I first saw Saint-Gaudens shortly after he began the Shaw Memorial. Returning a year later, I showed surprise that the work had not gone faster. The sculptor, in gray linen blouse and white cap, laid a long nervous hand caressingly upon the clay:
“This is a labor of love,” he said; “I only dare work on it in certain moods! I do this for you, and a few others.”
The first winter after our return to Boston from Europe my mother and I lived in a small apartment on Spruce Street. The experiment was never repeated: wherever my mother was, she immediately became the center of a large circle. Not only did children and grandchildren and relatives to the last degree of cousinship knock at her door and demand hospitality, but many travelers and strangers visiting Boston were brought to her. During the winter of 1880-1881 we took a furnished house, Number 129 Mt. Vernon Street. Here our Roman relations, Aunt Louisa Terry and her daughter Margaret, visited us. Marion Crawford had rooms in Charles Street close by, spending his waking hours at our house. This was a happy winter, though my mother was lame from a severe fall, and was perforce much at home.
I remember a dinner she allowed me to arrange for Crawford, who was anxious to meet the literary lights. The company included Mr. Longfellow, Doctor Holmes, and Mr. Tom Appleton. We lingered at table, listening to Marion’s vivid stories of Indian life. He was a born romancer; if he had lived in the East he would have become a professional story-teller and sat in the market place telling tales. Nothing he ever wrote compared with his brilliant talk; friends of Robert Louis Stevenson have told me the same thing of him.
Crawford had made quaint archaic dinner cards, with a verse for each guest. My mother’s card had an absurd drawing of an owl and some lines to Minerva. The evening went off well, but the next day my mother gave me this advice:
“Do not again invite Doctor Holmes and Mr. Appleton together. It is like asking two prima donnas to sing at the same entertainment!”
Though my aunt was overjoyed at having her boy with her again, she was very anxious about his future and disappointed that his work in India had not carried him a stage farther on the road to fortune.
“My brilliant boy will do nothing with all his gifts,” she said to me. “He is a rolling stone.”
“He will make a name for himself and a fortune for you!” I told her more than once. I never felt any doubt about his success; in those days he looked and moved like a conquering hero.
I have forgotten, if I ever knew, why Crawford gave up India for America.