Later I strove to put some of my impressions of Louisiana in a story called “Atalanta in the South.”
I remember this period as a time of strain and stress. The year before our New Orleans experience we lost the beloved Uncle Sam Ward; the year after, my dear sister, Julia Anagnos, was taken from us. These breaks in the family circle saddened us both immeasurably. My mother buckled more grimly than ever to her ceaseless round of work, “grinding with all her mills”, while to me life that had stretched so immeasurably long began to shrink incomprehensibly. Then all was suddenly changed by the most important event of my existence.
On the seventh of February, 1887, John Elliott and I were married at my mother’s house, by our minister, James Freeman Clarke, who christened me. I can claim no credit for having been born the daughter of my famous parents, but a good deal for my choice of a husband.
JOHN ELLIOTT AT THE AGE OF TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER XV
Chicago and Boston in the Nineties
Shortly after our marriage my husband’s work took us to Chicago, where he was already known as a decorative painter, through his “History of the Vintage”, a frieze and ceiling executed for Mrs. Potter Palmer’s fine house on the Lake Shore Drive. Letters to my family give my early impressions of the place.
[To my Mother.]
Chicago, January, 1888.