To C.C. Ballou from Bertha – June 24, 1913
Dear Papa,
This last week has been a very busy one and yesterday about the busiest day of all. I was up and down stairs at six o’clock. After breakfast, I walked down to the Post Office and back – a distance of about half a mile and then got my painting materials and worked, only stopping for lunch until nearby six. I like to work very much but was somewhat disappointed when our model left us yesterday and I was just nicely started on the biggest canvas I have ever attempted.
We will now turn our attention exclusively to landscape. I needed a start in that very badly and I think that a month will help a great deal. It is pretty expensive – a good deal more so I expected for the lessons are twenty-five a month and the materials are used up a good deal more rapidly as we make a good many more canvases in a week and larger ones than I have previously done. This morning I have been out for a walk. It is a lovely country – in the Berkshires and we are only about five minutes’ walk from the state line as I have been in Massachusetts this morning. It’s an ideal place for the summer and does not seem to get really hot at all. The milk and bread and butter agrees with me, too.
I’ve been up here. In company, this isn’t much of a place – there are the Shakers who are rather interesting and whom we’re getting acquainted with. Three or four elderly women, two or three old maids and younger married women – all painting – three of us about my age and pretty congenial and about four rather nondescript men and boys – including one hypochondriac, one high school boy and one “missing link” as we call him also wears a painfully downy mistake and what he fondly imagines to be artistic hair. Mr. Johansen, an instructor, is rather young man between thirty-five and forty, full of rigor and vitality and very much bent on making us work. His wife is also quite a distinguished artist.
I’m awfully glad I came here and am enjoying every minute of it. This morning, two of us have been out _____ out the land for more work. There are a good many bulls around which is our main trouble but I guess they are pretty well pinned up and we are learning what fields to sketch them in though sometimes I wish the fences were higher. This afternoon, we are going to Mrs. Johansen’s to team. It is about two miles so I think we will have had plenty of exercise for one day when we have walked over and back in addition to the distance we walked this morning.
June 24th we made our trip to Mr. Johansen’s and had a good time though it seems quite a long trip over and back. Since then, I’ve been making half day sketches and have seemed a good deal encouraged by the enjoyment I have made. Evelyn Hope and I are about the contented people here as the others seem to feel a great longing for moving picture shoes and such luxuries and we are nearly dying of boredom. It is an awfully out of the way place but I’ve seen much worse and I don’t mind the lack of amusement in the evening because I’m too tired and I go to bed pretty early.
Please tell Mamma that I will invite her soon but there is little to write and I am busy all day and the kerosene lamp is not very good so I don’t do any writing at night. In fact, the evenings are so fine that I am almost never in my room except to sleep. I’m getting quite a coat of sunburn after my winter in New York. I guess I’ll be hardened to the sun before I leave here. Just now I’m beginning to be afraid that I didn’t bring as many supplies in my trunk as I’ll need for painting in the islands [Note: The Philippines] but I guess I will be able to order from San Francisco through Mr. McCullough’s. Anyway, I am learning how to do without a lot of my seemingly essential things. Some of the boys here make their own sketch _____ in half a day. Maybe I could get a Filipino to make me one if I find myself in great need.
Love to all,
Bertha