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Contest Winner Announced
Wendy Erich
Frederick, Maryland
The Sargent Letter:
Dear Miss (unknown)
It is most kind of you to ask me to meet Mrs. Wister and I hope to be able to get
away from another engagement in time to present myself - if I do not turn up by
five or so it will mean that I have not found it possible - Her son is an old friend
of mine who has distinguished himself greatly in a literary way of late years -
he was very ill not long ago, but has quite recovered, I hear. In case I should
not be able to come please give her my very best regards.
This evening I got a note from my mother who has safely arrived in Paris after that
long jaunt to the Holy Land, and expects to arrive on Saturday.
Yours sincerely,
John S. Sargent
Wendy Erich is a former flight attendant who
left the airlines in 1984 to become a full time mother of two and active volunteer.
After ten moves with her husband's former job (British Airways), she pursued her
lifelong interest in paintings and art history at age fifty by getting an MA in
Fine and Decorative Art from Sotheby's Institute of Art London in 2006. Her undergraduate
degree is from the University of Denver in English Literature, with minors in Art
History and Italian.
Currently an empty nester in Frederick Maryland, Wendy has completed an article
on Benjamin Franklin's role in the production of transferprinted china with a
grant award from the Transferware Collector's Club. Wendy is married to one husband,
Dave, for 27 years; they have a daughter Katie (UConn '05), and a son Scott (Gettysburg
College '10).
Wendy's Statement
I stumbled on the Sargent Letter contest while researching an unidentified Robert
Bruce Williams portrait purchased from a Maryland antique shop. Always intrigued
by a contest, and having recently spent time reading the 18th century correspondence
of Benjamin Franklin for my essay, I became engrossed and consumed by J.S. Sargent's
challenging cryptic writing.
How I unearthed the Wister name:
Once I felt confident that the name "Owen" was within the text, I looked
for clues in the letter to diagnose his identity: Owen's mother's name began with
a "W….", Owen was a distinguished writer, he had been ill, and
obviously a contemporary of John Sargent.
I knew of the writer Owen Wister, the Pennsylvania author of The Virginian,
and clearly the mother's name fit (note: an English Lit major carries around lots
of useless information!). The Wister family name was vaguely known to me from recent
research I had done on Benjamin Franklin (Franklin was friends with James Logan,
whose ancestral home Stenton - near present day LaSalle - was nearby the Wister
home); also, my personal genealogical descent is from Philadelphia Quakers in the
Germantown area, where I was again vaguely familiar with the Wister surname.
Still guessing, I 'Googled' Owen Wister on Wikipedia to find his mother's name
(Sarah Butler Wister) then continued searching until I came upon the LaSalle University's
excellent website on the history of the Wister family (The Remarkable Wisters
at Belfield), which became interesting reading in itself. Owen Wister's cousin,
Ella Wister Haines, and I share a family Philadelphia Quaker name of Haines. Owen's
mother Sarah was the daughter of a celebrity, Fanny Kemble, and was 'squired around
Paris' by none other than Henry James, which would easily place the mysterious
"Mrs W --" of the Sargent letter in the late 19th /early 20th century
social scene in London. The article mentions that Owen had nervous difficulties,
and was a good friend of one John Singer Sargent subject, Teddy Roosevelt. Another
LaSalle article on Owen's wife, Mary Channing Wister: An Unknown Legend, states
that Owen was ill for most of 1909, which clearly fit into Sargent's description
of someone who was "very ill not long ago, but has since recovered".
Next I Googled around to establish a time frame of when Sargent was living at
31 Tite Street with Owen Wister's details, and the dates worked (according to
JSSgallery.org, the address became 31 Tite Street in 1900). An interesting and
confirming clue was reading online that Owen Wister had a role in hiring a portrait
artist for his cousin, Silas Weir Mitchell (information obtained from the Schwartz
Gallery of Philadelphia website). The pieces of the puzzle all seemed to fit,
and the letter made sense!
P.S. Disclaimer: Although I do tend to trust ".edu" websites, I would
not recommend Google-research for anything other than the fun purposes of an online
contest. However, if you are interested in documenting authentic research on this
subject, I would love to write it.
wendy.erich@gmail.com |
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