angel!"
She is, I have been told, very well received in society abroad, and
when baptized a Catholic in Rome, two ladies of high position, Countess
Cholmondeley and Princess Wittgenstein, offered to stand godmother for
her. Edmonia chose Lady Cholmondeley, whom I remember well in Rome as
a great belle and a highly accomplished woman. She wrote poetry, I was
told, and modelled in clay with much taste, and her finely trained
voice and dainty playing of the harp I well remember as one of the
attractions of Miss Cushman's receptions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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