Seurat and Gauguin, had been French. Spotiswode Worthen had told me that all of the great painters of the last hundred years had been French, without exception (only before Fantin-Latour, of course). I had read an article in one of Spotiswode’s art magazines about an American woman with a French name, Miss Mary Cassatt, who was living in Paris, in her sixties, after having studied for years with the Impressionists, especially the one who could draw best, a man named Edgar Degas, now blind and in his seventies. Miss Cassatt was, like me, the daughter of a wealthy American banker. Would she be sympathetic to my story and situation if I could meet her and talk with her? Might she introduce me to Monsieur Degas?
I never enrolled at the Chicago Art Institute. I would never meet Mary Cassatt, let alone Edgar Degas, but I did put my trunk back on the train, after withdrawing all of the money my father had sent to the Chicago bank. I sent my father a telegram, which read: CHANGED MIND STOP GOING TO PARIS STOP YES GO AHEAD STOP YOU MAY HAVE CYRILLA STOP LOVE VIRIDIS .
The terrible guilt I should have felt for saying that was obliterated by the excitement of what I was about to do.
In New York I discovered that I would need a passport and would have to wait a few days for it, and I used the opportunity to visit the museums there, where I saw more and more of those Impressionists and the moderns. Some of the paintings had labels reading: acquired through the generosity of miss mary cassatt, and I had a constant fantasy of what the generosity of Miss Mary Cassatt was going to do for my life.
That fantasy sustained me during a horrible ocean crossing. Can you imagine the ocean, Latha? Can you picture water in every direction, with waves of it rising up fifty or sixty feet? The boat I was on, a steamship called the Lusitania, the same one that would be sunk by a submarine seven years later during the Great War, was a huge craft of over thirty thousand tons, but even with that great size it was tossed on the waves like a toy. The sea was so rough that the crew themselves became frightened and convinced that we would sink. All the passengers were sick or scared to death or both. I began to believe that death at sea would be my punishment for letting my father have Cyrilla.
But the voyage itself seemed punishment enough, and lasted nearly a week. When Nail escaped the electric chair that first time, I already knew the feeling of survival, of being given another chance. And the elation of survival stayed with me during some of the disappointments that came soon afterward: when I arrived in Paris eager to meet Miss Mary Cassatt, I discovered that the American lady had returned to Philadelphia for an extended visit. I attempted on my own to visit Edgar Degas but was told that he was not receiving visitors.
They call Paris the City of Light, but it struck me from the beginning as the City of Dirt: grimy streets filled with grimy people rushing madly nowhere. If Chicago had intimidated me, Paris left me terrorstruck. You cannot imagine it. From the moment of my arrival in Chicago, I had been uncomfortable walking alone in the city; the feeling had increased in New York, and now, in Paris, it was almost unbearable. Men and women stared at me, or I thought they did, and made remarks among themselves, or I thought they did, understanding a few of their words, having not forgotten my home-tutoring in French. When I heard a man exclaim to his companion, “ Tu as vu ces émeraudes? ” I knew that he was referring only to the color of my eyes, but I was embarrassed.
My first days in Paris I tried to stay off the streets by retreating into the great museums, the Louvre and the Luxembourg, but the splendor of their masterpieces, my first sight of such incredible paintings by Botticelli and Titian and Poussin, gave me the firm conviction that I could never paint anything worthy of the canvas on which it would be painted.
Strange and huge and
I never enrolled at the Chicago Art Institute. I would never meet Mary Cassatt, let alone Edgar Degas, but I did put my trunk back on the train, after withdrawing all of the money my father had sent to the Chicago bank. I sent my father a telegram, which read: CHANGED MIND STOP GOING TO PARIS STOP YES GO AHEAD STOP YOU MAY HAVE CYRILLA STOP LOVE VIRIDIS .
The terrible guilt I should have felt for saying that was obliterated by the excitement of what I was about to do.
In New York I discovered that I would need a passport and would have to wait a few days for it, and I used the opportunity to visit the museums there, where I saw more and more of those Impressionists and the moderns. Some of the paintings had labels reading: acquired through the generosity of miss mary cassatt, and I had a constant fantasy of what the generosity of Miss Mary Cassatt was going to do for my life.
That fantasy sustained me during a horrible ocean crossing. Can you imagine the ocean, Latha? Can you picture water in every direction, with waves of it rising up fifty or sixty feet? The boat I was on, a steamship called the Lusitania, the same one that would be sunk by a submarine seven years later during the Great War, was a huge craft of over thirty thousand tons, but even with that great size it was tossed on the waves like a toy. The sea was so rough that the crew themselves became frightened and convinced that we would sink. All the passengers were sick or scared to death or both. I began to believe that death at sea would be my punishment for letting my father have Cyrilla.
But the voyage itself seemed punishment enough, and lasted nearly a week. When Nail escaped the electric chair that first time, I already knew the feeling of survival, of being given another chance. And the elation of survival stayed with me during some of the disappointments that came soon afterward: when I arrived in Paris eager to meet Miss Mary Cassatt, I discovered that the American lady had returned to Philadelphia for an extended visit. I attempted on my own to visit Edgar Degas but was told that he was not receiving visitors.
They call Paris the City of Light, but it struck me from the beginning as the City of Dirt: grimy streets filled with grimy people rushing madly nowhere. If Chicago had intimidated me, Paris left me terrorstruck. You cannot imagine it. From the moment of my arrival in Chicago, I had been uncomfortable walking alone in the city; the feeling had increased in New York, and now, in Paris, it was almost unbearable. Men and women stared at me, or I thought they did, and made remarks among themselves, or I thought they did, understanding a few of their words, having not forgotten my home-tutoring in French. When I heard a man exclaim to his companion, “ Tu as vu ces émeraudes? ” I knew that he was referring only to the color of my eyes, but I was embarrassed.
My first days in Paris I tried to stay off the streets by retreating into the great museums, the Louvre and the Luxembourg, but the splendor of their masterpieces, my first sight of such incredible paintings by Botticelli and Titian and Poussin, gave me the firm conviction that I could never paint anything worthy of the canvas on which it would be painted.
Strange and huge and
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