The Boston Globe reported that Elellanar Davies, the girl’s mother, collapsed during the service and had to be carried from the church. Helen searched for what happened to the parents after their daughter’s deaths. The records were heartbreaking. Eleanor Davies never recovered. She was admitted to Mlan asylum in August 1895, diagnosed with acute melancholia and nervous prostration.
She spent the remaining 12 years of her life there, mostly unresponsive, staring at a photograph she kept in her room. According to asylum records, it was a portrait of her two daughters in white dresses holding hands. The photograph Helen was now examining. Robert Davies sold the Beacon Street house in September 1895.
He moved to New York and tried to rebuild his life. He remarried in 1899, but the marriage was short-lived. His second wife left him, citing his obsession with the dead. Robert died in 1904, age 49, of heart failure. His obituary mentioned his first family only briefly, preceded in death by his daughters, Lily and Rose, and his first wife, Ellaner.
But the photograph’s journey didn’t end there. Helen traced its ownership through the decades. After Elellanar’s death in 1907, her few possessions were sent to her sister Margaret Hartwell, who had been estranged from Eleanor during her lifetime. Margaret took one look at the photograph and understood immediately what it showed.
She wrote in her diary. Ellaner kept this photograph in her room at the asylum for 12 years. She would stare at it for hours, whispering to her girls. I understand why now. Lily is alive in this image, but Rose is already gone. Eleanor was looking at the moment between the moment when she still had one daughter left, trying to pretend she had both.
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