point of view, becoming a champion of the beauties and pleasures of Paris. “So ends [my] journal of Paris,” he concluded. “It is the best city that I have come to yet in the World, + with a moderate fortune I should like to pass my life here ... I should be willing to be forced to pass the rest of my life there. I believe it the city of the world best suited to a man of artistic disposition + seems to me to contain all that is necessary for man’s happiness.”34 At last he understood his brother’s firm commitment to expatriate life.
While the Boit men clearly relished the many public pleasures of their surroundings, the women and children of the family would have inhabited a somewhat more circumscribed world. But women found happiness in Paris as well, and their entertainments consisted of much more than fittings at the couture salons of Worth or Doucet and shopping at the city’s many new luxurious department stores. Isa Boit was sociable and lively, and she delighted in what her friend James characterized as “the great Parisian hubbub,” which seemed to him, then at home in Boston, a “carnival of dissipation.”35 Like her husband, Isa enjoyed the opera, music, and theater, and she participated enthusiastically in the rounds of afternoon calls, teas, receptions, and dinners required of a woman of her class. She went riding and driving in the Bois de Boulogne and also entertained at home, putting the many elegant rooms in her apartment to good use.
The writer Edith Wharton reminded herself of an exceptional evening there in the 1880s when she met, for the first time, Henry James: “The encounter took place at the house of Edward Boit, the brilliant water-colour painter whose talent Sargent so much admired. Boit and his wife, both Bostonians, and old friends of my husband’s, had lived for many years in Paris, and it was there that one day they asked us to dine with Henry James. I could hardly believe that such a privilege could befall me, and I could think of only one way of deserving it - to put on my newest Doucet dress, and try to look my prettiest!” But the evening did not turn out as Wharton had hoped; her rose-pink dress failed to give her the assurance she needed. “Alas,” she said, the gown “neither gave me the courage to speak, nor attracted the attention of the great man. The evening was a failure, and I went home humbled and discouraged.” It was only later in her life, when she “had found” herself and “was no longer afraid to talk,” that she became one of James’s close friends, but she always remembered the sparkling evening of conversation that had tantalized her at the Boits.36
Although Wharton found herself mute in James’s company, Isa Boit did not. She adored him, as he did her; James thought of her as “always social, always irresponsible, always expansive, always amused and amusing.” Fond of people and of fun, she flourished in a continual round of engagements. Bob Boit assessed her as “strong, fascinating, full of grace, + with an extraordinarily penetrating mind - full of likes + dislikes - but never in any way or at any time small or spiteful - great-hearted - generous, exacting, loving, coquettish, humorous + with quick keen insight + appreciation of the thoughts and motives of others. She delighted in everything but the commonplace.” 37 She must have hoped that her four daughters would grow up to enjoy society as much as she did.
At the time Sargent painted them, the girls were still young and would not yet have participated in all of the activities of their parents, although they would have played in the park, gone for drives, and attended daytime concerts. Like Edith Wharton’s childhood, the Boits’ “little-girl life” was probably “safe, guarded, [and] monotonous.” 38 Their world was more clearly centered on the apartment, where they had a nursemaid and received their education from a private tutor. To reconstruct the lives of the Boit girls before they were immortalized in Sargent’s portrait, one must cobble together the sparse factual information with descriptions by other women of their age and social class who chronicled their own experiences growing up.
The earliest chapters in the Boit daughters’ lives presumably matched those of many other upper-class girls of their time. Wharton, for example, who was just six years older than Florie, remembered her “tall splendid father who was always so kind, and whose strong arms lifted one so high, and held one so safely,” as well as her “mother, who wore such beautiful flounced dresses, and had painted and carved fans in sandalwood boxes.” Mother and father were background figures for her, however, for she had “one rich all-permeating presence”: her nurse, Doyley, who was “as established as the sky and as warm as the sun.” Wharton, like the Boit girls, had been taken to Europe at a young age, but she realized that “the transition woke no surprise, for almost everything that constituted my world was still about me: my handsome father, my beautifully dressed mother, and the warmth and sunshine that were Doyley.” This semblance of stability was important for children like the Boits, and it was something that many families who were frequently on the move had in common. It created security within the family unit; as William James remarked of his brother Henry, “He’s really, I won’t say a Yankee, but a native of the James family, and has no other country.”39 This sense of place, of belonging to the family instead of (or in addition to) the state, served as the glue that kept families together despite constant travel. It also provided common ground for many expatriates, perhaps encouraging friendships among people who shared similar experiences, like the Boits, James, and Sargent.
Outside their home, the Boit girls probably enjoyed the city’s parks, where they would have been taken by their nurses to “[dodge] in and out among old stone benches, racing, rolling hoops, whirling through skipping ropes, or pausing out of breath to watch the toy procession of stately barouches and glossy saddle horses which ... carried the flower of [society] ... round and round.” Wharton’s parents went on from Rome to Paris, and she reminisced that they “were always trying to establish relations for me with ‘nice’ children, and I was willing enough to play in the Champs Elysées with such specimens as were produced or (more reluctantly) to meet them at little parties or dancing classes; but I did not want them to intrude upon my privacy.” She also recalled indoor activities, mainly kept separate from the adults but “led in with the dessert, my red hair rolled into sausages, and the sleeves of my best frock looped up with pink coral” to greet the guests at Sunday dinner, providing her with a glimpse into a grown-up world that was equal to the one Florie Boit received each time her parents asked her to entertain their own guests with her violin. Wharton, already demonstrating her own preferences, most often chose to read and to make up stories, apparently feeling no remorse or resentment about her insulated life.40 Like her, the Boit girls read, both together and alone, probably becoming familiar with the ever-growing selection of novels and articles written specifically for children. Their lives followed an established pattern, well protected from adult concerns and cares.
There is no indication that the young Boit girls sought any independence from this routine, and the impression given by the sparse notes in most of the existing adult diaries and letters is that they were rather passive. Yet a charming illustrated letter from ten-year-old Julia to her eleven-year-old cousin Mary, Bob’s daughter, confirms that their lives were not confined to the house and were also full of activities and fun:
I have still got my doll but its head broke and it has got a new head, with brown hair. I have been to lots of places this spring, twice to the grand Opéra to see “Romeo and Juliet,” to the Hippodrome, and to the Chatelet to see “Le Tour du Monde en 80 jours.” And I have also been to the Circus and to the Exhibition [the 1889 world’s fair]. There’re lots of funny things at the exhibition . . . I think you would like it very much. Have you ever seen “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West”? I have been to see it and think it is great fun. You see lots of Indians and “Cowboys” and “Buck jumpers” that are awfully naughty and the Cowboys can hardly ride them . . . it is so funny. We have got some canaries that Mama [got] us and I think they are cunning.41
