To Cora Hendricks from Bertha – March 7, 1923
[Note: Bertha is 32. She is living in the building below in Boston.]
238 Hemenway Street
Boston
Dear Mamma,
Busy days! I am almost swamped but am getting used to a full program so my head is still above water. Your interesting package containing so many welcome articles arrived yesterday. All will be most acceptable. I had been thinking I must buy a few handkerchiefs and paint rags are always thankfully received. As to the smock, it is a beauty. I shall perhaps be mobbed if I appear in another new smock. This year, having already become a joke for my cleanliness, but after all, cleanliness has its advantages and I sometimes thing that looking a little nicer than the other women in the class might have some bearing on the fact that Hoffman, a genius, has fanned me with many little attentions as of late, including the privileges of working with him in the afternoons when I don’t model, on portrait sketches. Hoffman is a great artist already at that. Nobody else has ever seen anyone except Sargent and De Camp and a few of the big men who could do better than Hoffman. Every day now he is turning off little “masterpieces,” well they are good. So it is fine to work alongside although I am so plodding comparatively. Presently, I shall pick _____ and do better as is though I lack the divine spark.
[Note: Irwin Hoffman who was allowed to enroll at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School when he was only 15. He had his first solo show at the age of 19, and was was referred to as “a prodigy in portraiture” by the press. He would have been a decade younger than Bertha when the letter was written.]
Today I painted in the morning, modeled from two to three and drew from three to four. It was a terrible day. Last night it began to snow and blow. It is blowing yet but the sky has cleared. This morning after three days of Spring, we were in a raging blizzard, the worse of the winter. Even I balked and had breakfast with Miss Fisher, then I waded out to school. People are trying to clean the walks but the wind swirled moving the snow in the air but the snow that should have been on the ground that it wouldn’t stay put and there was no keeping the ______ cleared until after morning. It was horrible.
Added to my other miseries I have been put on a committee and must have two posters by Monday and everybody declines to do posters. I cannot see my way to do two. At present, I am up against a blank wall but am beginning to see daylight after all for I’m _____ the making of lots of posters and if worse comes to worst, I think I’ll invite two or three men and dine with two or three other girls and myself at the Union next Sunday, and make them all work. I think it could be done like an old fashioned “bee.” How’s that for an idea, and old maid to get things going and two or three beautiful young girls as bait for two or three handsome young artists. I’ll bet it works if all else fails me. I know two or three flapper _____ who would work like beavers for the chance of dining with Hoffman. “J’ai une bonne idée.”
Am glad Mrs. Jackson is better. She certainly has had a time of it! I trust Papa is entirely recovered now as you wrote that he was all well his but for the soreness in this throat. I think it would be a fine thing if he could take a leave and get away for a little while. Thank you very much for all the things you sent me. I appreciate you’ve thought of me greatly. Am wondering when I’d better start home. When do you think? I want to go home and I want to work, too. From the standpoint of work this is the best year I’ve put in in many years. I’m putting in more hours and pulling ahead steadily. Wish I could work there. “I wish I were dead, this is such an awful world and sleeping when you’d rather be working.” I’m not quite that enthusiastic but I like to work in the new class. Everybody takes on a new lease of life in it. Well, time to close.
Love to all.
From,
Bertha