The Art of Acquiring: A Portrait of Etta and Claribel Cone (10 page)

“On the strength of these things of subterhuman hideousness, I shall try to put Henri Matisse out of my mind
for the present,” wrote J. Edgar Chamberlain in the
New York Evening Mail.

In June 1908, the New York journal
Scrip
reported: “Like nearly all the other very modern Frenchmen. . . he feels that sickening malevolent desire to present the nude (especially women) so vulgarized, so hideously at odds with nature, as to suggest. . . the loathsome and abnormal, and both with a marvel of execution and a bewildering cleverness that somehow fills one with a distaste for art and life.”

James Gibbons Huneker, a
New York Sun
writer, called Matisse's women “memoranda of the gutter and brothel.”

It was these less-than-reassuring accounts in the New York press that the Cone family read, and sent overseas to Etta, who must have felt at least a little discouraged. The critics’ implication was that she was squandering part of her inheritance on an artist ill-deserving of her support.

In Florence, Etta looked forward to returning to Paris to see first-hand the works that had simulatneously brought Matisse more criticism and more fame. She also was anxious to see the Picassos that Leo had so strongly rejected.

But the Cone sisters did not make it to Paris that summer. In August, they returned to America. They had received letters from Greensboro about Moses’ failing health, and Etta herself received letters from Moses telling her how much he missed her.

In June, Etta wrote to Michael Stein from Florence, explaining why she could not visit Paris: “It is the dream of my life to have a home of my own in the vicinity of yours (in Paris), but my eldest brother, who has placed me on an absurdly high place, is not at all well, he wants me near him. . . for with the love I have for that brother, the sacrifice doesn't count.”

In September, Etta was already caring for her brother. But three months later, on December 8, Moses died at Johns Hopkins Hospital of a heart-related illness. He was buried at Blowing Rock. The bulk of his estate went to his wife, Bertha, and the remainder was divided among his brothers and sisters.

Claribel left for Europe in the spring following Moses’ death, but Etta remained in North Carolina. Ostensibly, she remained there to console Bertha, but her letters to Gertrude indicated that Etta herself was devastated by her brother's death. And once again her distraught emotions manifested themselves in physical ailments. She complained of stomach troubles, nerves, and insomnia. She said she was a “slave” to veronal, an addictive, hypnotic sleep aid.

In April, Etta wrote to Gertrude, “I have meant to write before for several times I simply longed for a talk with you. Somehow it's hard to pull myself together and honestly I feel so indifferent whether I live or not and in this mood I have to face the summer in Blowing Rock.”

Through the summer and fall, Etta's letters show her to be increasingly unhinged.

July 25:
“My silence only means that there is no good in telling you the truth of how miserable I am, but I always knew that the death of my eldest brother would be hard with me. . . In the meantime I am walking all alone over these roads—usually average 10 miles a day, but it makes me sleep & thats all I want of it.”

August 22:
“. . . honestly Gertrude, you cannot possibly know how unhappy I am & you could not have realized how I adored, almost worshipped my brother & how I fought hard against depending on him & his exaggerated approval & love for me, for next to sister Bertha he cared for me & sometimes—but
what's the good to write this when it gives me such pain.”

September 26:
“There is no need to deny it but I have gone through the greatest trials that I could have had in this life, and all I want now is to be able to look at my future with calm, for I seem such a worthless sort of creature these days.”

And finally, in December, she wrote Gertrude: “My brother's death almost unbalanced me. . . The most terrible trial that could have come into my life has come. I miss my brother's intense devotion and approval of me. I miss—well the only people in the world who could give me something that I know I need are you and Mike and Sallie.”

And, “I wish, oh I do wish I could typewrite for you. . . I shall come to Europe surely next year if I live.”

Etta did live, but she did not return to Europe for several years. Moses was dead, Claribel was abroad, Gertrude had a new typist, and Etta, immobilized by grief and longing, was quietly returning to her family caretaker role as the helpful younger sister, with only memories of that other life to sustain her.

“No, I don't wish to touch the cup of experience. It's a poisoned drink! I only want to see for myself.”

—Henry James,
The Portrait of a Lady,
1881

I
n 1909, in the spring following Moses’ death, Claribel left the United States again for a tour of Europe. She was not as shattered as Etta by the loss of her eldest brother. But, unbeknownst to her family, she had suffered a personal setback abroad that changed her view of herself and of the world.

From 1903 to 1906, Claribel had conducted pathology research at the Senckenberg Institute under its director, a poet/scientist named Eugen Albrecht. Eight years younger than Claribel, he respected her professionally and personally, at least judging from her writings.

In fact, Claribel's mention of Albrecht in her letters is the only time in her life she expressed any sentiment approaching love for a person outside her family. In most cases, Claribel referred to other people as barely tolerable nuisances, but she heaped accolades on Albrecht.

She wrote Etta that she was “most terribly flattered by his praise—especially as he is so awfully critical as a rule, and
the men in the laboratory, who say how difficult Albrecht is
zufassen
[face to face], look at our daily morning confabs behind closed doors with wonder and awe. . .”

And in another letter, she confided, “I cannot hear from too many people of Albrecht's interest in me—for it is one of the most flattering and charming things that has ever happened to me in my life—to be approved of as a woman and as a worker by one of the most talented yet critical and learned men in the world. . .”

Albrecht, no doubt, brought about in Claribel a completely different—and more positive—state of mind. Her effusive letters from that period in Frankfurt praise even a rain storm. But Albrecht died in 1908 of tuberculosis, which he contracted in the laboratory. It is not clear if Albrecht's death was a contributing factor, but Claribel never again worked at the Senckenberg, even after returning to Frankfurt in 1909.

Within two years of Albrecht's death, the Women's Medical College of Baltimore, with which Claribel had been affiliated as a lecturer and professor since 1895, would also close, setting her professionally adrift.

That condition, however, was nothing very new to her. Even at the height of her medical career, Claribel had published only a few articles—on gross and cellular pathology and physiology—and admitted she was “usually too late to claim any innovation.” She told an interviewer who asked about her publications, “I never get my work into shape. . . There are so many other things to do.”

From 1908 on, her scientific career finished, Claribel immersed herself in opera, the symphony, books, art, and travel.

In a speech to a women's group in Baltimore, Claribel once discussed American women traveling abroad. She divided them into three categories—pseudo workers, the dutiful, and
the idlers. To describe the last group, she quoted Robert Louis Stevenson: “Idleness has as good a right to state its position as industry itself. It is a sore thing to have labored along and scaled the arduous hilltops and when all is done find humanity indifferent to your achievements.”

Claribel, the woman listed in one publication as the sole example of a Women's Medical College graduate who did “credit to both their alma mater and themselves,” was offering a justification for living the rest of her life as an aimless wanderer. Having reached that decision, she luxuriated in its liberty.

Her 1909 trip to Europe was with company. But her trip the following year, in 1910, was alone. Her letters indicate that Claribel, now forty-six, increasingly relished her solitude and kept up whatever dialogue was necessary through missives to her younger sister Etta, who was shuttling between North Carolina and Baltimore.

“There is a sort of intolerable loneliness in being with people you do not like—a loneliness much greater than that of being alone—for in being alone there are the possibilities of all sorts of other companionships—when you have time to think of them—whereas a bad companion is an actual unpleasant fact. . .”

“Do you know as to
Oberammergau
[a passion play], I do not want a companion—I want to enjoy the performance—I want to feel the reality of it and I do not wish to have my thoughts distracted by the conversation or comments of some uncongenial or half congenial person. I enjoy Wagner operas now because I learned to know them when alone.

“You do not know what good friends I am getting to be with myself and when I have to shuffle off this mortal coil—and go to the worms (or the fishes!) I shall be truly sorry as I now feel the world is very beautiful.”

As the middle Cone sister grew older, she became more physically striking. One interviewer said, “Dr. Cone has often been said to be like George Eliot, and indeed, in her large, dark eyes, her wavy hair and her strong features may be traced some resemblance of the great novelist, with the advantage greatly in Dr. Cone's advantage, however, for she is a remarkably handsome woman.” She was described by an admirer as simply “the only lady who combines great dignity with an easy grace.”

Claribel's figure swelled—beyond what was then called matronly to just large—but she carried her bulk with a majesty that made her as impressive as a queen. Much to her amusement, she was often mistaken for a noble Russian or English woman. And, in fact, at some point, she adopted a slight accent that her relatives called a kind of Irish brogue.

Claribel's European itinerary in 1910 took her back first to Frankfurt and Beethoven Strasse. The scientist in Claribel was inextricably drawn to Germany. By the first World War, Germany had won almost twice as many Nobel prizes in science as any other country. Claribel was also drawn to Germany's orderliness, its austere grandeur, and its formality. In Germany, she could live life without being touched by it.

Claribel engaged in an endless series of visits with acquaintances. But though her letters indicated she appreciated—even relished—the regard of those around her, she wrote of people as if they were some sort of alien phenomenon that she occasionally encountered but did not fully understand or even like.

“Do you know every now and then it dawns upon me that people do like to be thought of—I am so busy and free—occupied all the time in my work—that I do not stop to think of this enough. . . and oh the good human ties I am always throwing aside—not seeing them—for what I call
my pleasure in work—well—when I get to be an old lady—if I get to be an old lady, which I very much doubt strange to say—but nevertheless I shall finish the sentence—when I get to be an old lady—and can no longer work—then I shall take time to be human—and I can be very human indeed when I have time to think about it.”

What “work” Claribel was doing at the time is unclear, but it could be that she regarded handling the many necessities of life as a travail equaling employment. In her later years, she carried around with her a hand-sized notebook in which she made countless lists of things to do and people to write to or see. She even included “list-making” in her “to-do” lists. Note-taking alone may have consumed a significant portion of her day.

Claribel was also famous for being a late riser and, when finally up, for dawdling into the early afternoon. And she spent a good part of each day writing letters. Claribel ostensibly wrote to Etta, but the missives she mailed were not so much letters as daily journal entries, many of them poetic and nearly all of them beautiful.

From Frankfurt, Claribel traveled to Munich, where she began her love affair with that city, attending “music-music-music-every evening and theater.

“Oh how I love this random wandering. . . I have not been so happy for a long time as I am now. I was thinking this as I wandered about the streets this morning. And now I realize that I am not happy in America—how I hate those cramped, narrow, crowded, high above civilization—lonely (lonely) rooms on Eutaw Place—this I am just beginning to realize.”

After an extended stay in Munich, Claribel tore herself away in late August to travel to Weimar, Eienach, and the Wartburg, whose natural beauty inspired her as much as Munich's bustling streets and rich cultural menu. Dr. Claribel
Cone, who had spent her adult years viewing life in a laboratory, had suddenly awakened to its wild charm.

“How awesome it was at times to stand in a deep ravine between rocks so close together that they almost seemed to crush you—or threatened to do so as you passed under and between them—above your head—which let the daylight through in splashes—shredded and spots—and then green sunlight now and then green because of the mossy covering and the overhanging trees above—and the sound of splashing, gurgling water.

“I think without exception it is one of the most poetic incidents I have ever experienced—and as I entered the drachen schlucht [Drachen passageway]—at the beginning of the walk I passed a man and a young girl—the man walked slowly—and stopped a bit—the girl was young—and erect—they entered the ravine just a bit ahead of me—but soon I overtook, then passed them.

“And I saw that the man had a scholarly book (perhaps his step was scholarly—I think his walk was rheumatic)—he looked about 56 or 60 years of age—then as the water gurgled under the footpath—made of narrow birch branches strung together, crosswise—I heard the man in a deep rich mellow voice with a cultured accent begin to quote Shelley. . . He was not at all sentimental—he repeated it in fact as he would have done to me or anyone else—it was the occasion that called it forth and not his companion—that was only a passive element in the incident.”

In that same letter, Claribel described an encounter with a boy who played the banjo. She felt an affinity for the youth, yet chose to proceed on her walk alone. In the self-reflective mood that Weimar wrought, the strangeness of her choice was not lost on Claribel.

“At the crossroads we parted. Now why did I deprive
myself of a pleasant companion when I might have had agreeable company all the way!—throughout life—that is what I do—and have been doing—there is something subtle—and indefinable—that impels me to be alone—it interests me to send people whom I might like away from me.”

There is no indication in any of Claribel's writings that she was ever close to anyone outside her family except perhaps Albrecht. She seemed content to share the world or her experiences with no other person—she had no need for that sort of validation. For Claribel, other people were of value only if they could be useful to her or if they could appreciate her genius.

As luxurious as Claribel's solitary travels were, however, they were not to last long. She was joined by Etta, and a companion joined her in Europe in 1912.

Claribel's younger sister, now forty-two, had suffered greatly in the years following their brother's death—both physically and emotionally—and now found it necessary to travel with a nurse. Etta met Claribel in Frankfurt accompanied by a twenty-five-year-old unmarried attendant named Nora Kaufman. The group spent the summer in Italy, and by the fall they were in Paris.

Drastic changes had come to the rue de Fleurus. Alice now lived with Gertrude and Leo—she was given a small room called the “salon des refusés.” Leo and Gertrude quarreled more. He thought her writing was “rubbish,” and she disapproved of his romance with an artist's model, Nina Auzias, who had been known in the quarter for singing in the street.

In the past, Leo had been the one to hold court during Saturday evening salons, while Gertrude sat quietly in a
chaise lounge. But increasingly, Leo sat in another room during the sessions and primarily discussed diseases of the stomach. With the help of Alice, Gertrude was now the doyenne of the lively gatherings.

Leo explained the change simply: “When my interest in Cézanne declined, when Matisse was temporarily in eclipse, when Picasso turned to foolishness, I began to withdraw from the Saturday evenings.”

Leo's final rift with Picasso came when the young artist discovered Cubism. The term “Cubism” was coined in 1911, at the Salon des Indépendants, by the same critic who six years earlier had called Matisse a
“wild beast.”
The Cubists’ leading influence was mathematician Maurice Princet, who frequented the bars in Montmartre, and whose wife, Alice, left him to marry André Derain.

Maurice Princet, said Leo, talked about infinities and fourth dimensions, and “Picasso began to have opinions on what was and what was not real, though he understood nothing of these matters.” But those opinions became Cubism.

Gertrude, unlike Leo, admired Picasso's new work. What he was doing in paint, she decided, she was doing in words, which must have irked Leo to no end. He said of Picasso, “It is not the lack of ability that puts me off, but the silliness.”

But the artist's fortunes no longer depended upon Leo's support. Having attracted many collectors, Picasso was now visibly well off. In 1909, he had moved from the Bâteau Lavoir to the Boulevard de Clichy, where he ate his meals in the dining room, served by a maid in a white apron. When the movers came to collect the few items from the filthy rue Ravignan, Fernande heard them speculate, “Surely these folks have won the jackpot.”

Matisse, too, was faring far better now than when the Cone sisters had last seen him six years before. He had not
subscribed to Cubism. Matisse, said Leo, was “too intelligent and too sincere” for the movement.