Status Updates From Journal (1893-1899)

I loved one entry about a Catholic procession in Brittany only to realize that Julie wrote it on August 15 — today! — and so it was for the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary!

"A whole year has slipped away already...Today, I am alone and still mourning, but nature itself is cheerful..Beneath that huge green tree where Edouard Manet was the first in our family to be laid to rest, the azalea blended its immaculate whiteness with the delicate meadowsweet to brighten up the dreary granite. There is something reassuring about this place, which seems to whisper to me that Maman is happy" (80).

Page 79 has a postscript from Julie decades later when she's having dinner with one of Renoir's sons and is remembering how kind Renoir was to her and her cousins when they were orphaned and just after Julie's beloved mother, Berthe Morisot, died. It's very moving! I don't know much about Renoir as a man, but this does speak very much in his favor. It sounds like many of Morisot's artist friends helped Julie.