The Four Daughters of Edward Darley Bois, by Sarah Gorham

The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, by John Singer Sargent (USA) 1882

The Four Daughters of Edward Darley Bois        

Each child takes her post: The youngest, Julia, age four, on the carpet, an over-dressed doll lying in her lap. Might as well be a baby. She believes it to be a baby, and here are the clues: the tender touch, her hand on the doll’s shoulders, her in-turning feet that create a protective box around the doll. Her straight cut bangs are the sign of a petite trooper, white dress, black tights and shiny patent leather shoes. The doll is a message to her sisters, mine, mine, mine, not yours, while she eyes the mother hovering outside the frame…

On the left, is Mary Louis, age eight. A bright light shines on her too. She’s old enough to wear a white pinafore over her maroon dress, hair falling past her shoulders, though half her face is in darkness. But why? Will she be an in-between girl, patient enough to have her bangs touched up with a curling iron, but still uncertain about who she is. Maybe she’s thinking, you’re such a baby, Julia, you’ve still got a doll. Her best defence.

In the rear, two seven-foot Japanese-blue vases flank the opening to a dark hallway. Upside down, they might be the shape of a woman. Here they are merely vessels, nothing inside but darkness. Daughter Jane, age twelve, is also an in-between child. She faces the painter head on. Normally she likes to hover in the background, accepting her status, not quite as smart as her older sister. Ah, but she has whimsey. She knows how to tease her siblings, pulling the sheet out from under a sleeping sister, for instance. Or stealing her mother’s lipstick and tying socks on the family hound dog, while he sleeps. Grrrr, she growls close to its ear. The animal jumps, prancing like one of Santa’s reindeer. 

Florence at fourteen is the eldest and tallest, also standing in the hallway. She leans against the enormous vase, shadows from the hallway nearly engulfing her, except for a thick slice of pinafore, a slightly dingier white. She’s been waiting so long—the most ambitious, most likely to be trusted and yes, maybe a little bossy. She tolerates her siblings, but occasionally explodes will you please go away, leave me alone. She needs to get out of the house and begin her own life. She can hardly contain herself, imagining travel—France for the first time, reading alone on the train to Paris. Maybe, she’ll kiss that boy who’s always peering in their windows, hanging out in their tree. Good practice for someday falling in love. 

The painting denies what happened before and after this sitting: There was a first son by Isa Boit, also named Edward, known as Neddie, after his father. He suffered from severe mental retardation and was living in an institution. At one point, the couple made the heartrending decision to emigrate to Paris or stay in Boston to near him. They must have settled on the unfortunate fact that their son didn’t recognize them, and could not communicate. 

John Singer Sargent’s painting is large, a perfect square, the girls held in place—islands of their own—each of them meant to be equally important. If we drew a line from the youngest to the eldest it might carve out the letter Z. A long path to maturity for Julia, less so for Mary Louisa and Jane, and then Florence at the head of the three. Critics have called the painting “wooden,” or “psychologically unnerving,” or “unsettling.” Or, as Henry James saw it: “a happy play-world…of charming children.” Which is, in my opinion, the creepiest description of all. 

None of the four daughters depicted in the painting married. The eldest, Florence Dumaresq, died in 1919, aged 51. The second born daughter, Jane Hubbard Boit, had suffered a nervous breakdown and never completely recovered. Her father was concerned that she would end up in a mental asylum like his first-born, Neddie. She improved and in fact, went to live on her own in a Paris apartment. She died in New York State in November 1955, aged 85. Mary Louisa Boit, the girl who stood alone on the left of Sargent’s painting, looked upon as the prettiest of the four girls, died in New York in June 1945, aged 71.

Julia Overing Boit, the youngest, emerged as a talented watercolour painter. Often her letters contained small watercolour sketches. The work was displayed in many exhibitions. In March 1929 at the Copley Gallery in Boston, sixty-six of these watercolours were exhibited. She died in February 1969, aged 91.

What might have been interesting, a second chapter, where the girls relax into their actual selves, a mixture of early childhood and nearly adult. The daughters all agreed to turn over the painting to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, where they are imprisoned today.

Sarah Gorham

Sarah Gorham’s recent essay collection is Funeral Playlist from Etruscan Press. She is the author of Alpine Apprentice, shortlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein Award, and Study in Perfect, selected by Bernard Cooper for the AWP Award (both University of Georgia Press books.) Other books include Bad Daughter, The Cure, The Tension Zone, and Don’t Go Back to Sleep. Grants and fellowships include the National Endowment for the Arts, three state arts councils, and the Kentucky Foundation for Women. Media coverage included Salon, NPR, Utne Reader, Slate, and Real Simple. She co-founded Sarabande Books, inaugural winner of the AWP Small Press Publisher Award