"June 14th, Paris
"I am going to stay alone in Paris and on Sundays go and see Brush and Garnier and the Proctors and go to St. Moritz for a week or ten days; further than that I have no plans.... I see Shiff every other night and dine with him then; occasionally I see F——, whom I rather like. I'm working hard but slowly. I want a little rest, so in two days I go to London to see the exhibit there; besides, Sargent gives me a dinner on the 20th. Paris is really a wonderfully attractive city and the 'cut' atmosphere, to use a very unpleasant phrase, is clearly a great thing. There can never be more than a few big men that one respects, but there are so many people deeply interested in art, literature and music, so many that are working hard, that you feel a great deal of intelligence around you in the direction in which you are working, beside the unusual amount of general intelligence which surrounds one."
Toward the end of June Saint-Gaudens and his family went to England. In London, Sargent, always hospitable, gave a dinner to introduce Saint-Gaudens to many distinguished sculptors and painters. Burne-Jones, unfortunately, had died a few days before. Saint-Gaudens had always admired his work greatly, and treasured photographs of his pictures.
After two days at Broadway with Edwin Abbey, the family separated. Saint-Gaudens and his son Homer then returned to Paris for the summer, while Mrs. Saint-Gaudens went to take a cure at Vichy and St. Moritz. During that summer in Paris Saint-Gaudens saw as much as possible of George De Forest Brush and his family, who were then living near Fontainebleau. His intimacy with the Brushes dated back to his student days in Paris, and had been kept up in America. The two families had often been neighbors at Cornish, New Hampshire. Indeed, the Brushes had spent their first summer there encamped in an Indian "tepee," which was pitched on the edge of a field in front of the Saint-Gaudens' house. Their life always impressed every one as singularly beautiful and happy, and their presence so near Paris helped Saint-Gaudens to get through the long, dull weeks of the summer.
"Paris, July 10th or 11th
"Lately I have had a great time with X——, driving and lunching with him and sometimes with the ladies, going to Versailles and the museums. Next Sunday we go to Chantilly, another day to Dampierre where Rude's great statue of Louis (XIII, I think) is. We go to the Cluny, to the Louvre, and sit sipping in front of cafés, X—— telling me how much the woman question from one point of view troubles him and I doing the same from another, and the big world turns round, and we all suffer, and men fight, and women mourn. Courage and love is what we all need, isn't it?
"Yesterday I went with Homer to Fontainebleau to see Brush and Proctor who live near there at 'Marlotte Montigny.' The day was fine, and I enjoyed it greatly, particularly the walk with Brush and his two lovely eldest children. How remarkable Brush is! All the children are so beautiful and nice-mannered. He has commenced another picture of his wife, this time with all the children and himself, and it is already a stimulating thing, the composition is so fine and what there is of it that is drawn, is so splendidly drawn."
"Paris, July 14th
"It is the third or fourth really fine day that we have had since coming to France eight months ago. The whole city is alive with sunshine, a sky with white floating clouds, and every place brilliant with flags, and there is an unusual feeling of peace in this big studio as I sit alone in it and write to you.
"I have your letter with the enclosure from the Transcript. 'That's the way things is,' as Bryant said to me. I send you some more Hosannahs in my honour by this mail, and there is going to be more still in the 'Gazette des Beaux-Arts,' as I judge from the way Ary Renan talked to me the other night. He is son of the great Renan and is one of the editors of the 'Gazette des Beaux-Arts' and wished to meet me so much that Pallier, another critic, asked us to dine with him night before last. Pallier is the one who wrote the long article in the Liberté about me.
"You speak of Browning—I shall read the 'Ring and the Book,' but unless a man's style is clear I am too lazy and I have too little time to devote to digging gold out of the rocks, fine as it may be. On the other hand I got the Schopenhauer that Shiff spoke about with the intention of sending it to you, but it is so deadly in its pessimism, judging from the ten or eleven lines that I read, that I flung it away. It was so terribly true from his point of view, but what's the use of taking that point of view? We can't remedy matters by weeping and gnashing our teeth over the misery of things. 'That's the way things is' again, and although I have been told all my life it's best to put on a brave face and bear all cheerfully, it's only lately that it is really coming into my philosophy.
"It seems as if we are all in one open boat on the ocean, abandoned and drifting no one knows where, and while doing all we can to get somewhere, it is better to be cheerful than to be melancholy; the latter does not help the situation, and the former cheers up one's comrades.
"Michel, a friend of mine, had a beautiful nude marble bought for the Luxembourg, a pure noble chaste figure. There was a remarkable statuette by Gerôme, two or three other good things in sculpture and the same among the objets d'art, and one swell thing in painting, the Puvis de Chavannes. That appealed to me, but of course there were a lot of other very fine things, by Aman Jean, Henri Martin, Besnard and others. I send you some publications with the good things marked. I think if the Champs-Elysées were sifted there would be more good work found in it or as much as at the Champs de Mars. It is remarkable how much good work is done in Paris, but the first impression is bad, as the good is concealed in such a mountain of trash; but it's like gold in a mountain."
"Paris, July 24th
"Last night I dined with an old 'camarade d'atelier' at his home in the Cité Boileau at Passy and it was a great pleasure to be with him, one of the nicest kind of Frenchmen, a sculptor who is doing admirable work, a man of calm manners and large views, intensely interested in his work. His wife and three children are by the seaside, and on their return, if Homer does not go to America and I remain too, I'm looking forward to Homer's meeting his children. His boy, who is seventeen, is going to work in his atelier with him. It was delightful, as he took one through the rooms of his three children, to see the photographs of admirable works of art they had selected to hang on the walls. He has a house with a garden and we dined outside. (His name is) Lenoir and he is the son of a distinguished architect and grandson of a Lenoir whose bust is erected in the Cour des Beaux-Arts, a man of great distinction here on account of his love of art and his efforts to prevent the Revolutionists in 1795 from destroying the public monuments."
Early in August, while his wife was still away, Saint-Gaudens took his son Homer to Holland, where they had a delightful trip, extending to the quaint dead cities of the north. Ten days or so after their return to Paris they made another successful expedition together to join some friends at the sea-shore.
"3 rue de Bagneux, Paris, Aug. 26.
"It was intensely hot in Paris. I discovered that the Brushes were at Boulogne as well as the Proctors, so off we packed and we have had a great time, what with bathing and lolling all day on the cliffs, which I adore doing. The two Mears sisters followed us down there, and we, the Brushes, Proctors, Mears, babies, and all started off in the mornings, and, with the luncheon mixed up with the babies in the carriage, passed most delightful days, either on the cliffs or by the shore."
Saint-Gaudens, however, could never be happy long away from his work, and he was soon writing from his studio again.
"Paris, Sept. 2d
"A Russian professor at one of the Universities here has sent me his translation of Tolstoi's last work 'What is Art?' and has asked me (with highly eulogistic terms about what I have done, in an inscription on the fly leaf) to give him my opinion, which he wishes to publish with those of other men of note. So I am in for reading it. You read it too, please, and tell me what you think of it, then I'll sign it and send it as my opinion! For I have no opinion, or so many that trying to put them into shape would result in driving me into the mad-house sooner than I am naturally destined to be there. Yes, 5000 different points of view that are possible. After all, we are like lots of microscopical microbes on this infinitesimal ball in space, and all these discussions seem humourous at times. I suppose that every earnest effort toward great sincerity or honesty or beauty in one's production is a drop added to the ocean of evolution, to the Something higher that I suppose we are rising slowly (d——d slowly) to, and all the other discussions upon the subject seem simply one way of helping the seriousness of it all.
"Shiff's letter that I enclose is in reply to one asking whether the professor's request was all right and whether I should bother about it. In answer he wrote that the Russian was a very serious man who had done admirable work. I once told Shiff that at times I thought that 'beauty must mean at least some goodness'—that explains part of his letter to me."