The Art of Acquiring: A Portrait of Etta and Claribel Cone Read Online Free

often depicted women from the West as independent. Now the genteel Baltimore society of gloved men and mute women saw that independence first-hand.
    Gertrude was a dark, attractive, buxom young woman with flashing eyes. Her cousin, Helen Bachrach, said she was “quick thinking and speaking. . . you found yourself laughingat everything she found extremely amusing, even yourself. . . .” Everyone, according to Bachrach, found themselves drawn to Gertrude—even casual acquaintances.
    Leo, a tall, slender, serious young man, had strong ideas on just about everything. It was Leo who first attracted the attention of the women in the Cone circle. He was something of a dandy compared with the industrious Baltimore men Etta and her friends knew, and he flirted with women. Rather than discuss money and business—perhaps the only two things he knew nothing about—he spoke of art and music and travel.
    Claribel, having by now moved back to her family's home on Eutaw Place, hosted Saturday evening salons where people from the worlds of art and science would meet. The Baltimore Sun said Claribel's “weekly gathering together of friends more nearly approaches the old idea of the salon than any other drawing-room coterie in the city.”
    The Steins attended, but knew no rules and had no regard for appearance. While other women, shored up with corsets of bone and wire, sat politely—if uncomfortably—on the edge of their chairs, Gertrude put her sandaled feet up on the furniture and let her chubby, corset-less body breathe freely.
    The eighteen-year-old Gertrude was among the youngest of the Cone entourage, but she was most like Claribel, ten years her senior. In fact, Dr. Claribel would serve as a role model for Gertrude. Her friendship was to be the first important relationship Gertrude had outside her own family.
    It is easy to imagine the younger Stein roaring out her reaction to Claribel, who held forth during evening salons, or see her cheeks flushed or her eyes streaming with laughter, while others less appreciative of the bold doctor's wit sat quietly aghast. Etta, a mere shadow participant, no doubt delighted in the proceedings just the same.
    As Gertrude looked up to Claribel, Etta would look up to Leo. At twenty-two, Etta was two years older than Leo, but his grasp of a world much wider than her own must have made him seem more mature. It may have been his influence that brought Etta out into Baltimore's cultural life—to recitals and lectures. It was clearly Leo who awakened in Etta an interest in visual art.
    Leo's stay in Baltimore, however, was brief. He left for Harvard in the fall of 1892—the first time he and Gertrude had ever been apart. During their separation, Gertrude wrote that she became more “humanized and less adolescent.” But by the next fall, though she hadn't graduated from high school, she enrolled in the Harvard annex for women, later called Radcliffe, and rejoined her older brother.

    That fall, everyone was busy except Etta. Claribel was doing research, and Gertrude and Leo were attending college, but Etta had no activity to call her own. With no immediate prospect of marriage or a career, Etta fell into managing the growing Cone household and caring for her elderly parents. Her world revolved around the many gas-lit corridors of Eutaw Place, and especially her brother Moses, who had assumed the role of patriarch as their father grew more frail.
    Moses was a large, handsome, square man with arresting brown eyes under dark brows. Inside the family, he was warm, passionate, but stern. Despite his marriage, he was, Etta felt, especially fond of and dependent upon her.
    Hands crossed neatly on her lap, Etta became the nurturer, the manager, the helpmate. She was the epitome of “a redundant woman”—without a home and family of her own. And though she liked and took part in music, she had no truly consuming interest. Hers was not a world of WilliamJames’ philosophy, as it was for Gertrude,