A great friend of France
MISS SARA HALLOWELL

On July 18th last, a good woman and a woman of wit passed away in Moret-sur-Loing, where she had lived for many years. She was an American by birth, but French in heart and mind, and very fond of art and literature, and had acquired long before the war the reputation of a fervent apostle of the most intimate rapprochement between the United States and France.
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Miss Sara Tyson Morris-Hallowell was born in Philadelphia on December 7th, 1846. She was descended from one of those old English families who, transplanted to America in the sixteenth century, put down roots there. The city of Hallowell, in the State of Maine, takes its name from the Morris-Hallowell family, thus attesting, with all the splendor of a title of nobility, its ancient imprint on the country. It was in Philadelphia that Miss Sara did the studies which allowed her, later, after the reverses of fortune suffered by her parents, to fulfill the functions of secretary of the annual Exhibition of Chicago. She displayed there an activity so experienced and so skilled, a taste so sure, that she was soon entrusted with the organization itself of this exhibition. In 1893, during the great universal exhibition which commemorated in this city the fourth centenary of the discovery of the New World, she was charged with bringing together the artistic masterpieces owned by the great American collectors. Most of the works exhibited came from French masters. This explains why France always had Miss Sara's predilection and why, during her many trips to Europe, as a delegate of the Chicago Institute of Fine Arts, she always felt there as if she were in a second homeland. The fame of the pretty sites of the Loing Valley, so dear to landscape painters, and perhaps also the then nascent fame of the painter Sisley, several of whose paintings she sent to the United States, gave her the opportunity to come to Moret, where the famous impressionist lived. Seduced by the enchanting setting of the ancient city, she settled there permanently, several years ago, with her mother and her niece, Miss Harriet Hallowell, a talented miniaturist. When war broke out in 1914, she was one of the first, with Miss Harriet, to show the feelings of fraternal friendship which, a few months later, were to unite her country with ours in the fight and in victory. With the funds she received from the United States, where their propaganda was ardent, tenacious and effective, Miss Sara and Miss Harriet, one by cooperating in the maintenance of hospital 26, the other in the organization of the station canteen and the work of the "Soldiers' Home", devoted themselves, body and soul, to the care of our wounded and to the completion of their convalescence. The civilians themselves did not escape the helpful action of the two benefactors who multiplied again to bring aid to the refugee families from the invaded countries evacuated to Moret. The amount of money then employed by Miss Sara and Miss Harriet for the operation of their works exceeds what can be imagined. Miss Sara Hallowell enjoyed the veneration of the whole of Moretan society when she felt, two years ago, the first attacks of the disease which was to take her from the affection of her niece and her numerous friends. Her state of health necessitated a most serious surgical operation which she endured with stoic courage. Being hardly able to rise, she continued to edify, with the same serenity of soul, in her bed, as before in her armchair, by the simple and touching charm of her kindness and her goodness, those who had the privilege of approaching her. Her drawing room was like an academy where her good grace and the tact of her mind harmonized the tastes and opinions of each. She judged people, as she appreciated works, with finesse, with discernment, with benevolence. Never a word of blame, of reproach or even of severity fell from her smiling lips.
Miss Sara Hallowell was as loved as she was esteemed in Moret, where her memory, piously guarded, will always awaken in the thoughts and in the hearts of those who knew her the most moved feelings of their gratitude and their regrets.

Em. DEBORDE de MONTCORIN.