
          -3-

As a rule, she scorned copying, but the Sistine Madonna so appealed to her religious soul that she did it, and with such 
great success that J. R. Dodge, who remained in Dresden an extra week in order to visit Raphael’s picture each day, said that it was
a servile copy and so reproduced the radiant magnificence of the color and caught the mysterious vision so perfectly that it was a
joy to see it in America. This picture is at Moorestown, New Jersey, the property of her niece, Mrs. Mary R. Sumner.

While working at the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, the janitor, an old man who had been a retainer at Edgemont,
asked her why she did not paint the Old Market Woman of Robert Browning, Jr., and offered to get a long ladder and bring it down.
A spirit of adventure inspired her to undertake it, and this is the only copy ever made and is now owned by Miss Burley of
Haverford, Pa. The Bodenhausen Madonna was copied as an order for Honorable W. E. Fuller, of West Union, Iowa.

She was a most inveterate sketcher and did literally hundreds of little bits of landscape in oil; when riding or walking
she was everlastingly composing pictures. She used to carry materials with her when traveling, and if anything happened to delay
her, the compensation was an additional picture for her folios. I have a sunset on the Mississippi river from the bridge at
Dubuque where a slight accident to her train gave her the opportunity of transferring the picture.

While painting she was quite oblivious to surroundings. She would sit in a greenhouse on an overturned box, her feet in
the wet, and paint and neither see nor hear what transpired around her. Well I remember when she was painting the orchids of the
White House for the Columbian Exposition; it was in August, 1892, and I went over to the conservatories to see how the picture was
coming on; I found her working away in an orchid house, steaming hot as a Turkish bath. "Aren’t you smothered, suffocated?” I
asked. She never heard a word I said, but, wiping her dripping face and pointing to the half-done picture with a look of affectionate adoration, such as only a mother is supposed to give her baby, she exclaimed: "Beautiful things, are they not?”
Commiseration for her hardships when working was wasted energy, because she never knew hot from cold nor dry from wet, neither
was she like Taine, who saw more beauty in things artistic when there was something good in his stomach.

She was never handicapped for materials; if she had anything to say she put it on the first scrap that came to hand; some
of her choicest bits are painted on old box covers, she just had to get it down while the inspiration was fresh, and nothing
escaped her eagle eyes, and her hand was a submissive slave to her commanding brain.

From my first acquaintance, her hands were so affected with palsy that she could not lift a cup to her lips without
spilling, but when painting, the marvel of it all was that the trembling hand braced itself on the board and for the instance of
the deposition of color acted with the precision of a hairtrigger gun, and the finest line had the apparent confidence of a carefully adjusted scientific machine. She was like a great general, who determines on victory, and counts not the cost. With her the
joy of creation outweighed toil and deprivation of every kind. When will other women learn that mental creation brings greatest
joy, and that big work is the only thing in the world worth while, outweighing the most refined of creature comforts and so-called
luxuries!

Her recreation was conchology, and next to flowers and fruits she loved shells, and by an alertness and perseverance that
she brought to bear on everything that interested her, by exchange and buying, she made a collection that will be an acquisition
to the college fortunate enough to get it.

Her diversion was yellow cats, and, when exhausted from intense application of mind and body, nothing rested her so much as
watching the graceful gambols of kittens. On any Sunday evening one might see her sitting under a lamp shaded by her beloved red,
with a large Bible across her knees, Dandy Jim in her arms, and Buttercup, as jealous as a cat can be, ready to spring at the first
opportunity.

One is simply amazed at the amount of work she accomplished, and that with a perfection of detail that resembled point
lace in the care of doing. She set herself tasks and forced their completion.

She possessed two characters, one imperial and immovable as Gibraltar, imperious and proof against influence of any sort as
mailed iron; the other sweetly innocent and trusting to a degree that made her an easy prey to promoters, schemers, and imposters
of all sorts. Again and again she lost by trusting a man with a smooth tongue, but no amount of experience or loss ever taught her
the marks of a real estate sharper.
        