From the collection of the late Quincy A. Shaw. Half-tone plate engraved by G. M. Lewis

PEASANT WOMAN AND CHURN

FROM THE DRAWING BY JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET

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LARGER IMAGE]

“When we visited the graveyard at Greville, where our ancestors were buried, and found their graves, which had no headstones and the wooden crosses of which had long ago gone to dust, we saw that they were covered thickly with weeds nearly as high as our heads. I said nothing, but pointed to them as if asking which member of the family each grave contained; and Father, also pointing, simply said, ‘Father, Mother, Grandmother,’ and so on through the family category. Waiting awhile, much affected, he repeated, as only he could, the words, ‘Oh, the high weeds where sleep the dead!’

“In a few days we went there again and found a man cutting the weeds. Father asked him why he was doing so. ‘To sell them,’ he replied. ‘Sell!’ exclaimed Father. ‘Do you say that you are selling the weeds from the graves?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Does the curé know of it?’ ‘Know of it? Of course he does. He consents to it and thinks it a good thing to do.’ Then, as if speaking to himself, Father said, ‘Ah! the heart has left this place. You are men no more. And the curé—!’

“It was in November, 1870, that Father made the sketch of the superb marine, which he painted in the spring of the next year and sent to Ruel.[1] He made also a great number of sketches and drawings of places near Greville and Vauville, as well as of the priory. Father loved every inch of the earth of his native hamlet. It is a wonderful land.

“We lived in M. Feuardent’s house in Cherbourg, Father doing his work in an ordinary room with no special light facilities. He desired very much to make some pictures of the country and sea around Cherbourg, but the authorities told him that he must not even carry a pencil or a note-book. It was in Cherbourg that he made the drawings of ‘The Milk-maid,’ from sketches taken in Greville.”

[1] Owned by the estate of the late Quincy A. Shaw, of Boston, Massachusetts.