The Sculptress

by V.S. Alexander

Genres: War & Military

Synopsis

From acclaimed author V.S. Alexander comes an absorbing, immersive novel set during World War I, as a talented and ambitious artist finds an unusual calling.
May 1917 The elegant streets of Boston are thousands of miles away from the carnage of the Western Front. Yet even here, amid the clatter of horse-drawn carriages and automobiles, it is impossible to ignore the war raging across Europe. Emma Lewis Swan's husband, Tom, has gone to France, eager to do his duty as a surgeon. Emma, a sculptress, has stayed behind, pursuing her art despite being dismissed by male critics. On the bustling sidewalk she spies a returned soldier. His brutally scarred face inspires first pity, and then something more--a determination to use her skill to make masks for disfigured soldiers. Leaving Boston for France also means leaving behind Linton Bower, a fiery, gifted artist determined to win her. Emma's union with Tom has been steady yet passionless, marred by guilt over a choice she made long ago. In Paris, she crafts intricate, lifelike masks to restore these wounded men to the world. But in the course of her new career she will encounter one man who compels her to confront the secret she's never revealed, not even to Tom. Only by casting off the façade she has worn for so long can she pursue a path through heartbreak and turmoil toward her own unexpected future…
Praise for the author: "Alexander brings his signature commitment to historical accuracy to The Traitor, immersing readers in the intrigue of the resistance. Fans of Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See and Alex Rosenberg's The Girl from Krakow will fall under the spell of this powerfully moving novel." BOOKLIST

Release date: February 23, 2021

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 402

Sample

He was forbidden and Emma Lewis knew it.

They met by chance on summer vacation, before a horseback riding expedition in the wooded hills near Bennington, Vermont. He was the cousin of a friend; she the daughter of an upper-middle-class merchant turned gentleman farmer in the mountains of western Massachusetts.

Kurt Larsen appealed to the sense of the wicked in her, the expectant thrill of some primal taboo not yet fully realized. She thought him “darkly romantic,” a phrase borrowed from her “classics” reading as she told her friends that evening, although he was tall, fair, and blond. Emma, only two months past her fifteenth birthday, was eager for new experiences and willing to take her place among friends who knew more about the world than she. Two glorious weeks on the farm with three girlfriends—two from Boston, and Charlene from the Vermont farmhouse—plus the visiting male cousin, who settled in a few days after the young women had arrived.

“My handsome cousin,” Charlene said, as Kurt strode into the kitchen when the young women were finishing breakfast.

He wore jodhpurs, polished black boots, and a loose, white summer shirt. A cotton rucksack, sporting a tartan plaid, was strapped across his back. He flipped it easily from his shoulders before settling into a vacant chair.

Charlene flicked her red hair from her shoulders and paid little attention to him, as the others, including Emma, making eyes and stealing looks, swooned over him like a Greek god—one pictured from the descriptions in her studies. By her standards, Kurt was new and fascinating, more grown up than the provincial boys she knew who lived near her farm outside Lee. None courted her—her mother wouldn’t allow such activity yet—those boys were friends, only school chums.

Jane and Patsy, the two friends from the city, who might have been sisters they looked so much alike with their tied-back brown hair and pert noses, tried every manner of small talk to capture Kurt’s attention. They asked his age, where he went to school, where he lived, and the most important question, did he have a sweetheart? Kurt answered their questions in professorial style: Seventeen; his father wanted him to attend law school after college, preferably Harvard; he was from Swampscott, a resort town north of Boston; and, no, he had no sweetheart. What young man looking to further himself, with long, preparatory years of schooling ahead, could afford a serious attachment to a girl? When he said this, he looked straight into Emma’s eyes with an icy determination that frightened her, yet somehow left her awed by the strength of his character. She had never seen such mature resolve in a boy.

The girls noticed Kurt’s attention to Emma and teased her: “Emma has a new beau,” Jane said with a flirtatious grin.

“What color is your hair, Emma?” Patsy asked, with a look of nonchalance. “Dark brown or black?”

“It depends on the light,” Emma answered, her cheeks reddening. She had no use for such childish foolishness.

Shortly before noon, the five riders set out from the farmhouse with a picnic lunch. The sun had risen above the peaks, flashing between the billowing white clouds, showering golden light upon the whitewashed house nestled against the hill. The wind murmured in the pines. The sunlight, when wrested from the forest shade, warmed their backs, a perfect day for riding.

Emma, attired in her own riding clothes, noted that Kurt had no trouble with his horse, another point in his favor as far as she was concerned. He sat erect, attentive, and confident on the gelding. She was his match as an equestrian, having ridden for years on the horses that her father raised, but at one point Kurt took the reins of her chestnut mare and led the animal down the trail, past the swiftly flowing expanse of a greenish-brown river, into a valley filled with pines, maples, hackberry, and the misty veil of a waterfall. They stopped by the water and the horses drank.

“Go ahead, we’ll catch up,” Kurt urged the other girls as he jumped easily from his horse and offered his hand to Emma, although she needed no help with her dismount.

“There’s a cleared area about a quarter of a mile ahead,” Charlene said somewhat testily from her saddle. “Don’t be late for lunch.” Jane and Patsy pursed their lips and passed by, as Emma watched with muted amusement.

As she and Kurt stood by the river, the water gurgling over moss-covered rocks, he touched her hand.

The sense of his fingers upon her skin shocked Emma more than she could have imagined, never having felt anything like it before—at once fascinating and astonishing—an electric thrill racing up her arm straight to her heart.

She understood innately from the pounding in her chest, the rush of blood to her face, that Kurt’s innocent touch might lead her elsewhere eventually—somewhere that her mother and father, in their disapproval, would never allow—that she, in this ecstatic moment, might have opened her own Pandora’s box. Something flowered inside her, like a crocus poking through the snow, as urges yet unleashed signaled that the world of men would never be the same.

“Don’t pay attention to my cousin or those other girls,” he said. “Your hair is beautiful. I’d say it’s black, but with shades of red when you step into the light—almost the color of your cheeks when you blush.”

His fingers, like a satin glove, brushed up her arm toward her shoulder. A surge of nervous excitement blossomed inside her, setting her limbs trembling and her mind hurtling, urging Kurt onward with his exploration, perhaps to her breasts. However, not to be ignored, her mother’s voice popped into her head like a protective saint, admonishing her to stop the fiend’s hand.

“No,” she said, brushing his arm away. “I don’t want to disappoint Charlene—she has planned a perfect picnic.” It was the only excuse she could think of.

“You’re young aren’t you?” He took the reins of his horse and led it from the water.

“I’m fifteen,” she said, assured that she was a woman enough.

“Oh, but by the grace of God! Saved by the mouth of innocent truth.” He mounted his horse and left her standing by the river.

Her heart sank and she wondered if she had done something wrong by not letting him continue his exploration. Was it so bad to be close to a boy, perhaps intimate? The feelings of warmth and tenderness flowing through her body had been wonderful. Had she read the same in him, or had she been fooled?

At the picnic, on a blanket spread upon the lush summer grass, he avoided her and spent his time teasing Jane and Patsy, winking at them, laughing at their trivial jokes, stroking their uncovered arms warmed by the sun.

At one point, Charlene snatched a gold-banded ruby ring from Kurt’s finger and slid it over the fourth on her left hand. “Look,” she said, her eyes wide, her pouty mouth screwed up in haughty victory. “I’m married to my cousin. Isn’t that the way it used to be in the old days . . . marrying your cousin?”

“That’s disgusting,” Jane said. “Give him back his ring.”

Kurt lay back on the blanket, his slender form ablaze like white heat in the sunlight, a smile poised on his lips. “Oh, she’ll give it back or pay dearly for it, won’t you, cousin?”

Laughing, Charlene ripped the ring from her finger and flung it at Kurt. It bounced off his chest and landed near his neck. He lifted the gold band, positioning the ruby toward the sun, where it flashed crimson in the brightness.

His attention to her friends brought out a feeling in Emma— jealousy—one she had read about and pondered, but never experienced on this level; but, there was a new, deeper, darker, feeling that she couldn’t shake as Kurt left the farm the next day.

She could have sworn that it was love, but somehow it had twisted into something heated and full of longing, as if she couldn’t live without him; and, there would be no life in her lonely body if he deserted her.

Several days later, after bathing at home in tepid water in the washroom’s stone tub, Emma gathered her pad and charcoal pencil in her bedroom, much as she had done since her father had presented her with drawing materials when she was six years old. She sketched Kurt’s form lovingly, the curve of the jodhpurs on his legs, the breadth of his chest, the lean muscles of his arms. The face was another matter: the forehead arched too high, the nose was too thick, the lips too sweet. She noted her trouble with faces, and in Kurt’s case, after his departure, she could only admire and hope to recreate the memory.

“Emma, sit up straight. Pay attention to your posture. It’s not attractive for a young woman to slouch.”

Emma picked at the peas on her plate with her fork. Sunday lunches—the large meal of the day after church—could be torture. “I’m not slouching, Mother. I simply bent over to get to my peas.”

“Your mother is right, Emma,” her father said. “Posture is everything . . . appearance and presentation, my dear.”

It had been two months since she’d met Kurt in Vermont, and she could think of nothing else but the lean young man who occupied her dreams. School’s coming, the end of the New England summer, Sunday mornings at the red sandstone Episcopal Church, meant nothing to her, as did the few other boys who filled her days.

Her father had purchased the farm near Lee, south of Pittsfield, when Emma was five. A neighbor in Boston had teased her about the move to the country, saying, “The Indians will get you if you don’t watch out,” and for weeks she feared being alone in the vast, empty yard, or sleeping with the windows open in her second-floor bedroom.

Her mother, Helen, ate her lunch in mannered movements while stretching as little as possible, arms moving like a mechanized toy. She hadn’t changed after church, still wearing the somber black dress accented by a high satin neck that wrapped almost to her chin. The only accessories she allowed herself were a gray sash that fell from her waist along the length of the gown to her calves and a diamond-cluster stickpin attached to the bodice for the utilitarian use of holding down her hat.

Her father, George, ate in a more relaxed manner in his brown suit, shirt with rounded collars, and striped bow tie; but, much to Emma’s irritation, he bowed to Helen’s wishes and parroted her feelings except, it seemed, in one past instance: the decision to move from Boston to the fifty-year-old farmhouse near Lee. That came about from the sale of the Lewis Tea Company, which he had inherited fifteen years earlier from his father. When it came to buying the property he had not succumbed to his wife’s pleas or tears. “I’m finished with Boston,” he told her. “I want to raise horses and live a life unfettered by crowds and worries. In Lee, we can think—we can be ourselves.”

Helen rang the small silver bell beside her. Matilda, a middle-aged domestic from Lee who cooked and cleaned for the family on weekends, hurried to the table. In the still spry but prematurely gray-haired Matilda, Emma found an ally—a woman, it seemed, who appreciated mistakes, the follies, joys, and fullness of life.

“Please clear the table, Matilda,” her mother ordered. “We have an appointment this afternoon we must meet.”

“I’m not through with my dessert,” her father said with a bite of wild-blueberry pie rolling in his mouth.

Helen shook her head. “You know better than to talk with your mouth full. Hurry up . . . we mustn’t keep Mr. French waiting.”

Emma placed her fork on her plate and looked toward the open dining room window. The day, even though it was late August, had the look of fall. A dense overcast had rolled in from the west, covering the hilltops and coating the still-green grass with a layer of mist. The early morning breeze had dissipated, and the curtains lay limp with humidity against the white window frames. Charis, the Lewises’ tabby cat, had squeezed between the sheers and the screen, appearing as a diaphanous shadow as he surveyed the side yard for mice and squirrels.

Emma was in no mood for an afternoon trip, or company, especially a visit to Mr. French, a man she didn’t know. “Must I go? I have reading to do for the upcoming year.” She had no intention of studying; in fact, she was screwing up her courage to write a letter to Kurt after receiving his address from Charlene.

“Of course, you must go.” Her mother placed her folded hands on the table and stiffened her back. “One does not refuse an offer from Mr. Daniel Chester French, the great sculptor.”

“Who?” Emma asked.

Matilda winked at her from the other side of the table and nodded as if to say, pay attention to your mother.

“The world-renowned sculptor of the American patriot of Concord, the man who honored John Harvard at his own college, the artist who has brought so many famous faces of the past to life.”

“What an honor,” Matilda said, continuing her almost private discourse with Emma. “I think a young lady would be thrilled to meet such a famous man.”

Helen sniffed and said, “Quite right, Matilda. You do have a good head on your shoulders.”

George finished his pie and set the plate aside so Matilda could take it away. “Allow me to attend to myself and the carriage horses.”

Following Helen’s lead, they all rose from the table.

As Emma started for the stairs to get her hat, Matilda whispered, “Mr. French’s a famous man, known about these parts for years. Maybe you’ll learn something.”

“What can I learn?” Emma replied. “I’d rather stay home. Mother’s always been attracted to money and fame.”

“Shoo. It’ll be good for you to get out of the house and stop pining over that boy. It’s not healthy . . . you’ll find out when you get older.”

“All right,” she said, ascending the stairs, but her mind was far away from Mr. Daniel Chester French.

Secretly, her father had encouraged Emma to draw when she had displayed an early interest; not so her mother, who found a woman’s artistic desires to be distasteful. “One can never attract a worthwhile husband through such pursuits,” she had admonished George one time with Emma within earshot.

However, Emma’s practice of drawing, at first relegated to the barn, allowed her to go inside herself, to lose track of time, to fill the vacant hours in her room with something that amounted to fulfillment. Drawing gave her pleasure. She stashed finished sketches under her bed where her mother would never condescend to look, leaving Matilda to find them and compliment her on her talent.

“You mustn’t tell Mother,” she told the housekeeper. “It will be a secret between us.” Matilda was more than willing to keep secrets as long as no one, most of all Emma, was harmed.

The dense clouds still hovered over them by the time they boarded the carriage shortly after one in the afternoon. Their legs covered by a wool blanket to stave off the damp, Emma and her mother sat in back while George took the reins in front. On the hour trip to the French home, they passed hills clothed in green, stony blue lakes, and tilled fields.

Emma grew more excited as they neared their destination, thinking that perhaps Matilda was right—meeting such a famous man might be an honor—and that the experience of a new artistic form awaited her. They arrived at the imposing stucco residence to find the sculptor waiting for them in the lane behind his home.

“I’ve never seen so many windows in a house,” Emma whispered to her mother. “It’s very grand.”

“Don’t be gauche,” her mother shot back. “You’ve seen plenty of magnificent homes in Boston. Remember your breeding.”

The horses whinnied to a stop and George jumped down from the carriage to shake Mr. French’s hand.

Emma studied the sculptor’s face as if she would sketch it. What struck her most about Daniel Chester French was his affability, a kindness she gathered from his countenance despite his preference to keep his lips distant from a smile, as if some spiritual level of artistic seriousness guided his consciousness. He was balding, with the hirsute remains of his youth covering only the sides of his head, along with a few wispy strands crossing his pate; a full, brushy mustache streaked with gray covered his upper lip to his nose; the eyes were cleanly set, dark and reflective; the ears large with pronounced lobes. He wore a gray jacket and pants and a high-collared white shirt fastened with a striped bow tie.

“Welcome to Chesterwood,” Emma heard the sculptor say above the chatter of introductions.

George opened the carriage door, releasing the footsteps, and assisted his wife from the vehicle. Emma followed, holding on to her hat, as she descended the steps.

“A pleasure to meet you at last,” her mother said as the sculptor extended his hand. “Thank you so much for your invitation to tea.”

“I’ve always been fond of Lewis Tea,” he said, “so when the occasion arose that we might meet, I had no hesitation.” He paused and pointed to a large building not far from the house. “My studio. We often entertain visitors there, on the porch; unfortunately, on days like today we must keep inside.... I’m sorry my wife won’t be able to join us, but I’m afraid the damp weather has brought on a summer head cold. She conveys her regrets.”

The luster in Helen’s eyes faded a bit at the news. “I was so looking forward to meeting her . . . perhaps another time.”

“Of course. I’m sure there will be other opportunities.”

He led them across the spacious yard and through the tall studio doors into a room that towered over Emma’s head. Never had she seen such grand space, such sculpture in abundance: plaster casts, bronze works, animals greater than life-size, cupids, marble busts, mythological figures, all on display before her eager eyes. An ecstatic excitement buzzed inside her; she wanted to shout. How wonderful it must be to bring the lifeless materials of bronze and marble to life, a kind of divine magic akin to birth!

The sculptor noticed the look of wonder in Emma’s gaze and leaned toward her. “After tea, I want you to do something for me.”

Helen’s eyes widened, while Emma’s heart beat fast in anticipation of the mysterious request from the great man.

He led them to a room at the north end of the studio. They sat in Chippendale chairs at a table near the marble fireplace and drank Lewis Tea and ate iced cake and vanilla cookies. The conversation veered from her father’s history with the company, to their purchase of the Lee homestead, to her mother’s activities as a wife and homemaker.

“I would like to do more for the church,” her mother told the sculptor.

Emma suppressed a smirk, for her mother had never once indicated a liking for the church members, their groups, or their activities. Helen was content to sit at home and think of things for George to do while complaining about the lack of conveniences since leaving the city, the paucity of cultural life, and the absence of any intelligent friends.

The sculptor appeared to pick up on the meaning beneath her mother’s words. “We often get wrapped up in our own lives.” He turned to Emma. “I hear you’re good with a pen, young lady. That was one of the reasons I invited your family here.”

Her mother flinched and her father stiffened in his chair.

“Wherever did you hear that?” Helen asked.

“News travels in the Berkshires like lightning on a stormy day,” he replied.

Emma knew there could be but one answer. Matilda.

George’s cheeks puffed out, his face blanching with the exposure of his secret encouragement.

“I’d like you to draw for me,” the sculptor said. “I urge young people to learn about art. I sometimes teach . . . and if you display talent, you might study with me.”

Her mother stopped in mid-sip and put her teacup down. “I’m sure Emma has no such interest, Mr. French, although it would be a great honor to study with you.”

“We should let the artist decide,” the sculptor said, his eyes alighting on Emma.

Her father nodded.

Helen tilted her head in defiance. “George, really . . . Emma is much too young—”

“Never too young to learn,” the sculptor said and turned to her. “Are you interested in sculpture?”

Emma looked down at her teacup, then at her mother, and, finally, at her father. “I’ve seen statues before, but, until today I didn’t know how beautiful they could be. I’d like to learn.”

“Will you favor me with a drawing? I have a sketch pad and pencil in the casting room. Let your parents enjoy their tea.”

Emma heard the hurried whisperings of her mother directed at her father as she got up from her chair. The sculptor took her hand and they walked to a large wooden table near the studio doors.

“Look around, decide what interests you, let your muse run free.” He turned in a broad circle, and she followed him, taking in the sculptures around her. “Sit or stand, do as you wish, but pick the subject and let it fill you. Create.” He pointed to the pad and charcoal on the table. “Let art become part of you.”

Emma drew in a breath—being here was like being in Alice’s Wonderland—and, at last, someone—someone of note—appreciated her for who she was. She picked up the pencil, the wooden shaft shaking in her hands, and sat at the table.

“Don’t be nervous,” he said. “If you’d like, I’ll return to your parents. It seems your mother may need some calming down. Give me a quick impression in twenty minutes. We can go into the fine details later.”

As the sculptor returned to her parents, the marble bust of a man, a soldier wearing a helmet, caught her eye. French positioned his chair to sit again, its legs scraping against the floor, the conversation beginning anew.

The face reminded her of the drawing in her classics book of Perseus holding the severed head of Medusa.

The helmet flowed easily from her hand, the charcoal outlining the curved form swelling in pleasing lines around the face. She sketched quickly, finishing a rough likeness of the head, as well as the addition of a body defined by muscular biceps, abdomen, and legs. The figure was nude, but, except for the head, turned to the side to conceal any features that might be embarrassing to her parents.

The minutes evaporated, and she looked up from the pad to see the sculptor studying her from across the room. Her mother and father stared at each other across the table.

She went back to the face, but no matter how hard she tried, it looked nothing like the bust. The nose lacked the delicacy of the sculpture; the eyes, though rather lifeless in white marble, had even less vitality on the page than on the form. The chin was too angular and displayed none of the smoothness of the bust. Even she could see this as she trudged back to the table. She glanced at one of the shelves crammed with plaster figures and sketches. There, on top, was the nude figure of a woman, and angled beneath it, the nude form of a man. Her mother would have turned her eyes away and offered recriminations at the sight of both drawings, but Emma found them pleasing, particularly the man, whose frontal figure displayed every part of his anatomy. She thought of Kurt and wondered what it would be like to draw him.

“Let’s see what you’ve created.” His lips parted in a half smile. He was sitting like a judge at the end of the table.

She handed the pad to him, only its back visible to her mother’s inquisitive eyes, and waited for his pronouncement about her effort. Emma shuffled her feet, until Helen shot her a look that shouted, “Sit down.”

The sculptor took his time, and after a few minutes of intense study, placed her drawing faceup on the table. Her mother squinted at the form, closed her eyes, and leaned back in her chair. Her father seemed interested, but subdued, in what she had created.

“Very nice . . . respectable work. . . .” He lifted the pad between his hands and showed it to her parents. Shaking her head, Helen looked away.

“I don’t mean to distress you, Mrs. Lewis, but the human body is the bread and butter of the artist . . . unless you’re a master of landscapes only, like the French of late. But, even then, you can’t be a true artist unless you understand the form, which the French have already demonstrated.”

“I find it perverse,” Helen whispered, her gaze still turned from the pad.

“Mother?” Emma pleaded. “Did you hear what Mr. French said?”

Helen nodded. “I don’t want to speak of it.”

“Do you think my sculpture perverse, Mrs. Lewis? Look around you. You’ll see the naked breast of womanhood, the unadorned form of man.”

Her mother pursed her lips and stared at her husband. Emma feared that the worst was to come, perhaps in the carriage ride home.

“Your daughter has raw talent,” the sculptor said to her father. “If you agree, she could study with me over the next two summers before she goes off to higher studies. The preparation would do her good. Would you like that, Emma?”

She looked at her immobile mother and, seeing nothing but resistance, nodded. “I’ve never attempted sculpture, but I’d like to try . . . if you feel I’m good enough.”

“Of course. The work will be hard, but worth your while. Over the winter, continue with your sketching, but begin to think in three-dimensional terms, not only on paper, but in space—in your mind.” He looked again at the drawing. “The body is fine, but we have some work to do with the face. Do you agree?”

“Yes. Faces seem to be my weakness.”

“When you’re done here, you’ll have no weaknesses.” He rose from his chair. “Let’s have a tour of the garden before you depart. It’s lovely in any kind of weather.”

Emma got up, her legs wobbling with excitement from the news. She would be studying with one of the country’s best sculptors. She couldn’t wait to tell Charlene—and Kurt.

Her mother rose stiffly from her chair and followed the sculptor while Emma and her father walked behind. As they left the studio, she and her father exchanged a look that meant they both understood the trouble ahead. George smiled as if to say, “We’ll get through this,” and proceeded to his wife, who brushed him away with her arm.

The carriage ride home was as frosty as the chill that had crept into the air.

Nothing was said that night, but a silent, ever-building tension between her parents grew with each passing day until the living room exploded when Matilda left for the evening the following Sunday.

Emma had never heard an argument like it, and the heated and hateful words exchanged downstairs left her shivering and crying in bed, afraid that she had created a terrible and unalterable rift between her parents. Even after pulling a pillow over her head she heard shouted snippets of the conversation:

“How could you encourage her?” her mother railed.

“Emma’s talent is art—she should be encouraged!”

“Art is fine for men of means—not women . . . a girl working as a sculptress?”

“You would doom her to a life of servitude in the kitchen?”

“Better that than a life of poverty with miscreants.”

The argument burst not with a bang, but with an unendurable silence that left the house cold and hushed as if the lonely meanderings afterward were sounds created by melancholy ghosts. Her father moved into what had been a guest room, leaving Helen alone in the marital bedroom that had been theirs since they’d moved in. In the following weeks, cold greetings were exchanged between them, even extending to Emma, while her father took refuge in his own sad counsel. A separate living arrangement might linger until spring, Emma believed, when the land, and possibly hearts, thawed. In her loneliness, she wrote several letters to Kurt—none of which were answered.

Daniel Chester French sent periodic letters to her parents throughout the winter encouraging Emma’s studies. At first, Helen ignored them until an invitation to meet another well-known neighbor in Lenox, Edith Wharton, was issued by the sculptor. The chance to meet the writer of The House of Mirth was too much for her mother to brush aside. Helen spent many days in Wharton’s company in the spring and also in the months when the novelist wasn’t traveling abroad. Their unexpected friendship seemed to usher in the long-awaited reconciliation between her parents Emma had hoped for.

“She seems so sad for a talented woman,” Helen told them one night at the dinner table. “Both she and her husband . . . no married couple should suffer so.” She reached out her hand and for the first time in months touched her husband’s arm and the next evening they reconciled, moving again into the same bedroom.

Throughout the summer, Emma rode her horse three times a week to Chesterwood to receive instruction. As the sculptor worked on plans for his outdoor statuary, he looked over Emma’s shoulder and critiqued her work with the modeling clay, noting her innate ability to create the form, but fail in the details. She created maquettes of clay and plaster, and even learned techniques for carving marble under French’s guidance. Emma learned to love the process of bringing an idea, a drawing, to full form, and marveled at the process of creation.

Although thoughts of Kurt lessened during her tutelage, he was never far from her mind, especially after receiving an invitation in the autumn from Charlene to spend time between Christmas and New Year’s at the Vermont f