Sargent's Women
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154Jack wrote in care: Ibid., October 17, 1895. John Jay Chapman Papers, 1841–1940 (MS Am 1854). Houghton Library, Harvard University.
154“How is it you dare to go off” . . . “I’ll indulge in them?”: Howe, John Jay Chapman, 103.
154On October 27, 1896 . . . wedding archway: Thomas, Astor Orphans, 1971 ed., 195–96. Description of the wedding celebration.
155“kind, gay pagan”: O’Connor, The Astors, 298. Quote by Margaret Terry “Daisy” Chanler, wife of Elizabeth’s brother Wintie.
155Jack had written Elizabeth: Jack Chapman to Elizabeth Chanler, October 14, 1896. John Jay Chapman Papers, 1841–1940 (MS Am 1854), Houghton Library, Harvard University.
155“crimson chiffon dinner gown”: Bill from Mme. Macheret’s shop to Elizabeth Chanler, October 31, 1896, Chapman Papers, Rokeby.
156Margaret confronted her sister: Thomas, Astor Orphans, 1971 ed., 212–13. Description of trip.
156Aboard the steamship . . . Buddha’s tooth: Aldrich, Family Vista, 95.
156“tree of enlightenment”: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/200. Description of the sacred city.
156“Women’s skirts and saris” . . . the swords were gold: Aldrich, Family Vista, 96–99.
157After giving birth to her third son: Richard B. Hovey, John Jay Chapman: An American Mind (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), 72. Description of Minna’s death.
157“God help you—And help us all”: Elizabeth Chanler to Jack Chapman, March 3, 1897, John Jay Chapman Papers, 1841–1940 (MS Am 1854), Houghton Library, Harvard University.
157Jack insisted that she stay: Thomas, Astor Orphans, 1971 ed., 213.
157“perfectly formal line of conduct”: Elizabeth Chanler to Jack Chapman, [October 1897], John Jay Chapman Papers, 1841–1940 (MS Am 1854), Houghton Library, Harvard University. http://www.victoriana.com/VictorianPeriod/mourning.htm. Mourning customs.
158Elizabeth and Jack secretly shared: Elizabeth Chanler to Jack Chapman, September 17 and 21, 1897, John Jay Chapman Papers, 1841–1940 (MS Am 1854). Houghton Library, Harvard University. She kept his letters under “lock & key,” and advised him to acknowledge receipt of every letter she wrote to him, lest one should “go astray.”
158Elizabeth could slip away for the day: Elizabeth Chanler to Jack Chapman, August 7, 1897, John Jay Chapman Papers, 1841–1940 (MS Am 1854). Houghton Library, Harvard University. Thirteen-page letter in which Elizabeth plans a rendezvous on Conanicut Island, despite the fact that Alida was somewhat suspicious.
158“mystery and clandestine meetings”: Howe, John Jay Chapman, 128–29.
158“I crave more habit of you”: Elizabeth Chanler to Jack Chapman, August 12, [1897], John Jay Chapman Papers, 1841–1940 (MS Am 1854), Houghton Library, Harvard University.
158In New York they met surreptitiously: Howe, John Jay Chapman, 128. Meeting at a Paulist church.
159“these blessed visions of your bodily nearness” . . . “God keep us”: Elizabeth Chanler to Jack Chapman, September 17, 1897, John Jay Chapman Papers, 1841–1940 (MS Am 1854), Houghton Library, Harvard University.
159Though Jack was in the dark: Jack Chapman to Elizabeth Chanler, May 5, 1897, John Jay Chapman Papers, 1841–1940 (MS Am 1854), Houghton Library, Harvard University. Jack writes to her, “These mysterious sorrows & worries of yours are very annoying & painful. . . .” In pencil on the top of the page, Elizabeth noted years later, “Written when Archie was at Bloomingdale & I had agreed not to speak of it to anyone on the ground that he might recover suddenly & come out before anyone knew he was there.”
159“imbecile”: New York Herald, November 25, 1875, 3.
159Archie was certainly eccentric: Thomas, Astor Orphans, 1999 ed., 103–07. Discussion of Archie’s business dealings with his family, his eccentricities, and his commitment to Bloomingdale Asylum.
160Elizabeth learned of her thirty-four-year-old brother’s plight: Ibid., 109.
160“a honeymoon fragrance” . . . “precipice in heaven”: Elizabeth Chanler to Jack Chapman, September 17, 1897, John Jay Chapman Papers, 1841–1940 (MS Am 1854), Houghton Library, Harvard University.
161“Christmas stocking”: Ibid., October 9, 1897, John Jay Chapman Papers, 1841–1940 (MS Am 1854). Houghton Library, Harvard University.
161unnamed people coming to Rokeby: Ibid., October 18, 1897, John Jay Chapman Papers, 1841–1940 (MS Am 1854). Houghton Library, Harvard University.
161“[Archie] has a splendid constitution” . . . the journalist rehearsed yet again: New York Times, October 14, 1897.
162“the Astor blood seems morally”: Margaret Rutherfurd “Daisy” White to Elizabeth Chanler, February 13, 1898, Chapman Papers, Rokeby.
162“This implies that we had been living together” . . . “more than she can stand”: Elizabeth Chanler to Jack Chapman, [October 1897], John Jay Chapman Papers, 1841–1940 (MS Am 1854), Houghton Library, Harvard University.
163“war wedding” . . . “an undertaker”: Thomas, Astor Orphans, 1971 ed., 247.
163“on the lunatic fringe”: Paul Grondahl, I Rose Like a Rocket: The Political Education of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Free Press, 2004), 290. Thomas, Astor Orphans, 1999 ed., 136–37. Howe, John Jay Chapman, 138–41. Discusses the nearly twenty-year estrangement between Chapman and Roosevelt.
164“The crisis came with a crash”: Hovey, John Jay Chapman, 89. Thomas, Astor Orphans, 1999 ed., 136–37. Discussion of Chapman’s breakdown and his being placed in the tower room with the blinds drawn.
164“imaginative” . . . to avoid annihilation: Howe, John Jay Chapman, 153–154. Chapman writes that his brother-in-law Temple Emmet pronounced him “perfectly sane though imaginative.” Thomas, Astor Orphans, 1999 ed., 161–62. Describes Chapman’s infant-like condition.
165“a mystic to whom this world and the next were one”: Aldrich, Family Vista, 157. Thomas, Astor Orphans, 1999 ed., 201.
165When Jack could finally abide sunlight . . . overcome by its beauty: Howe, John Jay Chapman, 154. Thomas, Astor Orphans, 1999 ed., 162.
165“jounce”: Hovey, John Jay Chapman, 163.
166“Absolute heaven” . . . “kind of man that always gets cheated”: Ibid., 163.
166“Jay drowned”: Howe, John Jay Chapman, 155–56. Chapman’s telegram, his abandoning his crutches, and then announcing, “Now we can go home.”
167“I don’t talk to him”: Howe, John Jay Chapman, 157. Hovey, John Jay Chapman, 164. Discussion of his deep depression over the loss of his son. John Zukowsky and Robbe Pierce Stimson, Hudson River Villas (New York: Rizzoli, 1985), 189. Description of Edgewater, where novelist Gore Vidal lived for nearly twenty years in the mid-twentieth century.
167While secluded, Jack studied music: Howe, John Jay Chapman, 157–159, 185.
168“Letters of Condolence” . . . no more children: Teresa Klein to Jack Chapman, August 31, 1910, Chapman Papers, Rokeby. Klein wrote that the Chapmans’ crushing loss was especially unfair, for Elizabeth “is the personification of all that is sweet, true & noble.” May Sedgwick to Elizabeth Chapman, September 5, 1910, Chapman Papers, Rokeby. May advised Elizabeth to take it easy and to avoid people so that she wouldn’t have to endure “the nervous effort of talking, & of listening.”
168“I’ve been discovered”: Howe, John Jay Chapman, 320–21.
169“Victor has been killed”: Ibid., 302.
169“it had dropped like a stone”: Aldrich, Family Vista, 159. Thomas, Astor Orphans, 1999 ed., 218–19. Howe, John Jay Chapman, 301–02. Hovey, John Jay Chapman, 228–29. Discussion of Victor Chapman’s death and church service.
169“I have just heard that your son”: Bernard Berenson to John Jay Chapman, July 3, 1916, Chapman Papers, Rokeby.
169heaped a stream of abuse upon President Woodrow Wilson: Howe, John Jay Chapman, 297. Chapman called Wilson a “mendacious coward,” and a “hopeless jackass.” Hovey, John Jay Chapman, 229–30, 363. In an October 1916 pamphlet titled The French Heroes, Chapman expounded on the heroism of the French who “k
now they are saving not only France, but the soul of the modern world.” And in a Letter to the Editor in the New York Tribune on January 5, 1917, Chapman stated that the military should take over the U.S. government.
170“high up in the Cathedral gang”: Hovey, John Jay Chapman, 281.
170“nailed to the cross” . . . “Board of Fellows”: Howe, John Jay Chapman, 347.
170“Jewish menace”: Ibid., 340.
170“The K.K. are all right”: Hovey, John Jay Chapman, 287.
171“the wrong attitude” . . . The booze ran freely: Accessed October 22, 2014, http://www.si.com/vault/1977/06/13/621837/step-in-and-enjoy-the-turmoil.
171“worshipful reverence” . . . “need to bend your gaze”: Elizabeth Chanler Chapman to Chanler Chapman, January 26, 1921, Chapman Papers, Rokeby.
171“a bower, not a cell”: Ibid., January 16, 1922, Chapman Papers, Rokeby.
171“Shakespeare and such stuff”: Thomas, Astor Orphans, 1999 ed., 247.
172“A soldier lay dying” . . . “But there is lack of nothing here”: Hovey, John Jay Chapman, 347.
172“Elizabeth came with a book”: Howe, John Jay Chapman, 462.
173“bores the hell out of me”: Accessed October 22, 2014, http://www.si.com/vault/1977/06/13/621837/step-in-and-enjoy-the-turmoil.
173living off the inheritance: Thomas, Astor Orphans, 1999 ed., 307.
173“most eccentric man in America” . . . “It’s convenient for Chanler” . . . “Opinions come out of me” . . . “When You Can’t Smile, Quit” . . . “Close the blinds at night”: Accessed October 22, 2014, http://www.si.com/vault/1977/06/13/621837/step-in-and-enjoy-the-turmoil.
173KINGSTON ATTACKED BY GIANT MALL: Accessed October 22, 2014, http://www.bard.edu/archives/voices/Kline-Education/Chapman.doc.
173“Chanler Chapman, the son of the famous John Jay Chapman”: Saul Bellow and Benjamin Taylor, eds., There Is Simply Too Much to Think About: Collected Nonfiction (New York: Viking, 2015), 494.
173She died at Good Hap: Thomas, Astor Orphans, 1999 ed., 307–08.
174“ransacked London”: John Singer Sargent to Margaret Chanler, August 3, 1893, Aldrich Papers, Rokeby.
174“peacefully hang”: Ibid., October 17, 1893, Aldrich Papers, Rokeby.
174“vigourous energy” . . . “intense intellectual”: Ormond and Kilmurray, Portraits of the 1890s, 68.
174“dull” . . . “vision seems to have lost”: D.S.M., “Art. The Academy–I.” The Spectator, May 12, 1894, 652.
174“poorly, hastily conceived”: Ormond and Kilmurray, Portraits of the 1890s, 68.
175when Chanler walked into Rokeby . . . Gyp the government of taxes?: John Winthrop Aldrich, e-mail message to author, August 8, 2012 and October 22, 2016.
CHAPTER FOUR: THE COLLECTOR
176“She is not a woman”: Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), 242.
176“dear little village” . . . “straight to Cleopatra”: Shana McKenna, trans., Isabella Stewart Gardner’s Egypt Travel Scrapbook and Diary 1874–75, December 24, 1874. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Archives.
177“wicked as Cleopatra”: Ralph Curtis to Isabella Stewart [I. S.] Gardner, October 3, 1911. Gardner Museum Archives. There are several versions of the story—it was also said to have taken place in a Venetian train station, with an Italian girl saying that Belle was “more wicked than Cleopatra.” Morris Carter, Isabella Stewart Gardner and Fenway Court, 3rd ed. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 1972), 165–66.
177“blue icicles”: Louise Hall Tharp, Mrs. Jack (Boston: Little, Brown, 1965), 345.
177“delicious caress”: Ernest Samuels, Bernard Berenson: The Making of a Connoisseur (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1979), 307. Letter from the art connoisseur Bernard Berenson to his wife Mary Berenson.
178According to Belle’s ironclad will: Lisa Feldmann, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, e-mail message to author, November 22, 2016. Any permanent change to the collections or the building requires the formal permission of the Massachusetts attorney general. The short-term loan of an item for an exhibition at another museum is occasionally permitted because Isabella did so herself. In addition, the piece’s removal would roughly match the time it might take for a conservation treatment, so it is considered a temporary—and not a permanent—change to the collection. Museum officials will not permit a loan request if it is for too long a period or if it is deemed to detract too much from the visitor’s experience of the Gardner Museum.
179Her grandfather: Tharp, Mrs. Jack, 5, 12.
179early life: Ibid., 6–11.
180private tutors: Ibid., 10–16.
180“with beautiful pictures”: Ibid., 16. Ida Agassiz Higginson to I. S. Gardner, March 8, 1923, Gardner Museum Archives.
181“How do you like Boston anyway?”: John Jay Chapman to I. S. Gardner, May 19, 1923, Gardner Museum Archives. “You see you married into Boston,” he wrote, but she was still not one of them.
181Proper Bostonians: Cleveland Amory, The Proper Bostonians (New York: Dutton, 1955), 11.
182Sweet Son: Elizabeth Chanler Chapman to Chanler Chapman, July 25, 1923, Rokeby Collection. She goes on to write: “A bit suppressive & conventional perhaps, taken en bloc. But one of them at a time in a drawing-room qualifies the whole atmosphere.”
182“cold, cold, cold”: Elizabeth Anne McCauley et al., Gondola Days: Isabella Stewart Gardner and the Palazzo Barbaro Circle (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2004), 18.
182Lady’s Guide: Tharp, Mrs. Jack, 12.
183green moiré dress: Ibid., 23–24.
183not invited: Ibid., 29.
183“peculiar social institution”: “The Sewing Circles of Boston,” New York Times, November 10, 1888.
183family shipping business: Gardner Family Papers 1772–1915 and Gardner Family Papers II, 1655–1959. Account Books 1851–1857: January 25, 1853, pepper cargo; January 28, 1853, saltpeter cargo; June 14, 1854, shellac cargo; August [no date], 1854, tea cargo; March 25, 1856, indigo cargo; April 23, 1856, cloth cargo, Massachusetts Historical Society. Frank A. Gardner, comp., The Gardner Memorial: A Biographical and Genealogical Record of the Descendants of Thomas Gardner, Planter, Cape Ann, 1624, Salem (Naumkeag), 1626–1674, through His Son Lieut. George Gardner (Salem, MA: Newcomb & Gauss, 1933), 148–49, 190–91, Gardner Museum Archives.
184about $15,000: http://www.davemanuel.com/inflation-calculator.php
184“safe on board”: Jack Gardner to George Gardner, August 23, 1864, Gardner Family Papers, 1772–1915.
184flashes of her old self: Tharp, Mrs. Jack, 30–31.
185By November 1864: Ibid., 35.
185Jackie died: Ibid., 36–37. Carter, Gardner and Fenway Court, 27.
185Get away with Jack: Tharp, Mrs. Jack, 38–39.
185“le tyran de la mode”: Olian, The House of Worth, 3.
186“half merchant, half Venetian doge”: Ibid., 4.
186Worth took one look: Tharp, Mrs. Jack, 42.
186“the best customers he has”: Olian, The House of Worth, 7.
186“Pray, who undressed you!”: Tharp, Mrs. Jack, 43.
186“She is every day and evening in Society”: Catherine Peabody Gardner to George Gardner, January 22, 1872, Gardner Family Papers 1772–1915.
187interfere with his business: Ibid., September 17, [no year]. Despite “an amount of dinners Balls etc. . . . that would frighten you,” she wrote reassuringly, “John neglects no business duties.”
187“subordinate, comic, errand-boy” . . . “like royal spouses”: George Santayana, The Middle Span: Volume 2. Persons and Places (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1945), 123.
187prone to seasickness: Alan Chong and Noriko Murai, eds., Journeys East: Isabella Stewart Gardner and Asia (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2009), 133. Writing to Anna Lyman Gray, a friend in Boston, she describes an excruciating trip from San Francisco to Japan during which “I was wretched as usual and Jack happy as a King. Never was mortal so glad to find foot on dry l
and as I—and then to have that land Japan . . . I am wild with excitement.”
187“there has been no storm” . . . “fun is over”: Jack Gardner to George Gardner, June 17, 1883, Gardner Family Papers 1772–1915.
188“San Antonio Justice”: Chong and Murai, Journeys East, 21. http://www.gardnermuseum.org/microsites/travelalbums/album_index.html; http://www.gardnermuseum.org/microsites/travelalbums/index.html#/3/11/1/4.7/v_1_a_4_7020.
188“stept out of the ‘Arabian Nights’ ” . . . “what perfect postures”: Gardner’s Egypt Scrapbook, December 10, 1874, Gardner Museum Archives.
188“solemnity and mystery took possession”: Ibid., December 16, 1874.
189“into a perfect frenzy”: Ibid., December 18, 1874. She wrote, “I have never seen anything so terrible.”
189“sky parlour”: Ibid., December 18, 1874.
189“incalculable” advantage: George McClellan, “A Winter on the Nile,” Scribner’s Monthly, 13, no. 3 (January 1877): 370.
189silhouette of camels: Gardner’s Egypt Scrapbook, December 20, 1874.
189“always washing them” . . . “a very jolly set”: Ibid., December 18, 1874.
189“filled with sand”: Ibid., February 14, 1875.
189“I was obliged to take away”: Ibid., February 16–19, 1875.
189“cookboy”: Ibid., December 27, 1874.
190crocodile: Ibid., January 24, 1875. She describes a “loathsome creature” that “slumped himself slowly into the river.”
190“Coco” . . . “when she couldn’t be satisfied”: Ibid., January 30, 1875, and March 6, 1875.
190sheikh’s uncovered leg: Ibid., February 2, 1875.
190“Arab swells” . . . “battle axes and poles”: Ibid., January 5, 1875.
190“tyrannous”: Ibid., January 18, 1875.
190“conscription time”: McClellan, “Winter on the Nile,” 379.
191arrested and tortured: Gardner’s Egypt Scrapbook, January 18 and 21, 1875, Gardner Museum Archives.
191forms of punishment: Chong and Murai, Journeys East, 201, 219, 224.