The Portland daily press., 1893-07-21
Where MilIet Lived and Painted.
Boston Transcript.

Boston Transcript
Wishing to make acquaintance with
the village where Millet had lived and
painted so many years, J. left the court
yard of the inn, and standing in the road,
surveyed the village street. The artists
inn is at the extremity nearest the forest;
in three minutes one can gain the shadow
of the large trees; but at Babizpn it is
not nature, but the great painter of ma
ture, that dominates the place. turned
my face from the forest. In the oppo-
site direction, across the dusty road,
few steps from the artists inn, was the
spot where Millet had lived. His pretty
vine-covered cottage has been torn down
by vandal hands. His studio still stands,
but changed beyond recognition, and
inhabited by persons who have neither
love nor respect for the great name asso-
ciated with it. Madame Millet now lives
in cottage across the way; it extends no
invitation to the passer-by. One cannot
catch the slightest glimpse of it from
the road, and had no intention to cross
its threshold. But as stood examining
the lovely garden that had once been
Millets, and admiring the graceful group
of trees whose growth he had watched,
my heart so warmed and opened toward
the lonely widow behind the great dumb
wall opposite, that turned quickly, rang
the bell, and asked the maid who ap-
peared if Madame Millet would be will
ing to receive a stranger from America.
Madame Millet welcomed me courteously
and at the end of five minutes we had
forgotten conventionalities, and for an
hour or more had most earnest talk of
real things. Madame Millet is plain
little woman of sixty, full of common
sense and noble sentiments. Millet was
twice her age when she, girl of fifteen
and half, married him. At nineteen
she was the mother of three children,
AS she talked of the early years of her
married life, faced crayon portrait of
Miliet by himself at the age of thirty
three. 1t is an ideal head and face, and
represents man happy natured. tender
hearted and TRANQUILITY happy, who is
equally poet and thinker. Madame
Millet told me he had been very Ill with
rheumatism, and when he was better,
while his hair and beard were still long
she begged him to make portrait of
himself; this he did, and the result is as
remarkable as those Of Durer and An
drea del Sarto.- by themselves. (The
portrait of the latter is in the collection
of Earl Cowper. at Panshanger, Eng
land).
Madame Millet has not been able to re-
tain d single one of her husbands paint
ings, but she has six or eight of his
drawings. She took me into her own
room to show me the last picture taken
of her husband. 1t hangs at the head of
her bed; and in third room she showed
me lovely drawing of a young shepherd
ess carrying newborn lamb in her arms
and in the same room a photograph of
the daughter whom they lost, noble
fine qualities of brain and heart. Then
we walked through the garden, which
bears no resemblance to the little rec
tangles of the Barbizon peasant, but is
ample in extent and well planted with
trees and flowers, and Madame Millet
loves her flowdrs passionately. At the
end of the garden she unlocked the gate,
and we stepped out on the broad fat
plain which extends behind the village.
1 thought recognized it as the plain
that Millet had SO often painted as setting
to his laboring peasants, solitary or in
groups; but Madam Millet said no. 1t
had completely changed its aspect in the
eighteen years since her husband s death.
1t used to be planted thick with apple
trees; they have all disappeared, and in
the green fields stretch away, fiat and
treeless as western prairie, the horizon
being marked by a long waving line of
poplars that Millet never saw.
The portrait of her husband she can
not part with At her death she wants