O' Artful Death - By Sarah Stewart Taylor Page 0,67

Thanks, Marlise. This shouldn’t take too long.”

Sweeney opened the box, conscious that she’d have to hurry. The first item was a copy of a letter from Piers Benton to the trustees of the University libraries dated April sixth, 1963. It stated that he was donating his mother’s personal papers to the University and went on to say that she would have been happy to know that future students had access to them.

Next was a stack of photographs. Sweeney leafed through them quickly, noting familiar faces: Morgan, Gilmartin and some of the others. She would get to them later. Right now, she was impatient to see what the journals offered up, so she put the pictures aside and took the first leather book from the pile of ten or twelve similar volumes.

It appeared that Myra Benton had begun keeping her journal in 1886 as an art student in Philadelphia. Sweeney read carefully, enjoying the developing writing style of the obviously intelligent young woman, but growing impatient with her verbosity.

Finally.

June 10, 1888. We arrived into the Suffolk train station at about 9 o’clock, having slept well overnight despite the incessant ramblings of a fellow passenger who I suspected had been at the sherry most of the evening. I awakened at 7, when the sun shone through the sleeper car window and on to my berth and when I raised the shade, I saw outside the great form of the Green River and looking into its seafoam depths, I could see from whence the name had come. Beyond were hills as green as England and little farms where cattle dotted the fields. Mrs. Morgan rapped on my door before I was done dressing and when I told her I would be there in a moment, she snapped that she had been up for two hours already and that if I was going to learn to be useful in Byzantium, I would learn to rise earlier, the way the country people did. She is a terrible woman and no one at the Academy thinks she is the equal of her husband.

As to her dear husband, he was there when we pulled into the station and kissed me once on each cheek in the European style when I got off the train. When he tried to kiss her, his own wife, she told him it had been a long journey and that it was his fault for insisting she travel with me.

There is so much to tell, I hardly know where to begin! We drove in a smart carriage through Suffolk, a bustling little town where there are a great many factories and shops that turn out all manner of engines and machines. Dearest Bryn told me that I ought to come with him some day and see the women at work in the factories. He said it is quite amazing and that they work very hard and make their own money. We followed the river out of Suffolk and started for Byzantium. All along the way, field turned to forest and then to field again, the green pastures dotted with wildflowers and lilacs. A very sad-eyed creature, standing in the road, forced us to stop so as not to hit it and I recognized it as a milk cow, which Bryn said I would see lots of in Vermont and I had an idea for a piece featuring a milk maid, sitting by her cow. Bryn said there were lots of local girls who were willing to pose for the artists.

The house is heavenly, a white palace covered with climbing vines and Mrs. Morgan’s famous gardens all around. They really are beautiful, sculpted out of the land, the pink and blue and red and yellow spots of color like a French painting. Bryn took me to the studio and showed me what I am to do. He said he was glad to see me and that he thinks I will enjoy Byzantium, then took me back to the house to meet Mr. Gilmartin, the painter, who is only just out of the Academy and very handsome and looks at one as though he could see right through your skin and bones and clothes. He and his wife have only recently built a house over on The Island. I also met the Morgan girls, Gwenda and Martha, who are cunning and bright, with mischievous spirits. I think we will be great friends.

My room is on the third floor, next to the servants, which doesn’t bother