Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1898-01-21

r. @. HARD1E's ENGAGEMENT
To Mrs. Caroline Hall Washburh'
Prominent Newspaper Woman aud
Sorfetv V.eader of Roston.

/ To Mrs. Caroline Hall Washburh, o
Prominent Newspaper Woman and
society Leader Of Boston,
| Boston despatch to the Burlington Free Press
No social announcement of the present
season has caused a greater flutter of sur
prise in society circles of Boston than the
news of the engagement of the noted artist
Robert Gordon Harde of Brattleboro Vt,
and New York city, and Mrs. Caroline
Hall Washburn, prominent society WON
an and journalist of this CITY, While the
formal announcement has not yet been
made, and will not be for several weeks, il
is known to many of Mrs. Washburn'
friends, and already congratulations are
beginning to pour in upon her.
Mrs. Washburn is a Bostonian of the
most pronounced type, so far as birth and
family connections are concerned. Early
in life she married, her husband being a
member of the Maine family of Wash
burns. Upon his death, after a brief mar
ried life, Mrs. Washburn returned to her
old home in Dorchester and there lived
quietly among her family for several years,
later entering society and becoming con-
spicuous for her beauty and brlliancy.
Perhaps a dozen years ago she accepted
the position of society editor of the Sun
day Globe and in her liable Gossip de-
partment made a name for herself as the
conductor of the brightest and most reada-
BILE society department printed in Boston.
Three years ago she left the Globe to take
charge of a similar department in the Bos
ton Sunday Herald with which paper she
is still connected. Mrs. Washburn moves
in the most fashionable circles Of Boston,
and will bring to Artist IIardie opportuni-
ty for minglng with the 400 OF Boston
should his tastes after marriage tend to-
ward society.
Among the portrait painters Of the pres
ent time no one is probably more deserved
ly prominent before the public than Rob.
ert Gordon Hardie. He stands today,
while yet in his early prime, in the fore
mos, rank Of his profession. Among his
most successful portraits are those OF Da-
vid Dudley Field, the great iurist, Presi-
dent Eliot of Harvard, Chief Justice Field.
Judge Marcus Morton of the Massachu-
sets supreme court and Chief Justice
Burnham of the Massachusetts, superior
court all three of which hang in the new
court house, the Hon. Robert NJ. Morse,
which is not only a fine likeness. but a re-
markable work of art, the head especially
being masterpiece of painting. Mr.. Har-
dies portrait of Horace White. editor of
the New York Evening Post. of Gen. b.
+. Bristow. Of Chief Justice Durfee Of
Rhode Island, of P. p Langley, secretary
of the Smithsonian institute, ex-Secretary
Redfield Proctor, Prof. Charlier of New
York, Mrs. Reginald Henshaw Ward the
young daughter of Dewing Duer of New
Haven, and the Rev. DR.. George l.. Walk
er of Hartford, Conn, are only a few
among his later ones, which are all &C
knowedged to be notable paintings.
Mr.. Hardie eXcels above all in the faith
fitness of his drawing and the character of
his subject is so carefully wrought out that
il makes his portraits so true to life they
seem to stand out from the canvas. Win
tiers he lives in New York but his sum
mers are spent with his mother at the old
homestead in Brattleboro, where he was
born, and which he has remodelled and
into a colonial cottage, filled
with delightful old pieces of antique furni-
ture that have been picked up from time
to time, rare bits of virtu and a few. but
not too many, good pictures, making of it
a typical artists home from every point of
view.