The Art of Acquiring: A Portrait of Etta and Claribel Cone (5 page)

In fact, the decision to stay or leave Hopkins was really not hers to make—she had flunked four senior-year courses.
And she had drawn the ire of the chief of obstetrics, Dr. J. Whitridge Williams, who, according to H.L. Mencken, “detested women doctors and, in addition, had a violent prejudice against all women who were fat.”

During those tumultuous Baltimore days, Etta lost track of Gertrude. Now that they were reunited in Europe, both women found the other changed.

The air of experimentation at the Johns Hopkins Medical School extended into the social life around it, and some of the students engaged in same-sex relationships. Gertrude, now twenty-seven, had been involved in a romantic triangle with two women—May Bookstaver and Mabel Haynes—during her last years in medical school. The affair is generally believed to be documented in Gertrude's book
Q.E.D.,
which was not published until after her death.

In it, she described the summer of 1901 as the time when the character Adele began to understand the meaning of her relationship with the character Helen. Did the passage indicate that Gertrude discovered her sexuality during her summer in Europe—the same summer she met up with Etta in Paris? The answer is unclear. But scholars are in general agreement that the Bookstaver-Haynes affair was Gertrude's first foray into lesbianism.

The entire issue of a woman's sexuality at the turn of the century is difficult to gauge. Delicacy dictated that the nature of relationships—heterosexual or homosexual—not be spelled out clearly. And in some cases, relationships that would today be described as lesbian were regarded then as mere friendships.

As early as the eighteenth century, women were engaging in relationships with other women that were referred to and accepted as “romantic friendships,” and contained all the
elements of great passions, including physical intimacies.

Even mainstream publications like
Ladies Home Journal
and
Harper's
carried romantic tales of relationships between women. The unions were not believed to be sexual, because women themselves were thought not to be interested in sex except to please their husbands, or to procreate, and so society had no objection to the attachments.

But by the late nineteenth century, as the movement toward women's general independence grew, research into the nature of women's relationships emerged, and an alarm bell sounded from Europe. Women who were attracted to women were found to be abnormal and neurotic by German psychologist Carl von Westphal, who said the condition “explained why some women had such a grave craving for independence from men.”

In 1897, Havelock Ellis, a noted American expert on sexuality, declared that love between women was a form of insanity that led to murder and suicide. A sensational 1892 case, where a Tennessee woman, Alice Mitchell, slit the throat of her female lover, Freda Ward, supposedly reinforced Havelock's view.

It is not clear whether Gertrude's first affair in 1901 progressed beyond the intensity of a “romantic friendship” and into a sexual relationship. But, from her writing in
Q.E.D.
, it can be assumed that she was in the thrall of a grand passion when she arrived in Paris that summer.

Etta, for her part, was a new woman, too. Out from the shadow of her dominant older sister Claribel, she was broadening herself with travel, and was in the grip of a passion of her own. In the museums of Europe, she had discovered an occupation—the study and appreciation of art.

In Paris, Etta traveled across the Pont des Arts to the Louvre, where she would wander alone for hours, eagerly
hunting out clues to the treasures housed in the famous French museum. Her visits there were almost obsessive, as her diaries attest. It was as if she had set herself a task of making art and its history her own by constantly roaming among the Louvre's artistic masterpieces.

Etta spent her days expanding her intellectual horizons, but devoted her nights to reviving her spirits. Her diaries were full of dinners and cafés and the theater, which sometimes resulted in her remaining in bed until 1:30 the next afternoon. And at the center of each activity was Gertrude.

During the first portion of her trip, it was Leo whose name appeared most frequently in Etta's diary. But after the reunion in Paris, it was Gertrude who consumed the younger Cone. “Arose late & Gertrude came in most inopportunely to my room. . .”

“. . . Got up at 1 p.m. when Gertrude came in with her enthusiasm over French literature. . .”

“. . . talked with Gertrude on her pet subject of Human intercourse of the sexes. She is surely interesting.”

Etta describes a dinner with Gertrude at the Gare de l'Orient as “the greatest meal for me in Paris.” Gertrude left her at 2 a.m. that night. Etta retired for the evening at 3:30. Etta, once the picture of Victorian womanhood, found her way to the bawdy Follies Bergère, noting in her diary, “I never saw more charming athletics.”

Gertrude and Leo were interested in Japanese art and sought it out in Paris galleries. Etta accompanied them on their visits and, on September 17, according to her diary, she purchased 41 francs’ worth of Japanese prints.

It was her first art purchase since the Robinsons in 1898, and foretold her future as a collector, not so much because of what she bought, but how she bought it. In her diary of that day, she stated her initial intention of spending no more than 15 francs, but, she confessed, “I've got the fever bad and
could not help it.”

During that visit, none of the Stein-Cone circle appears to have visited the galleries displaying the work of artists living and working in Paris. The only diary entry that hints they might have seen work by modern artists was on September 13, when Etta wrote that she visited the Luxembourg and saw works by Rodin and the “so-called impressionist painters, Monet, Manet and others.”

She also noted that she “went with Gertrude to Rue Lafitte & saw art stores.” But it is certain she knew nothing of the painter working less than a mile from her hotel who would dominate her life.

While Etta and her group ate and drank with abandon, Henri Matisse and his family, living along the Seine in a studio on the Quai St. Michel, subsisted on rice brought back to Paris from the artist's father's store.

The Baltimore group's brief sojourn in Paris ended on September 24, when Etta and Hortense Guggenheimer left for London. The bleak grayness viewed from her room at the Victoria Hotel perfectly reflected Etta's mood—she was sullen and tired. Even when Etta and Hortense met up with Gertrude, who would travel with them to America from Southampton, Etta continued to be blue.

Her diary entry on October 3 declared the day “uneventful in every sense of the word.” On October 7, in slow and sloppy handwriting, she noted, “. . . I fear I am not in a sociable mood. I want awfully to get home.”

But on October 8, Etta had a change of heart, writing in a brisk hand, “Clear beautiful day which I spent mostly below in a most
beautiful state of mind
but one which brought out the most exquisite qualities of Gertrude. My vanity. . .” The underlined phrase is the only such emphasis in Etta's 1901 journal, and is all the more curious because the unfinished
entry is the last in an otherwise well-documented trip.

Neither Etta nor Gertrude indicated which event—if any—put Etta in a “beautiful state of mind.” But a hint might be found once again in Gertrude's book.
Q.E.D.
begins in 1901 with a boat trip which the character Adele takes with two women—the same configuration as Gertrude's 1901 crossing from Southampton with Etta and Hortense Guggenheimer. In
Q.E.D.,
Adele describes a growing closeness to the character Helen, and several incidents during the journey involve “pressing fluttering fingers” to lips or “warm kisses.”

But even if Etta and Gertrude ended up comforting each other physically, as described in
Q.E.D.
, it was not outside the bounds of what was considered “decent” behavior for two women of their time and culture.

Still, the intimacy, whatever its intensity, made it harder for Etta to return to her role on Eutaw Place as housekeeper and youngest sister. Her eyes had been opened to a world that not even her beloved brother Moses had seen.

When Etta returned to Baltimore, its monotonous skyline, endless brick row houses, and marble stoops must have seemed to her a kind of prison compared with the grandeur she had left behind in Paris. Immediately, she began plotting her escape. But Etta did not shed her domestic responsibilities for another two years, until after her mother's death in 1903.

With the last Cone parent gone, there was no reason for her to stay in Baltimore—and no reason to keep up a large household. Etta spent the first months of the year relocating the Cone family possessions to the home of her brother Sydney, farther north on Eutaw Place, and preparing the Cone house for sale. That done, Etta was technically homeless, which was the best excuse of all to return to Europe.

The timing of Etta's next European trip also fit neatly into Claribel's schedule. On the faculty of the Women's Medical
College of Baltimore, she became the school's president in 1902. But Claribel, while considering a leave of absence from the college to do research at the Senckenberg Institute in Frankfurt-am-Main, decided she would go along on a European tour with Etta, and cousin Aimee Guggenheimer, and visit the Senckenberg while in Germany.

In May 1903, Etta was once again on a ship taking her to Italy. But this time, she was the experienced traveler, guiding her older sister along the course she had traveled two years before. This time, when their ship docked in Naples, there was no Leo at the quai to escort them on their adventures.

And this time, Etta's travel diary showed she had assumed the role of tour manager. She was now more concerned with the price of things than their glory. While the trip might not turn out to be the lark her first tour had been, Etta could take comfort in the fact that she was in Europe, and she would be surrounded by art.

After a brief stay in Naples, the party moved on to Florence and registered at the Helvetia, a villa hotel in the heart of the city near Etta's favorite restaurant, Gambrinus, and a short walk from the Uffizi. Just after their arrival, Gertrude wrote Etta, asking her to meet her in Rome in July, where she was to be with Mabel Haynes and May Bookstaver

The request indicated that Gertrude's relationship with Etta was more than just friendship because, by bringing Etta to Rome, she would be forming a couple with Etta in front of the women with whom she had had a turbulent entanglement. But Etta declined the invitation, partly to take care of Claribel and partly to continue what she now referred to as her “work” at the Uffizi.

Etta was now a much more sophisticated observer than
two years earlier. No longer interested in the stories behind the paintings, she focused instead on what made each artist unique.

“We went to the Uffizi. Here I wandered off alone learning to be familiar with the portraits of such men as Ingres, David. . . I began to feel more and more how merely superficial is one's first knowledge of great paintings.”

The next day, Etta wrote of the “enormous difference in tactile values” between different paintings. And she began “working out the influence one old master had on the other.” But her serious studies were cut short that day by Gertrude's arrival.

Though 10 years older than when she first arrived in Baltimore, Gertrude was still a hellion who could turn even pious Florence, with its ever-tolling church bells, into the setting for a lively romp. If Leo, and by extension Etta, looked to Florence for edification, Gertrude roamed the city and its galleries looking for fun.

“Went to the Academy with Aimee. Gertrude came along and found us in the Botticelli room and then we had a good time finding charm and humor in the various paintings. . . Gertrude was in fine humor and we had a good talk on me and my future life.”

“Started off after breakfast with Gertrude and had a beautiful time with the Michael Angelo's room in the San Lorenzo. Gertrude found a strong likeness between Michael's ‘Night’ & me & we had a good time.”