Three generations

Henry James is dead. The news came to-day. A sudden warmth of old friendship, a kindness of other years leaps up within me, and the memory of how he looked at our house in Rome...

Among my mother’s welcome visitors was Henry James the elder, father of Henry, the novelist, and of William, the philosopher. She thought Mr. James Senior a greater man than eit...

“This is green peace!” Mama exclaimed that July day she took possession of our South Boston home. The title clung, like many of her nicknames, snapped out on the spur of the mom...

My first school was the pioneer Kindergarten of America, established and taught by Miss Elizabeth Peabody, in a house on Pinckney Street, near the corner of Joy Street. Miss Pea...

While proud of being a Bostonian, I had from the beginning a sort of sneaking affection for New York. My mother, though of mixed New England and Southern descent, was born and b...

The year 1867 brought changes. Hellas once more called my father to her aid. The insurrection of the Cretans against the Turk in 1866 was one of the most courageous struggles fo...

My father was greatly disappointed when Congress, under the whip of Charles Sumner, quashed President Grant’s plan for the annexation of Santo Domingo by refusing to ratify the...

My mother sailed early in the spring of this year--1872--for England to hold her famous Peace Crusade, and until her return in August, my father and I were alone together. As us...

William Hunt is the first artist I remember to have known. I have visions of him mounted on a tall hunter, galloping over the Newport beach, and on the Brighton Road, driving a...

If there were a horse to buy, I did not hesitate, but promptly bought the best horse I could find, only to learn that the dear animal--we called him Ha’pence--was afflicted with...

The spring of 1877 saw the great adventure of our European journey begun. My mother and I sailed from Boston on the Cunard steamer _Parthia_, Captain Donald MacKaye commanding....

Rome, the old enchantress, held me enthralled from the moment St. Peter’s dome floated before my eyes like a faint blue bubble on the far horizon. We passed the winter of 1878-1...

Our great adventure lasted more than two years. I kept no diary, wrote few letters. My mother’s journal for these months is briefer than usual; we lived at such a pace that ther...

A notebook of anatomical drawings recalls my adventure as a student at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Frederick Crowninshield taught us anatomy and much besides; I remember wit...

Of these tales, “Concerning X 107” is a true story of a young woman criminal, with a Jekyll and Hyde personality. Her life has been debased and vicious, but she is capable of th...

I believe that distinguished southern gentleman, Colonel Morehead of North Carolina, is responsible for the next chapter of my life and of these random snapshots of memory. The...

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 e...

The absurd words, the maddening air, greeted us when we marched on London, four strong, in that dazzling season of 1892. My husband, my mother, my niece, Alice Richards, and mys...

It was in the early days of 1894 that J. and I set sail for Italy, whither his work called him, and that on the way I beguiled him into one of our merriest adventures.

Having known it in the seventies, I welcomed the changes that had brought comfort and health to the modern capital. The old Rome was all there, if you only knew how to look for it!

During our long residence in Rome I made frequent flying trips to America to see my mother. On one of these visits my friends, Captain and Mrs. George Hamilton Perkins, asked me...

When we had been living in Rome four years my mother resolved to come out and pass a winter with us. One of the things that drew her to Italy was the wish to see her sister Loui...

The twentieth century dawned for us in Rome, where we were now in our sixth year of residence. The opening of the new cycle was marked by the magnificent pageants of the Pope’s...

Boston, January 1, 1901. We thought we had seen the birth of the Twentieth Century in Rome; when we reached Boston we found out we were mistaken, for here the new century begins...

Between 1894 and 1910 we lived more in Italy than in America and had the opportunity of observing the amazing developments that were taking place in the country that was, until...

In October of the year 1910, as the first decade of the Twentieth Century was drawing to a close, my mother passed from the world where for nearly ninety-two years she had lived...

When I was asked to write that paper on “Artists’ Life in Rome” for the Current Topics Club of Newport, I little thought what the consequences would be! Glad of the opportunity...