International studio (48.1913)

The Late Francis Davis Millet

our Western plains. Drawn by six wiry horses,
trotting in a white cloud of alkali dust, it pursues
its perilous way, guarded by a plainsman, sitting
at porte armes on a seat above the driver. Nor
would the painter have shown an imaginary stage-
coach.
One may be safely assured that this is a
faithful representation of some actual relic of the
days when Pacific coast mail took this picturesque
and danger-fraught route across the plains.
In Arabia the shambling camel swings over the
burning sands, guided by a white-robed native
perched on his oddly fashioned saddle, behind
which is slung the parcel containing the letters.
In North China the carrier, peacefully drawing at
a pipe, as accords with his placid race, trudges
along afoot, behind his mail-laden donkey, and in
the background the great wall of China may be
seen girdling the distant hills. In West Africa the
slow and lumbering bullock, and in Alaska the dog
team—to each country its every peculiarity of
method, costume and scenery. The Alaskan
panel is one of the finest of the series, the five pair
of “huskies,” tailing out on their long harness,
being a splendid piece of animal painting. The
immense amount of careful research required for
the conscientious painting of this series can only
be imagined. We look at a picture such as the
dog team, and we know that it is a dog team. If
it were not before us, and we were required to
make an accurate drawing of the exact sort of
harness used for the dogs, we might begin to
realize, in part, the gleanings from the four quar-
ters of the globe that went into Millet’s great
“letter-carrying” series in the postmaster’s suite
in the Cleveland post-office.

From his wide travels, his keen observation and
brilliant mind, Millet was recognized as a compe-
tent and weighty critic of painting, architecture
and sculpture, and his sympathetic and ever alert
nature made him always ready to offer his services
in this capacity whenever any of his many friends
called upon him to do so.
During the later years of his life he traveled and
lived much abroad, becoming “a citizen of the
world,” equally at home in London, Rome,
Vienna or back in New York or Washington—and
welcome anywhere.
He lived for several years in the quaint little
English village of Broadway—a picturesque ham-
let of a single street. The inn, the smithy, the
little shops, a few cottages and the church made
up the entire place—and an ancient priory, where
Millet lived and worked. It was a place replete
with history and romance, and the painter must
have been very happy beneath its venerable roof,
or working out in the wonderful old rose-garden
behind it. He loved every stone of the house, and
the local legends surrounding it were equaled only
by those which he chose to weave around it after
his own fancy.
There have been few painters, perhaps, in whom
art has been so inseparable from their daily life.
It is impossible to speak of Millet’s work, as any
of those who know him will attest, without think-
ing of Millet.
And as I have said before, perhaps such a feel-
ing is the highest tribute that can be paid to an
artist—to go down to posterity not only as a
painter of pictures, but as a man, in the words of
Stevenson, “loyal and loving, down to the gates
of death.”


LETTER-CARRYING BY DOG TEAM IN ALASKA
THE CLEVELAND POST-OFFICE

XXXVII