She has "great possessions" indeed, but her best, to my
mind, is her most beautiful voice, even though I remember her garden by
moonlight with the fountain playing, her books and her pictures, the
Sargent portrait of herself presiding over one of the most splendid of
those splendid rooms, where everything great in old art and new art is
represented. What a portrait it is! Some one once said of Sargent that
"behind the individual he finds the real, and behind the real, a whole
social order."
He has painted "Mrs. Jack" in a tight-fitting black dress with no
ornament but her world-famed pearl necklace round her waist, and on her
shoes rubies like drops of blood. The daring, intellectual face seems to
say: "I have possessed everything that is worth possession, through the
energy and effort and labor of the country in which I was born."
Mrs. Gardiner represents all the _poetry_ of the millionaire.
Mrs. Gardiner's house filled me with admiration, but if I want rest and
peace I just think of the houses of Mrs. James Fields and Oliver Wendell
Holmes. He was another personage in Boston life when I first went there.
Oh, the visits I inflicted on him--yet he always seemed pleased to see
me, the cheery, kind man.
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