The Art of Acquiring: A Portrait of Etta and Claribel Cone (22 page)

—F. Scott Fitzgerald,
The Crack Up,
1931

W
hen her brother Moses died, Etta fell apart physically and emotionally. But she was twenty-one years older now, and better able to cope with the mechanics of burying her loved one—her lifetime companion.

Brother Fred had arrived in Lausanne shortly before Claribel died, so he was of some help making all the necessary arrangements—transporting Claribel's body back to the U.S., and sending out personal messages announcing her death. But Fred, always the least capable of the three, may have been more of a hindrance to Etta than if she had been entirely alone.

Claribel's body, it was decided, would be placed on a train that would go directly to the
Statendam
, for return to the U.S. Given a choice, Claribel in life would have traveled back to the U.S. on that very ship. So it was only fitting that she was entrusted to that vessel in death. Etta and Fred headed
back to Paris to wrap up business there before joining Claribel's body on the
Statendam
.

At the Lutetia, Etta had letters of condolence awaiting her from friends in Europe and the U.S. The death of Claribel, for those who knew her, was like losing a precious and irreplaceable ornament that was difficult to care for, but always gave delight.

She had been larger than life—in some ways, more a character than a person—who exuded romance and fascination. She had treated life as if it were created for her personal amusement, and managed to share her pleasure with the people she knew. Her laugh, her smile, her wit were all sparkling, even into old age. Claribel's friends acknowledged that the world would be a lesser place without her.

Matisse wrote Etta, “My Dear Mademoiselle, I know that words lose every meaning in the face of great emotion but allow me to tell you of my sad surprise in learning by letter from my family of your sorrow. I think of your great sadness knowing your attachment to Dr. Cone and imagine how much her rich and distinguished character enhanced your days. Believe me that I share your grief, my dear mademoiselle, and want you to accept the expression of my affectionate and devoted feelings.”

Etta replied, “My Dear Monsieur Matisse, Your letter full of appreciation for the character of my sister profoundly touched me. Permit me to express myself frankly in saying that your acquaintance and work were one of the great influences in the life of my sister, as well as in mine.”

Gertrude wrote from the south of France, “My very dear Etta, I have just had word from Mike of the death of Claribel and it has saddened me terribly, I was awfully attached to her, oddly enough just the other day we were telling that delightful story of Claribel and the box in her room with the two old
bon bons and the Bolsheviks in Munich, everything she did had an extraordinary quality all her own.

“I had not seen so much of her in recent years but she made a very important and rather wonderful part of my Baltimore past, and Dr. Marian Walker and I were talking of it all and of her in it when she was here just a couple of months ago, and so strangely enough Claribel had been very near me this last summer, and now Etta you know how I understand your loss and feel for it, do take my love and my fondest thoughts of Claribel, Always, Gertrude.”

Death being the great healer, Etta was able to respond to Gertrude with grace, putting aside whatever differences separated the two old friends. “I do appreciate your understanding sympathy,” she wrote Gertrude, who was then in Bilignin. “Your realization of my sister is also a comfort to me. She always admired you profoundly. I should like so much to hear you talk of my sister, someday when I am more calm within. I thank you for your very kind letter. With my love for you and Alice I am, Your sincere friend, Etta Cone.”

While Etta waited for the
Statendam
to begin its journey to America, she consoled herself, or distracted herself, by making a few additional purchases—an activity of which Claribel would have heartily approved. Her choices offer some indication of her state of mind. The pieces purchased—nostalgic, sweet, and comforting—were from the years that had meant so much to Etta.

She bought four Matisse bronzes. Two of the three were casts of Matisse's
Tête d'une jeune fille
(Head of a Young Girl) from 1906, one of which she gave to Sally and Michael Stein. The second two were
Tête du'un enfant
(Head of a Child) from 1905. She purchased two casts of the piece instead of one—in just the same way she and Claribel had done when Claribel was alive, as if she were reluctant to give up the habit.

That fall, Etta may also have purchased a Picasso “blue period” painting from Gertrude's collection. Gertrude was in Aix, so if Etta did buy the painting, she would have done so through Sally and Mike. Picasso had painted
Femme au frange
(Woman With Bangs) in 1902, at the height of his monochrome period.

The lone woman in the painting is the embodiment of despair and grief. Her expressionless eyes stare straight ahead from the painting's blue shadows, but appear to be fixed on emptiness. If the Cones, consciously or not, purchased paintings that reflected their inner lives, then this Picasso would have mirrored Etta's emotional state that autumn.

Etta and Fred finally made their way to the
Statendam
to escort Claribel's body back to the U.S. The trip had a poignant finality about it. It would be the last time the two sisters would cross the ocean together. It would be the last time trunks of Claribel's things would be shipped to Baltimore to take their place in her apartment-museum. It would be the last time Etta's life would revolve around caring for her tremendously vibrant older sister.

While Etta suffered her personal grief, America mourned the crash of Wall Street. In every way, the post-war high life of the ‘20s was over.

Wall Street had started to rattle on October 24. The market plummeted as people cashed in their stocks for money that simply wasn't there. By October 28, the tremor had become an earthquake, and the market fell through the floor. A six-hour time difference between New York and Paris isolated French brokerage houses for a time, but soon U.S. citizens in Paris with large stock investments learned they were suddenly insolvent.

“Americans who had been dependent on remittances from home joined the queue at the embassy for emergency funds to return to the U.S.,” said the reports. “The cafés and hotels of Montparnasse emptied out.”

In Paris, what Parisians were calling “Le Krach” all but depeopled the city of the invading American hordes. In 1914, it had been the start of the war. Now, the Americans whom Parisians had loved to hate no longer had pockets overflowing with money. The franc was worth more than 25 to the dollar, but the favorable exchange rate could not help the generation of Americans who had lived on credit—and were now dying of it.

Though in the middle of the financial upheaval, Etta was untouched by it, much like Claribel years earlier in Germany. The Cone brothers had taken steps to shore up their stocks by guaranteeing deposits in the North Carolina Bank & Trust Company's Textile Branch. Her finances secure, Etta was able to glide through the crash, nursing her personal loss of Claribel, while those around her succumbed to the panic.

When Fred, Etta, and Claribel's body arrived in Hoboken, New Jersey, the harbor was covered in a dense fog appropriate for the occasion. Etta's younger brother Julius and his wife Laura, along with Ceasar's widow Jeanette, met them at the ship. They all boarded the train that would bring Claribel's body home to Baltimore for her final rest.

Despite arriving in Baltimore at 10 in the evening, Etta insisted that Claribel's body be taken immediately to the family mausoleum, a simple, elegant structure built for the Cones at the Druid Ridge Cemetery, in a suburb of Baltimore. There the family was met by a rabbi, who conducted a burial service by the light of a kerosene lantern.

The brilliant Claribel was dead, but Etta was not willing to give her up. She told her servants to give nothing of Claribel's away. Everything, she said, should remain in her rooms at the Marlborough, just as when she was living. Her clothes were to be hung in her closet, fresh flowers were to be placed in the rooms, and her trunks were to be left as they were—packed and ready for another European trip.

Despite the effort to preserve Claribel's spirit, the Marlborough apartments were almost unbearably silent. The small rooms that once overflowed with Claribel's presence were now empty. No longer would the doorbell ring out, announcing Claribel's invariably late arrival for a meal.

Etta was left to contemplate the future in the rooms whose life emanated only from the walls and the tabletops, which were covered in noisy paintings and animated objects that she and her sister had lovingly gathered. Etta might have realized for the first time then what purpose the collection served. It was her personal reservoir of beauty, love, devotion, and memory.

If Baltimore had not appreciated Claribel in life, it seemed to in death. By November 22, the Baltimore
Sun
was writing glowingly of the lady and her collection. The editor of the
Sunday Sun
wrote to Jacob Moses, a friend and distant relative of the Cone family, informing him of the newspaper's plans to run a page or two of the Cones’ paintings in order to show “our own appreciation of the importance of the collection.”

The city had not suddenly grown sophisticated enough to understand or even like the collection. The newspaper was taking its cue from Claribel, who, in her published will, had warned that the collection would be left to Baltimore only if the city exhibited a greater appreciation for modern art. A greedy Baltimore began a campaign, led by its leading newspaper and its rather sophisticated art critic, to prove itself
worthy of the sisters’ bounty.

The
Sun
's November 22, 1929, headline read “Cone Art Unit May Pass To City Museum. . . Suggests However, Baltimore's Appreciation Must Improve.” The paper's art critic, A.D. Emmart, wrote on the same day in a separate article that the collection of Dr. Claribel Cone “is unquestionably one of the richest and most stimulating and individual accumulations of art which ever has been brought together in Baltimore.”

Emmart also issued an apology on behalf of his fellow citizens for their lack of understanding of the new art. “Baltimoreans have had very little opportunity, ever, to see in their native city any extended exhibition of the work of men and women who have made a new world and a new history in art. . . The failure to understand and to enjoy proceeds most times from an unfamiliarity, a lack of preparation, a fear before the unknown.”

The following year, for the first time ever, the Baltimore Museum of Art, with Etta's consent, exhibited pieces from the Cone collection—giving Baltimore audiences a chance to become acquainted with at least some of the works of art she considered her most valued companions.

Etta spent a long winter receiving visitors in her Baltimore apartment. They invariably sought to comfort her in her grief, and to discuss the collection, but the visits were more distractions now than anything else. Having at some point decided that her life's job was to carry on the collecting, but with more of a purpose, Etta plotted her next move.