[Photo Credit: Victoria Kastner]
During her first year in Paris (1896-97), Julia lived at the American Girls Club at 4 rue de Chevreuse. Though it provided a safe haven for many young female artists, this rambling 18th-century building was far from ideal. Problems with rodents finally spurred Julia’s departure, as she explained to her cousins on October 12, 1897: “My new room at the club was being newly papered and cleaned, – a big pleasant room with immense closet and a glass balcony belonging to it – It promised beautifully for the winter so I waited till finished & moved in & settled things beautifully – to move out suddenly the next morning – a sorry looking object – I learned afterwards it was because of its being inhabited [by rodents that] it had been so carefully done over, but evidently it had little effect.”
Julia had also been saddled with another responsibility at this time. She continued: “The young girl from home who came this summer, Sara Whitney, had to leave the Club for the same reason, and as she had promised her mother to stay at the Club, or [move to] where I was, was in a fix. . . . . Sara is about Nina’s age [Julia’s nineteen-year-old cousin], and her mother wanted me to look out for her. I did not like the idea when they wrote me of it, for I know her very little, just having seen her at the Art School – Her mother knows Mama – She turns out to be a very earnest worker; modeling, and a bright unselfish, pretty to look at, girl, – without the slightest idea of looking after herself or her money.”
Sara Whitney and Julia shared an apartment until the fall of 1898, when Julia’s brother Avery’s imminent arrival prompted Julia to find new quarters they could share. Sara was a talented sculptor who became a student of the preeminent artist Auguste Rodin. When her funds ran out after three years—and she faced returning to Oakland—Julia’s friend and mentor Phoebe Apperson Hearst paid for Sara to continue with Rodin for another year. During that time, Sara met an American painter, Boardman M. Robinson, whom she married in France in 1903. They moved to New York and raised a family. Though Boardman Robinson became an illustrator and an art instructor, Sara’s name disappeared from view—presumably because she gave up her artistic career. This all-too-common outcome may be one reason why Julia chose to remain unmarried, and to devote her life to architecture.
[Julia Morgan Papers, Special Collections and Archives,
California Polytechnic State University, 010-2-D-17-11]
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