Audiobook
SUMMARY
Miss Medora Martin, a middle-aged woman who lived happily
in a village near Harmony, wanted to be an excellent painter. Although her village was beautiful and she had a fiancée, she
went to New York to study art.
In the big city, she took painting lessons with
professor Angelini, a former barber who had learnt his job in a dancing academy
and whose teaching, as you can imagine, was very poor in quality. Nevertheless, she
thought she could become a great artist.
But one day, things went awry: she didn’t get her money
from home, she had to take back some pictures because the art dealer couldn’t
sell them, she was hopeless about her talents, etc. So, at this moment, she was ready to give up all her illusions.
But, in the middle of her calamity, she got a lucky strike: one of her boarding house mates, a Mr Binkley, a fishmonger that was
keen on art and attended meetings of people connected with the beaux arts, invited
her to a café where the Broadway Bohemian artists usually meet.
Mr Binkey was admitted to the group because he had lent
ten pounds to one of the artists.
These people talked and talked and talked about art and artists.
And Medora immediately felt entrapped in that Bohemian atmosphere and discovered
what was actually her calling: to live as a real artist.
She decided to sever all connection with her past,
and immediately wrote to her suitor in the village, telling him to forget her
because she was under the spell of the artistic life and had to live in the Bohemian
world; so she couldn’t go back to the country anymore.
But some days after, her fiancée came to New York to take her back to Harmony. However, she said she was engulfed in
Bohemia and couldn’t move. He didn’t pay attention to her wishes and told her
she had to pack her things and go with him.
What did she do eventually?
QUESTIONS
-Who were Bastien Le Page, Gérôme, Rosa Bonheur, Giotto,
Henry James, Camille, Lola Montez, Royal Mary, Zaza?
-Give some information about the Columbus Circle, the
magazine Puck, Würzburger, Basilisk, St Regis decorations.
-In the text we find the sentence “We are short, and
Art is long”, that is an adaptation of “Life is short, and art is long.” What
is its meaning?
-And what do you know about “The die is cast”?
VOCABULARY
easel, brickbats, pans out, whooped, pebble grain, panhandler,
pail, shucks!