I went on to France.
My objective point in France was the study of Millet and his work. I wanted to interpret him to working people in New Haven.
So to Greville on La Hague I went with a camera.
Greville consists of a church and a dozen houses. Gruchy is half a mile beyond, on the edge of the sea.
In Gruchy Millet was born; in Greville he first came into contact with incentive—I photographed both places and spent a night and a day with M. Polidor, the old inn-keeper who was the painter's friend.
Surely, never was so large a statue erected in so small a village. The peasant artist sits there on a bank of mosses, looking over at the old church that squats on the hillside. In Cherbourg I found more traces of his art and some stories of his life there that would be out of place here.
I found four portraits painted while he was paying court to his first wife. I found them in a little shoe shop in a by-street, in possession of a distant relative of his first wife.
From Cherbourg I went to Barbizon, where Millet spent the latter part of his life. I was very graciously received and entertained by his son François and his American wife.
To browse among the master's relics, to handle the old books of his small library, to hold, as one would a babe of tender years, his palette, were small things, judged by the values of the average life: to me it was one of the most inspiring hours of my career.