Sargent's Women
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xix“seemed to protect himself”: Charteris, John Sargent, 229. Discussion of his clothing and orderly life, Olson, John Singer Sargent, 201–3.
xix“a lemon with a slit”: Miller, “John Singer Sargent in the Diaries of Lucia Fairchild,” 6.
CHAPTER ONE: THE PILGRIM
1“Here is no home”: Elsie Palmer diary, October 2, 1894, Tim Nicholson Collection, Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum, Starsmore Center for Local History. In her transcription, Elsie misspelled “pilgrim” as “pilgram,” and added a second “forth” before the exclamation point.
1“lifeless” . . . “hard” . . . “almost crazy”: Ormond and Kilmurray, Early Portraits, 191.
1A Portrait: Ibid., 259. The painting, currently owned by the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, now goes by the title Portrait of Miss Elsie Palmer or A Lady in White: Joy Armstrong, curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, e-mail message to author, January 16, 2017.
1“I sat sedately”: Elsie Palmer diary, April 30, 1891. Tim Nicholson Collection.
2“marmorial and mute”: Nigel Nicholson and Joanne Trautmann, eds., The Letters of Virginia Woolf, vol. 3 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977), 112.
2“merciless analysis”: Ormond and Kilmurray, Early Portraits, 191.
3Elsie’s mother had just visited: Elsie Palmer diary, October 27, 1889. Tim Nicholson Collection.
3The ghost, Dame Dorothy: Frances Metcalfe Wolcott, Heritage of Years: Kaleidoscopic Memories (New York: Minton, Balch & Company, 1932), 254. General description of house and ghost, Nigel Nicholson and Adam Ford, Ightham Mote, rev. ed. (Warrington, UK: National Trust, 2005), 2–3, 12–13, 17.
4“co-maniacs”: Mount, John Singer Sargent, 1957 ed., 96.
4rumored relationship: Mary C. Hampel DeHay, transcriber, The Joyous Child: A Personality Sketch of Anna Held Heinrich (self-published, 1992), 27–29, Special Collections and Archives, Tutt Library, Colorado College.
4“the scales of a serpent” . . . “soft chain armour”: Eve Adam, ed., Mrs. J. Comyns Carr’s Reminiscences (London: Hutchison & Company, 1926), 211–12, for a full description of the dress.
4“magenta hair!”: John Singer Sargent to Isabella Stewart Gardner, January 1, 1889, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Archives.
5“the vision of Lady Macbeth” . . . “wonderful possibilities”: Cox Devon, The Street of Wonderful Possibilities: Whistler, Wilde & Sargent in Tite Street (London: Frances Lincoln, 2015), 138.
5The painting caused an enormous: Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray, Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends (London: National Portrait Gallery, 2015), 139.
5“I am tired”: Mount, John Singer Sargent, 1957 ed., 22.
6With the death of his father: Olson, John Singer Sargent, 159–61. Financial situation in the wake of his father’s death.
6The painter now inherited: Mount, John Singer Sargent, 1957 ed., 13, 183. Discussion of Emily’s debilitating illness and spinal deformity.
7“Castle” for her: Black, Queen of Glen Eyrie, 22. From an August 7, 1869, letter from William J. Palmer to Queen Mellen.
7“where life would be poetry”: William J. Palmer to Queen Mellen, August 9, 1869. Elsie Queen Nicholson Collection, Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum, Starsmore Center for Local History.
7“I may as well get used to”: Black, Queen of Glen Eyrie, 18.
7The awestruck bride-to-be: Ibid., 17.
8“lungers”: John Bessner Huber, Consumption: Its Relation to Man and His Civilization, Its Prevention and Cure (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1906), 124.
8“all motionless and silent”: Jerry Camarillo Dunn Jr., The Smithsonian Guide to Historic America: The Rocky Mountain States (New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1998), 129.
8“Major Domo” . . . “Montezuma”: Black, Queen of Glen Eyrie, 42.
9“Our home is in Colorado”: Elsie Palmer to George MacDonald [1882]. Special Collections and Archives, Tutt Library, Colorado College.
9“dull-eyed and wan” . . . “little machine of her”: Black, Queen of Glen Eyrie, 80. Transcription of an April 26, 1882, letter from William J. Palmer to Queen Palmer.
10“I am perfectly enchanted”: Ibid., 81.
11The Mote is a giant puzzle: For a thorough description of the house, Nigel Nicholson and Adam Ford, Ightham Mote, rev. ed. (Warrington, UK: National Trust, 2005).
11There was no electricity: Adam, ed., Mrs. J. Comyns Carr’s Reminiscences, 122.
12“a vile and papistical”: Nicholson and Ford, Ightham Mote, 22.
12“squint”: Ibid., 21.
12Elsie’s own bedroom: Elsie Palmer diary, March 29, 1890, Tim Nicholson Collection.
12“New Chapel”: Nicholson and Ford, Ightham Mote, 22–24.
13“who is a perfect beauty”: Elsie Palmer diary, September 3, 1889, Tim Nicholson Collection.
13“Mother wants to be very sure”: Queen Palmer to Elsie, Dorothy, and Marjorie Palmer, July 1886, Tim Nicholson Collection.
14“After supper at 8 o’clock”: Elsie Palmer to Queen Palmer, ca. 1886, Tim Nicholson Collection.
14“bewildering[ly] happy”: Elsie Palmer to Queen Palmer, October 5, 1889, Tim Nicholson Collection.
15“The good General Palmer”: Leon Edel, ed., Henry James Letters, volume 3, 1883–1895 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1980), 216.
15“drollest amalgam” . . . “characteristically Coloradoish” . . . “lean tenants” . . . “rustics”: Ibid.
15“now lives in a country boasting” . . . “a picturesque boatman”: Adam, ed., Mrs. J. Comyns Carr’s Reminiscences, 123.
15“major-domo a helpless”: Edel, ed., Henry James Letters, Volume 3, 217.
15“a state of almost perilous decreptitude”: Ibid., 216.
15“Our spines were chilled”: Frances Metcalfe Wolcott, Heritage of Years: Kaleidoscopic Memories (New York: Minton, Balch & Company, 1932), 254–55.
16“fortunately the former remained”: Edel, ed., Henry James Letters, Volume 3, 216.
16The author added to the decidedly spooky: Alice Strettell Carr, J. Comyns Carr: Stray Memories (London: Macmillan and Company, 1920), 134.
16“The children were always the frame”: Ibid., 135.
17“Always let her pursue”: Ibid.
17“like a nun”: Elsie Palmer diary, March 7, 1889, Tim Nicholson Collection. Carr, J. Comyns Carr, 134–35. Adam, ed., Mrs. J. Comyns Carr’s Reminiscences, 126. George Meredith and Henry James helped teach the children at the Mote how to play a parlor game called “Definitions.” One person would write down a word that would be the “subject”; another would define it on a piece of paper, keeping the original word covered; a third person would then “recover” the meaning. Carr recounted one sample game: “Subject, Soap; Definition . . . The Horror of the East-end multitude; Recovery, Jack the Ripper,” who was then terrorizing London.
17Dress-up was a major: Adam, ed., Mrs. J. Comyns Carr’s Reminiscences, 111, 123.
18Sargent needed activity: Elsie Palmer diary, December 12, 1890, Tim Nicholson Collection.
18“Hardly doing any-thing”: Elsie Palmer diary, December 1, 1889, Tim Nicholson Collection.
18A full-length portrait: Ormond and Kilmurray, Early Portraits, xxiii.
19“strange and weird”: Elsie Palmer diary, November 5, 1889, Tim Nicholson Collection.
19Elsie went up to London: Ibid., December 1 and 7, 1889, Tim Nicholson Collection.
19Queen and Elsie had already spent months: Ibid., August 10, 1889, and March 14, 1890, Tim Nicholson Collection.
19Leaving the Mote: Elsie Palmer diary, March 26, 1890, Tim Nicholson Collection.
20“Tonight: this is the Mote”: Ibid., March 30, 1890, Tim Nicholson Collection.
20Mothers and daughters: Ibid., March 31, 1890, and June 6, 1890, Tim Nicholson Collection.
20“Elsie Palmer’s unfinished portrait”: Ormond and Kilmurray, Early Portraits, 191.
20“wonderful change”: Elsie Palmer diary, November 18, 1890, Tim Nic
holson Collection.
21“Same spirit of rebellion”: Ibid., November 19, 1890, Tim Nicholson Collection.
21On other days they argued: Ibid., November 21–22, 1890, Tim Nicholson Collection.
21By mid-December: Ibid., December 11–13, 1890, Tim Nicholson Collection.
22“I can’t express:” Elsie Palmer diary, December 31, 1890–January 1, 1891, Tim Nicholson Collection.
22“There is not much to add”: Queen Palmer to Elsie Palmer, March 28, 1890, Tim Nicholson Collection. For the sake of clarity in this letter, a few dashes were changed to commas.
22Doctors in England: William J. Palmer to Elsie Palmer, April 17, 1892, Tim Nicholson Collection.
22“My darling chick”: William J. Palmer to Elsie Palmer, February 21, 1891, Tim Nicholson Collection.
23Elsie knew her father: Elsie Palmer to William J. Palmer, note folded into 1890–1892 diary volume, Tim Nicholson Collection.
24One winter day: Elsie Palmer diary, February 26, 1891, Tim Nicholson Collection.
24“The end of the Gotterdammerung”: Ibid., March 22, 1891, Tim Nicholson Collection.
24“the most sacred spot”: Ibid., July 19, 1891, Tim Nicholson Collection.
24“great solemn silent pines!”: Ibid., July 9, 1891, Tim Nicholson Collection.
24“there is . . . a something strangely lacking”: Ibid., July 21, 1891, Tim Nicholson Collection.
25The General visited London: William J. Palmer to Elsie Palmer, May 25, 1891, Tim Nicholson Collection.
25He and Elsie went: Elsie Palmer diary, November 14, 1891, Tim Nicholson Collection. “My portrait looked very well in the right light,” Elsie had written a month before her father arrived. She also noted that the studio had Sargent’s “interesting Egyptian sketches for the Boston library.”
25“I want to do something more”: John Singer Sargent to Elsie Palmer, December 1891, Tim Nicholson Collection. Sargent writing from Morgan Hall, Fairford, Gloucestershire, to Elsie Palmer at Oak Cottage, Frant, Sussex.
25“It is too difficult a task”: Elsie Palmer diary, June 7, 1892, Tim Nicholson Collection.
25Elsie wrote her assessment: Thomas Garner and Arthur Stratton, The Domestic Architecture of England during the Tudor Period, vol. 1 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1929), 84.
25“like an ideal fairy-garden”: Ibid., June 7, 1892, Tim Nicholson Collection.
26“After having wandered”: Ibid., May 5, 1892, Tim Nicholson Collection.
26“Put it away in some nursery”: Ibid. Elsie and her husband Leo Myers eventually owned the painting. Ormond and Kilmurray, Early Portraits, 264.
26Helen Dunham remained: Elsie Palmer diary, May 4–5 and 20, 1892, and June 16, 1892, Tim Nicholson Collection. “Helen’s portrait quite finished and beautiful,” Elsie writes on June 16.
27her fingers as “saignant”: Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: Portraits of the 1890s (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 58. Further discussion of Lady Agnew, 66, and Helen Dunham portrait, 56–58.
27“a white finger appeared”: Elsie Palmer diary, May 13, 1892, Tim Nicholson Collection.
28“Poetess, who turns her back”: Ibid., June 12, 1892, Tim Nicholson Collection. The June 12 entry describes Elsie’s entire stay at Box Hill, including the birthday party that took place on June 10 and her departure on June 11.
29He had been dismayed to learn: William J. Palmer to Elsie Palmer, April 17, 1892, Tim Nicholson Collection. The General, writing to Elsie from New York concerning his disappointment that she had given up her health regime, had one request: he begged Elsie to keep her younger sisters away from caffeine. “Then they will like milk & never find out that coffee or tea is essential to soothe shattered nerves or to drive away head aches &c because they will not know what nerves are to soothe & will be less likely to have head aches.”
29Elsie was learning: Elsie Palmer diary, June 12, 1892, Tim Nicholson Collection.
29Elsie’s diaries reveal: Ibid., June 16, 1892 and July 10, 1892, Tim Nicholson Collection.
29“Men and women of all kinds”: Elsie Palmer diary, July 5, 1892, Tim Nicholson Collection.
30“The very thing in this English climate”: Black, Queen of Glen Eyrie, 112–13.
31“There is some music”: Barbara Gately, “An Abiding Bond: The Friendship between Major Henry McAllister & William Jackson Palmer,” in Legends, Labors & Loves of William Jackson Palmer 1836–1909, ed. Tim Blevins et al. (Colorado Springs: Pikes Peak Library District, 2009), 65.
31“And you my dear wife”: Chris Nicholl, “ ‘My Darling Queenie . . .’ A Love Story,” in Blevins et al., Legends, Labors & Loves, 78.
31“Nomad”: Elsie Palmer diary, March 5, 1894, Tim Nicholson Collection.
31“Mrs. Carnegie’s place”: Ibid., March 20, 1894, Tim Nicholson Collection.
31“George Vanderbilt’s place”: Ibid., March 22, 1894.
32“stately little walks”: Ibid., March 28, 1894, Tim Nicholson Collection.
32“The green rock wall” . . . “in a silk dress”: Ibid., March 19, 1894, Tim Nicholson Collection.
32“Motherling’s path”: Ibid., March 30, 1894, Tim Nicholson Collection.
32“chromatic scale bird”: Ibid., March 31, 1894, Tim Nicholson Collection.
32Visitors came and went: Ibid., April 1–2 and 11, Tim Nicholson Collection.
32“Even what seems bad weather”: Judith K. Major, Mariana Griswold van Rensselaer: A Landscape Critic in the Gilded Age (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013), 158.
32“barbaric place”: Ibid., 159.
32Only two days later: Elsie Palmer diary, April 22, 1894, Tim Nicholson Collection.
33“Almost like a civil war”: Ibid., May 26, 1894, Tim Nicholson Collection. Description of entire trip to and from California is from May 2 to June 8, 1894.
33Within six months Elsie: Elsie Palmer diary, August 16, 1894, Tim Nicholson Collection. She described her trip to England as “going home!”
33“black shadows were assembling”: Elsie Palmer diary, October 1, 1894, Tim Nicholson Collection. Elsie is quoting Thomas Bailey Aldrich, prominent writer and editor, from his novel The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel.
33“questionable letter”: Elsie Palmer diary, October 26, 1894, Tim Nicholson Collection.
34Peter cited “gentleman”: John Ashdown-Hill, Last Days of Richard III and the Fate of His DNA (Stroud, UK: History Press, 2013), xlvi.
34“looked sweetly interesting”: Elsie Palmer diary, December 19, 1890, Tim Nicholson Collection.
34“Juggernaut”: Peter Harrison to Elsie Palmer, November 4, 1903, Tim Nicholson Collection.
34“heaps of watercolours” . . . “all hopelessly clever”: Peter Harrison to Elsie Palmer, November 21, 1903, Tim Nicholson Collection.
34“creeping away into inner rooms” . . . “wiser and less exuberant”: Ibid., November 4, 1903, Tim Nicholson Collection.
34“be converted to think more of John”: Henry James to Peter Harrison, November 13, 1903, Tim Nicholson Collection.
34“strong man” . . . “& do-nothing”: Peter Harrison to Elsie Palmer, November 4, 1903, Tim Nicholson Collection. Peter Harrison also describes his feelings regarding Sargent in a November 9, 1903, letter to Elsie. He tells her that to be an artist it takes such a supreme effort that he doubts it’s worth the trouble, unless you have the “vitality” or the “genius” of a Sargent. Harrison’s depression and inability to work is described in a September 4, [1895] letter from Alma Strettell Harrison to Elsie Palmer.
35“asthmatic attack”: Elsie Palmer diary, December 15, 1894. Tim Nicholson Collection.
35“my own darling Motherling” . . . “We feel your presence”: Elsie Palmer to Queen Palmer, December 25, 1894, Tim Nicholson Collection.
35Elsie looked to Peter: Elsie Palmer diary, December 29, 1894, Tim Nicholson Collection. She writes that she took “strength from Peter’s presence.”
35Peter gave Elsie a gift: Elsie Palm
er diary, March 2, 1895 and March 9, 1895, Tim Nicholson Collection. Elsie visits the Mote “in a daze,” but Peter “understands it all—and holds one up to one’s best.”
35Sargent, from London: Emily Sargent to Elsie Palmer, March 14, 1895, Tim Nicholson Collection.
36“looks like the end of the world”: Dorothy Comyns Carr diary, December 20, 1903, Tim Nicholson Collection.
36“Sky Garden”: Donald McGilchrist, “The Gardens of Glen Eyrie,” in Blevins et al., Legends, Labors & Loves, 219.
37Close upon arrival, Elsie moved: Elsie Palmer diary, April 13, 1895, Tim Nicholson Collection.
37“freckled and a little awkward”: John S. Fischer, A Builder of the West: The Life of General William Jackson Palmer (Caldwell, ID: Caxton, 1939), 283.
37“They would arrive with a town” . . . “little forlorner”: Dorothy Comyns Carr diary, December 19, 1902, Tim Nicholson Collection.
37“charming tyrant”: Chris Nicholl, “William Jackson Palmer: Living while Dying,” in Blevins et al., Legends, Labors & Loves, 278.
38“loose or no undergarments”: Delores Gustafson, “General William Jackson Palmer & the Mellen & Clarke Families,” in Blevins et al., Legends, Labors & Loves, 83.
38She pronounced that the mountains: Dorothy Comyns Carr diary, January 13, 1903, Tim Nicholson Collection.
39“Infinite”: G. H. Bantock and L. H. Myers, A Critical Study (London: University College Leicester and Jonathan Cape, 1956), 139.
39Like a commanding general . . . “platoon”: Hamlin Garland, Companions on the Trail: A Literary Chronicle (New York: Macmillan, 1931), 82–84.
39Though raised in entirely different circumstances: Trevor Hamilton, Immortal Longings: FWH Myers and the Victorian Search for Life After Death (Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic, 2009), 54–55. Leo doesn’t want to be in the same room as his father and his mother tries to protect her son. Penelope Fitzgerald, Introduction to The Root and the Flower by L. H. Myers (New York: New York Review Books, 2001), vii. A “procession of mediums and ‘sensitives’ . . . came to the house.”