Here she entertained noted people of the day, who came to visit her. Usually, after a hard day's work, she would mount her horse and gallop over the Campagna, returning refreshed at night and ready to dine with her friends. Her animation and wit in discussion, her musical laughter, her gaiety and lightness of spirits, astonished and charmed all who met her.
Like most thinking women of the time, Harriet Hosmer abhorred slavery, and did her part in the Abolition movement by making an inspiring statue called The African Sibyl—the figure of a negro girl prophesying the freedom of her race. Of this work, Tennyson said, "It is the most poetic rendering in art of a great historical truth I have ever seen."
One of her notable orders came from the beautiful Queen of Naples, whose portrait she executed in marble. The Queen became a close friend of Miss Hosmer, and her brother, King Ludwig II of Bavaria, frequently visited the studio.
Miss Hosmer's last years were spent in England and America, with only occasional visits to Rome. Death came to her in 1908, at the age of seventy-eight, but to the end she remained an entertaining talker, recalling with joy the many episodes of her busy, happy life and the great people she had known.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
(1832-1888)
"God bless all good women! To their soft hands and pitying hearts we must all come at last."