The Paris Letters of Thomas Eakins

By Thomas Eakins

The young Thomas Eakins's most revealing letters—published here for the first time

The most revealing and interesting writings of American artist Thomas Eakins are the letters he sent to family and friends while he was a student in Paris between 1866 and 1870. This book presents all these letters in their entirety for the first time; in fact, this is the first edition of Eakins's correspondence from the period. Edited and annotated by Eakins authority William Innes Homer, this book provides a treasure trove of new information, revealing previously hidden facets of Eakins's personality, providing a much richer picture of his artistic development, and casting fresh light on his debated psychosexual makeup. The book is illustrated with the small, gemlike drawings Eakins included in his correspondence, as well as photographs and paintings.

In these letters, Eakins speaks openly and frankly about human relationships, male companionship, marriage, and women. In vivid, charming, and sometimes comic detail, he describes his impressions of Paris--from the training he received in the studio of Jean-Léon Gérôme to the museums, concerts, and popular entertainments that captured his imagination. And he discusses with great insight contemporary aesthetic and scientific theories, as well as such unexpected subjects as language structure, musical composition, and ice-skating technique. Also published here for the first time are the letters and notebook Eakins wrote in Spain following his Paris sojourn.

This long-overdue volume provides an indispensable portrait of a great American artist as a young man.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Release date: Mar 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781400831791

Book preview

Introduction

Thomas Eakins: The Artist and His Letters

I HAVE ALWAYS CONSIDERED THOMAS EAKINS (1844–1916) one of our greatest American artists. He skillfully captured the essence of the human image, placed it within a convincing space, and made it seem tangible in its reality. His best portraits are extraordinary not only because he mastered the conceptual and technical skills needed to make inert paint and canvas come alive but also because he discovered the sitter’s most worthy personal traits, and recorded them vividly and in persuasive detail.

In his genre paintings, Eakins concentrated on life in the United States rather than rehashing worn-out European myths and allegories. His hunting, sailing, and rowing scenes reflect the pleasure he took in these commonplace sports while elevating them to a higher, more universal plane. The pictorial language he used was not particularly original, yet it differed from what he had been taught at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts during his student years in Paris. It was also allied to, but separate from, the American genre tradition of George Caleb Bingham, Winslow Homer, Eastman Johnson, and William Sidney Mount. His work often resembles theirs in subject, but more than any of them he derived his visual information directly and faithfully from nature.

For Eakins the nude human figure became a symbol of freedom, intellectual and sexual liberty, and opposition to narrow-minded prudery. His experiences as an art student in Paris reinforced this view. The French, especially within the high-spirited art community, were far less puritanical than the Americans back home. Eakins saw the nude not as a transcendent image, nor as an allegorical or traditional one: it was a marvel of nature, the superb end product of centuries of evolution. To see and study the body in this way, Eakins had to invoke all the authority of science, drawing endless analogies between medical and artistic practice.

Eakins pursued his goals in art and life with unswerving determination. Not only did he work diligently to become an accomplished painter himself; as a teacher and administrator at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, he forcefully imposed his credo on his students. For some of them this was the right path, but for others, especially women, his teaching seemed unduly confined to the workings of the nude human body and little else.

Caring far less about his public reputation than about his freedom to paint and teach as he pleased, Eakins tenaciously held to his principles, no matter what the cost. His candor in regard to the nude led to his expulsion in 1886 from his position at the Pennsylvania Academy. This prevented him from having a beneficial influence in art education, tarnished his personal reputation, and exiled him from the social and art-political circles in Philadelphia where he had exerted considerable leadership. His uninhibited, often vulgar speech was considered boorish, and his stubborn, self-righteous behavior caused him to become an outcast. It is as though he thoroughly enjoyed offending the Philadelphia commercial aristocracy and the philistines who appreciated neither his ideas nor his art.

His masterful paintings and his creative process in producing them have become the subject of informative books and catalogs by art historians, biographers, and critics. Noteworthy are the writings of Lloyd Goodrich, Margaret McHenry, Elizabeth Johns, Sylvan Schendler, Kathleen Foster, Cheryl Leibold, Gordon Hendricks, Henry Adams, Sidney D. Kirkpatrick, and William McFeely. Through these volumes, and the present author’s Thomas Eakins, His Life and Art, the artist’s contributions became well-known to a wide audience. Indeed, it would seem that by now every facet of Eakins had been appropriately covered. But there is still a large body of Eakins material that has not been fully mined. I am referring to his personal correspondence, especially the voluminous letters to his family and friends written while he was an art student in Paris. I believe these student letters will prove to be an endless source of fascination to scholars and laypersons alike.

Abroad for nearly four years, 1866–70, Eakins wrote long, detailed letters. These provide full accounts of his daily life and artistic development. Perhaps his father, Benjamin Eakins, had asked this of him, just as he had required his son to write home once a week; or possibly the young Eakins found his new experiences so compelling that he felt a need to capture everything in words. Whatever the reason, his letters from Paris and Spain are wonderfully informative; they are a treasure trove of information, revealing much about his training, growth as an artist, and opinions of France and the French. He continued this kind of writing while living in Spain in 1869–70, and there also recorded trenchant observations in a pocket notebook that serves as a rare summary of his opinions on art and artists.

Eakins’s letters are filled with narrative detail. His descriptions often go on for page after page, frequently without much focus or emphasis. These impressions are particularly fresh, bordering on wonderment, because they come from an American art student who was experiencing the pleasures of Paris for the first time. The city was teeming with activity; Napoleon III was emperor and brought the trappings of regal splendor to the office. The French nation was at the height of its power, and many of its citizens enjoyed unparalleled prosperity. Paris of the Second Empire presented Eakins with an astonishing panoply of cultural experiences.

Eakins’s letters offer much besides biographical information and insight into the formation of his art. They answer fundamental questions about his psychological drives that have puzzled and challenged scholars in recent years. For some, like Michael Fried, David Lubin, and Henry Adams, Eakins seems to have been motivated by dark forces, tumultuous urges that he himself was unable to acknowledge. Others, like Foster and, most recently, Kirkpatrick, have taken a more objective position and sidestepped the riddles of Eakins’s psyche. Read carefully, I think Eakins’s letters, particularly those in the Charles Bregler collection in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, will help to settle many of the debates that have circulated around the artist’s inner life and thus serve a useful purpose by telling us who Eakins was.

His father and Caroline, his mother, were the primary recipients of his correspondence. While Eakins was growing up they provided a normal, respectable, middle-class environment for him in Philadelphia, and he suffered no particular boyhood traumas or scars.

He seems to have loved and gotten along with his mother, a Quaker from southern New Jersey, but we have few details about their relationship. His father was a respected penman and writing master, steady and quietly successful in his work. Benjamin loved hunting, fishing, and outdoor sports, and through his father Eakins was indoctrinated into these activities, which he apparently enjoyed as much as Benjamin did. There seems to have been an undercurrent of Quaker rectitude and morality in the Eakins clan. Achievement and hard work were valued by both the parents and children, of which there were three besides Thomas, all girls: Fanny, Maggie, and Caddy. He wrote to them regularly, especially Fanny.

A close relationship existed between Eakins and Fanny, who seemed to be his intellectual equal—and that is saying a great deal. His letters to her were filled with such things as linguistic analysis, the art and science of music, and the fine points of Dante’s poetry. Eakins wrote that Fanny was superior to any girl I know (April 1, 1869). From all we can gather, she was, like her brother, both intelligent and artistic. She did not take up painting but rather found her niche in playing the piano, an instrument she took seriously, not as a dilettante.

Eakins enjoyed his companionship with all of his sisters, but Maggie was a particular favorite because she shared so many of his interests. Like her brother, she engaged in sports, and apparently was quite good at sailing and ice skating. Goodrich points out that temperamentally she was like [Eakins] in independence, hardiness, and mental vigor.¹

Another object of Eakins’s affection was Emily Sartain, daughter of the noted engraver John Sartain, a family friend. She was three years older than Thomas, and like him, was an artist, read Dante in the original with him, and could correspond with him in Italian. For reasons that are unclear, their romantic relationship cooled while Eakins was a student in Paris, though they did remain friends in later years.

Eakins frequently corresponded with Emily’s brother, William, who also studied art in Paris. They were close friends and lived together during their student days. Another major correspondent was William Crowell, a classmate of Thomas’s at Central High School, and a friend and future husband of Eakins’s sister Fanny.

There were others—family and friends—who received letters from Eakins, but they were fewer in number than those just enumerated. Wherever possible, these lesser figures will be identified in an introductory note or footnote to the letter in question.

In regard to the publication of his letters, Eakins has been shortchanged when compared to other American artists. For example, we have editions of letters by George Inness, J. Alden Weir, and John Marin, as well as the correspondence between John Sloan and Robert Henri. Eakins certainly ranks with these artists, but an edition of his letters has not yet appeared. Fortunately, the publication of excerpts from Eakins’s letters as integral parts of the books by Goodrich, McHenry, Hendricks, and Kirkpatrick has in part addressed the situation—but not enough. This volume will hopefully fill the gap.

A major step toward this publication was Foster and Leibold’s Writing about Eakins, issued in 1989. Their volume is concerned with the Eakins manuscript material in the Charles Bregler collection, acquired by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1985, as noted above. This remarkable collection gathered by one of Eakins’s former students includes not only paintings, drawings, and photographs but also numerous letters and manuscripts. Some of the written material was published by Foster and Leibold in 1989; some was not. (A limited microform edition of letters and related manuscripts, now out of print, was issued in connection with their book.)

Although the Bregler collection is important, it does not tell the full story. There are other repositories of letters that round out the picture, among them the regular (non-Bregler) collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Archives of American Art, and the Dietrich Collection. Other institutions, dealers, and collectors hold significant numbers of letters, too.

One of the most interesting discoveries in recent years has been the lost halves of a group of Eakins letters in the Archives of American Art. When the original letters were divided between two different Crowell family members, some of them were physically separated about halfway through each letter. The remaining portions came to light and fortunately were photocopied before they were lost.

My goal has been to publish all of Eakins’s letters and collateral writings, major and minor, from the years 1866 through 1870. This involved a decision to print not only the long letters but also the brief ones. At first glance, the latter type of material might seem irrelevant and not worth including. Nevertheless, I believe even the slightest written expression may tell us something intriguing or unexpected about its author.

A choice had to be made as to whether to print Eakins’s occasional misspellings and omissions of words. I decided to leave the idiosyncrasies just as they were, without changes, because they, too, reveal something about the writer.

Where information about the recipient of an Eakins letter is needed, I have provided it in an introductory sentence or brief paragraph or two. Whenever a personality, place, or event cited in the letters is not generally known, I have offered more information in brackets and/or a footnote keyed to the subject matter of the letter. Birth and death dates are provided where relevant.

I have been involved in research, writing, and lecturing on Eakins and his work for more than forty years. My first public remarks on the artist date from the early 1960s and focused on his contribution to the scientific method, particularly the photography of motion. Eakins was the subject of journal articles and scholarly papers that I presented over the years, and I taught graduate seminars on Eakins on a regular basis at the University of Delaware. My 1976 seminar contributed materially to the exhibition of the Thomas Eakins Collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC. My graduate students and I became deeply involved in this project, and a considerable portion of the research for the catalog was done by the Delaware group working under the joint direction of myself and Phyllis Rosenzweig of the Hirshhorn Museum. During the fall semester of 1979, I repeated my Eakins seminar. This time, the research that my students and I did led to a 1980 exhibition, with a catalog titled Eakins at Avondale and Thomas Eakins: A Personal Collection, for the Brandywine River Museum.

The concept for a book of Eakins’s early correspondence developed as I was conducting research for the Brandywine River Museum exhibition. Studying Eakins material in this connection convinced me that such a publication was long overdue. Thus, in 1979 I started to assemble photocopies and transcriptions of the artist’s letters and other writings, and began research on many of the personalities mentioned therein.

The partial fruits of this labor came to light in my essay Eakins as a Writer, published in the exhibition catalog Thomas Eakins issued in 2001 by the Philadelphia Museum of Art for its exhibition of that same name.

During the ensuing years I have worked diligently to complete this project. Originally my plan was to include all of Eakins’s letters, but as I labored it became clear that this would need to be a two-volume effort. I chose for the present edition all of Eakins’s student letters. These are the most numerous, interesting, and revealing documents from his hand. A smaller future edition will cover letters from 1870, the year of his return to Philadelphia, to the last letter penned by him in 1915, the year before his death. It will also include the few letters dictated by him to his wife, Susan, during his terminal illness.

It is my hope that scholars and lay readers alike will share my enthusiasm for these insightful and illuminating writings. It has been my pleasure to assemble this edition for publication, and I look forward to producing the companion volume in the coming years.

1. Lloyd Goodrich, Thomas Eakins, His Life and Work (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1933), 38.

THIS LETTER WAS ADDRESSED in the main to Eakins’s friend and classmate William (Billy) Sartain, and deals with the fine points of language and word origins. Ranging from English to Latin, Italian, French, and German (which, following a convention of the day, he called Dutch), Eakins demonstrated a characteristically analytic approach, showing (or showing off) his wide knowledge of the subject. At the end of the letter he added a note on German linguistics for Billy’s sister Emily.

William was a son of the venerable John Sartain, a noted Philadelphia engraver and friend of Benjamin Eakins. William was close to Thomas, both boys having attended Zane Street elementary school and Central High School together. Like Eakins, William studied to become an artist, first in Philadelphia, and then in Paris. Although William gained some popular success, he is forgotten today.

Emily, the daughter of John Sartain, was a Philadelphia portrait painter and engraver who had studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under the aging Christian Schussele in 1864–70. For a time she and Eakins were romantically linked, but by 1868, the relationship had cooled. In later years she served as the principal of the Philadelphia School of Design for Women.

June 12th. 66.

Dear Billy,

Naïf, of which when I last saw you, I did not know the root, comes, losing a t, from the Latin Nativus (Noël & Chapsal)¹ and therefore coincides exactly with our Natural and Ingenuous.

The principal idea of natural qualities as applied to persons, is that of those passively received, as opposed [to] those acquired by their own doing, and here we can build many synonyms.

Artless. This word of your suggestion is very strong, because of the frequent contrast of nature and art.

Unaffected. Ad, to. Facio, (feat, fact, factory[,] etc.) to make. Not made, brought, put on-to.

Unassuming. Ad, to. Sumo (sumptuous, etc,) to take.

Open. The Dutch [sic, read German] of the verb to open is to auf-machen, to make up. I conceive our open to be formed in a similar way from the root of our to pain. The word is then discovered, that is nothing is concealed, nothing has been pulled over, or affected.

Sincere. Sinc without Cera, wax. (Schmitz & Zumpt.[)]² One of the meanings of Cera is a paint for women. The second definition of naïf in Noël & Chapsal is sans fard, and the first definition of Fard by the same is Composition cosmétique qui imite les couleurs naturelles de la peau[] [a cosmetic compound that imitates the natural color of the skin]. I think cera is contracted from to smear as our marrow is from the same word. In contracting a word, it often happens that one language will lose one letter and another another [sic]. Example. Lat. Monstrare. Fr. Montrer. Ital. Mostrare.

Unpretending. Tendo, to stretch, Prae. Not to hold or stretch before.

Undisguised. Guise has probably the radical sense of drawing on, covering, holding or containing (See Webster on Wise.) Noël & Chapsal bring it from the same source.

Candid. (Candidus, white.) From the root to cant, whose purest, most abstract signification is in the phrase to cant a stone. From this we have to tilt as in the phrase to cant a barrel over on its side. Hence cant, to whine as a beggar, as the Dutch sprechen is to break (to cant) out (A. Cyclopedia) Latin, Canto to sing, English, chant, canto. Latin, Canto, to sing, English, can, to be able, press forward.

From this comes also the sense to dart—rays, to shine, to be clear. Hence Candidus white. Hence, candidate.

Simple. Sine, without, ply. P—ly, To lay upon, or over or to (Webster.) whence our apply, comply, reply, complex, implicate, etc. and plait, but this last word when applied to shirt bosoms I have always heard called pleet, and this is not in my dictionary or I know not how to spell it.

Unstudied. Study. To set the mind to. Steed & Stud.

Frank. Prank, franchir, friend, frango[,] etc.

Unpremeditated. Nearly the same as Unstudied.

There are I suppose many more.

I have made mention of the contrast of nature and art, and of how the last synonyms depended on a passiveness of being born (for that is Nature.) Yet Nature and Art are but the same words. Nature is from L. Natus, born, and this from Gnatus, and this from Gigno or Geno, to generate, bear, create; and Nature is what is created or shaped; that is the Creation. Tell Emily to look in her Dutch dictionary[.] Now Art (so thinks Webster) is but a contraction of the word to create. (See Art, Create, Cry, Can[,] etc.)

It’s time to go swimming. I saw the lightning bugs last night.

Dear Emily, You called my attention to the childish word liefer, Deutsch, lieber. Did it ever strike you that even such a verb as to love implies and contains motion as its principle [sic] element, and that one always loves to and not away from a person. I have an affection for him, (Translation, to make forwards to). I have an inclination for him. I yearn towards him (Ich habe ihn gern.) How close then comes love to laŭfen. ˘ Laŭfen ˘ brings us to the English life, live, leave. Another class of verbs, having the same radical meaning that is of going towards, are those of intention. I have the intention says I tend towards. I propose says, I put forward. I will (ich will) (wollen) is the Latin volo to stretch forward (Deŭtsch ˘ Welle, a wave) and this brings us to Valeo, to be strong, from a going forward. A man therefore while he lives goes after the fashion of a clock, er läŭft, ˘he lives. How are you? How goes it? Valeo. I am well.

T. C.E.

1. This is undoubtedly a reference to François-Joseph-Michel Nöel and Charles Pierre Chapsal, Nouvelle grammaire Français (1823), translated into English in 1869.

2. A reference to one of several publications by the nineteenth-century German linguists.

THIS LETTER WAS UNDATED, but its subject and style reflected Eakins’s thinking around the time he left for Paris in September 1866. As in his letter of June 12, 1866, to William, he wrestled with the fine points of literature, in this case analyzing passages from Virgil’s Aeneid and Dante’s Inferno. The majority of Eakins’s text was written in Italian, with quotations in that language and in Latin. In other letters, Eakins alluded to William’s, Emily’s, and his group study of Dante—an exercise that must have been carried out at a high level of linguistic sophistication.

[undated, ca. September 1866]

[To Emily Sartain]

Non era ancor di là Nesso arrivato

Quando [noi] ci mettemmo per un bosco,

Che da neun [nessun] sentiero era segnato.

Non fronda [frondi] verde, ma di color fosco;

Non rami schietti, ma nodosi e involti,

Non pomi v’eran, ma stecchi con tosco.

Non han sì aspri sterpi, né sì folti

Quelle fiere selvagge, che ’n [in] odio hanno

Tra Cecina e Corneto i luoghi colti.

Quivi le brutte Arpie lor nido [sic, read nidi] fanno,

Che cacciar delle Strofade i Troiani

Con tristo annunzio di futuro danno.

(Dante, Inferno, canto 13, 1.1–12)¹

Versione del Sig. Cary.

______. Less sharp than these

Less intricate the brakes, wherein abide

Those animals that hate the cultured fields

Betwixt Corneto and Cecina’s stream.

Ho questa sentenza, la quale, domenica sera passata, o per la tardezza dell’ora, che, si non porti sonnolenza, almeno causa spesse volte alquanto di stupidità, o per una attenzione da una quasi lunga lezione troppo divenuta minore, o per uno svenimento delle mie idee, o forse piuttosto per un smarrimento di queste, altrove a lor diletto state andate, o per altra cagione alcuna, non fu potuta tradurre, di nuovo esaminata; e spiegato ho, esaminandola, ed ove e come a me mancò allora il pigliarne il senno, il quale io sto per dimostrarti in poche parole; e per venir ai punti, accui:

È ben possibile che fiere abbiano sterpi, ma certo per soggiorno o abitazione e non altramente; perciòche sterpo vale a dire (non lo tradurrò) rejeton qui frousse du chicot ou des racines d’un arbre sec; chicot significando, venendo quella parola del spagnuolo chico piccolo, (1.) reste d’un arbre. qui sort de terre, (2.) branche morte ou en très mauvais état. (3.) reste d’une dent cassée (4.) maladie des chevaux.

Però noi possiamo apertamente vedere la significazione della sentenza, ed eccola:

Quelle fiere selvagge che hanno in odio (perciòche sono elleno selvagge) i luoghi colti tra Cecina (fiume poco lungo da Livorno) e Corneto (una città) non han (avverti per abitazione) sì aspri sterpi nè sì folti, che hanno quel bosco il quale il Dante ha testè descritto.

[]S’elli [egli] avesse potuto creder prima,[]

Rispose il Savio mio, anima lesa

Ciò c’ha [ch’ha] veduto pur con la mia rima

[sic, original not italicized]

Non avrebbe [sic, read averebbe] in te la man distesa.

(Dante, Inferno, canto 13, l.46–49)

Questa del Savio rima trovasi quasi nel comminciamento del terzo libro del Eneid. L’istorietta è d’un uomo che ebbe nome Polidoro, e conciosiacosachè [sic] ella ti debba forse alquanto interresante essere (perciòche se non dimentico, tu l’hai già poco fa letta) io intendo in piccola parte di ridirla.

[horrendeum et] dictu video mirabile monstrum. [Latin] vedo un mostro meravigliosa cosa essere detta [Italian]

Nam, quie prima solo ruptis radicibus arbor [Latin]

Or (c’è) un albero il quale siccome prima è, essendo state rotte le sue radici, dal suolo [Italian]

Vellitur, huic atro liquuntur sanguine guttae svelto [Latin], e gotte di sangue atro da cui sono stillate [Italian]. Et terram tabo maculant. Mihi frigidus horror e maculano colla lor tabe la terra [Latin]. Un orrore frigido [Italian]. Membra quatit, gelidusque coit formidine sanguis [Latin] mi per-cuote le membra, ed il mio sangue gelato da formidine coagola [Italian].²

(Virgil, Aeneid, bk. 3, l.26–30)

Andai jersera a casa Signor Waugh.³ Non sta egli molto meglio, se ho ben inteso qual che mi è stato detto. È fiebole [sic], e non è ancor la sua malattia arrestata.

Thos. C. Eakins

Adesso, io son per partirmi, Bella, cara Emilia,

Addio.

[Translation from Italian and French.]

I have this passage that could not be translated when I looked at it again, last Sunday evening, either because of the lateness of the hour, which, if it doesn’t make me sleepy, at least often makes me a little stupid, or because my attention flags after a long lesson, or because my thoughts have been lost, or perhaps rather because they have wandered, having gone to their loved one, or for some other reason. And in considering the passage, I explained where and how I failed to catch the sense of it, as I am about to show you in a few words. And to come to the point, I may say:

It is quite possible that wild animals may have thickets but certainly for a place to visit or for a home, and not otherwise; since sterpi [thickets, or decaying shoots] (I won’t translate it) means a sprout that grows from the stump or roots of a dessicated tree; stump, a word coming from the Spanish Chico-little, signifying (1.) remainder of a tree appearing above ground, (2.) a branch that is dead or in very bad condition, (3.) remnant of a broken tooth, (4.) a disease of horses.

So we can clearly see the significance of the passage, which is:

Those wild animals that hate (since they are wild) the cultivated places between Cecina (a river a little distance from Livorno) and Corneto (a city) do not have (note—for habitation) thickets so sharp or so thick as have that forest that Dante just described.

The poem of Savio is to be found almost at the beginning of the third book of the Aeneid. The little story is of a man who was named Polidorus, and as it [the poem] may perhaps be of some interest to you (since, if I remember rightly, you read it a little while ago). I intend to retell it in brief.

I see an awful portent, wondrous to tell. For from the first tree that is torn from the ground with broken roots, drops of black blood trickle and stain the earth with gore. A cold shudder shakes my limbs, and my chilled blood freezes with terror.

Last night I went to Mr. Waugh’s house. He is not much better, if I understood rightly what was told me. He is weak and his illness has not yet been arrested.

Thos. C. Eakins

Now I am about to leave, lovely, dear Emily. Farewell.

1. Translation by Henry Francis Cary (1772–1844), a translator of Dante’s Divine Comedy.

2. Translation from H. Rushton Fairclough, Virgil, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973).

3. Samuel Bell Waugh (1814–85) was a Philadelphia painter specializing in portraits.

IN THIS LETTER, Eakins dealt with the planned meeting in New York with his friends William (here called Willie) and Emily. The occasion was his departure for Paris, to become a student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the official government art school.

Philada.[,] Mon.[,] Sep. 17/66

My dear Emily,

I received your letter of Friday on Saturday, and delayed answering that I might consult with Willie. I leave here in the midnight train of Wednesday or Thursday and sail from New York in the Pereire on Saturday. Willie expects to spend the last of the week with you in New York where I can see you Friday evening or Saturday morning. He suggests a picture gallery as the place of our meeting and parting.

Tom

EAKINS WROTE EMILY in Italian four days before sailing for France. His tone was stilted and sentimental, almost a parodic or theatrical style of writing. Except for a few grammatical errors, his knowledge of the Italian language was commendable.

Filadelfia, i 18 di Set. 1866.

Mia cara Emilia,

Da Willie il tuo secondo viglietto [sic] ed italiano ricevuto ho e con piacere di molta pena miscolato letto; e addiviene il piacer d’un sentimento che m’assicura che andato via non sarò dimenticato e che una cara amica della mia partenza si dorrà. Ma qui nel animo mio surge grande tristizia, tristizia avendo Emilia; e credo che non passerà giammai. Nondimeno dacchè io abbia sovente udito dire un cotal proverbio, maggiore è la ventura stata divisa e diviene per compassione il dolore minore, e conciosiacosa chè mi sia gran mestier di consolazione, ti prego, acciochè non m’uccida il mancar di questa, di compiangere del mio dolore. Io mi parto non che da un amico, ma da tutti. Mio buon padre e la dolce mamma mia lascio e vo in una contrada straniere, certo non Inghilterra, ma ancora straniere assai, non essendovi o parente, o amico, o dei miei amici, amico; e vo solo.

Mio padre m’aspetta: non posso finire. Vedrotti a New York. Scrivi a Willie od a me. Ringrazia da mia parte le tue ostesse. Non avrò il tempo di farlo io.

Tom.

[Translation from Italian.]

Philadelphia, 18 Sept. 1866

My dear Emily,

From Willie, I received your second letter in Italian, and I read it with pleasure mixed with a great deal of pain. The pleasure derives from a sense of assurance that although I am gone, I shall not be forgotten, and that a dear friend grieves at my departure. But here in my soul, great sadness arises, because Emily is sad; and I think it shall never go away. Nevertheless, since I have often heard the proverb that says happiness becomes greater when it is shared, and pain becomes lessened by compassion, and because I have a great need for consolation, I pray you, so that I may not die from lack of it, to take pity on my suffering. I am leaving not just one friend, but everyone. I am leaving my good father and my sweet momma and go to some strange country, certainly not England, but much stranger still, there not being here a relative or a friend or a friend of my friends; and I go alone.

My father is waiting for me: I cannot finish. I shall see you in New York. Write to Willie or me. Thank your hostesses for me. I shall not have time to do it.

Tom.

EAKINS SAILED TO FRANCE on the Péreire on September 22. The ocean voyage would take him to the French port of Brest, and from there he was to travel to Paris by rail. At sea he wrote his mother one of the longest letters he ever penned—a letter that revealed values and convictions that he appears to have held throughout his life. He wrote not only about the food, the living quarters, and the sea but also about individuals he met, as well as class, nationality, and religion. His views about humanity were strongly held and not without prejudice. In essence, he showed himself to be morally upright (if not self-righteous), opinionated, and antiaristocratic. And he was above all a keen observer of human character flaws, and was quick to point them out.

Atlantic Ocean, 2 or 3 hundred miles from France, Oct. 1, 1866

Dearest Mother,¹

Such is a mothers love, that the letter most acceptable to her will be as full of I’s as one of Johnson’s speeches, and therefore with no further excuse or parley, I will say: I have been very sea-sick. The agony of parting with all my family and all my friends had considerably interfered with my digestion and in spite of my eating but little fat or butter, and drinking but little milk for a week beforehand I was decidedly bilious when I started, and fearful of [the] consequences. The brightness and coolness of the Saturday of departure diminished but did not entirely dissipate this fear, and alas for me it had a good foundation. We started out a little before 2 o’clock, and soon passed the English steamer which my father remembered seeing get off about a quarter of an hour before us, and soon after some others[,] German and English six in all, for the Pereire is very fast.

The sun was pretty warm and we did not dine till half-past four. I got as far as the end of the soup, and prudently retired. I then lost all account of time and everything else. I will not try to say how sick I was. I think it must be worse than cholera at least as far as sensation is concerned. It is while asleep a continual nightmare, and even when awake the ugly dreams often continue. But as all earthly things have an end so had my sea-sickness. One night my dreams were better. I dreamed that although sick my head was on your lap. Afterwards I heard one of Fanny’s sonatas from beginning to end. ² I do not think I missed a note, and this I look upon as extraordinary, for if awake I could not have begun to remember it. Then I was eating ice-cream; then, I had been rowing with Max,³ and I was drinking some cool beer at Popp’s at Fairmount; but while I was drinking some one put salt in it, and I was still forced to drink. Then I woke up and felt hungry and dry, for I had not since the soup tasted a morsel of food or drink, not even water. It was growing daylight and soon a waiter came in with coffee, a thing which I can just remember refusing in my sickness. Does mister want any coffee? He has long fasted. No, but bring me some bread and wine. I could only get down a couple of mouthfuls of bread, but I drank all the wine and soon felt much better. What day is it? Wednesday[,] mister. You would not eat anything before. I commenced to dress for what I wanted to get out in the fresh air, and I think I was an hour doing it, I felt so miserable, and had to lie down often. I do not think you would have known me if you had seen me, I was so pale and thin, and had such large eyes. My teeth even were loose and my lips hard and dry. But after I got up on deck, I began immediately to recover. I did not go to breakfast, but a passenger who came up eating grapes gave me a bunch and these I found very refreshing. By dinner time my appetite was as good as ever, and if my sickness was sudden, my recovery was no less so and now I am as well as ever in my life[,] if not better.

End of the disagreeables.

I met with an unlucky incident in New York but a very funny one with all. I arrived there before daylight and went to French’s Hotel because, first I knew where it was and secondly I knew I would get a room there without meals. Well, I did get a room and such a room you never saw in your life. After I got asleep, I heard a great pounding on the door. I got up. What do you want? Open the door. I opened it. Why, says he peering around, have you paid yet for your room[,] I have forgotten? No, do you want the money? No. I only wanted to know if you had paid or not, that’s all. He wanted to see if I had any baggage as security. I went to sleep again. I woke at last again and felt sorry that it was so early and such a cloudy or rainy day. I dressed [and] looked at my watch. Past 8 o’clock. Then I was sure it was raining, but going to my window to see how hard it was raining, I was surprised to discover by looking up a sort of chimney into which the window opened that it was as bright a day as ever shone. After breakfast I took off my shoes and threw myself on the bed again. I felt something crawling. I jumped up in great fear of bedbugs, but they were not, they were fleas. I counted five at one time on one foot, and my body was covered proportionally. Then I stripped and shook my clothes one by one, and hung them up, and then fixed myself like we did Harry.⁴ I made a ring of soap suds around my neck, and then commenced driving them down. They made good their retreat to the carpet whence they came. I did not kill any, nor did I care to do so. Then I dressed myself on top of a chair and hurried away, outgeneralling them all. Father came on at night and by taking a double room we got a very decent one. I am not fond of New York. To be sure there is a great deal of life there, too much in fact for the size of the place.

The ocean is different from what I expected. The waves are much larger. When people said mountains, I always thought of mole-hills. The general size is between the two. The wind except for two or three days has been east right against us. Sunday, that is yesterday, for I know nothing of the other one, was perfectly calm. One could not have wanted a better place to row Charley’s shell.⁵ Besides it was hot almost to suffocation. Just before sun-set we saw a heavy black cloud rise in the east and in five minutes it reached us. I never saw a rain come up so quickly. One could hardly see for the fog, and it was almost freezing cold.