Estelle
Page 25
“I’ve no interest in cotton.” Degas wrote to Rouart, “One does nothing here, it lies in the climate, nothing but cotton, one lives for cotton and from cotton.” December 5, 1872. In Guerin, Degas Letters.
Chapter 30
“This is the best painting I’ve done since I came to New Orleans.” On February 18,1873, Degas wrote to his friend James Tissot, “After having wasted time in the family trying to do portraits in the worst conditions of day that I have ever found or imagined, I have attached myself to a fairly vigorous picture.” He was referring to A Cotton Office in New Orleans. In Guerin, Degas Letters.
Chapter 32
“marriage . . . free him from the need to be gallant.” His words in a letter to Tissot were, “A good family: it is really a good thing to be married, to have good children, to be free of the need of being gallant. Ye gods, it is really time one thought about it.” November 19, 1872. In Guerin, Degas Letters.
Epilogue
1. Feigenbaum, Gail, and Jean Sutherland Boggs, Degas and New Orleans: A French Impressionist in America. “Edgar Degas, almost a son of Louisiana,” p. 16. New Orleans Museum of Art, 1999.
2. Feigenbaum, p. 17.
Afterward
3. Feigenbaum, p. 9.
4. Ibid., Jean Sutherland Boggs, Catalogue, p. 105 onward.
Paintings by Degas in New Orleans referred to in the story
Painting
Chapter(s) in story
Young Girl in a White Dress (Carrie Bell)
1872
Oil on canvas
10 ½ x 8 ⅝ inches
Private Collection, The Bahamas
10
Children on a Doorstep
1872
Oil on canvas
23 ⅝ x 29 ½ inches
Ordrupgaard, Copenhagen, Denmark
10, 12
Portrait of Mme René de Gas,
née Estelle Musson
1872-73
Oil on canvas
39 ⅜ x 54 inches
New Orleans Museum of Art: Museum
Purchase through Public Subscription
11, 14, 25, 29, 31, 35
The Song Rehearsal
1872-73
Oil on canvas
31 ⅞ x 25 ⅝ inches
Dumbarton Oaks Research Library
and Collection, Washington, D.C.
12
Woman Seated on a Balcony
(Mathilde Musson Bell)
1872
Pastel
24 ⅜ x 29 ⅞ inches
Ordrupgaard, Copenhagen, Denmark
20
La Pédicure (Jo Balfour)
1873
Essence on paper mounted on canvas
24 x 18 ⅛ inches
Musée d’Orsay, Paris
26
A Cotton Office in New Orleans
(Portraits in a Cotton Office)
1873
Oil on canvas
28 ¾ x 36 ¼ inches
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Pau
30, 33
Cotton Merchants in New Orleans
1873
Oil on canvas
23 ⅝ x 28 ¾ inches
Harvard University Art Museums (Fogg)
Cambridge, Massachusetts
30
Acknowledgments
This story would not exist if my husband, Vince, had not begun teaching classes on fiction writing several years ago. I had never written fiction before, and his coaching helped me and many others to write in a style that was for many of us a completely new experience. Vince’s support of my creative efforts has been invaluable, and I thank him for turning me into an author.
I owe a special vote of thanks to my stepmother, Neena Stewart. She read an early draft, encouraged me to publish, and kept asking not if, but when I would do so. But for her, I would have given up trying, and I persevered.
Professional editor Jessica de Bruyn read part of my manuscript when I submitted it to an Ink and Insights contest. As one of the judges, she gave me valuable initial feedback and then followed up with full critiques. I needed these, and have her to thank for pulling me out of many pitfalls. Later, Ellen Notbohm assisted with deep edits and made wise suggestions for improving the final draft.
Other friends deserve mention also. Several of these kindly read early drafts, put up with my obsessive ramblings about the book, and offered encouragement: Sue Adams, Tina Brown, Jo Critchfield, Audrey Van Cleve Dickson, Marie-Claire Dole, Maggie Fisher, Liz Jozniak Glickman, Laura Hamilton, Aleli Howell, Robyn Kruse, Carol Masters, Martha Burck Shackelford, Gail Sheridan, Susan Lavell Warm, Jean Wharton, and my brother Jonathan Stewart.
I relied heavily for my research on the New Orleans Museum of Art publication Degas and New Orleans: A French Impressionist in America by Gail Feigenbaum and Jean Sutherland Boggs which was published in 1999 to accompany the Museum’s exhibit of Degas’s work in May–August 1999. The same exhibit was presented in Ordrupgaard, Copenhagen, in September–November, also in 1999. The paintings mentioned in the novel were all included as part of these exhibitions.
Thanks are due also to my publicist, Caitlin Hamilton Summie, who managed to make a publicity process that I dreaded into a worthwhile adventure, and to Libby Jordan, for her help with social media.
My adult children, Jenny and James Keul, followed the passage of the book with interest and gave me hope along the way. Other special friends fall into this category, too many to name. I thank you all.
I’m grateful to everyone at She Writes Press: the community of writers, including Ashley Sweeney, and especially Brooke Warner for accepting the story and Lauren Wise for helping bring it to print. I hope many women writers will be encouraged to publish using the outstanding services offered by this distinctive publisher.
About the Author
Linda Henley, an English-born American, moved to the United States with her family when she was sixteen. She is a graduate of Newcomb College of Tulane University in New Orleans. She currently lives with her husband in Anacortes, Washington. This is her first novel.
Author photo © Mark Gardner
SELECTED TITLES FROM SHE WRITES PRESS
She Writes Press is an independent publishing company founded to serve women writers everywhere. Visit us at www.shewritespress.com.
The Black Velvet Coat by Jill G. Hall. $16.95, 978-1-63152-009-9. When the current owner of a black velvet coat—a San Francisco artist in search of inspiration—and the original owner, a 1960s heiress who fled her affluent life fifty years earlier, cross paths, their lives are forever changed . . . for the better.
Portrait of a Woman in White by Susan Winkler. $16.95, 978-1-938314-83-4. When the Nazis steal a Matisse portrait from the eccentric, art-loving Rosenswigs, the Parisian family is thrust into the tumult of war and separation, their fates intertwined with that of their beloved portrait.
Peregrine Island by Diane B. Saxton. $16.95, 978-1-63152-151-5. The Peregrine family’s lives are turned upside-down one summer when so-called “art experts” appear on the doorstep of their Connecticut island home to appraise a favorite heirloom painting—and incriminating papers are discovered behind the painting in question.
Hysterical: Anna Freud’s Story by Rebecca Coffey. $18.95, 978-1-938314-42-1. An irreverent, fictionalized exploration of the seemingly contradictory life of Anna Freud—told from her point of view.
The Vintner’s Daughter by Kristen Harnisch. $16.95, 978-163152-929-0. Set against the sweeping canvas of French and California vineyard life in the late 1890s, this is the compelling tale of one woman’s struggle to reclaim her family’s Loire Valley vineyard—and her life.
The Sweetness by Sande Boritz Berger. $16.95, 978-1-63152-907-8. A compelling and powerful story of two girls—cousins living on separate continents—whose strikingly different lives are forever changed when the Nazis invade Vilna, Lithuania.
ter>