[Boston—Wednesday, 24 October 1866]
Wednesday. Except for a slight rain night before last this glorious weather has remained; day after day seeming each more lovely than the last.
We have been much entertained by some of Lissie’s stories, one of her Yankee persecutor, the boarding house woman, Mrs Chapman. When this creature first went to Florence, a fresh importation from Yankee land and without the capacity to speak one correct sentence in English, she began at once to hunt up rooms to live in and food to eat, trusting to signs and the few words she could pick up as capital for communication. She told Lissie afterward, that she thought every house must be a “piano” manufactory, she saw so many advertisements!
Her models also tell her queer things sometimes—one old Italian sang loud praises of his wife, “she is such a good woman, we have lived long together, she does all good things for me.” Presently he took out his watch and began to fondle it. “A good watch,” he said, “I love my watch it keeps perfect time. Ah! what should I do if I should lose my watch! If I lost my wife I could get another you know, but I never could get another watch! Such a good watch!!”
Teaching a new girl, planning country excursions for sketches and for exercise and enjoyment of this exquisite season. Putting down carpets and housekeeping generally.
Writing nothing, but trying to read in the snatches of time and to make others comfortable and happy.
Went down through Ferry and North Sts. looking up models. Such splendid-eyed tatterdemalions! Such handsome dirt is not frequently seen by us. The Irish crowd tried to compete with the Italians, one mother catching her children and washing their faces, then asking us if they wouldn’t do, but their washed out blue eyes and freckled pallid faces looked poorer yet by the side of the smiling olive filth of the Genoese and Tuscans.
A lady came yesterday from Hartford to get Rowse to take her portrait but he treated her so badly that she dared not go the second time so she came to Mr Fields for introduction and assistance. Rowse consented to do the thing when he was bombarded by J.T.F. but he is too rough for patience sometimes. A mixture of pride, conceit, shyness, forgetfulness of what lies between him and his work—a emphatic temperament combined with the “vatis irritabile,” a hatred of shams and rough fight against unreality wherever he sees it with a keen perception of whatever is most lowly—all these qualities go to make up the person we call Rowse, the man whose portraits are unrivaled in our time and whose painting is beginning to rival the painting of Sir Joshua in all but Sir Joshua’s rapidity. R. is very slow. Dr Estes Howe who is now sitting to him has been 23 times and the color is not yet laid it.
