Jervis McEntee Diaries

Tuesday June 1, 1880

Jervis McEntee Diary Entry, June 1, 1880, from the Jervis McEntee papers, 1850-1905, in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

Tuesday, June 1, 1880 I went over to the cemetery directly after breakfast. The flowers Sara and I placed there yesterday were still fresh on dear Gertrudes grave. I walked about and looked at some of the graves of soldiers and others which had been decorated yesterday. Faded flowers lay in the paths and many of the dead at least had not been forgotten. Many had no one to think of laying flowers on their graves. Afterwards I went and walked on the Common and I recalled a letter of darling Gertrudes in which she and Sara had come across the Common on their way from Mr. Burgesses and she was thinking of me, and lamenting my absence "and I know just how I should feel were I to go there one of these days and you were gone forever. I so often think of it, but then I think it more than likely that you will be the one left." Dear loving heart. She could not have felt what I felt there alone, in this place hallowed by her loving thoughts of me. The laurel was in bloom and I gathered a great bunch of it and went back to the cemetery on my way home and placed it above her head. Then I came home and went to my studio and tried to make a design for Mr. Chickerings picture but did not succeed very well. Presently there was a knock at my door and a telegraph boy came in with a dispatch from Edward Brown to the effect that Mr. George Peabody Russell had made an offer of $650 for my picture "The Edge of a Wood". I answered "to accept" and am glad to get even that for it. This is without the frame. Had a short note from Eastman saying he had been ill. A letter from my father who is at Westernville and enjoying his visit. Raining again tonight. Henry cut the grass and trimmed the hedge on my place today.

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