The Anatomy of Deception - Lawrence Goldstone [142]
After Dr. Osler left for England in 1905, Mary Elizabeth Garrett, Hopkins’ major benefactor, commissioned a group portrait of Osler, Halsted, Welch, and the gynecologist Howard Kelly, to be called “The Four Doctors.” For this task, she engaged not Thomas Eakins, but the expatriate American John Singer Sargent. Only Dr. Osler lived in London, where Sargent’s studio was located, so the other three crossed the Atlantic to sit. During the process, Sargent found Halsted so unpleasant and overbearing that he was rumored to have painted his image so that it would fade over time.
Neither Abigail Benedict nor her brother ever returned to America. Albert died in a traffic accident, run down by a carriage in Zagreb in 1892. The driver was never apprehended. After her father’s return to America later that year, Abigail lived in London for a time, then in Florence. In 1895, she married a French count twenty years her senior. The couple, childless, spent much of their time traveling about in Europe and Asia. When Abigail’s husband died of esophageal cancer, Abigail retired to his ancestral home near Avignon, where she lived as a recluse until her own death last year. As far as I could learn, she never exhibited any paintings. I was saddened at her death, but more at what seemed to be a lonely and unfulfilled life.
Thomas Eakins remained at his home on Mount Vernon Street until he died there in 1916. Although the Pre-Raphaelites he despised slipped from public acclaim, Impressionists did not. Art continued to retreat from realism and, with the rise of abstractionists like Picasso, Eakins saw his reputation wane even further. After the Lachtmann affair, Eakins devoted himself almost entirely to portraiture. He could not hide his bitterness, however, and his subjects were almost always rendered in an unflattering light, often as much older than they were. In desperation, he even attempted to incorporate some of the modernists’ techniques into his later paintings, but was nonetheless no more than a footnote in American art at his death. Susan Eakins still lives in Philadelphia, an indefatigable champion of her husband’s work. Whatever Eakins’ faults, I can only hope that one day his great talent will finally be appreciated by a nation that has spurned him.
Mary Simpson never married. The Croskey Street Settlement House thrived and became the model for similar institutions. During a speaking engagement in 1912, Mary was approached by a woman who claimed to admire her work greatly, and sought to create even more progressive enterprises for women. That woman’s name was Margaret Sanger. I corresponded with Mary from time to time, and I hoped that we would always think of each other as friends. She died peacefully of congestive heart failure four years ago, surrounded by friends and admirers. I can only hope that when it is my time, I will be so fortunate.
Haggens, despite both his style of life and his heart condition, lived for another twenty years, although Mike was shot to death in front of The Fatted Calf not six months after I left Philadelphia. Sergeant Borst was indeed promoted, eventually to captain, and he was a mainstay of the Philadelphia police department until his retirement in 1915. As far as I know, he still lives in the city. Jonas Lachtmann returned to California, where he had gotten his start, just after the turn of the century. I was more than a bit anxious when I learned that we lived in such proximity, but Lachtmann was never the same man after 1889, and he preferred to ignore me than revisit the tragedy