Lenox, MA. High lown and Highwood History of Lenox, Massachusetts - Berkshire County Page 1 of 2 A HISTORY OF LENOX LENOX IS FOR AIL SEASONS Lenox was a prosperous farming and mill town -- the seat of Berkshire County -- that was suddenly "discovered" by famous and wealthy residents of Boston and New York in the mid 1800s. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote "The House of Seven Gables" while living in a little red cottage just outside of town (the cottage actually is in Stockbridge, but Hawthorne thought he lived in Lenox because its village center was much closer). Hawthorne's series of children's stories, "Tanglewood Tales," provided the name for a neighboring estate. A recreation of Hawthorne's cottage, near Tanglewood, is open for tours in the summer. In 1845, Samuel Gray Ward, the Boston banker who later was to finance the U.S. purchase of Alaska, built a summer home near Hawthorne's cottage. Ward told his friends back in Boston about the beautiful Berkshire countryside and the mild summer weather. Soon, many of them were joining him as summer, or even year-round residents. Among the early "summer people" was Fanny Kemble, one of the most noted Shakespearean actresses of the day. By the late 1800s, Lenox and Stockbridge were booming as the summer homes of many of the country's elite. The peak building year in Lenox was 1885, when construction began on several of the gigantic mansions these wealthy families whimsically called "cottages." The most magnificent of them all was Shadowbrook, built for railroad baron Anson Phelps Stokes on 900 acres at the edge of Lenox and Stockbridge. With 100 rooms, it was one of the largest homes in North America. Andrew http://www.lenox.org/history.html 9/9/2003 History of Lenox, Massachusetts - Berkshire County Page 2 of 2 Carnegie later bought the house, and died there in 1919. The Guilded Age ended in the early twentieth century, when the income tax and other factors made it impossible for the "cottagers" to maintain their huge summer homes in the Berkshires. Several of the cottages have been converted to hotels or schools. One of the grandest cottages in Lenox is open for public tours: The Mount, built by novelist Edith Wharton. The Mount is now undergoing a restoration to bring it back to its former grandeur. A new era for Lenox and the Berkshires began in the 1930s, when music lovers began sponsoring symphonic concerts in the summer months. In 1937, the Boston Symphony Orchestra began offering concerts at its new summer home, the "Tanglewood" estate between Lenox and Stockbridge. A year later, the orchestra inaugurated its huge new concert hall, the "Shed." In the succeeding six decades, Tanglewood has become famous as one of the world's leading music festivals, attracting more than 300,000 listeners each summer. Other summer arts festivals, featuring theater, music and modern dance, have joined in making the Berkshires the summer cultural capital of the Northeast United States. Back Antiques & Galleries Il Artists, Artisans and Musicians II Banking & Insurance Il Calendar of Member Openings & Events Il Cultural Schedules Il Churches & Synagogues Il Communications, Marketing & Public Relations Il Education & Camps Il Health, Fitness & Personal Image Il A History of Lenox Il How to Get to Lenox Il Links Il Live and Work in Lenox Il Lodging Il Historic Lenox Village Map Il Town of Lenox Map Il Picnics & Catering Il Professional Services Real Estate Il Restaurants Il Retail Il Retirement & Nursing Homes Il Things to Do II Trades, Manufacturing & Business Services Il Travel & Transportation Il Weddings & Conferences http://www.lenox.org/history.html 9/9/2003 Page 1 of 3 Encircling Laurel Lake For more than fifty years the Rev. Samuel Shepard preached in Lenox church to all the countryside. "His Lenox was not the Lenox of to-day. On every southern hillside, with protecting walls of forest to the north, stood ample farmhouses. The valleys "Yokun Farm," the Judge Walker house, were luxuriant with corn as it looked in 1865, when the Hon. and waving grain. Town Richard Goodman purchased it of Judge Edwards Pierrepont, minister to meeting day found the old England under Grant. town house--which is still standing and still in use-full of as fine a set of New England farmers as any town could boast. Eloquence was the rule." [1] Familiar figures of old days in Lenox were Major Caleb Hyde, Samuel Collins, and Colonel Elijah Northrup (his house of 1778 is still standing on Main Street, the residence of Henry Sedgwick), also Representatives Asher Sedgwick, Oliver Belden, and William 0. Curtis, Senator Charles Mattoon, County Treasurer Joseph Tucker, James Robbins, and Judge William Walker who came from old Rehoboth in 1770, and purchased some 200 acres on Walker Hill (now Lanier Hill). Judge Walker always drove four horses or four oxen; in his house, Yokun farm, remain still the huge chimney, and exquisite French wall-paper laid on in 'Yok-un Farm," the Judge Walker house, as it looked in 1865, when the Hon. Richard Goodman purchased it of Judge Edwards Pierrepont, minister to England under Grant. sheets, and the room in the L, " where Madame Walker directed her maidens at their spinning. "Yokun " has been the home for many years of the family of the Hon. Richard Goodman. Judge Walker raised his gambrel-roof on a most attractive height, whence may be observed the clear waters of three embowered ponds- Makheenac, Lily, and Laurel Lakes; this latter is literally a mountain mirror." Seated beneath Yokun's honeysuckle "Yokun" to-day; built by Judge Willaim summerhouse on the west Walker in 1794, and remodelled; residence of Mr. Richard Goodman. knoll, one becomes the guest of the clouds, the cirrus trains which float or scud across Bald Head and Monument, to be finally drowned in the azure distance of Sheffield's proud Dome. One of the prettiest of days is when "the clouds are sticking across,"- as the daughter of a Cape Cod fisherman expressed it, her weather eye unconsciously alert for the smacks outside the bar. http://www.berkshireweb.com/themap/lenox/history/laurel.html 9/10/2012 Page 2 of 3 On the hither side of Laurel Lake is the broad sweep of "Erskine Park," the summer home of the inventor George Westinghouse; thence you may command, set in sublime scenery, "Yokun" and the "Allen Winden of Charles Lanier, Esq., on this Walker's or Lanier's Hill. 'The Perch" of Fanny Kemble also overlooks Laurel Lake, on which she spent long days fishing for pickerel, "the most patient fisherman hereabouts." Where willows dip, by the western shore of Laurel Lake, the close-cropped upland rises to the terraces of The Mount," the home of Edith Wharton. Simplicity is the accent of this estate by the author's preference, and the house is a copy of Beton, the seat of Lord Brownlow in Lincolnshire. June is full of invitations to the outdoor revel of bird-folk and flowers; quite equal here to the scene at Elvetham in Hampshire, poetized by Peter Lylly, for the occasion of "The Honorable Entertainment given by the Queen's Majestie in Progress" by the right Honorable the Earle of Hertford. Thus runs the Dittie of the Six Virgins' Song: "Now birds record new harmonie, And trees doe whistle melodie! Now everie thing that nature breeds Doth clad itself in pleasant weeds. 0 beauteous Queene of second Troy, Accept of our unfained joy!" [2] Still another estate in the literary annals of Lenox touches Laurel Lake- Wyndhurst," originally the Blossom Farm" of the Rev. John Hotchkin, Principal of the celebrated Lenox Academy. Henry Ward Beecher wrote Star Papers here and the height is known as "Beecher's Hill." Gen. John F. Rathbone christened the place "Wyndhurst" ; it looks out upon bewitching October Mountain, and the Housatonic Valley. The ivy-mantled tower of the "Tudor" mansion of the present owner, John Sloane, Esq., commands a sweep of sixty miles across Berkshire from Greylock to the Dome. In the appropriate landscape setting of "Wyndhurst" yearly blooms the memory of the power and charm of Charles Eliot and Olmsted the elder. Adjoining the Beecher farm is Coldbrooke, the estate of Captain John S. Barnes, who has an unusual collection of war- relics of 1812. Coldbrooke is the summer 'home of James Barnes the author. The early estate of Mrs. Dorr, a sister of Samuel Gray Ward, is now part of " Blantyre," the present estate of Robert W. Paterson, Esq. His collection of paintings includes the signatures of Meissonier, Romney, Bridgman, Henner, and Lembach. The furniture is modelled after Hatfield House, and includes pieces from the Marquand collection. The old Albany post-road used to run through the Paterson and Barnes places. The Elizabethan villa built by George H. Morgan, Esq., on the http://www.berkshireweb.com/themap/lenox/history/laurel.html 9/10/2012 Page 3 of 3 old Ogden Hagerty estate and designed by Arthur Rotch, well becomes its setting of magnificent old pines. Mrs. Hagerty held the earliest salon in Lenox, and among other interesting events Christine Nilsson sang in her drawing-room. Miss Hagerty became the wife of the gallant Robert Gould Shaw. The foundation of the Parish of Trinity Church was begun as early as 1771: its fine group of buildings of Berkshire limestone. are largely memorials. The parish house is a gift of the Hon. John E. Parsons, the chimes, of George H. Morgan, Esq., the chancel, of the Kneeland family, the campanile tower of Mrs. R. T. Auchmuty and F. Augustus Schemerhorn. Tablets have been placed to Chester Alan Arthur, twenty-first President of the United States, Major-General Paterson, Debby Hewes Quincy, Wm. Ellery Sedgwick, Richard Goodman, Mrs. John E. Parsons, Miss Sarah Schermerhorn. "Sunnyridge," the old Brevoort place, is the house of George Winthrop Folsom, Esq. Between the Lanier and Goodman estates is that of Cortlandt Field Bishop, Esq., the president of the Aero Club of America. one of the new marvels applying science to sport, combined with valuable explorations of earth and air; the earliest ascensions were made in Pittsfield. NEXT The BerkshireWeb Return to the BerkshireWeb http://www.berkshireweb.com/themap/lenox/history/laurel.htm 9/10/2012 home.gif Page 1 of 2 History of Blantyre Nearly one hundred years ago, Blantyre began its life as a gift of love. A successful merchant, Robert Paterson, had been invited to Lenox, Massachusetts in the late 1890's by his good friend John Sloane, a founder of furniture store W&J Sloane. Paterson was immediately infatuated with the area and its elegant way of life. At the time Lenox already had many great estates, prompting the area to be known as "the queen of inland resorts" or, as Cleveland Amory wrote, "the Switzerland of America." Paterson decided this was where he wanted to spend summers with his wife, the love of his life, and his family. He set about acquiring 220 acres next door to Sloane so that he could begin to build his dream house. It was to be a spectacular property, built on a grand scale, although the architect's initial plans were purportedly drawn on the back of an envelope. 20000 In homage to his wife, Paterson's concept was for no less than a castle of "feudal architectural features," replete with turrets and gargoyles. The house was modeled after his wife's ancestral home in Lanarkshire, Scotland and construction began in 1901, at times employing over 300 people on the grounds and buildings. In addition to the main house, there were seven outbuildings, including an icehouse, stables for 16 horses, and a carriage house, as well as extensive greenhouses. fi The main house was furnished in the English style with all the furniture being brought in from England. Throughout, there were exquisite pieces from the Paterson's extensive art collection. The featured painting in the Music Room was a highly prized Bismarck by Lembach. Today the portrait has been replaced by one of Henry Clive, painted by John Opie. The Paterson family used the house every summer and entertained frequently, as was the fashion in those days. There were garden parties with musicians imported from New York and grand dinner-dances with each party becoming more lavish than the one before, befitting the "Gilded Age." When the end of the era came nearly 20 years later, hastened by the introduction of the income tax, so, too, ended a lifestyle that was never to be repeated. Over the next 60 years, Blantyre went through several transitions and changes in ownership, including a particularly harsh and destructive period in the 1970s. Things began to change for the better in 1980 when Jack and Jane Fitzpatrick bought the property. Also the highly respected owners of The Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge, the Fitzpatricks were determined to restore Blantyre to its original élegance. After almost a year of extensive renovation, and the addition of many period http://www.blantyre.com/history.htm 8/15/2003 home.gif Page 1 of 1 Property Map of Blantyre Blastere Road Carriage House to Route 20 Main Gate Tennis Courts Pool, Jacuzai, 888 and Sauna & Ice House Main House Cottage Queen Shuffle Board J Winter Cottage by I Palace the Path Croquet Courts Trails 30 Cianwell Golf Course 16 Blantyre Road * Lenox, MA 01240 * Telephone: (413) 637-3956 6 Fax: (3) 637-4282 + E-mail: welcome@himmyre.com http://www.blantyre.com/property.htm 8/15/2003 Blantyre Castle Page 1 of 1 BLANTYRE CASTLE I received E-Mail that said: There is a castle called Blantyre in Lenox, Massachusetts. Built in 1903 for Robert W. Patterson of New York City. The architect was Robert W. Robertson of the firm Robertson and Potter, New York. The story goes that Robertson after viewing the location was asked to design something. He then did a rough sketch on the back of an envelop which was then given to Mr. Patterson who agreed on the design. It was built like this sketch on the 220 acre estate. The house was modeled after his wife's (Livingston) ancestral home in Lanarkshire, Scotland in the town of Blantyre. Construction began in 1901 at times employing 300 people on the grounds and buildings. In addition to the main house, there was seven outbuildings, including an icehouse, stables for 16 horses, and a carriage house, as well as extensive greenhouses. The house was 165 X 50 feet with a 30 X 75 extension for servants quarters The main house was furnished in English style with all the furniture being brought in from England. Patterson had an extensive art collection in the mansion and the walls were adorned with trophy animal heads from his hunts in the US. and Canada. In addition to their Lenox estate, the Pattersons had a New York home, a Canadian fishing lodge, and a winter retreat in Georgia. Visit the Blantyre homepage by clicking here. To return to this page, click on the BACK button. Does anyone have more information? Back to Home Page http://www.dupontcastle.com/castles/blantyre.htm 12/19/2005 : Rathbone then : had been named PINE CROFT. F. A. Schermerhorn's summer house was also a working farm. Although he and is new property the entire Schermerhorn family were known and respected during their day, history remembers only one. Caroline Schermerhorn married William Blackhouse Astor. The combination of her lineage and his money established her as the Mrs. Astor, grande dame of New York society. (Courtesy of the Lee Library; photograph by E. A. Morley.) ossom Farm house e house during the Rathbone's house HIGHLAWN, 1842. George Dorr was credited "with the best lawns in Lenox." Highlawn e's fine house was much admired as a large and comfortable house, advantageously sited upon a hill. It was was not of the Lee Library; however, the going to serve the next wave of Berkshire visitors. The only perceived advantage was (Courtesy of the Lee Library; photograph by E. A. Morley.) land. I lighlawn became one of three parcels combined to create the great estate of Blantyre. 65 Reports of the presented 1 waver (871/1872-1893. M.I.T. Hathi Treath Digital lobray. STATEMENT OF THE TREASURER. The Treasurer submits the annual statement of the financial affairs of the Institute for the year ending Sept. 30, 1890. During the year the executors of the estate of the late 1806-1876 George Bucknam Dorr have handed over to the Institute the following securities at the valuation set against each :- International & Great Northern R. R. Bond $1,110 00 Milwaukee & St. Paul R. R. 71s, $3,000 3,510 00 Chicago, Burlington & Quincy R. R. 7s, $7,000 8,715 00 Cincinnati & Indiana R. R. 7s, $2,000 2,080 00 Union Pacific R. R. 1st Mortgage 6s 1,140 00 Chicago, Burlington & Northern R. R. 5s, $2,000 2,060 00 Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé R. R. 4s, $2,000 1,687 50 Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé, Incomes, $500 301 88 Chicago, Burlington & Quincy R. R. Stock, 14 shares 1,477 oo Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago R. R. Stock, 20 shares 3,000 oo Morris & Essex R. R. Stock, 82 shares 6,150 00 New York & Harlem R. R. Stock, 40 shares 5,000 Pennsylvania Coal Co. Stock, 75 shares 11,250 00 Consolidated Gas Co. of N. Y. Stock, 15 shares 1,447 50 Cash 644 59 $49,573 47 By the decease, Dec. 5, 1889, of Miss Susan C. Dorr. the title of the Institute to two-thirds of the estate at Lenox, Mass., known as "Highlawn," became absolute, subject, however, to the provision named in the deed of gift of Mrs. Martha Ann Edwards, dated Nov. 21, 1876. Digitized by Google Original from UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN THE ANGLIWOOD CIRCLE L HAWTHORNE'S "Anyone who loves the Berkshires will love this book." -Pulitzer Prize winner Debby Applegate, author of The Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher CORNELLA BROOKE GILDER WITH JULIA CONKLIN PETERS CONTENTS 9 13 and the Hive 15 and the Bullards at Highwood 23 and the Tappans 35 and the Red House 43 and Fanny Kemble 49 à and Sarah Starr Lee 55 Cock and the Dorrs at Highlawn 59 Hal 63 and Woolseys at Woodcliff 67 and Vent Fort 71 exembers and Pinecroft 77 Serigwicks and the Elms 81 CS and Mahkeenac Farm 87 and Nestledown 91 Touring Lenox's Hawthorne-era Fifty Years Later with Henry James and Edith Wharton 97 Literary and Social Neighbors Berkshires of Hawthorne's Day 103 109 119 123 the Authors 127 8/27/2018 Highlawn in winter - Digital Commonwealth Lenox Library Association (/institutions/commonwealth:1c18dv406 Local History Photograph Collection (/collections/commonwealth:1c18dv41g) Highlawn in winter Item Information Title: Highlawn in winter Photographer: Martin, Augustus E. 1872-1961 /search?f%5Bname_facet_ssim%5D%5B%5D=Martin%2C+Augustus+E.+1872-196 Date: [ca. 1890-1904] Format: Photographs (/search?f%5Bgenre_basic_ssim%5D%5B%5D=Photographs) Genre: Glass negatives s(/search?f%5Bgenre_specific_ssim%5D%5B%5D=Glass+negatives) Location: Lenox Library Association /search?f%5Bphysical_location_ssim%5D%5B%5D=Lenox+Library+Association) Special Collections Collection (local): Local History Photograph Collection (/search? f%5Brelated_item_host_ssim%5D%5b%5D=Local+History+Photograph+Collection Series: 3 Villay power REVEREND COOK AND THE DORRS AT HIGHLAWN Jost T an appropriate setting for the baronial, brick mansion built there in 1904. But these he grand copper beech and black walnut trees of today's Blantyre property make impressive trees were actually planted half a century earlier to shelter another historic and long-forgotten Lenox country house, Highlawn (a nineteenth-century estate not to be confused with the twentieth-century farm and brick Georgian mansion of Lila Sloane and William Bradhurst Osgood Field across Laurel Lake). A celebrity preacher of the day, Reverend Russell Salmon Cook (1811-1864), built the first Highlawn around 1850 during a brief hiatus between his third and fourth marriages. A member of an established Berkshire family, Cook hailed from New Marlborough and his first pastorate was at the Congregational Church in Lanesboro. But Cook was bound for bigger things. In New York City, he built up a successful nondenominational Protestant publishing house, the American Tract Society. An ebullient entrepreneurial figure, Cook marketed the Tract Society's books, magazines and pamphlets through his brainchild, the colportage system, hiring itinerant preachers and seminary students on summer vacations to sell publications and subscriptions door to door. Cook worked closely with many leading evangelicals: philanthropists Lewis and Arthur Tappan, Reverend Lyman Beecher and his ascendant son Reverend Henry Ward Beecher all served on the board of the Tract Society in Cook's day. Back in the Berkshires in 1844, Cook organized the Berkshire Jubilee in Pittsfield, a reunion of people like himself whose professional lives had taken them away to the city but who yearned to reconnect with their Berkshire roots. For this event, he worked with national luminaries with local ties-Catharine Sedgwick, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Fanny Kemble. In the 1840s and early 1850s, Reverend Cook was a regular Lenox visitor, sometimes filling Mr. Neill's pulpit at the Church-on-the-Hill. Congregant George Walker, writing his absent sister Sarah, could not resist remarking of Cook's pulpit performances, 5 Reverend Cook and the Dorrs at Highlawn Thirty years earlier as a student, George B. Dorr (1806-1876) had been thrown out of Harvard for youthful high jinks "playing cards, drinking spirituous liquors, and making improper noise." Now in his fifties, the loyal widower and sober New York businessman would become a benefactor of educational causes and promoter of the fledgling Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. In Lenox, George and his brother Francis were remembered by the younger generation as formal, perhaps pompous and sometimes dull. In an unguarded diary entry from October 1869, Grace Sedgwick Bristed described a festive lunch party on Mrs. Tappan's porch at Tanglewood with Boston and New York friends. "Mr. Dorr [either George or Francis] was also there but did not add much to the conversation-the rest of us were delightful." The Dorr brothers of Highlawn had two more animated younger half-siblings-Susan and Charles-who were closely linked to Lenox by friendship and marriage to Sam and Anna Ward of Highwood. Susan Dorr was one of Anna's closest Boston friends. Anna's diary depicts Susan as a ready companion for outings to concerts and lectures as well as domestic sessions addressing party invitations. When Susan's brother Charles became engaged to Sam's sister Mary in 1849, their families became allied. "It seemed the happiest evening of our lives," wrote Anna when Sam brought the news from the city to her at Highwood. In her early twenties, Mary Ward had already established a reputation in Lenox as an intrepid horsewoman. Hotel owner William Curtis considered her second only to the legendary Fanny Kemble. Over the years, the Dorrs would enlarge and alter the house begun by Reverend Cook. In 1876, a local newspaper reporter considered the Dorr house as comparable to Highwood, only more "elaborate and symmetrical." The only surviving photograph of Highlawn dates from 1886, by which time the house was far from symmetrical. Lenox builders the Clifford Brothers had rendered it "virtually a new house" that year. Its original board and batten façade had been shingled and clapboarded. The photograph only offers a glimpse of what must have been a rambling Victorian summer house with an eccentric roofline, random leaded windows, wide bracketed porches for entertaining on the ground floor and little, inset, private porches at key corners on upper stories. By the late 1880s, the house offered fourteen bedrooms and attracted tenants like Helen and Anson Phelps Stokes, with their nine children. The Stokeses found the Dorr house a bit confining for their household and in 1894 built Shadowbrook, the grandest of all Gilded Age houses in the Berkshires. George B. Dorr outlived his brother Francis and is credited with the landscape planning for which Highlawn became known. As early as the summer of 1854, his neighbor Henry Ward Beecher observed "the benevolent Mr. Dorr" at work planting specimen trees.9 Twenty years later, a reporter making the rounds of Lenox estates called Highlawn "a place almost too perfect," where "the views are complete the grounds in perfect order, and not even a COW is allowed on the premises to soil the smoothly shaven lawns of emerald green. "10 The Dorr brothers called their Washington Place town house Hightown, a play on the name of their country home with its emerald lawns. The horticultural passion of George Dorr transmitted to his young nephew and namesake, George Bucknam Dorr Jr., son of Mary Ward Dorr. Born the year his uncles 61 HAWTHORNE'S LENOX 6 The Dorrs' Highlawn in 1886, as it looked when the large Anson Phelps Stokes family rented it. E.A. Morley, photographer. bought the place, young George Dorr escaped Boston city life each summer for Lenox, where he learned about plants and explored the country on foot and horseback. In years to come, as owner of Mount Desert Nurseries in Maine, this second George B. Dorr would supply plant material to fashionable clients like Beatrix Farrand and Edith Wharton and, as a pioneer in land preservation, become known as the father of Acadia National Park. 11 Late in life he referred to the varied landscape around Highlawn in a letter to John D. Rockefeller Jr. "Open grassy spaces, like wild sheep pastures, are often better in contrast to continuous woods." Dorr wrote, "I used to be familiar with them, wandering over the Berkshire country when I was a boy."12 62 "HIGHLAWN." MR. GEORGE DORR 8/27/2018 Highlawn in winter - Digital Commonwealth Lenox Library Association (/institutions/commonwealth:1c18dv406) Local History Photograph Collection (/collections/commonwealth:1c18dv41g) Highlawn in winter Item Information Title: Highlawn in winter Photographer: Martin, Augustus E. 1872-1961(/search?f%5Bname_facet_ssim%5D%5B%5D=Martin%2C+Augustus+E.+1872-1961) Date: [ca. 1890-1904] Format: Photographs (/search?f%5Bgenre_basic_ssim%5D%5B%5D=Photographs) Genre: Glass negatives /search?f%5Bgenre_specific_ssim%5D%5B%5D=Glass+negatives Location: Lenox Library Association /search?f%5Bphysical_location_ssim%5D%5B%5D=Lenox+Library+Association) Special Collections Collection (local): Local History Photograph Collection (/search? f%5Brelated_item_host_ssim%5D%5B%5D=Local+History+Photograph+Collection) Series: Subjects: Dwellings s(/search?f%5Bsubject_facet_ssim%5D%5B%5D=Dwellings Winter /search?f%5Bsubject_facet_ssim%5D%5B%5D=Winter) Places: Massachusetts(/search?f%5Bsubject_geographic_ssim%5D%5B%5D=Massachusetts) > Berkshire (county) (/search? %5Bsubject_geographic_ssim%5D%5B%5D=Berkshire+%28county%29) > Lenox (/search? f%5Bsubject_geographic_ssim%5D%5B%5D=Lenox) Extent: 1 photograph : glass negative ; plate 11 x 13 cm Permalink: https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/1c18dv66b( (https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/1c18dv66b) Terms of Use: No known copyright restrictions. This work is licensed for use under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). (cc) BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0) show more... View MODS XML (/search/commonwealth:1c18dv66b/metadata_view More Like This (/search/commonwealth:st74d1000) (/search/commonwealth:1c18f961t) (/search/commonwealth:1c18f8792) https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:1c18dv66b 2/3 Chapter draft by Cornelia golder. Courtesy of author. 9/24/18 HIGHLAWN 1/12/00 draft #1 C. 1849 - constructed 1886 - remodeled, Clifford and sons, builders. 1901- 2, moved for construction of Blantyre and demolished soon afterwards. the Levers For the past century the name "High Lawn" has been associated with the Wilde family's renown Jersey farm and their magnificent Beaux Arts style house (Delano & Aldrich, 1910) just over the Lee line. But in the 1850's, when Anna Ward of Highwood was going to tea at "Highlawn", her destination was quite another place. It was her their relatives, the Dorrs, whose fine house stood on a Lenox hillside overlooking Laurel Lake. Anyone familiar with the spectacular views at Blantyre, built 100 feet away from its long forgotten predecessor, Highlawn, will understand the special qualities of the site. In the hands of George B. Dorr, an avid horticulturist and landscape gardener, the 50 acre estate was described in 1874 as a place almost too perfect" where the views are complete the grounds in perfect order, and not even a cow is allowed on the premises to soil the smoothly shaven lawns of emerald green".¹ Early History - Rev. Russell S. Cook The George B. Dorr did not build the house, however. His family bought it, soon after its construction, from one of New York's influential ecclesiastical figures of the day, Rev. Russell Salmon Cook (1811-1864). Cook was the corresponding secretary2 of the American Tract Society, an interdenominational Protestant publishing house in New York City. In the Berkshires, he was a well-known public figure. He was the organizer of the Berkshire Jubilee of 1844, a county centennial celebration in Pittsfield attended by not only local residents but also over a thousand prominent "emigrant sons" who had moved away, but still felt a strong attachment to their Berkshire roots.³ Russell Cook, himself, was a Berkshire native. He was born in the south county town of New Marlboro, and his first and only pastorate was at the Congregational Church in Lanesboro, after graduation from Auburn Theological Seminary. Difficulties with his voice led him to resign, but during his one year pastorate in Lanesboro in 1837 he came to appreciate the materials of the American Tract Society, the organization that he would soon lead. When he purchased the property in Lenox, the energetic Rev. Cook had been with the Tract Society for 12 years, transforming its publications department. A buoyant personality and a publishing genius, he conceived of a myriad of new publications with circulations that quickly mounted into the hundreds of thousands. These included a monthly called The American Messenger, a popular children's magazine The Child's Paper, illustrated children's "toy" books and a stream of tracts such as Beware of Bad Books (1847). Cook supervised their translation into scores of foreign languages and their distribution through "colportage", a novel system of employing itinerant preachers 1 Gleaner & Advocate, September 15, 1874. 2 During Cook's tenure at the ATS in the 1840's and 1850's, the position of corresponding secreary (today's equivalent of CEO) was shared by three men. letter fom Kristen Mitrisin, Archivist of ATS, Nov. 8, 1999) 3 Stuart Murray, A Time of War: A Northern Chronicle of the Civil War (Berkshire House Publishers, Lee, MA: 2001) p. 1. Gilder-2 and seminary students on summer vacation not only in rural areas of America, but also among newly arrived urban immigrants and even abroad. 4 The religious publishing of Tract Society of Cook's day permeated everyday American culture on a significant scale.5 Among Cook's board members were prominent clergymen, educators, politicians and businessmen - some with links to the Berkshires. 6 The largest single contributor to the early years of the Tract Society was a New York merchant named Arthur Tappan.7 His nephew William Aspinwall Tappan and bride Caroline Sturgis were building Taplet Tanglewood in Lenox in the early 1850's, overseeing the project from next door at Highwood rented from the Wards & In New York the Tappan family were members of Henry Ward Beecher's Plymouth Church in Brooklyn. Both the charismatic Henry Ward Beecher and his influential father Rev. Lyman Beecher were on the board at the American Tract Society, and Beecher followed Cook's example buying property next door to him in Lenox in 1854.9 No pictures survive of the house Russell Cook built in 1849, but it seems to have been a board and batten structure, judging by a description in Lenox Life written fifty years later. The house was "of the old sloped-roof pattern, boarded up and down outside and painted and sanded not unlike the primitive railroad stations often seen in small towns" 10 In the course of his first year in Lenox, Cook purchased six separate parcels of land creating a thirty acre estate. Perhaps like Beecher a few years later, Rev. Cook found Lenox too far from New York for a man with business pressures and increasingly uncertain health. 11 In 1853 after spending six months abroad on Tract Society business, he sold his Lenox property to Francis Fiske Dorr who had rented the place for the summer. The Dorrs and Highlawn The scion of a distinguished Boston family, Francis Fiske Dorr was a middle aged bachelor and an established import merchant in New York City when he purchased the property in Lenox Though the original title bears his name¹², Francis' two brothers, George Bucknam and Charles Hazen and sisters Susan Elizabeth and PMartha Ann Dorr Edwards all took a lifelong interest in Highlawn. They were the children of Samuel and Lucy Fox Dorr of Boston and came to Lenox as friends of Charles Sedgwick 13 and connections to Samuel Gray Ward. 4 American National Biography pp 386-7. 5 Edwin Scott Gausted Religious History of America, (NY Harper & Row, 1966) p. 170 as cited in Slocum p. 95-6. 6 Stephen Elmer Slocum Jr. " American Tract Society: 1825-1975. An Evangelical Effort to Influence the Religious and Moral Life of the United States" NYU phd thesis 1975, pp.61, 125, 127. 7 Dictionary of American Biography, Arthur Tappan, p.299. 8 May Callas, Profiles of Tanglewood Families, The Studley Press, 1995. pp11-13. 9 Blossom Farm, later Wyndhurst and now known as Cranwell. See Wyndhurst (4). 10 Lenox Life, June 1, 1901. 11 After serious lung infection in Switzerland in 1856, Cook resigned from the Tract Society. His last nine years were afflicted by lung disease, but he continued to work when he could for the Committee for a Better Observation of the Sabbath. He died in Pleasantville, NY in 1864. Cook married four times. During his Lenox days, he was probably married to his third wife, Harriet Ellsworth of Hartford, CT. 12 Registry of Deeds. Book 139, p.299. 13 Gleaner and Advocate, Sept. 7, 1876. golden-3 In 1850 the youngest Dorr brother, Charles, married Mary Ward, Samuel's N younger sister. Anna Ward described it "the happiest evening of our lives" when Sam returned home from New York with the news of Mary's engagement to Charles Dorr. 14 N Her diary of 1845-1852 is filled with entries describing the close associations between the Sedgwicks, Wards, Hoopers, Tappans and Dorrs both in Lenox and Boston. Anna records shopping in Boston for a silver knife, fork and spoon for Mary Ward Dorr's Hooper Strigis premature (or as she put it "eight month") baby William on February 4. 1851. 15 Another entry for February 28, 1852 tells of Susan Dorr's valuable help to Anna addressing a Sam mound of party invitations. Not long before "Mr. Dorr" had taken Anna and her close Hair, friend the singer Jenny Lind to hear the notable Bostonian Edward Everett lecture at the Mercantile Library Association. 16 Thus, when the Dorrs and Wards were in Lenox, the Highwood and Highlawn households were closely connected. One, Highwood, overlooking the Stockbridge Bowl, and the other, Highlawn, overlooking Laurel Lake were often compared, and it is interesting to note that Highlawn was considered the "more elaborate and symmetrical" of Heaper the two grand houses. 17 In the 1850's when Francis bought the house in Lenox, he and his older brother George lived together on Ninth Street in New York where they were both import merchants. Although Francis made the initial investment, it is George who appears to have dedicated his energy and time to Highlawn. By the 1870's George was undisputed squire of Highlawn, having dedicated 24 summers to making the place "a seat of unsurpassed beauty". 18 George B. Dorr (1806-1876) was the second of Samuel and Lucy Dorr's seven children. His wild college career at Harvard must have caused a family crisis or two and precipitated him early into the working world. On June 12, 1822, as a giddy sophomore with spring fever he was formally "admonished for having several students at his room yesterday, engaged in playing at cards, drinking spiritous liquors, and making improper noise". 19 A year later the University cracked down on Dorr's revels and expelled him and a friend named Gourgas for "deliberate and intended insult of a College Officer". The last straw had been their "whistling loudly" from their dormitory windows at Professor Channing20 who was earlier subjected to their "loud and insolent laughing". 21 Gourgas was readmitted the following year, but it was not until 1866 that Harvard relented and granted Dorr his bachelor of arts degree "out of course" along with another former 14 Diary of Anna B. Ward, May 31,1849. Houghton Library, Harvard. NEEDS PERMISSION TO QUOTE. 15 This treasured present to the baby, William, who died as a young man in his midtwenties, survives in the collection of the Bar Harbor Historical Society. 16 ABW diary Jan 28, 1852. Everett had recently been president of Harvard and was serving as Millard Fillmore's Secretary of State. 17 Gleaner and Advocate, Sept 28, 1876. 18 Gleaner and Advocate, August 7, 1876. 19 Harvard University Archives Faculty Records 1814-1822 p.298. 20 Probably Edward Tyrrel Channing (1790-1856) brother of the great Unitarian preacher William Ellery Channing. 21 Harvard University Archives Faculty Records 1822-1824 pp. .24-5. gilder-4 miscreant from the Class of '08, Richard Henry Dana. 22 By this time Dorr was almost in his sixties and retired comfortably in Lenox after a successful business career, a benefactor of educational causes and a patron of the arts. After his erratic college career, George B. Dorr appears to have flourished in business joining his brothers, Samuel and Francis, both importers in New York. At 31, he married Joanna Howland, the seventeen year old daughter of the shipping magnate of the era Samuel S. Howland23. George was devastated by her death five years later in 1842 and never remarried. In the early 1850's when he and his brother Francis began expanding and improving their new Lenox place, Joanna's first cousins Emily and Edward Woolsey were building their hilltop home Woodcliff just north of the village. Highlawn gave George B. Dorr an outlet for his horticultural passion and skill. During 1854, his first summer at Highlawn he was already transforming the open landscape, and his neighbor, Henry Ward Beecher, at Blossom Farm delighted in the shrubbery which "the benevolent Mr. Dorr was SO beautifully planting for my sake blessings on him!" 24 After dividing their time between New York and Lenox in the mid- fifties, the Dorr brothers retired "in possession of ample competence"25 to become gentleman farmers in Lenox. The farm was managed by Thomas F. Graham and Batholomew Lawton, but George Dorr took charge of the grounds around the house. Highlawn became recognized as "for extent and variety of prospect, and the high culture of the immediate surroundings, a seat of unsurpassed beauty" 26 While preferring the rural life, Dorr maintained his city connections. He became a member of the Century Club in New York in 1864 and in Boston in the early 1870's he was an early promoter of the Museum of Fine Arts. At the opening in July 1876 of the museum's first building, the Greek rooms were dominated by Dorr's gift, a vast cast of the caryatid porch of the Erechtheum on the Acropolis. 27 In Lenox, Dorr was a close friend of Col. Auchmuty, William R. Robeson, Charles Kneeland and his two next door neighbors John Sargent and Gen. John Rathbone28 As an integral member of the public spirited community of mid-century Lenox, he was a ready contributor to village improvement projects, including "embellishing" the Lee and Lenoxdale roads on either side of Highlawn.29 His nephew, namesake and heir was another George Bucknam Dorr (1853-1944 who inherited both Highlawn and his uncle 22 HU Archives Corporate Records, vol. 10 1857-1866 p. 447. This Richard Henry Dana (1787-1879) was the father of the author of Two Years Before the Mast, and a recognized man of letters, himself. 23 Franklyn Howland: A Brief Genealogical and Biographical History of Arthur, Henry and John Howland and their descendants of the US and Canada, New Bedford, MA 1885. p. 356. Joanna's younger sister Catherine married the architect Richard M. Hunt in 1850?. 24 Henry Ward Beecher, The Star Papers. J.C.Derby: New York: 1855. p.268. This quote comes form an essay dated "Lenox, August 10, 1854". 25 The Gleaner and Advocate, Sept. 7, 1876. 26 ibid. 27 Walter Muir Whitehead, The Museum of Fine Arts: A Centennial History. Belknap Press, Cambridge, 1970. Vol. 1, pp.33-34. 28 They all served as his pallbearers at his funeral in the old Trinity Church in September 1876. Gleaner and Advocate, Sept 14, 1876. 29 Gleaner and Advocate, Oct. 22, 1874. gilder-5 George's love of landscape architecture. The younger George B. Dorr, a son of Charles and Mary Ward Dorr³0, was a frequent visitor to Highlawn in his youth where he must have observed and learned from his horticulturist uncle. He and his brother William, who died in his twenties, seem to have been the only children connected to Highlawn. The fourteen bedroom house with its library, dining room and music room, where Frederick Rackemann would play3 must have been a very adult world occupied by the quartet of elderly, childless Dorr uncles and aunts, Francis, George, Susan and Martha Ann³³. The second George B. Dorr and his parents seem to have initiated a substantial remodeling of Highlawn in the Shingle Style in 1886. the year of Morley's photograph. The sweeping gambrel roofs, asymmetrical fenestration, and inset upper floor porches were all part of the remodeling by the Clifford Company rendering it "virtually a new house" by the middle of the summer. 33 But the Dorrs were increasingly attached to their Mt Desert home, Oldfarm. This NO house, also in the Shingle Style, was designed by Alexander Oakey in 1878, the year he lost his Lenox house by foreclosure. Charles, Mary and the young George B. Dorr seem to have come to Lenox irregularly and for most seasons the house was rented often to families who were looking for a place to buy. Robert and Adele Chapin rented it in 1885 before they bought Nowood, Anson and Helen Stokes and their eight children rented it in 1887 before buying The Homestead. 34 In the 1890s the Henry Crams and George Blisses were tenants at High Lawn. Charles Haven Dorr died in 1893, and Mary Ward Dorr, considered one of the grande dames of Bar Harbor, lived on at Oldfarm with her son George. 35 The Oldfarm garden, begun in the 1870's by Charles and Mary Dorr, was said to be "the earliest pleasure garden" of Bar Harbor.36 In 1896 George Dorr established here the Mount Desert Nurseries which became famous for its range of old fashioned plants and its knowlegeable staff. His friend and fellow garden enthusiast Edith Wharton sought his advice on each phase of making the Mount as she once promised him it would be "one of the most interesting places in the world in 1907". In a series of letters over a period of years she discussed the planting of white pines between the house and the 30 Charles and Mary Dorr were described by Prof. Francis G. Peabody as "the first to discover the possibilities of the shore for landscape gardening and to transform the wild beauty surrounding their hospitable home into a well-ordered and unspoiled park". as quoted in George B. Dorr, The Story of Acadia National Park, Acadia Press, Bar Harbor, Maine: 1997. p.59. 31 Diary of Charles Rackemann, August 19, 1874. The 17 year old describes driving over with "Papa" to the Dorrs' in the afternoon. 32 The Dorrs are all buried at Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambrdge. Francis died in 1871, George in 1876, Martha Ann in 1882 and Susan in 1889. Each one had a share in Highlawn. In 1876 Martha Ann and her husband Henry Edwards left their share to MIT, reserving life estate for Martha Ann and Susan and a provision for their nephew George B. Dorr's repurchase of their interestfrom MIT after their deaths. (In November 1976, two weeks before the Edwards' agreement with MIT, William Dorr had died in his twenties leaving young George B Dorr,a recent Harvard graduate, the sole survivor of the next generation.) Registry of Deed book 275 p 262. 33 Valley Gleaner, May 18,1886, July 28,1886. 34 Stokes Records, vol iv, p.10 or 11 (Mary Waller) 35 Cleveland Amory recounts Mary Dorr's quip at a tea party when struggling with a lapse of memory about some local point of interest. "We never answer questions here after four o'clock". The Last Resorts, Harper and Row, 1952. p.315. 36 "Catalogue of the Mount Desert Nurseries", .1926 p.1. Gilder-6 stables, siting farm buildings, digging up ferns, and stocking borders along a path he designed. 37 "What you say of the phloxes makes my mouth water, for I have tried to get as many good varieties as possible, and am keen for new colours. If there is any really good novelty, wd. you not ask your manager to send me the name and the colour and won't you, by the way, come to us sometime next month in September, and see the George Dorr path, the new pond, and other improvements?"38 Highlawn, the Lenox house with SO many Dorr family memories, had been demolished, by the time Edith Wharton was urging George Dorr to visit the Mount. He had sold the place in 1900 to Robert Warden Paterson, a Scottish born turpentine broker duch in his sixties and his third wife, Marie. As The Mount was constructed at one end of Plunkett Street, the new baronial Blantyre (designed by Potter and Robertson of New York) was in progress at the Dorr place. Amidst the Dorrs' towering elms, copper beeches and black walnuts the extravagant new brick and half-timbered Tudor mansion took form. 39 The old Dorr house was moved temporarily to provide housing for some of the vast crew of craftsmen-masons, plasterers, wood-carvers- brought in by the great Worcester building contractors, the Norcross Brothers40. Having completed the ambitious Aspinwall Hotel site work, Charles Hale of Boston was awarded the grading and road-building contract for both Blantyre and the Mount. 41 And what became of George B. Dorr, that striking, tall, athletic outdoors man whose Bar Harbor barber described as resembling "a forest" ?42 Today conservationists revere him as "the father of Acadia National Park". Within a year of the sale of Highlawn, Dorr embarked on an historic effort to preserve the Bar Harbor landscape and create one of the earliest National Parks in the U. S.43 With the single-minded zeal of a bachelor, Dorr dedicated the next forty years of his life and most of his fortune - including probably N the proceeds of the sale of Highlawn - to a series of land purchases which form today's park around his family house, Oldfarm. He became a local legend in Bar Harbor for his ritual swims in icy waters until Christmastime and his lively interest in comparing Greek translations of Homer until his eyesight faded in his nineties. In Boston he lived at the Somerset Club and served on the Harvard University's Board of Overseers on the philosophy committee, and lead the fund drive for the construction of Harvard's Emerson Hall. Visiting Blantyre today, the Dorr era is told only in a few nineteenth century outbuildings - the shingled carriage house and a little board and batten hipped roof structure - and some surviving ancient specimen trees planted 150 years ago by "the benevolent Mr. Dorr". 37 Eleanor Dwight, Edith Wharton: An Extraordinary Life. Harry Abrams 1994. 116 38 EW to GBD the Mount July 24 [1906] as quoted in Dwight p. 116. 39 Lenox Life, June 1, 1901. 40 During the construction the Norcross foreman, Elmer Welch married the Lenoxdale librarian, Lucretia Lawrence and they settled in Lenoxdale. Valley Gleaner, Jan 20, 1902. 41 Valley Gleaner , Jan. 1,1902. 42 Cleveland Amory, The Last Resorts, p.324. 43 Acadia was designated a National Park in 1916, the same year the Park Service was created. see George B. Dorr. The Story of Acadia National Park. Gilder-7. Cornelia B. Gilder Thanks to Kristen Mitrisin, archivist of the American Tract Society: Joan Kaufman, archivist of Mt. Auburn Cemetery: Debbie Dyer of the Bar Harbor Historical Society: the staff of Acadia National Park: Alan Emmet; Craig Thomas; Barbara Czelusniak of Blantyre; and the continued collaboration of Julia Conklin Peters. C. Epp, Ronald From: Nini Gilder [cbg@gilder.com] Sent: Monday, July 07, 2003 12:15 PM To: Epp, Ronald Subject: Re: George Dorr's antecedants Dear Ron, Bood to hear from you and glad the Dorr material was helpful. My book is still in progress and it should fill the gap you seek. David Wood's book may help in a general way but, even there, the Dorrs aren't mentioned. Highlawn was demolished when G.B. D. jr. sold it at the turn of the century, and a rather baronial brick house was built on the beautiful site. It was called Blantyre and is the most pricey place to stay and eat in the Berkshires (owned by the Red Lion Inn). The Dorrs seem to have been more or less forgotten in local published works which made me look to other sources to sort out the brothers and their professions. I have one nice 1874 clipping from a local paper and a poor picture of the house published in a now-rare book of photographs by E.A. Morley entitled Lenox. For my research on some 50 Lenox country houses (some like Highlawn long-gone, some extant) I am constantly using the collections at the Lenox Library, Lenox Historical Society, Berkshire Atheneaum and to a lesser extent the Berkshire Historical Society but Dorrs just don't crop up. Let me know if you do plan a trip this way as I would be glad to show you Blantyre and my file on the Dorrs. Since George B. Dorr was such a figure at the Somerset Club in Boston I wondered if there was a published tribute by a fellow member after his death. (The Century Club in NY does memorial tributes which are often very interesting and more personal than published obits.) Please do keep in touch, I am glad to share my research because without exception I learn new things in the process! E Best Wishes, Cornelia Gilder 413-243-0161 > From: "Ronald Epp" > Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2003 16:15:10 -0400 > To: "Nini Gilder" > Cc: > Subject: Re: George Dorr's antecedants > > Dear Ms. Gilder: > > How kind of you to respond with such extensive information about > George B. Dorr and his relatives. You have provided me with key > information that I did not have in my possession. I will acknowledge > your contribution when my book is published. > > I've requested a couple of titles on Lenox history that may contain > references to the Dorr cottagers (Palmer's History of Lenox and > Richmond > (MA) and David Wood's Lenox; Massachusetts shire town) but I was unable to > find any publication data on your "book on Lenox country houses. Is it a > work in progress? > > My wife and I frequent Lenox, less often since we moved to New > Hampshire from south of Hartford, CT. two years ago. As members of the 1 > Trustees of Reservations we would frequently visit Bartholemew's > Cobble and other TOR properties in your area as well as Tanglewood, of > course. Naumkeag was one of our favorites as well; we never visited > Wharton's home which clearly now relates to my invesitigations of Mr. > Dorr's relationship with landscape architect Beatrix Farrand, a close > relative of Wharton > > I appreciate your references to the sources and repositories of > information for the Dorr ancestry. I have yet to delve into Harvard's > archives except online and I will explore the Mount Auburn Cemetary > records since I have some of Mr. Dorr's correspondance with them when > he felt that the grave sites of his parents were not being propoerly > tended. > > George B. Dorr's life prior to his adulthood greatly interests me and > appreciate your suspicion that he and brother William likely came > often to Highlawn. Do you know of any local social histories that > would capture the essence of life in this 1860's era? > > It would interest me to know whether you have found the Berkeshire > Athenaeum Local History Room, the Berkshire Historical Society, or the > Lenox Historical Society useful to your inquiries with special > reference to Highlawn and the Dorr family. Your judgment might spare > me an unproductive trip to these historical repositories. > > If Elizabeth and I journey to western Massachusetts perhaps we could > meet. > > Please call me "Ron". > > Very appreciatively, > > Ron Epp > Home : 47 Pond View Dr., Merriumack, NH 03054 Phone: 603-424-6149 > > Original Message > From: "Nini Gilder" > To: > Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2003 9:41 AM > Subject: George Dorr's antecedants > > >> Dear Dr. Epp, >> I have just returned from a two-week trip to Alaska - a place George > B. >> Dorr would have loved - and found your letter. I wish I could come >> to > hear >> your talk to the Bar Harbor Historical Society. >> My knowledge of the Dorrs comes through my research for a book on > Lenox >> country houses. Here in Lenox George B. Dorr's relatives on both >> sides > of >> his family established substantial estates in the 1840s and 50s. >> George's uncle Samuel Gray Ward is considered the pioneer Lenox >> "cottager." He and Anna Barker Ward built the first big house of the >> area called "Highwood" (now part of Tanglewood) in 1845. In 1853 >> Francis Fiske Dorr (1811-1870) bought a house he named "Highlawn" >> which he had rented previously. Francis had two brothers George >> Bucknam (1806-1876) and Charles Hazen (father of the second George >> B.) and two sisters Susan Elizabeth and Martha Ann Dorr (later >> Edwards) They > were >> the children of Samuel and lucy Fox Dorr of Boston. The second George 2 >> was the lone descendant of these five brothers and sisters >> (after the death of his older brother William in his twenties). . While >> the Charles > Dorrs >> gravitated to Maine, all the others summered in Lenox. The first >> George > B. >> and Francis were in business together in New York as import merchants >> and lived together on Ninth Street in NYC. I have pieced together >> this genealogical material from Harvard Alumni records (on the first >> George B. who was the most active family member in Lenox), , the >> Ancestry. com web site, Mt. Auburn Cemetery records, New York City >> Directories . I am always interested in learning more and would be > most >> eager to know if you have run into any references to Highlawn in >> Lenox > where >> I suspect George B. and his brother William came often as children. >> I'd be very interested to have a copy of your paper when it is done. >> Please let > me >> know if you have further questions I might be able to answer. >> >> Best Wishes >> >> Cornelia B. Gilder >> 413-243-0161 >> P.O. Box 430 >> Tyringham, MA 01264 3 BLANTYRE. Robert Warden Paterson was listed in Notable New Yorkers 1896 to 1899. He lived at 2 West 51st Street, across from the Vanderbilts. It was a 50-year journey to Fifth Avenue from the poverty of Scotland. He immigrated to Canada with his family and struck out for New York alone as a teenager. With his first wife, Emma Downing Paterson, he had two sons, Henry A. and Robert Downing Paterson. Emma died, and in 1893, Paterson married Marie Louise Fahys. The Fahys family traced its lineage to William "the Pilgrim" Brewster, who had led the first religious service in the New World at Plymouth. In 1900, George B. Dorr (of Highlawn) conveyed "to Marie Louise Paterson certain real estate in Lenox." Between 1900 and 1904, the Patersons acquired six properties totaling more than 300 acres, retained architect Robert H. Robertson, and built Blantyre. (Courtesy of the Providence Library.) Carole Owers. The Backsheres Charleston,S.C dia, 2004. 8/15/2021 Beecher Hill I Lenox History Lenox History Tag Archives: Beecher Hill PLACES LENOXASA RESORT - EVOLUTION OF BEECHER'S HILL JANUARY 30, 2016 Henry Ward Beecher became minister of Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn (shown here with his equally famous sister Harriet Beecher Stowe) in 1847. He spent time in Lenox 1853-1857. A progressive active in the anti-slavery movement, he became part of the early Lenox intelligentsia. His stopovers included visiting the Lenox Sedgwicks and preaching at Church on the Hill. He and his fam- ily stayed at a house they called Blossom Farm. Blossom Farm It was located on what is now Route 20/ Lee Road in an area called, for awhile, Beecher Hill. Privacy Terms https://lenoxhistory.org/tag/beecher-hill/ 1/9 8/15/2021 Beecher Hill I Lenox History her daughters, Ellen, married Richard Tylden Auchmuty. They would go on to build The Dormers and play a very active role in the construction of the new Trinity church. Highlawn/Blantyre The southeastern end of this clus- ter of "cottages" began its story with another adulterous clergy- man. Another celebrity preacher, Rev. Russell Salmon Cook (1811- 1864). In 1853 he purchased property in Lenox that included a ramshackle farm house. In a dust up over money and the Reverend's third (fourth?) marriage, he needed to abandon his property. Highlawn (Maybe) - 1870's? It was taken over by two New York brothers (one a bachelor, the other a widower), Francis and George Dorr. They expanded the house and planted the grounds - in- cluding large specimen trees. Their property made up about half of the several hundred acres acquired by Robert Paterson for what would become Blantyre. Robert Paterson was introduced to the Lenox area in the late 1890's by his friend John Sloan (of W&J Sloane). Paterson tore down the modest Dorr house, keeping the outbuild- ings and started building a prop- Privacy Terms https://lenoxhistory.org/tag/beecher-hill/ 6/9 8/15/2021 Beecher Hill Lenox History erty on a grand scale, He told his architect, Robert Henderson Robertson. that he wanted a castle of "feudal architectural features," replete with towers, turrets and gargoyles. The house was modeled after his mother's ancestral home in Blan- tyre, Scotland. Construction began in 1901, at times employing over Blantyre - 1902 300 people on the grounds and buildings. The main house was furnished in the Eng- lish style with all the furniture being brought in from England. The family used the house for the summer and fall and there were garden parties with musicians im- ported from New York and grand dinner- dances with each party becoming more and more lavish. In the 1920's the property evolved with its neighbors Wyndhurst and Coldbrook. Mr. and Mrs. Paterson at Their Large Organ Blantyre deteriorated considerably in the 1970's. In the 1980's it was re- stored by the late Ann Fitzpatrick Brown and is now run as a luxury hotel. Privacy Terms https://lenoxhistory.org/tag/beecher-hill/ 7/9 8/15/2021 Beecher Hill I Lenox History Properties Rise and Fall Together By 1928, the party was over. The Gilded Age was ended, and the cot- tages were relics of a bygone era. On the hill, an ambitious plan for aBerkshire Hunt and Country Club combined four former estates - Wyndhurst, Coldbrook, Pinecroft, and Blantyre. Woodson R. Oglesby, Blantyre - 1902 former New York Congressman, started buying the estates at foreclosures. On August 10, 1929 there was a full page spread about the second season of the Club. On an adjacent page it was reported that a Williams College professor warned, "Unemployment is a problem in need of an immediate solution." A column on the financial page predicted, "The Stock Market will rally after a minor dip." The Market crashed on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, two months and 19 days later. The country was in depression. For a moment it looked as if those Club members would be untouched and the Club would continue. By 1933 the Club was as- saulted by lawsuits and swamped in debt. In 1939, the land on the hill was sold for (approximately) $9,000 in back taxes. New Identities in the Twentieth Century For that price, Edward Cranwell bought the hill with two Berkshire Cottages: Wyndhurst and Coldbrook. In 1939, he gave it to the Jesuits to use as a sch I The Jesuits named the school in honor of the donor - Cranwell Preparato School. Privacy Terms https://lenoxhistory.org/tag/beecher-hill/ 8/9 8/15/2021 Beecher Hill I Lenox History The school closed in 1975. Coldbrook and Cranwell (Wyndhurst) are now oper- ated as a condominium and resort complex, Pinecroft has been demolished, and Blantyre is a luxury hotel. For much more on the architecture of these houses and the people who lived in them, see Houses of the Berkshires, 1870-1930, by Richard S. Jackson Jr. and Cornelia Brooke Gilder, Acanthus Press, 2006 The Tanglewood Circle, Hawthorne's Lenox, Cornelia Brooke Gilder with Julia Conklin Peters, The History Press, 2008 The Berkshire Cottages, A Vanishing Era, by Carole Owens, Cottage Press, Inc. 1980 BEECHER HILL BLANTYRE BLOSSOM FARM COLEBROOK HIGHLAWN PINECROFT WYNDHURST Privacy Terms https://lenoxhistory.org/tag/beecher-hill/ 9/9 role Owens. The Buchsheres, 2004. Charleston, S.C.: Arcedia Publishing THE LITTLE R1 morning in driv of how far afield doorstep. Hawth Shanty. (Autho HIGHWOOD, 1845. At Highwood, Sam Ward entertained Jenny Lind, Fanny Kemble, Margaret Fuller, George Inness, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Catharine Sedgwick, but on this day, he was waiting for the chimney man. "December 16, 1845, Richard, In a new house, at this season of the vear. after sparing no pains or expense to he unable to half 8/15/2021 The Beginnings of Lenox As a Resort Community Lenox History Lenox History THE BIG PICTURE THE BEGINNINGS OF LENOXASA RESORT COMMUNITY JANUARY 31, 2016 | LENOXHISTORY Several authors count Samuel Gray Ward's (1817- 1907) purchase in 1844 of the original Highwood as the beginning of Lenox as a resort community. Ward certainly set the mold for others who would follow shortly. He was the son of Thomas Ward who sought out investment opportunities in the burgeoning American economy for London based Barings Bank. Young Samuel was a member of Emerson's circle (a Transcendentalist Groupie?) and he longed to pursue the life of a country scholar. Samuel Gray Ward (about 1860) Time Was Right for an Early Summer Resort But to understand how this act set off a bit of a ripple of grand summer ho should probably consider how the stage was set as New England rolled int new century. Privacy Terms https://lenoxhistory.org/lenoxhistorybigpicture/the-beginnings-of-lenox-as-a-resort-community/ 1/4 8/15/2021 The Beginnings of Lenox As a Resort Community | Lenox History The economy was shifting from agricultural subsistence to a cash based econ- omy with the emergence of wage labor, professional services and trade as in- creasingly important - particularly in the Northeast. A mobil wealthy class was emerging. Other areas - particularly the Northwest Territories and Upstate New York of- fered better agricultural opportunities than New England. Starting as early as 1790 with Major General John Paterson moving to upstate New York, the phe- nomenon of investing in land for its economic potential was shifting away from New England. The quality was better and there wasn't much open land left in Massachusetts Population density (in the 1830-1850 censes Massachusetts had one of the highest densities per square mile) motivated those who were able to seek the health and beauty of the countryside. Transportation improvements were accelerating allowing more people to go where they wanted to go and allowing economic specialization (i.e., wheat from the midwest, dairy and fresh food from New England moved to cities). Roads had improved steadily since the Revolution and even before rail service was es- tablished, there was regular coach service stopping at what would become the Curtis Hotel. Then several major developments occurred 1820-1850. The completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 eased east west transport through the Great Lakes. The railroad came to Berkshire County by 1841 providing rela- tively easy access to the countryside for moyers and shakers from Boston and New York. America was just beginning to define its own art and culture and patronage and discussion were eagerly sought by the elite. Between the courts, the Sedg- wicks, and the schools there apparently was enough critical mass to attract a steady flow of artists and literati such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville and Thomas Cole. Highwood Privacy - Terms https://lenoxhistory.org/lenoxhistorybigpicture/the-beginnings-of-lenox-as-a-resort-community/ 2/4 8/15/2021 The Beginnings of Lenox As a Resort Community Lenox History Samuel Ward purchased land from farmer Daniel Barnes' farm - se- lected for its beautiful view of the Stockbridge Bowl. Although their home was famously chilly, the Wards lived year round at High- wood from 1845 to 1849 and quickly merged with the Sedgwick Berkshire about cultural circle for teas, talks, recita- Highroad now part of Boston Symphony Orchestra's Summer tions and concerts. The original Program; Much Altered from the Original Italianate Design Highwood (the one shown above had been considerably altered) was designed by Richard Upjohn who was, at the time, also working on Trinity Church in New York. Although the country intellec- tualism of the Wards and the Sedgwicks was much less pretentious than other what would follow later in the century, the trend of out of town architects and conscious design had begun. The couple attracted other Boston visitors and, when Sam was forced to return to Boston to take over his father's business he rented High- wood to the Tappans who would eventually take up residency on what is now part of the grounds of Tanglewood. In 1850 they rented the little red house at the end of Drawing of Cottage Rented to Hawthorne in 1850 (Re-cre- the drive to Nathaniel Hawthorne ation now on Hawthorne Rd. Across from Tanglewood) and his family. Afterward Privacy Terms https://lenoxhistory.org/lenoxhistorybigpicture/the-beginnings-of-lenox-as-a-resort-community/ 3/4 8/15/2021 The Beginnings of Lenox As a Resort Community I Lenox History Eventually, Highwood was sold to another successful Boston businessman, Will- iam S. Bullard. When the property was turned over to the Boston Symphony Or- chestra mid twentieth century, The Wards had never cut their ties to Lenox and when Sam Ward re- tired in the 1870's he purchased a property near Highwood and had Charles McKim build shingle style Oakwood in 1876. In 1891, the property was sold to Anson and Helen Stokes who would build Shadow Brook up the hill and con- vert Oakwoods to a stable. It burned in 1903. Oakwood, Built in 1876 for Sam and Anna Ward by Charles McKim, Burned 1903 So here was another pattern of tearing down charming existing homes to put up bigger, grander "cottages." For much more information on the early days of Lenox as a summer resort see, The Tan- glewood Circle, Hawthorne's Lenox, by Cornelia Brooke Gilder with Julia Conklin Peters HAWTHORNE'S LENOX LENOX HISTORY Privacy Terms https://lenoxhistory.org/lenoxhistorybigpicture/the-beginnings-of-lenox-as-a-resort-community/ 4/4 8/15/2021 The Cottager I Highwood Manor: Where Hawthorne dreamed up Tanglewood tales I Archives I berkshireeagle.com Editor's note: This is the second of three columns about the Gilded Age Cottages that make up the present day campus of Tanglewood. The history of Lenox and of Tanglewood might be slightly different today had a young Samuel Gray Ward never met Margaret Fuller while staying with his Harvard Professor John Farrar in the late 1830s. Fuller, a well-known intellectual of her own right and colleague of Ralph Waldo Emerson, would be responsible for introducing Ward not only to Emerson and the Transcendental movement, but also to his wife, Anna Hazard Barker. Those introductions would both be instrumental in shaping the future of Lenox as a society resort sought out by the "Berkshire Cottagers." When Ward met Fuller, he was a poet who wanted nothing to do with his father's line of work. Fuller, then editor of Emerson's "The Dial," would publish his poetry, while he taught her about the world of art. Following in the footsteps of his father, Thomas Wren Ward, the esteemed American representative of London's https://www.berkshireeagle.com/archives/the-cottager-highwood-manor-where-hawthorne-dreamed-up-tanglewood-tales/article_d6db1726-3567-536... 2/12 8/15/2021 The Cottager I Highwood Manor: Where Hawthorne dreamed up Tanglewood tales I Archives I berkshireeagle.com Baring Brothers bank, was the furthest thing from his mind. He planned to remain a member of Emerson's Transcendentalist Circle, writing poetry and analyses for "The Dial" until he met Anna during the summer of 1836. In 1837, just home from his European trek, Ward put aside his poetry and went to work as a banker. He also courted Miss Barker for the next three years, traveling often to her family home in New Orleans, before marrying her in 1840. "By 1843, he made up his mind that trade was not compatible with his disposition, that country life would be more suitable to him, a scholarly and intellectual man," May Callas writes in "Profiles of Tanglewood Families" of Ward's decision to move his young family to the Berkshires. If there was a place to become a gentleman farmer at the time, it was in the Berkshires, where a 'hive' of intellectuals was buzzing about the Sedgewick clan. In "Hawthorne's Lenox: The Tanglewood Circle," author Cornelia Brooke Gilder writes of the young family's Berkshire beginnings: "It all began in 1844 on a dreary day in the third week of March, when a handsome, well-heeled 27-year-old Samuel Gray Ward (1817-1907) strode across Daniel Barnes' brown, tufted meadow with a glorious view of Lake Mahkeenac and pronounced it 'very good.' https://www.berkshireeagle.com/archives/the-cottager-highwood-manor-where-hawthorne-dreamed-up-tanglewood-tales/article_d6db1726-3567-536.. 3/12 8/15/2021 The Cottager I Highwood Manor: Where Hawthorne dreamed up Tanglewood tales I Archives | berkshireeagle.com Wards's guide at the time was the esteemed Berkshire Clerk of Courts Charles Sedgewick, who arranged for the family's lodging while their three-story home was built. That October, the couple's third child, Thomas, was born in Lenox. The home, Highwood Manor, completed in 1845, is credited to architect Richard Upjohn, known best for New York City's Trinity Church, who was building a church for the Episcopal congregation in Stockbridge at the time. Upjohn would later design the Tappen house, which still sits within walking distance of Highwood. Whether or not Upjohn, whose signature was Gothic Revival manses and churches, designed the house is somewhat controversial, as the house's original design is more of an Italianate country house. Of this Callas wrote, but there is correspondence between Ward and his father, which mentions construction of Highwood done by the firm of Upjohn. Since Richard Michael Upjohn joined his father's firm the same year that Highwood was completed, it may be the younger Upjohn, assisting his father, added his own design incentives. There are design details in the Tappan house that are similar to those at Highwood, i.e., window soffits and apron benches." https://www.berkshireeagle.com/archives/the-cottager-highwood-manor-where-hawthorne-dreamed-up-tanglewood-tales/article_d6db1726-3567-536... 4/12 8/15/2021 The Cottager I Highwood Manor: Where Hawthorne dreamed up Tanglewood tales I Archives I berkshireeagle.com What is for certain about Highwood Manor are two things: It is considered to be the first of the Gilded Age cottages and it, not the Tappan house, was the inspiration for the porch in Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Tanglewood Tales." We also know that despite Ward's affection for his adoptive "Lenox valley," the house and its 220 acres sat on the Stockbridge side of the town line. The Wards lived at Highwood year round and became part of their adopted society, while keeping close ties with those in Boston. Guests would stay at a little red house (later inhabited by Nathaniel Hawthorne's family) at a nearby farm. Many of those guests, including the Tappans and Higginsons, would become inspired to build their own country cottages. But the snow-filled winters and long spring thaws at Highwood would not last long for the family, as Ward was soon recalled to Boston to aid his father. Of Ward's recall to Boston, Edward Waldo Emerson wrote in "The Early Years of the Saturday Club: 1855 to 1870": "As Samuel Ward was working in his Lenox garden, he saw, like an apparition approaching, his father's factotum, and on the moment foresaw his own doom." Ward was to become a banker like his father after all. The Wards didn't give up on returning to Lenox. They rented out Highwood to their friends, William and Caroline Tappen, who were living in https://www.berkshireeagle.com/archives/the-cottager-highwood-manor-where-hawthorne-dreamed-up-tanglewood-tales/article_d6db1726-3567-536. 5/12 8/15/2021 The Cottager I Highwood Manor: Where Hawthorne dreamed up Tanglewood tales I Archives I berkshireeagle.com the Red House at the time, and boarded their three oldest children with a clergyman and his wife. It was during the Tappens occupation of Highwood that their friends, Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne, took up residence in the Red House. The Tappans now owned the house and the farm adjacent to Highwood. It was on the long-gone porches of Highwood that Hawthorne would be surrounded by children, a setting he reproduced in his children's books, "A Wonder-Book," and "Tanglewood Tales." "The house and situation are described with particulars that identify it closely with the Tappans' Highwood In the summer of 1851, Mrs. Hawthorne wrote to her mother: 'On Sunday, Mr. Samuel G. Ward came to us. He gave me an excellent drawing of Highwood Porch, for 'A Wonder-Book," which he said he asked Burrill Curtis to draw. We have sent it to Mr. Fields," author M.A. DeWolfe Howe wrote in "The Tale of Tanglewood: Scene of the Berkshire Music Festivals." It is Hawthorne who is given credit for coming up with the names Tanglewood and Shadow Brook, which would become the name of another nearby grand estate overlooking the Stockbridge Bowl. In 1857, the Wards realized their time at Highwood had come to an end and sold the beloved Highwood. A year later, following the death of his father, Ward would be the sole agent for Barings. https://www.berkshireeagle.com/archives/the-cottager-highwood-manor-where-hawthorne-dreamed-up-tanglewood-tales/article_d6db1726-3567-536... 6/12 8/15/2021 The Cottager I Highwood Manor: Where Hawthorne dreamed up Tanglewood tales I Archives I berkshireeagle.com Nine years later he would orchestrate the financing of the United State's $7.2 million purchase of Alaska from Russia. (The Wards would later build a cottage in Newport, R.I., which they sold to Edith Wharton, before building another cottage in Lenox. Ward's second cottage would be the grand Oakwood, which he later sold to Anson Phelps Stokes. Stokes turned the home into a stable for his grand, 100-room estate, Shadow Brook.) The Wards sold Highwood to another Boston couple, William Story Bullard and his wife, Louisa Norton Bullard, who had rented the house for two years. Bullard, a merchant who made his fortune in the East India trade, sold his company when new protective tariffs were introduced. A rich man, the couple who had four sons and a daughter, settled into their new home, which they were not afraid to alter. "The Bullards appreciated and enjoyed the magnificent property and they continued to develop and maintain it for more than 100 years it remained in the family. Inevitably changes were made to the house, including, and most obviously, the removal of the porches on the first and second floors and the removal of the chimney pots. A more formal, smaller single-story porch was added to the garden entrance," Callas wrote of the Bullards. A driveway, which passed through a porte cochère on the house's https://www.berkshireeagle.com/archives/the-cottager-highwood-manor-where-hawthorne-dreamed-up-tanglewood-tales/article_d6db1726-3567-536... 7/12 8/15/2021 The Cottager I Highwood Manor: Where Hawthorne dreamed up Tanglewood tales I Archives I berkshireeagle.com south side, was installed along the lake side of the house sometime after 1900 by Dr. Norton Bullard, a neurologist, who inherited the property from his parents. Upon his death in 1931, Dr. Bullard left part of his estate to establish the salary for the Bullard Professor of Neuropathology at Harvard. An amateur botanist, he wanted to leave Highwood to Harvard as a wildflower sanctuary. His wife, Mary Reynolds Bullard, continued to live at the manor house, and in 1954 bequeathed the estate's 70 acres along Lake Mahkeenac to the Stockbridge Bowl Association. Upon her death in 1960, she honored her husband's wishes and left Highwood to Harvard, which it in turn put the property that it could not afford to maintain on the market. The Boston Symphony Orchestra, which now owned the Tanglewood estate, turned down the chance to acquire Highwood and it was instead purchased in 1961 by a Harvard alumnus, New York lawyer Mason Harding and his wife, Mary Riker Harding. Harding, whose father maintained a second home in Lenox, was deeply involved in the Berkshires and was trustee of both the Lenox Library and the Hancock Shaker Village. https://www.berkshireeagle.com/archives/the-cottager-highwood-manor-where-hawthorne-dreamed-up-tanglewood-tales/article_d6db1726-3567-536...8/12 8/15/2021 The Cottager I Highwood Manor: Where Hawthorne dreamed up Tanglewood tales I Archives I berkshireeagle.com The couple and their five children spent the summers and holidays at the house in Lenox, while maintaining their permanent residence in New York City. "Idyllic summers did not last long. In the late 1970s, Tanglewood and the BSO sponsored rock concerts at various times throughout the season Mr. Harding complained that he didn't expect to have Woodstock in his backyard and brought suit against the BSO to limit the length and noise level of the concerts. Adjustments were made and eventually the suit was withdrawn," Callas states of the Hardings. The Hardings made the last alterations to Highwood in 1982, when the kitchen was renovated among major interior renovations. The back of the house was also extended at this point. In 1986, after requiring open heart surgery, the Hardings ended their tenure at Highwood Manor, selling the estate to the Boston Symphony Orchestra for $1.7 million. https://www.berkshireeagle.com/archives/the-cottager-highwood-manor-where-hawthorne-dreamed-up-tanglewood-tales/article_d6db1726-3567-536... 9/12 Cornell University Making of America Page 1 of 1 1706 0 THE CENTURY MAGAZINE. VOL. XXXII. MAY, 1886, No. I. AMERICAN COUNTRY DWELLINGS. I. branch is due in each and all to the fact that we are repenting of this fundamental sin- are beginning to feel the necessity for basing all our work on rational foundations, for tak- ing as our guide intelligent, cultivated thought, not apathy or impulse, not mere vague artistic aspirations nor a merely formal adherence to the examples of some other age. It is not strange that in building our country homes we should have shown ourselves more original, more " American " than elsewhere. Here most of all have we been forced to meet -or at least to deal with- new and diverse requirements. Our climate and the habits of life it engenders, our social conditions and the variety of needs they create, our sites and surroundings, as well as our main material, wood - all have been most unlike those of other nations. In no other architectural LOCKIE or CHAS, J. OSBORNE, ESQ, branch have we been thrown so largely upon MAMARONECK N. N our own resources; therefore in none was the PASSING from one development of some kind of originality so branch of our archi- probable. And thus that native character tecture to another, we realize which gives more general signs of its existence how many are the dangers which than are commonly perceived - which some- beset its path. Much of our ec- what tinges all our work, however featureless clesiastical work, as we have or however imitative - nowhere else reveals seen, has been fettered by the itself so clearly as in our country homes, No- wish to follow inappropriate prec- where has its accent been so pronounced, and edents very many of our buildings for com- nowhere has its voice been broken by SO few mercial use have been pauperized by com- wholly alien notes. An inquiry into its vari- plete indifference and for long our city ous manifestations must begin with our very dwellings were stereotyped and stunted in earliest products. dull reiteration of some unintelligent de- Every one knows what were the first of all our sign. And now, in considering the domestic country dwellings- - those old farm-houses, architecture of our smaller towns and our built by Dutch or English settlers, which still country places, we shall see still another survive in many a quiet spot. Nothing could tendency at work for evil-the tendency to- be more simple, more utilitarian, more with- ward ignorant, reckless originality." But the outthought of architectural effectiveness. And same fundamental sin has underlaid all these yet such a farm-house is often extremely good various superficial sins, and the reformation in its own humble way - good in its general which now begins to show in each and every proportions, and especially in the agreeable Copyright, 1886, by THE CENTURY Co. All rights reserved. strop to P8. http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/pageviewer?coll=moa&root=%2Fmoa%2Fcent... 11/14/2005 Cornell University Making of America Page 1 of 1 AMERICAN COUNTRY DWELLINGS. 15 try homes of to-day are infinitely better than future paths, and most especially those which the best and the average of twenty or even of dealt with the new necessities of iron. He ten years ago. But it is just as little open to was so enthusiastic and versatile that every question that the professional architect " branch of the art appealed to him - even the now playsa much more important part in their then despised branch which includes country construction or, again, that this architect is homes. All this did good, I repeat, not only as becoming year by year more professional him- influencing other workers, but as raising the that is, more widely differentiated from generally received opinion with regard to the mere artisan in quantity of knowledge, in the utility of an architect in architecture. But thoroughness and quality of training, in refine- in this last respect we are most of all indebted, ment of intelligence, in width of artistic hori- perhaps, to the force of character and witch- zon, in processes and theories and ideals. ingness of tongue that enabled Mr. Hunt to LIBRARY ID HOUSE OF SAMUEL GRAY WARD, HSQ., LINOX MASS. One name, I think, deserves to be men- lay hold of the stolid, indifferent, obstinate, tioned here with especial honor. It would be or timid client, and lead him whither he would difficult to overestimate the good influence have him go. I do not feel that in saying this Mr. Richard Hunt has had both upon the 1 overstep the line which dívides legitimate im- profession itself and upon its status with the personal from illegitimate personal commen- public. When he began to practice such an tary; for, let it be in the other arts as it may, education and equipment as his were almost in the architect's art personal force and per- anomalous with us, while to-day (of course suasiveness are essentially part and parcel of not by any means solely, but yet, I think, the required endowment. As I have said so partly through his example) they are getting often, this art depends upon direct, special, to be thought essential and getting to be not reiterated acts of patronage to a degree quite quite exceptional. He was so industrious a peculiar to itself; and as every new commis- worker, moreover, that the sum of his results sion differs from every other, an artist's past formed a very large lump of leaven - a re- record is not always taken - indeed, cannot markably large lump, seeing that they were always be taken / as a guarantee of future not all, like the results of too many others, success. Therefore he who has not a modicum patterned upon one shallow, monotonous of personal persuasive power runs a great risk scheme. He was so full of ideas that he ex- of being obliged to follow those whom he ought perimented very widely and diversely, Not to lead. I do not say how it might be in an all of his experiments, we may grant, were ideally artistic community there, perhaps, successful. But as they were based on knowl- all excellence would be self-evident to all in edge, not ignorance, all were useful as sys- anticipation as in fact, and no discussion or tematizing future efforts and marking out persuasion necessary. But as communities http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/pageviewer?coll=moa&root=%2Fmoa%2Fcent 11/14/2005 Cornell University Making of America Page 1 of 1 16 AMERICAN COUNTRY DWELLINGS. I LINING-ROOM IN MR. WARD'S HOUSE. stand to-day, that architect will be most ser- with it a sound much less of novelty and offense viceable to his clients, as well as to his art is largely due just to this one champion. and to himself, who (other things being equal, Of course Mr. Hunt was not the first to try I mean, of course) can persuade them most to improve upon the " vernacular" type of convincingly that he knows best. When Mr. country dwelling-to try to put architectural Hunt began to practice this seemed a very coherence and something which might truth- strange proposition to the ears of the free fully be called design in the place of the fantastic and independent American citizen - espe- and yet mechanical medley which prevailed. cially when he was intent upon the structure Doubtless he was not even the first to do this of his own home. The fact that it now carries with real ability and radically right ideas to # How often do we still hear some 'house-father" of the elder generation proclaim with child-like pride of gratitude I feel to Mr. Howells for having set bc- fore my readers so delicately trenchant a dramatic *4 I had no architect : the builder and I did it all or, more likely, "I and the builder." And how inva- picture of the difference between the old régime and riably does the fact reveal itself in a very different the new in matters architectural. Silas Lapham and his new house and his architect will, I am very way from that which he supposes Perhaps this is as good a time as any to acknowledge the personal debt sure, advocate my conclusions far more persuasively than all my own theoretic preachments. http://cdl.library.comnell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/pageviewer?coll=moa&root=%2Fmoa%2Fcent.. 11/14/2005 Page 1 of 1 Cornell University Making of America AMERICAN COUNTRY DWELLINGS. I7 31 FIREPLACE IX STUDIO OF H. H. RICHARDSON, BSQ., BROOKLINE, MASS. back the effort. But so far as I know he was Coming now to speak of our current work the first who perceptibly stemmed the popular in this department, I find the task extremely current, who started any conspicuous and difficult. In no other branch do controlling permanent stream of improvement. His work needs, desires, and opportunities vary so widely differs in many ways from that which is most and perpetually nowhere else are possibil- characteristic of to-day. And yet he should be ities of excellence or failure so manifold in ranked as the forerunner-as what the Ger- themselves or so dependent upon the differing mans call the "road-breaker"-of the younger characters of different sites. And this makes band who are doing such good service now. it peculiarly hard, of course, to select exam- In the matter of interior treatment- both ples - these being necessarily few in number as regards the nice provision for complicated - so that they shall be in any sense typical practical needs, and as regards variety and examples. That is to say, a town hall which beauty of architectural effect as well-his in- is successful in one small town might have novations were especially remarkable and been just as successful in a hundred others salutary. When speaking in a former chapter the plan and façade which are good for a of the gradual growth in beauty our domestic narrow city lot might be just as good in interiors have undergone, I remarked that it Chicago or St. Louis as in New York or Bos- showed at first in the shape of mere extrinsic ton but a country home that is admirable charm - of upholsterer's decoration, so to say at Newport, for example, could hardly be re- -and that we were satisfied for a time with peated at Mt. Desert or in the Catskills, not this ere we bethought ourselves that intrinsic even to meet the same owner's needs- often architectural charm might be still better worth could not be repeated on any other Newport the having. But Mr. Hunt's houses should be site. It is peculiarly difficult, moreover, to noted as exceptions, His efforts after archi- describe even the individual excellence of any tectural beauty began long before the decora- country home, for this excellence is not only tive movement declared itself. For a long individual to 50 exceptional a degree, but in time the homes he built were much better in this country is also, in the majority of cases, their main constructive features than in their of a comparatively modest, unaccented kind; decoration or their furniture, though at a much lies in the harmony of minor, detailed virtues; later day the rule was the reverse of this, is not to be explained by the citation of con- http://cdl.library.comell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/pageviewer?coll=moa&oot=%2Fmoa%2Fcent. 11/14/2005 "Cornell University Making of America Page 1 of 1 18 AMERICAN COUNTRY DWELLINGS. spicuous features, or characterized by reference teristic, much less those which we deem our to anything very pronounced in the way of most successful efforts. "style." The architectural virtues of a palace But why is not the Queen Anne cottage, or a mansion are emphatic and describable, which in its best state at home has charmed the but the architectural virtues of a cottage eye of many an American and thoroughly ful- are retiring and elusive are very apt to filled his conception of what a country home evaporate entirely from the words in which should is it notable, if transplanted to one tries to write them down. I must there- our own soil, to meet at least a certain class of fore make it my chief aim to point out certain needs Try to hive in one, and you will see. In factors which, in spite of the endless diversity the winter season you will havesnow where the of our problems, nevertheless enter into almost Englishman has rain, and will find his pictur- all of them; and to note certain tendencies esquely complex roof a snow-trap, not a snow- which, in spite of the varied character of our shed. You will have far greater cold than he, efforts, nevertheless may be said to character- and will need a plan that does not put too ize those efforts as a whole. The examples I many difficulties in the way of warming from shall briefly note in illustration must not be a common center. Winter and summer you accepted as being better than all others, but will have sunshine of a strength he knows merely as being most familiar to my eyes. only in his dreams, and his house will very Indeed, their illustrative value depends to no likely give you more windows than you want. small degree just upon the fact that I can say And in summer you will have heat of a po- they are not better than all others. tency he would hate to know even in his I have already hinted that when the Amer- dreams, and his house will most certainly not ican architect labors in this branch he can get give you the thing you want most of all a an unusually small amount of help from his piazza. And, again, you will very often wish foreign brethren. Continental excellence can- to make a much more extensive use of wood not be very useful to him, for the fundamental than he ever makes in these modern days. Of ideas which prevail in continental lands with course you may use your wood in place of his regard to what country homes should be are brick; you may modify his roofs, change his radically different from those which prevail plan, alter his openings, and add your own with us. The fundamental ideas which prevail piazza. If, however, you do this with the in- in England, on the other hand, do strongly tent to copy the effect of his house as nearly resemble ours. But our social conditions are as you can, you will utterly spoil his creation so peculiar to ourselves, and our climate and produce a bastard thing which will neither and our consequent habits of life, that even satisfy your eye nor wholly meet your needs. English teachings must be vastly modified in And this is just what has been done in a very the application. Of course I do not mean to great many cases. If, on the other hand, you contradict everything I have written above- make the necessary changes with intelligent to say that we do not need to use all possible thought and artistic feeling as your helpers, learning, to incorporate many transmitted instead of with imitative effort as your fetter, ideas and many borrowed motives, here as the result will not be the Englishman's house elsewhere in our art. I merely mean that here at all, but something essentially different, even more than elsewhere we should not, can- essentially your own. And this too, let us not - should study the results of other rejoice to note, is done more often and more lands and ages 'only as one studies literature, successfully year by year. not as one studies grammar." From current English fashions we have This fact has clearly proved itself within certainly learned a great deal besides the the last few years. An effort has been made mere fact that we cannot copy them; and to copy the domestic style which now rules in we should be peculiarly grateful that our in- England,- that so-called Queen Anne," terest in them has led us to take an inter- which our grandchildren will call Queen est in genuine Queen Anne and Georgian Victoria,"- it has proved the impossibility work-that is, in the work so many exam- of direct imitation as distinctly as the ver ples of which are to be found upon our own nacular" had already proved the futility of soil, Our colonial homes have of late been thoughtless, ignorant originality. Fortunately the objects of much earnest attention, and we have not been as long in learning the sec- the fact is very fortunate. und lesson as we were in learning the first. It It would have been unfortunate, however, is true that we cannot just yet say that it is had not our architects approached them in thoroughly learned cannot say that our im- a more sensible spirit than that which has itative Queen Anne is yet extinct. But it is swayed some of the critics already quoted. dying fast, I think, and to-day it does not in- For, after saying much in a vague way with clude those which we deem our most charac- regard to what ought not to be done in Amer- http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/pageviewer?coll=moa&root=%2Fmoa%2Fcent. 11/14/2005 Cornell University Making of America Page 1 of 1 AMERICAN COUNTRY DWELLINGS. 19 ica, these advisers have given at least one bit live at their ease to-day or work at their best of decided counsel with regard to what ought in an unmodified colonial interior. If they to be done- have declared that we ought to happen to dwell in an old one, there are sen- look back at our colonial examples and to timental compensations which perhaps suffice. reproduce" them as faithfully as we can, But when a new home is in question the case These examples, they assert, are the only ex- seems wholly different. And the alterations amples at once American" and good; and in plan and arrangement which are necessary they are so very good-so charming, so char- to meet the change in main requirements, and acteristic, and so appropriate to our wants- to provide for a hundred subordinate new re- that we need not try to improve on them. If, quirements, must be of such a character that the however, we throw aside a very natural old exterior pattern cannot often be retained. sentimentality which clings about the subject, For this pattern is certainly not flexible, elas- and if we then compare our colonial homes tic, given to indefinite extension and the not merely with their later rivals, the clap- indefinite multiplication of minor constructive boarded box and the "vernacular" villa, but features. The effect of quiet dignity which with a sensible ideal of what the homes of is its greatest charm depends very largely just to-day might be and should be-if we do upon its simple, unbroken outlines, and its this, we find that our critics' assertions hardly broad, unbroken masses. sustain themselves. And in thus deciding with regard to its We need not quarrel over the question practical sufficiency, have we not also decided whether the colonial house is "American" or with regard to the expressional and artistic not. In any strict sense, of course, it does sufficiency of the colonial home Our more not deserve the name; nothing does save the freely social, more lavish, more varied and wigwam of the North and the pueblo of the complex ways of living cannot find full and South. Of course its patterns were all im- truthful expression in any colonial pattern, ported, and sometimes their treatment was nor our growing love of art full and lawful very strictly imitative strictly imita- satisfaction, We still want to be dignified in tive, I should say, than the treatment of any our architectural voice, still to be refined, still of our later products whatsoever. But certain to be quiet; but the dignity, the refinement, frequent features- for instance, one or and the repose must be of a different char- two sensible and charming modes of roofing- acter from those which appropriately marked may fairly be called original; and when the the dwellings of our ancestors. The simpler translation into wood occurred, that was cer- types among these are extremely puritanical; tainly American enough. Then our colonial and I do not think the adjective fits ourselves, work has stood longer than any other, and is And the ornater types, even if they had not identified with whatever historic associations also much of the same accent, are the least we can call our own; and it is all so analogous well fitted for reproduction in our most usual as to offer an instance of the flourishing on material; for, excusable though the practice our soil of something that may be called a co- was a hundred years ago, it would be inex- herent, comprehensible, all-pervading "style." cusable to-day to build Doric porticoes or All these facts, together with its undeniable to frame Ionic pilasters out of pine boards charm, certainly give it a strong hold upon painted. our affections, and a priority of claim among In short, we may say of our colonial homes the proper objects of our study. But the main what we may say of the contemporary homes question is not as to its Americanism, and is of England: our architects should study not as to its charm; the main question is, does them, but cannot copy them. When to a cer- it indeed wholly meet the needs of to-day, tain degree their features and their general practically, expressionally, and artistically effect have been reproduced, the result seems Practically it does not. Its air is indeed as peculiarly pleasing and most appropriately of a delightfully complete domesticity, but it "American," (Atleast this true of the Eastern by no means fulfills to the modern American States. It would not be so true, I think, of mind the promise it holds out to the eye. In the Western-which may be taken as proof relation to the habits we have acquired during in passing of how desirabilities vary in this more than a century of rapidly changing department of our art.) But many extraneous existence, it is not one-half so livable as it features and many variations of old features looks. It provides only for the simplest, most and old modes of working must be introduced unvaried and homogeneous domestic and so- if the result is to be sensible and satisfactory. cial customs, and only for housekeeping of And for some of these the point of departure what now seems a very primitive pattern. must be found in the "vernacular." Incapable Whatever the paterfamilias might feel about of self-development into anything good, it yet it, neither the mater nor her executives could cannot be cut down root and branch it must http://cd1.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/pageviewer?coll=moa&root=%2Fmoa%2Fcent.. 11/14/2005 Cornell University Making of America Page 1 of 1 20 AMERICAN COUNTRY DWELLINGS. LODGE OF FREDERICK L AMISS, KSQ,, NORTH EASTON, MASS. yield us certain buds of excellence for devel- long chapter, and must postpone all further opment along with other grafts. Its piazza, comment to another. The illustrations here- for example, absolutely imposes itself upon with given reveal something in the mean while the conscience of every American architect. with regard to our current efforts. I would To develop it into a beautiful and constructive only say once more that the revelation is of instead of an ugly, make-shift, superadded necessity imperfect; that no such illustrations feature, and to bring it into perfect harmony can tell the whole truth as to form and pro- with all his other features, many of which will portion, much truth as to detail, or any truth have come from very different sources-this as to color; and, especially, cannot speak is one of the most vital problems with which distinctly as to that perfect adaptation of a he has to deal; and also one of the most diffi- house to its surroundings which is one of the cult, and the one of all others which most most vital of all virtues. As our conditions emphatically forbids him to imitate any pre- run, it is sometimes a virtue very difficult of vious product, most emphatically prescribes attainment. Nevertheless it is one which we that if he builds good country houses for the are earnestly striving to attain, and already Americans of to-day, they will be essentially with a degree of success that goes far to prove unlike all others. there lie within us some latent sparks of true But I have come to the utmost limits of a artistic aptitude. M. G. van Rensselaer. The lodge on Mr. Osborne's place at Mamaroneck, White: the studio and the lodge at North Easton by Mr. Major Poore's house, and all the interiors except the Richardson; Mrs. Hemenway's house by Mr. Emer- studio were designed by Messra. McKim, Mead & son, and the Newport farm-house by Mr. C. S. Lace. htp://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/pageviewer?coll=moa&root=%2Fmoa%2Fcent. 11/14/2005 11 Carole Owens. The Beakshine Cottages:a Vanishing erc 100 Enflewood cliffs, NJ: Cottage Press, 1984 6 mily Thorn Vanderbilt's grandson muses, "I think, that if you ran a house like that, you didn't have time for anything else." He thinks a moment, try- ing to express something more about the great houses both in the town and country. In Lenox, he THE lived at the cottage named Highlawn House and visited his grandmother at Elm Court. In the city, "We lived on Fifth BUILDERS Avenue, and I have always been embarrassed to describe where I grew up." In the Berkshires, standing in one of the cottages, you "My purpose was can learn something of the age and the people from the propor- tions alone. to have a road The beginning of the estate period in Lenox and Stockbridge is the equal of not easily pinpointed. Some mark it as early as the 1840s when Samuel G. Ward bought Highwood, which commanded a spectac- corresponding ular view of Lake Mahkeenac and the mountains, and settled down first class to gentleman farming and entertaining the literati of the day. Others identify the end of the Civil War, the amassed wealth and places in Lenox; lighter spirit, as the time when building began. If it was the end of I ask for the Civil War that loosed the pocketbook and the heart to build, and the start of the First World War that changed the attitude and nothing better and I shall not willingly Photograph by William Tague accept poorer." W. D. Sloane: Letter to Messrs. Olmsted, Olmsted and Eliot, October 2, 1884 Aerial view of Elm Court 101 Courtesy of The Essex Institute Highwood, first cottage of Samuel G. Ward ended the period, then the estate period would fit neatly between two wars. However, neatness is not necessarily accuracy. The ma- jority of estates in the villages were built in the 1880s and 1890s spilling over into the twentieth century as late as 1911, and al- though the Great War changed the mood, it was not until the Depression that the great estates were given away for tax reasons or auctioned off, razed, or deserted. A local resident muses, "Giraud Foster died in 1945, and Mrs. White died soon after - they were bridge partners, you know- with those two gone, the period was really over, as far as I'm con- cerned. They were the real generation of builders." They were not Courtesy of the Providence Library only the generation that built, but the generation that understood the reason for the building and believed in it. If the wealthy had an obligation, it was to amass and spend money; to build for an assured future not just for the sake of show, but to establish an American economic aristocracy. After the Civil War, there was a confluence of events that created the right at- mosphere for a display of wealth that was, if nothing else, very en- tertaining. It was a time when the state of things for the moneyed class seemed stable, and the only conceivable changes seemed destined to be for the better. Perhaps the start of the era was the Oakswood, moment when the idea of an American aristocracy formed and ap- second cottage of peared to have mass approval, and the beginning of the end was Samuel G. Ward when there was a rent in the fabric of the mass approval. 110 Courtesy of The Berkshire Eagle Blantyre, Robert Warden Paterson's cottage Brook. It would take two years, five hundred skilled laborers, and one and a half million dollars to build Ernest W. Bowditch a land- scape architect, was retained after Mrs. Stokes rejected tentative sketches made by Olmsted." In his journal, Mr. Bowditch recalled the circumstances when I met him [Mr. Stokes he had just purchased the old Ward estate Oakswood, not Highwood] and adjoining land-in all some 500 acres; had started a gigantic stone house with a Pittsfield architect and had just come to realizing that by no possibility could he drive to his front door in safety, and furthermore, if he succeeded in reaching that point, it was physically impossible to (Right) Spring Lawn, turn a vehicle around unless he had a mechanical turntable. In- the cottage of John Alexandre cidentally, he had no water supply, no sewage disposal and the (Below) Brookhurst, cottage of Newbold Morris Courtesy of the Providence Library Courtesy of the Providence Library 126 laid to rest alongside her father and grandfather and great- grandfather She is laid in a cemetery with ceremony that has con- tinued unchanged. The mourners walk back for a small lunch at the coral house on Main Street. We cannot expect that every aspect of our history will be pre- served as scrupulously as Sedgwick tradition. We have a right, however, to want some part of our heritage preserved and accessi- ble. We have a responsibility too. It is unfortunate that the motiva- tion often comes from mourning what is gone. Across the country, the summer cottages have been abandoned, sacked, demolished, and burned. The palatial homes that the rich built in the suburbs are probably the greatest and most typical of the Gilded Age's con- tribution to architecture. "By its country estates, the Gilded Age is remembered. The present age will be remembered for tearing them down." The Field children at Highlawn House, 1913 Courtesy of William O. Field If we have the opportunity to visit one of the cottages, and if, as we walk through it, we ask, what was it like to build such a place and live in it, the answer to that question is the history of a period. To answer it is to understand the economic growth of a country, the philosophy, the religion, and the values of a country and a time. The gilt of the Age of Elegance was run out of town by an auto- mobile, tarnished by world war, and put beyond the reach of peo- ple by the graduated income tax. In the over half century since it has been safe to say that the Gilded Age is dead and gone, there have been times when Tiffany lamps gathered dust on the back tables of antique shops; the Victorian loveseat was considered ugly and uncomfortable-though cheap; and the architecture of the 127 day impractical, nonfunctional, and peculiar looking at best. During such times, it was thought that: McKim, Mead and White and other classicists, were mere copycats; worse, responsible for stifling and setting back for Courtesy of Jane Foster Lorber decades the development of a genuine vernacular, ingenious and, above all, original American architecture More than five decades after the systematic denigration of McKim, Mead and White their works have been destroyed, truncated and vandalized.² We were losing the architectural representation of our history and heritage to the fire engine and the bulldozer. Perhaps the architecture was criticized not only for itself, but because it sym- bolized an age that was being attacked. William Henry Vanderbilt made $10,300,000 per year. That's $858,333 per month, $190,740 per week, $28,219 per day, $1175.79 per hour. When he left each of his eight children $10,000,000, there was still $17,000,000 left for his wife out of holdings, not including income. The second coachman at Elm Court, William Henry's daughter's estate, made $840 per year, $70 per month, $15 per week, $2 per day, 20-25$ per hour. Andrew Carnegie said in the Gospel of Wealth that it was the responsibility of the superior upper class to give to the less fortunate. An assistant gardener left Carnegie's employ at Shadow Brook when he was refused a raise from $60 to $70 per month. A case could probably "Boy" Foster at Bellefontaine, be made that Carnegie and Vanderbilt had SO much because oth- with his dog, Berry ers had SO little. The anonymous Berkshire poet who wrote the lines: "The golf course runs SO close by the mill, that the laboring children can see the men at play," would probably have rejoiced had he lived to see the cottages deteriorate. Perhaps we think we have progressed past a former ignoble economic system. Assume that is true, then why preserve the sym- bols of a less than glorious past? If we do not, what we lose is the ability to judge where we are and how we got there. Without his- tory, it is possible to believe that things are as they have always been and always will be. You lose the ability to look into a fine old face and catch a glimpse of the girl she was. It becomes impos- sible to tell if the way things are is progression, regression, or oscillation. Besides, the history of the Gilded Age is a whale of a story. The scenes are full of the outrageous and splendid, the sordid and the humorous. The dynastic dreams and ferocious deeds, the brilliant accomplishments and the perfectly silly, the scale of the age is easier to grasp standing in a preserved cottage of like dimensions. The Countess Scherr Thoss said that this generation does not care about history. The granddaughter of Ambassador Henry White, she was a contemporary, a relative, a friend, and one of the social and economic elite. Neither this generation nor that saved history. For the forty years between 1880 and 1920, they struggled to buy history and civilization. But even during that forty-year span, the buying and selling was seen not as a preservation for pos- terity or the common weal, but a trading back and forth between To WEST MTN. ROAD To Pittsfield 2 1. Arrowhead T 188 Scale for all maps EAST RD 0 1/2 Mile 2 + Eastover o 20 7A Windy Side 3 7 (LENOX CLUB) V Homestead Church on the Hill L e x PATERSON MON. Sadgwick Hall (LIBRARY) TOWN HALL (OLD P.O.SITE) 16 Groton Place HOUSATONIC ST. (BOSTON U. SUMMER MUSIC SCH.) ST. Fralinghuysen Cottager Trinity Church RICHMOND 183 WEST RD. LENOX Ventfort STOCK. ST. 18 20 Site of The Perch Brook Farm 19 8 ANNYKEMBLE MARKER) (BERK. COUNTRY 6 DAY SCHOOL) 9 Coldbrooke Lily Pd. 22 Interlaken 11 10 Stockbridge 7A PLUNKETT ST. - Shipton Court 12 (Northern part of Stockbridge) 13 (7HILLS) Merrywood Bowl 14 20 23 LENOX RD. LEE Laurel Lake 15 183 CROSSROAD INTERLAKEN Interlaken To Lee PROSPECT HILL RD. 24 To W.Stockbridge To Lenox 102 LENOX 90 1. FERNBROOK/Avalon School 2. ASPINWALL HOTEL 183 3. BELVOIR TERRACE , Oronoque 24 4. ORLETON / The Gateways Inn (BOSTON U. SUMMER 5. SPRING LAWN/Bible Speaks MUSIC SCHOOL) 6. ANANDA HALL 7. WINTER PALACE Stockbridge To Lee 8. ALLEN WINDEN/Berkshire Christian College 33 9. BELLEFONTAINE BUTLER 25 : 28 10. ELM COURT RD I Glendale 29 11. WYNDHURST/'Cranwell' 34 HILL 12. BLANTYRE Church YALE 13. OVERLEIGH/Avalon School RD. MAIN Casino 14. THE MOUNT/Edith Wharton Restoration GLENDALE (BERK. THEATER and Shakespeare & Co. FESTIVAL) 183 (ORIGINAL CHILDREN'S 28A 15. ERSKINE PARK/The Ponds at Fox Hollow 30 16. THE CURTIS 17. BROOKHURST/Private Home 102 RR 7 STATION STOCKBRIDGE CHERRY HILL 31 RD. 18. SHADOW BROOK/Kripalu Center N.gray 19. THE LITTLE RED HOUSE 20. TANGLEWOOD 21. HIGHWOOD/Private Home TOWN HALL! 22. WHEATLEIGH 23. BONNIE BRIER FARM/The Desisto School 24. CLOVER CROFT 36 25. NAUMKEAG 26. BONNIE BRAE/Private Home 27. WINDERMERE/Private Home 28. EDEN HILL/Congregation of Marians Great Barrington of the Immaculate Conception 23 28A. LAUREL COTTAGE/Tennis Courts 29. HEATON HALL FAIR GROUNDS 30. RED LION 31. KONKAPUT BROOK/Riverbrook School 37 32. STRAWBERRY HILL/Private Home 33. LINWOOD/Norman Rockwell Museum HILL 34. CHESTERWOOD 35. SOUTHMAYDS/Private Home GREAT BARRINGTON 36. SEARLES CASTLE/Barrington House/ Kellogg Terrace 37. BROOKSIDE/Eisner Camp THE COTTAGES 150 Fernbrook 176 The Curtis 209 The Red Lion 151 The Aspinwall 178 Brookhurst 210 Konkaput Brook 152 Belvoir Terrace 180 Shadow Brook 212 Strawberry Hill 154 Orleton 184 The Little Red House 213 Linwood 155 Spring Lawn 188 Tanglewood 215 Chesterwood 156 Ananda Hall 190 Highwood 216 The Southmayd Place The Winter Palace 193 Wheatleigh 219 Searles Castle 158 Allen Winden 195 Bonnie Brier Farm 222 Brookside 160 Bellefontaine 197 Clover Croft 163 Elm Court 198 Naumkeag 166 Wyndhurst 200 Bonnie Brae 224 Afterword 168 Blantyre 201 Windermere 226 Appendix I 171 Overleigh 205 Eden Hill 232 Appendix II 173 The Mount Laurel Cottage 235 Appendix III 175 Erskine Park 208 Heaton Hall 236 Index THE GREAT TALLYHO AGE OF LENOX MASSACHUSETTS HIGHHI TAIS GOTAR CASTLA AMERICA'S A SELECTION OF ESTATES FROM "THE INLAND NEWPORT" The cover of this book is "The Great TallyHo Age" by Robert DeLage. Copyright: © 1980, Robert DeLage 180 Photograph by William Tague 18 SHADOW BROOK (Stockbridge/Lenox) Aerial view of Shadow Brook B uilt by Anson Phelps Stokes, first floor were of marble. Since it Shadow Brook has been was quarried locally, it was almost called the largest house in an economy. The second and third America. Completed in 1893 and stories were of stucco and wood in consisting of a reported one hun- a style reminiscent of Tudor. The dred rooms, it may have been the tower was completely marble. largest house in America for two The 738 acres included a work- years until George Washington ing farm, Brook Farm, gardens and Vanderbilt completed his 250- riding trails. The stable was a con- room mansion, Biltmore, in verted Charles Follen McKim Asheville, North Carolina. house, Oakswood, built for The Stokes chose a local archi- Samuel G. Ward in 1878, Anson tect, H. Neill Wilson, of the Wilson Phelps Stokes' son, Isaac Newton firm, Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The Phelps Stokes wrote his mother landscape architect was Ernest February 5, 1893: "It does seem a Bowditch. Mr. Wilson certainly de- pity not to use the Ward house or signed one of the largest homes of to convert it into stables. Mrs. a non-classical style in America. Al- (Dorr) of Macao says Mr. McKim al- though parts of Shadow Brook (the ways regarded the house as one of tower, for example) were reminis- his best creations." cent of a castle, the overall impres- Shadow Brook rested on a slope sion of Shadow Brook was of a above Lake Mahkeenac. In The country house. Regardless of its Wonder Book, Nathaniel Haw- size, it retained that air of hunting thorne had named that slope lodge or country dwelling that Shadow Brook: "In the summer- blends rather than contrasts with time, the shadow of SO many clus- the landscape. Like Elm Court's, tering branches, meeting and Shadow Brook's foundation and intermingling across the rivulet, 190 Highwood I n 1841. Samuel Gray Ward bought land from the widow of Cyrus Huwlitt. and from Daniel Barnes in 1844 to form Highwood. Samuel G. Ward was from Boston. He was a representative of the Lon- don firm of Baring Brothers as his father, Thomas Wren Ward, had been before him. Ward started the well-known Saturday Club, a liter- ary gathering that included Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Samuel Gray Ward is often con- fused with Sam Ward, Julia Ward 21 Howe's brother and husband of Emily Astor. Even contemporaries confused the two Sams Henry Wadsworth Longfellow separated them by calling Samuel G. Ward of Highwood and Boston: Good Sam. "The G stands for good. he said. It seems Samuel G. was the more conventional of the two. To further complicate the identities of the men, they almost became HIGHWOOD brothers-in-law However, Henry Ward died after becoming en- (Stockbridge) gaged but before marrying Samuel We know from his wife's diary G.'s sister Mary In fact. one of that when Sam first purchased the Lenny Lind's biographers. Gladys land, he had intended it as a vear- Denny Schulz. makes the mistake round residence. After his father in Jenny Lind: The Swedish Night- died, Sam was persuaded to take ingale She writes that Tenny mar- his place at Baring Brothers, and ried Otto Goldschmidt at Sam G. Highwood became a summer resi- Ward's house and then goes on to dence. He has always been distin- describe Sam Ward. Sam and Emily guished as the "First of the Lenox Astor Ward lived in New York City, Cottagers." Never mind that his Jenny was married at No. 20 Louis- property was in Stockbridge. locals berg Square, Boston, the home of date the start of the Cottage period Samuel G at 1846- - the year Mr. Ward built As a wedding present. Sam gave Highwood. Yet it is not at all clear her a locket containing two like- that Mr. Ward actually built High- nesses: one of Daniel Webster and wood or when. one of George Washington. She In 1841 when Samuel G. Ward called it her "good luck locket," purchased the first piece of land, and thereafter, wore it at the deed marks the property line all her concerts. Others have re- "beginning at the Southeast corner ported that she was married at of the house." Mr. Ward purchased Highwood, confusing not the two land five and two years before the Sams, but Sam's two houses. 1846 date, and we know, from Mrs. 191 ters to his architect, Richard Upjohn. 11 The letters are dated 1846 from Pittsfield. The fact is that the letters were dated after Mrs. Ward's letters to her father-in-law Photograph by David Frank postmarked Highwood. That cou- pled with mention of an existing house in the Huwlitt deed. causes one to ask if Mr. Ward built Highwood at all, or was he, with the help of architect, Richard Up- john, renovating the widow Huwlitt's house? Perhaps there is no way now to be certain about the genesis of the "first cottage." however. there is one piece of evi- dence supporting the notion that Highwood was not built but reno- vated. It has to do with the archi- tect, Richard Upjohn. Richard Upjohn was born in England in 1802. His first commis- sion as an architect came after he emigrated to America. Although he made his reputation designing churches, that first commission in Photograph by David Frank 1833, was for a house. Since he was the first president of the American Highwood today Ward's letters to her father-in-law Institute of Architecture from 185 in Boston, that they occupied what -6, his work has been docu- she called "Highwood` as early as mented. Not only was his work 1845. We also know that Ward had distinctive, but he was credited construction work done from let- with favoring the gothic style and Highwood, architect's rendering Courtesy of Boston Public Library Print Dept. Peabody & Stearns Collection 192 legitimatizing it in America. The tion is not known, the landscaping simple fact is, Highwood does not was done by Copland and Cleve- look like an Upjohn. It is in fact land, the firm that lost the contract more easily explained if the archi- for Central Park to Frederick Law tect were working within the con- Olmsted. straint of an existing house. It is William's sister Kate Bullard harder to believe that during the lived with her brother summers at very years that he was establishing Highwood. In 1920, probably as a his style, he changed that style to result of her brother's marriage, build one house, Highwood. she built an "Italian Villa at a cost of Those who believe Upjohn did $300,000" on the Highwood prop- build a house for Ward, say the dif- erty to the left of the main house. ference in style is the result of sub- She died that winter in Boston. sequent alterations. Although the Never occupied, the villa was torn house was altered by the next own- down in 1923 by William. He didn't ers, those who still believe Upjohn want to live in it. and he didn't want built, not renovated it, would have to sell it and have strangers live SO to decide why it does not look like close. The Berkshire Eagle re- other houses Upjohn built, but ported that the Bullards preferred does look almost exactly like Bon- the history and charm of High- nie Brae built by local craftsmen wood to a $300,000 villa. The news- for Henry Ivison less than six miles paper commended them for down the road. sound values and something like Ward sold the house to Dr and "Yankee" good sense. Mrs. William Bullard in 1855. The Today Highwood is a private res- Bullards altered it at least twice idence. It has had only three since Sam Ward wrote to Upjohn owner-families in 137 years, if one complaining that the workmen begins, by tradition or force of were too slow. In 1899. records habit with Mr. and Mrs. Samuel from the architectural firm of Ward. From 1846-1855. the Wards Peabody and Stearns show: occupied the house. Bullards OC- Bullard, William & Mrs. Lenox Alterations General Contractor Joseph Clifford's Sons2 2,540.49 Plumber William A. Johnson 1,075.00 New Plumbing 1,297.00 Comm. 180.79 Transportation expense 19.23 Another entry, undated, shows cupied the house 1855-1961 - Mr. "Mrs. William S. (Louisa N.) Bullard and Mrs. William S. Bullard, Louisa building a stable for a cost of N. after her husband's death. her $6,040.00, [with a] $302 Commis- son William H., and his wife after sion and $38.68 Transportation" his death. Since 1961. the present paid to Peabody and Stearns. The owner has lived at Highwood If present owner believes there was a Highwood is the renovated farm second major renovation after Wil- house of Cyrus Huwlitt. then only liam N. Bullard, Jr.'s marriage dur- four families occupied it in almost ing the period 1917-20. Although 150 years. the architect of the second renova- 201 nent residence for what the town- 1963. Today, in order for Henry Ivi- folk call "year-round summer son's great grandson to live there people." The house was "de- without spending uncounted dol- Victorianized" in the 1920s when lars on heat, he has insulated with Aunt Hattie built "Wee Haus" polyurethane-quite a twentieth across the valley in Stockbridge century intrusion into the old leaving Bonnie Brae to the more walls. modern Mrs. J. Graham Parsons. Walking out onto his front lawn, The house went out of the family Mr. Parsons says, echoing the senti- in 1945 and became the summer ments of the original cottage build- cottage of Mr. Walter Hoving of ers, "I wish more of the homes Tiffany and Company: It was repur- were still in the hands of original chased by the Parsons family in families." A rchitects and landscape archi- year it was built can only be tects were brave fellows forg- guessed at as no one made note of ing a new field at the time it. Some even argue that it was not a Windermere was built. This house cottage at all (They say it was built predated their assent. So that. pos- too early, the 1860s, but Highwood, sibly the most interesting of all the reputed to be the first cottage, pre- cottages in the Berkshires is nei- dated Windermere They say it is 27 ther very large nor is it breathtak- too unimposing; however, given ing. Its architect is unknown and the definition of a cottage, it almost probably was not an architect at all conforms: it was not a primary resi- but a local builder. Even the exact dence, the builders had a home in WINDERMERE (Stockbridge) Windermere Courtesy of the Stockbridge Library LENOX. E.A. Morley, Photographer. East Lee, MA: 1886. Sargent, John O. LAUREL LAKE COTTAGE Dorr, George. HIGHLAWN Rathbone, John F. WYNDHURST Barnes, John S. COLDBROOKE Barlow, Francis C. Schermerhorn, F. A. PINE CROFT Rogers, Mrs. M.E. LENOX CLUB Haggerty, Mrs. Ogden. VENT FORT Thomson, Mrs. E.L. THE PERCH Sands, Philip J. GLAD HILL Chapin, R.W. Sloane, Wiolliam D. ELM COURT Goddman, Richard. YOKUN Lanier, Charles. ALLEN WINDEN Gilmore, Alfred. LITHGOW COTTAGE Devereux, Alfred. PLUMSTED COTTAGE BURTON HARRISON COTTAGE Bishop, H.W. Kneeland, Mrs. Charles. FAIRLAWN Parish, Helen. COSEY NOOK Sloane, H.T. NESTLEDOWN Robeson, William R. THE ELMS Shattuck, W.B. BROOKEHURST Higginson Jr., George Barclay, H.A. BONNIE BRAE Ward, S.G. OAKSWOOD (First impression reminds one of Old Farm!) Bullard, W.S. HIGHWOOD Furniss, Ms. C. EDGECOMBE Carey, Ms. DeP. GUSTY GABLES Parsons, John E. STONOVER Braem, H.M. ETHELWYN Greenleaf, R.C. WINDYSIDE McKim, C.F. Biddle, Mrs. J. William. BREEZY CORNER Folsom, George W. SUNNY RIDGE Tucker, May. CHESTNUT HILL Newton, M.F. Woolsey, Mrs. E.P. WOODCLIFF Dana, Richard S. Auchmuty, R.T. THE DORMERS Source: State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Verizon Yahoo! Mail - eppster2@verizon.net Page 3 of 6 NINI Houses of the Berkshires, 1870-1930 (The Architecture of Leisure) by Richard S. Jackson & Cornelia Brooke Gilder: http://www.acanthuspress.com/ps-20-3-houses-of-the- berkshires-1870-1930.aspx On Oct 25, 2007, at 7:53 AM, ELIZABETH and RONALD EPP wrote: Dear Nini, Delighted to hear from you ! I was especially pleased to hear about your new book contract and the inclusion of Highlawn. Progress on the Dorr biography has been slower than usual this summer due in no small part to some pro bono archival consulting for the Massaschusetts Trustees of Reservations, development of a Concord Free Public Library (MA) finding aid of the massive collection of Dorr's friend landscape photographer Herbert Wendell Gleason, and the frequest regional travel that Liz and I took while the weather was fair. I've filled in most of the gaps in Dorr's academic career but have to flesh out the final twenty years of his life brfore I start polishing this rough draft. I've gone through an extracted about seven pages of references to the Dorr's experiences in Lenox and will attach them in a follow up message aloing with some adsditional points to the one raised below. Fore the time being, I wanted you to know that I am working on these matters and will send along more in a few days. I do not expect that you will find much that is relevant to the scope of your manuscript. On the other hand you may find errors and misinterpretations that would once corrected would improve mine. I've spent more than a little time on your first footnote. While it is accurate, I found it a bit misleading because of what I believe that the reader will infer--that there were only "five Dorr siblings." The omssion of any reference to other children of Samuel Dorr by his first marriage, third-born Albert Henry (1807- ) and sixth-born James http://us.f842.mail.yahoo.com/ym/ShowLetter?MsgId=8387_3629377_93528_2942_712.10/27/2007 Verizon Yahoo! Mail - eppster2@verizon.net Page 4 of 6 Augustus Dorr (1812- ) you might explain as the consequence of their lack of "interest in the Lenox place." But what exactly does this mean? I have relied heavily here on the Dorr Papers in the NEHGS. They are unprocessed, contain no less than seventeen chronological essays beginning with progenitor Edward Dorr's settlement in Boston in 1677. There is no stated author for most of these essays spanning two centuries but several are by Charles Hazen Dorr, some are credited to his son George (written as late as 1938), and there is good reason to attribute the remainder to George as well. Complicating the matter is that several essays are very rough drafts and the pagination is sometimes irregular or broken. I have not found evidence of a legal "interest" of Albert or James Augustus to Highlawn. While the Dorr papers suggest that Albert may have died after many years abroad it is clear that James was alive and active in the region during the first decade of the ownership of the property; indeed, the Dorr Papers essay on "Children of the Hon. Samuel Dorr by his First Marriage," author George B. Dorr Jr. says that James "died at my father's house in the country [Canton] in 1869, my father tending him with infinite kindness." Is there any reason to suppose that they were not interested in the family life in Lenox? What do you think? More to follow. Ron Cornelia Gilder wrote: Dear Ron, I am wondering how you and George B. Dorr are progressing and have thought of you particularly in the last week while I have been editing Highlawn. I have finally found a publisher for my next work which will include the Dorr's house. I have a http://us.f842.mail.yahoo.com/ym/ShowLetter?MsgId=8387_3629377_93528_2942_712 10/27/2007 Verizon Yahoo! Mail - eppster2@verizon.net Page 5 of 6 contract with The History Press for "Lenox Country Houses of the Hawthorne Era" and the deadline looms on Feb 1. I am working within a word limit and have had to compress the Highlawn essay into 1,000 wds. There are three footnotes that relate to you. One is a place where I'd like to cite your forthcoming book and the other two involve quotes from your research in the Dorr Papers in the New England Historical and Genealogical Library. Could you help me out with the correct citations? I attach the chapter and please let me know if you catch any embarrassing mistakes.i 1/4 Best wishes, NINI Houses of the Berkshires, 1870- 1930 (The Architecture of Leisure) by Richard S. Jackson & Cornelia Brooke Gilder: http://www.acanthuspress.com/ps- 20-3-houses-of-the- berkshires-1870-1930.aspx Delete Reply Forward Spam Move - Previous Next Back to Messages Save Message Text I Full Headers Check Mail Compose Search Mail Search the Web Copyright © 2007 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. | Copyright/IP Policy I Terms of Service I Send Feedback Help NOTICE: We collect personal information on this site. To learn more about how we use your information, see http://us.f842.mail.yahoo.com/ym/ShowLetter?MsgId=8387_3629377_93528_2942_712..10/27/2007 LENOX Massachusetts Shire Town BY DAVID H. WOOD 17 67 Qill DRAWINGS BY VAUGHN GRAY Published by the Town . 1969 . "Pleasures and Palaces" 73 Ward" to differentiate him from the Samuel Ward who was the lob- byist, politician and playboy of his time), was the first "summer resi- dent." A Boston banker and financier, he was of comfortable means and was more attracted to the prospect of a farm in Berkshire than to a banking office in State Street. A friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson Ward was one of the founders of the famous Saturday Club, whose membership comprised Longfellow, Agassiz, Lowell. Holmes, Mot- ley, and whose purpose, as Ward once wrote was "only to dine together once a month!" Ward also contributed to the Dial and knew the inimitable Margaret Fuller well. Samuel Ward was not successful in his farming venture and sold "PLEASURES AND PALACES" his Lenox holding within a few years. He had liked plowing on his Berkshire acreage because it "required just enough attention and skill to help and not to interrupt the flow of meditation, and my friends the farmers were greatly edified and amused at my beginnings." We can picture the gentleman farmer at work on his fields; he actually sc.w. N 1844 Charles Sumner, then residing in Pittsfield, wrote to Sam- I grew 100 bushels of potatoes his first year here. At the same time he uel Howe: "Ward jolted us in his wagon to Lenox to view the was working on a translation of Goethe's autobiography. He wrote farms, one of which he covets." That year Samuel Gray Ward 850 that he had to leave Berkshire, "because I found a hole in my pocket bought the farmland that he coveted in Lenox and set out to become that could be mended in no other way. a farmer. He had founded the North Stockbridge Farmers Club and the Almost IOO years later, on 22 September 1945, Giraud Foster. own- esteem in which he was held by its membership can be gleaned from er of Bellefontaine and virtually the last of the great estate owners, the resolution the Club passed in 1850 upon his return to Boston: died at the age of 94. "Be it resolved that the Farmers Club deplore his loss as a member of Between these two dates lies a period of a century, the century the club, as a citizen and resident of Berkshire, as a public misfor- which saw what many have called the "heyday of Lenox," and the tune " Ward was later to return to Lenox in the 1870's and to period which is certainly most often called to mind when the town's build a second estate, Oakswood. He shuttled between Boston and name is mentioned Berkshire, with occasional trips to Rome, until his death in 1907. Sotoo Cottagers If Samuel Gray Ward was the first of the cottagers, and Giraud Ward was typical of the early cottagers to settle in Berkshire, to GBD- Foster the last, then by the later date the designation of cottager" was build comfortable but not pretentious country homes and to try to no longer a very apt one or to be taken very seriously-not when the but become assimilated into the life of the community. The Tappans, cottage had sixty or seventy rooms, or was designed by Carrere and neighbors of Samuel Ward, were of the same kind; the Goodmans concerded Hastings to duplicate the Petit Trianon. The name as well as the con- who exercised an influence of culture and learning on the life of SGW. cept of the cottagers had undergone a serious change in 100 years. Lenox for many years were of this same group; the Higginsons, the Samuel Gray Ward (called by his contemporaries "The good Sam Danas, William Ellery Sedgwick the list is a long one. 72 74 Lenox: Massachusetts Shire Town "Pleasures and Palaces" 75 American society, at least during the nineteenth century, tried to Young men called for young women to walk in Woolsey Woods, whither they emulate the society of Europe, and this movement to the country, the were seen wending their way with a cashmere shawl on the gentleman's arm for adoption of "rural seats," was grounded in the European tradition. the lady to sit upon, and a blue-and-gold volume of some favorite poet in his hand, But at mid-century the invasion of Berkshire by such families as from which to read selected passages, under dropping nuts in an amber atmosphere. People met at the post-office after church on Sunday, when the elm-shaded street those named above brought a kind of transformation of this western came alive with gay faces and graceful figures with attendant cavaliers. On Sunday county into a watering place for the intellectuals. It brought to Lenox afternoons we walked up to see Mr. Goodman's cows. In the rocking-chairs of the and the surrounding country such figures as Hawthorne, Holmes, Curtis piazzas were discussed all sorts of current subjects, from stocks to horses, Longfellow, Lowell. The small town of Lenox, then the county seat from domestic to foreign politics, resumed later by the male participants at the and largely a farming town, was written about and its virtues ex- Club in the village street. tolled. All of this had the effect of making Lenox and its environs I lived long enough there to see a mighty change. The rural hillsides and pastures, seem a desirable place to live, and so a later and different generation bought up at fabulous prices, were made the sites of modern villas, most of them handsome and in good taste. The villas were succeeded by little palaces, some re- of summer residents appeared on the scene. peating the facades and gardens of royal dwellings abroad. Instead of the trim maid- We must remember that following the Civil War there was a servants appearing in caps and aprons to open doors, one was confronted by lackeys period of great prosperity. It was the age when many of the great in livery lounging in the halls. Caviare and mousse aux truffes supplanted muffins and American fortunes were either made or confirmed. There was no waffles. Worth and Callot gowns, cut low and worn with abundant jewels, took restrictive tax structure; a man was able to keep whatever he was the place of dainty muslins made by a little day dressmaker. Stables were filled with costly horses, farmyards with stock bearing pedigrees sometimes longer than the able to make. And most of the newly-rich looked about for fashion- owners', the dinner hour moved on to eight o'clock, and lastly came house parties, able ways to spend their money, fashionable places in which to be 'weekends', and the eternal honk and reek of the motor car. An early resident tells seen, fashionable individuals with whom to associate. Newport, Bar me mournfully that all the enchanting wood roads of my early memories are now Harbor, Southampton, Saratoga: these were the centers. Lenox did oiled for automobiles, the scent quite overpowering that of uncrumpling ferns and not appeal to many of the devotees of these places, but attracted a dewy moss as the smoke-breathing monsters tear through these haunts of ancient group of its own, whose name and lustre shone brightly in Berkshire peace. through the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth. Lenox, in a word, was becoming fashionable. Quiet country farms The change from the more modest cottagers to those whose con- were bought up for extraordinary prices: G. G. Haven in 1880 paid cerns were with building lavish and ostentatious estates was a gradual almost $3000 an acre for country farmland on the west side of Kem- one, remarked by few, but notable nevertheless. One of the visitors, ble Street. "The Gilded Age" Charles Dudley Warner called it, and writing reflectively in 1911, saw the change quite clearly: in Lenox it lived up to its name. Rolling hay fields were subdued to When we first went to Lenox, the lovely hill village had not parted with all its expansive (and expensive) landscaping, the "pipes of pagan Pan old-time characteristics of unpretending hospitality. The people who met there, played in woodland niches," summerhouses and playhouses, mock summer after summer, were of the cultured and refined class of American society, Italian villas and exotically cut and trimmed shrubbery all decorated knowing each other intimately, and satisfied to exchange simple entertainments in their pretty, picturesque homes. We had tea parties followed by games of twenty the pastoral landscape of Berkshire. Pastureland yielded to the ex- questions, by charades and dumb crambo, where fun and wit were the order of the quisitely terraced and planted Mount; fields were hedged and foun- hour. We walked to and from each other's houses, attended by maids with lanterns. tains played at Bellefontaine; acres of greenhouses assured tropical Every Saturday evening there was a gathering at Sedgwick Hall for dancing and fruits and delicacies at Elm Court. What had started as a cultural exo- reunion, to which the new-rich magnates of New York came as total strangers. dus to the country in the 1840's became the lavish spectacle of a 76 Lenox: Massachusetts Shire Town "Pleasures and Palaces" 77 wealthysociety bent on proving itself the equal of anything in Europe. Nowhere is the snobbery and condescension of the "Gilded Age" It is very easy for us of the twentieth century to fault this way of better shown than in a long and fascinating essay, written by one of life. Indeed, the wealthy and sometimes eccentric "cottagers" have the society reporters for a Springfield paper as late as 1915:3 taken much more than their just share of abuse and ridicule from those Sunday morning when the guest in the villa goes down the following morning who see in them only the decadence of a false American society, in tweeds for a morning walk, he may breakfast alone. His hosts have not yet arisen; overladen with wealth and sometimes lamentably lacking in taste. some other guests have breakfasted and gone out. He breakfasts and then walks. He American social structure of this era, as most historians have pointed may go to the Club, stop in at the Curtis Hotel, the great social rendez vous, to read out, was notoriously top-heavy. The rich did get richer; the poor re- the register and there find some acquaintances. They are off for a motor run for the day. Or he may, after breakfasting, take a short tramp and return to the country mained at the bottom of the ladder, and we are as appalled to read of house and dress to go to church. In Lenox the rich and famous go to church. Trin- the shamefully low wages for which men worked as we are to read of ity Church is the objective point, the place where the Congregationalist, the Bap- the abnormally high profits reaped by the "robber barons" from tist, the Presbyterian and various creeds all go when they visit in the hills. Although some of their transactions. there is a venerable Congregational church with an eloquent and learned pastor in Sociologists tell us that societies carry within them the germ of its pulpit, Trinity Church with its beautiful appointments, its vested choir, and its their own decay. It was so with the "palace er in Lenox. The two popular rector, a favorite of society, is the one popular place of Sunday worship. In season its congregation is always important. Famous men, beautiful women, wom- decades from 1880-1900 saw the most pretentious of the Lenox sum- en who wear the latest Parisian clothes, financiers, foreigners, titled noblemen, curi- mer homes built. Ahead lay the first of two devastating world wars, ous folks after pointers in dress or to look upon the great, fill the pews. The service the enactment of an income tax law, anti-trust legislation: all foes of in Trinity is noted for the excellence of its music and the appropriateness of the ser- the way of life often called the Lenox golden age. Nineteen hundred mon. The rector is a scholarly man. His short Sunday morning addresses are epit- saw the height of the large estates and Lenox as a fashionable water- omes of thought, such as are demanded by a most cultured congregation. ing place. After that it was all downhill. The depression trimmed the Gradually the estates were broken up and sold. After Andrew Car- sails of some, the difficulty of obtaining servants finished others, and negie's death, for instance (he had bought Shadowbrook in 1916), this the outbreak of world conflict again in Europe in the 1930's admin- largest of the Lenox estates passed into the hands of the Jesuit order istered the coup de grâce. and was converted into a novitiate. It, too, finally was lost to Berk- These are all externals. The causes of the downfall of this way of shire in a spectacular fire in March of 1956. Schools, camps, housing life are also, as I have indicated above, from within. Social exclusion developments gradually seized upon the vacant and crumbling villas and snobbery, petty rivalries and frequent intermarriage, all helped and palaces and converted them to more mundane use, or razed them hasten the end of the era. The changes in American society which and used the land. If Lenox real estate values had been high in the were then taking place would not ultimately accommodate them- 1880's when the owners bought and built, the reverse was now true. selves to the type of life led by the owners of Groton Place, Eastover, Land was sold for the proverbial song, and houses and their contents, Shadowbook or Clipston Grange. The days of the old Aspinwall Hotel when sold, realized practically nothing. It seems hard for us to be- were numbered as well, for the mode of American life was changing, lieve, for example, that Bellefontaine, one of the most opulent, was becoming more mobile, less formal, less socially fixed. As Mr. Good- sold at public auction for $70,000 in 1946. It had reputedly cost over man's COWS and the Curtis piazza were supplanted by fashionable $1,000,000 to build and furnish in 1899. Its gold-decorated service soirées and foreign cuisine, SO these in turn would yield to tourism, plates commanded only $18 each at the sale; a seventeenth-century motels and the cocktail party. Veronese marble wellhead which had cost Mr. Foster $10,000 brought 78 Lenox: Massachusetts Shire Town "Pleasures and Palaces" 79 $125; a set of armorial "Lowestoft" dinner plates sold at twenty for We'd play hide-and-seek and sometimes I'd get lost and have to telephone from $65. where I was and ask iny father to come and get me. The era was fading. Early in the twentieth century Frank Crown- I can remember the warm, sugar cookies that the cook used to give us when we went to visit our father. I can remember the long walks through the woods and inshield, the social arbiter, had been asked to rate the spas and water- seeing the white statues standing about among the trees; we thought they were ing places. Of Lenox he said, "Dull and dowdy, but full of genteel old scary then. And I can see the ones who used to work there: In the main house there families in reduced circumstances who are willing to unbend-if was the cook and a kitchen maid, two laundresses, a parlor maid, two chamber- properly propitiated!" But Lenox did not have much shabby gen- maids, the Mrs.' personal maid, the master's valet, three people in the pantry, one tility to fall back upon, and by the end of World War II, the palace of them a second man, a butler and I don't know how many men in the green- era in Lenox was dead. houses or on the grounds. I can remember the farmer, the herdsman, the chauffeur and the coachman. But then in summer they used to hire boys from town to work "How did these people in their marble villas, and their retinues of in the gardens and in the greenhouses and on the lawns. servants, get on with the townspeople?" we may ask. It is a question I can remember, too, being taken into the dining room one time just before a I have asked many times, and a conversation I had with a Lenox man dinner party and seeing the table all set with the gold plates and the silver center- helped to answer it. This man's memory extends well back into the piece and the bronze-colored chrysanthemums. It was beautiful. It was like another "Gilded Era"; his father, in fact, came to Lenox to start a business world. largely dependent on the wealthy summer residents. It is hard to envisage the aura of a departed age. The big houses Well, I remember it all very well [he says]. I remember it, but I don't resent it. that still stand, converted to guest houses or school dormitories or Some did and some still do. It was the way things were here. You were either rich music camps, catch our imagination. The brilliant world that peo- and lived in one of the big houses, or you lived in town and waited on them. My father got his living from them, and I helped him, helped him until I was grown. pled them briefly passed quickly by, leaving little but memories. Then I got a job in one of the stores and I met some of those people face to face. It is a shame, parenthetically, that no one of the big places in Lenox Some were pleasant. They'd speak and pass the time of day. Others would snub has been kept, like the Newport Breakers, as a memento of its era. 4 you. But you never forgot that they had the money and that your living depended We have fast lost touch with the Gilded Age and each year that goes on them. No, I wouldn't want to go back to those days; things are better the way by puts more firmly behind us the age when one woman employed they are, even if we do have riots and strikes and all. I try to tell my children what IOO servants on her estate, or when the gay tub parades and horse things were like then, but they don't believe me. They just think I'm making it all shows, the costume balls and the parties, the gala reception for a up. They just don't understand what I'm talking about. Some of them that came here did care about the people in the town. One family President's wife5 were all part of the social season. [he named it] saw to it that a local girl with talent was sent off to a first-rate college The end of the era is nowhere better summarized, and more finally, and they paid the bills. There were some like that. But mostly they were just there. than in a terse newspaper item in the Berkshire Eagle in 1943: "Mr. We'd see them in their cars go rushing by, or we'd hear that they were giving a Giraud Foster, well-known owner of Bellefontaine, will celebrate his big party, but they moved in a different world. They never came into ours and we 93rd birthday on November 8. The guests will partake of a buffet in were never a part of theirs. Things are different now. keeping with the war tempo. The gorgeous Louis XIV ballroom Another said of her acquaintance with one of the big houses: with its gold and white ornamentation will be closed on account of I can remember going through that house [her father was the caretaker] as if it were the fuel shortage." yesterday. The great long hall that echoed so, the long marble stairway with the velvet-covered handrail. The bedrooms with their French furniture and heavy drapes. The closed-up musty smell when the house was empty during the winter. 80 Lenox: Massachusetts Shire Town NOTES D Emerson, who called Ward "the American gentleman," wrote to him in 1840: "The reason I am curious about you is that with tastes which I also have you have tastes and powers and corresponding circumstances which I have not, and per- haps cannot divine, but certainly we will not quarrel with our companion, for he has more root, subterranean or aerial, sent out into the great universe to draw his nourishment withal. The secret of virtue is to know that, the richer another is, the richer am I;-how much more if that other is my friend!" "THE GENTLE QUEEN" 2. Mrs. Burton Harrison, Recollections Grave and Gay, 1911. 3. "Country Life Deluxe"; Springfield Republican, 28 June 1914. (The rather petty religious snobbery which this passage reveals is peculiarly repugnant to us to- day. To equate the Episcopal-or any-church with social prestige and acceptance is indeed a millstone about its neck. Fashions change in this regard, also!) UCH of the luster which Lenox attained in the middle of 4. Virtually the only estate still in its original condition, with most of its furnish- ings and decorations intact, is Elm Court, presently owned by Col. and Mrs. H. M the nineteenth century was due to the bright light of one George Wilde. As the Berkshire County Historical Society and private individuals woman: Catharine Maria Sedgwick. Of Stockbridge birth, seek out examples of Berkshire architecture and history worthy of preservation, she moved to Lenox to be near her beloved brother, Charles Sedg- thought should be given to preserving this, or some other of the estates that subse- wick who was clerk of courts. The closeness of this family is shown quent generations may not have to rely only on words or pictures to conjure up by the many letters written among this group, full of devotion and the era. regard, as well as observations on friends, lectures they attended, books 5. A gala reception was held at Sedgwick Hall to welcome Mrs. Frances Folsom Cleveland on 3 October 1889. It was the social event of its season. they read. It must have been a singularly pleasant household in Lenox. At first their house was on Walker Street, then Charles Sedgwick had it moved to a larger lot on Kemble Street just beyond the junc- tion with Walker. Catharine Sedgwick had her own "wing," and with its broad piazzas, the rockery she speaks of in her letters, her beloved rose bushes, strawberry beds, and the view off to the west, it was a pleasing situation. Fame, perhaps, never came to a more unsuspecting person than to Catharine Sedgwick. Her first novel, A New England Tale, was ac- tually intended to be a religious tract in the form of a short story. But she became carried away with it; this book and the novels which succeeded it sold well and brought the literary world to her door. She was surprised. "I should be delighted to visit Boston in the course of the summer," she writes Mrs. Channing in 1822, "but I 8I ramy yy more satisfying one of marriage. Charles Kemble, her father, owned Covent Garden Theatre, and its fortunes and misfortunes would make a story in themselves. Fanny's mother was a DeCamp, of French origin, which may ac- count for some of the romantic side of her nature. She was Marie III Thérèse DeCamp, known as the "little French Fairy" who danced for royalty and who wheedled favors at the knees of nobles and com- moners alike. A generation later, her daughter was to act for royalty and pack theatres with the magic of her personality and "that mar- velous voice." Fanny Kemble's first connection with Berkshire came on her very first trip to America. British-born, she came to America with the European nineteenth-century stereotype in her mind: America was FANNY KEMBLE to be the land of barbarous customs, savage peoples, inconveniences and crudities beyond belief. Some of this she found. Always a shrewd observer, her comments on this first trip are vivid, poignant and true. New York she found dusty and hot and shabby. But there was color: in the markets, at the assemblies, in the theatre. UR DIVINE FANNY," Catharine Sedgwick called her. She O Fanny met Catharine Sedgwick and the liking was instantaneous was Mrs. Pierce Butler, but by the time she settled in Lenox and mutual. It was not long before the Sedgwicks invited Fanny for an extended stay, she had been divorced by her husband Kemble to Lenox. Meanwhile, Pierce Butler had come onto the and had assumed the name of Mrs. Kemble, and as such was the scene. A wealthy slaveholder and descendant from distinguishe South- brilliant flame which drew about her a circle of admirers. ern lines, Butler wooed Fanny Kemble over an extended period of Lenox was the least likely place in mid-nineteenth century to find time and, many thought, had worn down her defenses until she had a famous actress, a divorcee, and an ardent horsewoman, all in one. agreed to marry him. After the marriage, in June of I834, the Butlers Such was Fanny Kemble. Her story seems almost like fiction and, as went to live at Branchtown, near Philadelphia, in a house lent to we read about her excursions into the Berkshire countryside and her them by Pierce's aunt. The problems which were to haunt Fanny contacts with the residents of Lenox as well as of its seasonal visitors, Kemble through the short years of her marriage were already appar- we almost have to pinch ourselves to believe she ever existed. ent: Pierce had lost much of the glamor which he possessed during Even her family background was unusual. On her father's side their courtship. Fanny Kemble remarks that he is no longer interested Frances Ann Kemble came from a family of British stage people; the in things of the intellect as he appeared to be during their early days Kembles owned theatres, acted in them, directed their plays, produced together. The life at Branchtown was incredibly stifling to one of actresses and singers for them. The great tragedienne Sarah Siddons Fanny's wide interests and enthusiasms: "You ask of my society. I was Fanny Kemble's aunt. Fanny's own sister Adelaide broke off a have none whatever; we live six miles from town, on a road almost promising career as an opera singer for the less glamorous but perhaps impracticable in the fairest as well as the foulest weather, and though 98 IOO Lenox: Massachusetts Shire Town Fanny Kemble IOI people occasionally drive out and visit me, and I occasionally drive in The Butlers traveled extensively, going back to England to visit and return their calls, and we occasionally at rare intervals go in to the Fanny's mother and father the year following their visit to Berkshire; theatre or a dance, I have no friends, no intimates, and no society. the transatlantic voyage was rough and took thirty-seven days! She Were I living in Philadelphia, I should be but little better off they returned to Lenox and this time stayed at the "Old Red Inn" (later to have no time, and, it seems, but little taste for social enjoyment" become the Berkshire Coffee House and, still later, the Curtis Hotel). (letter from Fanny Kemble to Harriet St. Leger). Fanny Kemble had additional griefs: she was increasingly oppressed The first Cemble Butler's two children was born in the by the issue of slavery and had found in England support for her be- spring of 1835 and to restore his wife to health and to relieve her lief that ownership of human property was insupportable in an en- obvious monotony, Pierce accompanied her that summer on her visit lightened society. During that autumn of 1838 she received the news to the Sedgwicks. All went well. Fanny discovered in these people, that her mother had died in England. She had consolation from Eliza- buried in the country of western Massachusetts, the social life she had beth Sedgwick, with whom she became more friendly and of whom missed in Branchtown; the brilliance of conversation, the constant she wrote: "Elizabeth is a great comfort. She has somewhat taken the visiting, dinners and the expeditions into the country all restored place of Adelaide [Fanny's sister]." Fanny's friendships with persons Fanny's spirit. Catharine Sedgwick was to remain her constant friend she met in Berkshire were becoming deeper: Mary and Fanny Apple- and confidante for the rest of her life, and Fanny found Elizabeth ton were her constant companions, and they drove and picnicked Sedgwick (Mrs. Charles), Catharine's sister-in-law, a very solid spir- and rode together. [Fanny Appleton was to become the second wife it and someone who would, later on, understand Fanny's violent of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in July of 1843 and to burn to condemnation of slavery, the institution she said she could not live death, tragically, almost eighteen years later.] with in this new country. When Fanny returned to Branchtown at At about this time, Fanny Kemble decided that she must visit her the end of that summer, she had in her mind the fresh, green image of husband and brother-in-law's plantations in the South. At first, they Lenox in summer. She had ridden through the quiet lanes (astride, to discouraged the idea, but then Pierce Butler gave in and Fanny made the shocked surprise of many), had climbed some of the hills, and the the first of several trips south. What she saw there affected her deeply. picture she had of this idyllic spot in the Berkshires was to give her She could not imagine that, in a country which prided itself on its sustenance through the trying times ahead for her. freedom, such things existed. The conditions under which the Butler The marriage with Pierce Butler did not go well. It is not difficult slaves lived were beyond her belief. Later, she was to incorporate her for us, of a later time, to see why. Pierce was the Southern aristocrat impressions in a book which had considerable impact: Journal of a with fixed ideas as to the place of his women. He was a procrastinator Residence on a Georgia Plantation (1863). Even in the quietness and by nature, almost unbelievably careless with money. "The first fine beauty of the Berkshires, a montage of scenes was to flash through careless rapture" of his love for Fanny was soon spent, especially so Fanny's mind and to disquiet her: Old Dorcas, a Negress, coming to when he found that the "lofty, soaring spirit" he had admired in her beg a pinch of sugar from Mrs. Butler, picked up Fanny's watch, then did not tame well after marriage. For the duration of their married put it down: "Ah, I need not look at this, I have almost done with life together (the divorce came in late summer of 1849), tensions and time." An old woman, almost at the point of death, wizened and difficulties were to assail the pair, understanding became rarer, and, shriveled, sighing contentedly that she had "gone on makin' little at least from Fanny's point of view, Pierce Butler became more and niggers for Massa." more difficult to live with. Fanny wrote to Elizabeth Sedgwick of one incident: "I found an IO2 Lenox: Massachusetts Shire Town Fanny Kemble I03 old negro named Friday lying on the floor of the damp, dark, filthy attraction to it. In the latter years of her life she did readings only, room; his glazed eyes and rattling breath told me that he was dying. and it is for these, largely, that she is remembered in America. When A tattered shirt and trousers barely covered his poor body, he had she first came to Lenox, she offered to do one of these readings, her nothing under him, but a handful of straw that did not cover the offer was taken up, and the details arranged. When she was asked earth on which he lay and under his head, by way of a pillow, two what group was to benefit from the performance, she remarked or three rough sticks raised his skull from the ground. There he lay- kindly, "Why, the poor of Lenox." "We have no poor in Lenox," the worn-out slave whose life had been spent in unrequited labor for was the tart reply, and Fanny decided that the money should go to- me and mine, without one physical alleviation, one Christian solace, ward the fund for the public library in the town. one human sympathy-panting out his last breath like some forsaken This was not the only misunderstanding Fanny Kemble had with beast of burden rotting where it falls. As I bent over him, blinded the residents of Lenox. After buying her house, "The Perch," south with tears of unavailing pity, there was a quivering of the eyelids and of Lenox village, together with its small complement of acreage, she falling of the jaw-a he was free. How I rejoiced for him; and found it necessary to have her hay cut and engaged a local farmer to how, as I turned to the wretches who were calling to me from the do the job. Seeing the men and boys laboring in the hot June sun, she inner room, I wished they were all gone away with him, freed by sent to the tavern for a keg of cold beer which she intended giving to death from bitter, bitter bondage." Needless to say, the visits to the the men. Her friend Charles Sedgwick "expostulated with me (she plantations quickened the dissolution of their marriage; Fanny in- wrote) as introducing among the laborers of Lenox a mischievous sisted that Pierce give up this inhuman way of supporting a family need and deleterious habit till then utterly unknown there; in short, and he, with a Southerner's immunity to its wrong, stubbornly up- my poor barrel of beer was an offense to the manners and morals of held his way of life. the community I lived in, and my meadow was mowed upon cold After another extended visit to England, Fanny Kemble Butler re- water from the well." turned to America in late summer of 1848, summoned here by the Fanny Kemble's beauty shines from each of her portraits, yet we news that Pierce Butler was suing her for divorce on the ground of are told by those who knew her that no portrait ever caught the desertion. Despite the able services of Rufus Choate on her behalf and essence of her. Thomas Sully, who was a cousin of Pierce Butler, her filing of a demurrer, the divorce was granted, allowing Pierce the painted Fanny several times (one of these portraits illustrates this custody of the children, Sally and Fanny (who had been born in 1838), book), but he never felt that he was successful. "Her features," one though they were to spend some time during each year with their acquaintance wrote, "taken individually are not memorable. Togeth- mother. er they produce a unique beauty." Mrs. Fitzhugh put it even more While she was in Europe Fanny Kemble had started doing read- succinctly, "Fanny Kemble, you are the ugliest and the handsomest ings, largely from Shakespeare's works. Fanny regarded the Bard as girl in London." Undoubtedly Fanny had an air, and Julian Haw- the greatest writer who had ever lived and had almost a sense of wor- thorne, son of Nathaniel, remembered long years afterward the strik- ship toward what he wrote. It is interesting to note that her first suc- ing dark-haired lady who rode astride a fierce horse into the cottage- cess upon the stage when she was not yet out of her teens was as yard overlooking the Bowl, picked him up peremptorily from the Juliet in Romeo and Juliet. Her attitude toward the stage and acting is ground, swung him astride the saddle before her and galloped around strange for one who came of a family so steeped in theatrical tradi- the pastures and lanes with him shrieking in combined delight and tions. She loathed anything about the profession, yet felt a strange terror. IO4 Lenox: Massachusetts Shire Town Fanny Kemble IOS At first, Fanny Kemble was slow in being accepted in Lenox and One day, after a ride, she stopped with the Sedgwicks to look at it is not difficult to see why. She loved the people she met; she always the Church on the Hill. Trees had not then grown up, and from the had a way with ordinary people, but she seemed difficult to know. churchyard where they stood, the valley dropped before them and Once, striding into the Berkshire Coffee House in Lenox she noticed they could see for miles. Fanny said impulsively, "I want to lie here a man standing next to her with his hat on. "A gentleman always when I die, that upon the Resurrection morning I may awake with removes his hat in my presence!" she announced. "I'm not a gentle- this scene before me." man. I'm the butcher," he remarked dourly, and Fanny delightedly If she was impressed with Berkshire, many were impressed told this story on herself to the Sedgwicks. On another occasion she her. Charles Sumner, the Senator from Massachusetts who was later rented a carriage for a drive around the town when some friends to be the victim of Preston Brooks' assault in the Senate Chamber, came to visit. She had contracted with the driver for an hour's drive spent some time in Pittsfield in 1844 recuperating from an illness. He for five dollars and they were punctual. She had kept up a running wrote to his friend Howe on II September: "Tomorrow I move to stream of conversation, questions, and banter with the driver during Lenox where I sojourn with [Samuel] Ward and count much upon the ride, and when she came to pay him, he announced that she owed the readings of Shakespeare, the conversation and society of Fanny him five-fifty. "Why the extra fifty cents?" she demanded. "You Kemble, who has promised to ride with me and introduce me to the said five dollars." "Extra fifty cents is for the 'sarse'," he said. And beautiful lanes and wild paths of these mountains. She seems a noble again she was delighted that he had got the best of her. woman, peculiar, bold, masculine, and unaccommodating, but with Fanny Kemble, however, came to be accepted by many of the resi- a burning sympathy with all that is high, true, and humane." dents of Lenox and she came to know them and, most of all, to love But her children were now grown, Pierce Butler died in 1867 this part of her adopted country. When her daughters spent time right after the Civil War (which Fanny knew was inevitable and the with her, it was at "The Perch," that strange-looking Victorian house Northern cause of which she spent hours in England defending and with its three-story tower. In many of her letters written from Eu- promoting), but Fanny had decided to leave Berkshire. She bought rope she shows her longing for the familiar Berkshire scenes which York Farm in Pennsylvania, and this necessitated her selling "The she describes. Before she bought her house in Lenox she wrote (on Perch," but she returned in the summer or early autumn for some 3 October 1843): "You do not know how earnestly I desire to live years to enjoy her favorite part of America. Her friends were still up there. I do believe mountains and hills are kindred of mine,- many: With Henry James in her later years she enjoyed a close friend- larger and smaller relations, taller and shorter cousins, for my heart ship, started at least on his part many years before when, as a small expands and rejoices and beats more freely among them, and doubt- boy in a wagon on a country road, he had seen a beautiful woman, a less in the day when I can hardly remember' I was a bear or a wolf, or veritable Amazon, go speeding by on a dark horse. She was flattered at the very least a wildcat with unlimited range of forest and moun- by the attentions of younger men, but liked them: Henry James; tain. That cottage by the lakeside haunts me, and to be able to James Leigh, her son-in-law; young Owen Wister. She had not realize that day-dream is now certainly as near an approach to happi- grown older in spirit and none of her fire had really been quenched. ness as I can ever contemplate." She even liked the winters which She thought of the Lenox hills in 1877 as, sadly, she returned to had daunted the Hawthornes and writes of a day's expedition: England for the last time. She must have contrasted the New York journeyed to the little town of Pittsfield, the solid ice cracked like she had first seen in 1832 with the New York of forty-five years the breaking of the great bass strings of a harp, and the pitiless sky later, as the Britannic started its cold January voyage eastward. She seemed filled like an armory hung round with steel weapons." was to have another sixteen years of life and it was to be filled with 700 EARLY BUILDINGS OF LENOX S we have seen in our discussion of the early settlement of the A town of Lenox, Jonathan Hinsdale and the other early settlers quickly built shelters for themselves. It is doubtful, as I have already pointed out, that these shelters were log cabins, but probably were rough frame dwellings, soon to be supplanted by houses which were plastered and glazed against the cruel Berkshire winters. There seems to be virtually no discoverable material to be unearthed which would tell us more of this period and we therefore have to proceed largely on supposition and on what we know of settlers and their building elsewhere. Earlier, in Connecticut, settlers of English ancestry built timbered and framed houses with huge center chimneys, the American equiva- lents of their English counterparts. Since Lenox was not permanently settled before the middle of the eighteenth century, such medieval buildings as the Parson Capen house of Topsfield or the old stone house in Guilford could not be expected to dot the Berkshire coun- IIS 116 Lenox: Massachusetts Shire Town Early Buildings of Lenox II7 tryside. Tucker, in his unpublished history of the town, speaks of the It is necessary early in one's consideration of Lenox buildings to old-time houses in Lenox as having been built with a realize that the burst of prosperity which Lenox underwent, first as winding stairway leading to an upper story, and back of this the huge chimney the shire town, later as the site of the "cottages" and the more pre- twelve to fifteen feet square at its base. On each side of the hall a door opens into a tentious "villas," dealt a severe, often fatal blow to the early struc- large square room. The roof slopes toward the rear so that the distance from the tures which the town must once have possessed. One can count on eaves to the ground is not more than seven or eight feet. Across the whole house in the fingers of both hands the early dwellings (dating from the eight- the rear stretches the capacious kitchen, the common working room and living eenth or early nineteenth centuries) still left standing in the town, and room of the whole family in each of the front rooms is a large deep fireplace and many which still remain have been so altered as to escape detection. in the kitchen is a huge one six or eight feet across, and in a recess at one end is a There is, in the field of Berkshire architecture a wide-open field for brick oven.¹ investigation, study and publication. It is a fact, however, that when What Mr. Tucker describes here is the typical Massachusetts or Con- the cottages were built in mid-nineteenth century, and later when the necticut lean-to or "salt-box" house, built from the seventeenth cen- lavish mansions were constructed, many early Lenox houses were tury until late into the eighteenth. There are such houses extant in razed or entirely altered. Thus the early house (built late in 1780 by Berkshire, but I know of none presently in Lenox. William Walker), later to be known as the Goodman house, on old The "typical" Lenox house is quite different. It is, parenthetically, Stockbridge Road, was razed in 1930 by Courtland Field Bishop. A interesting to find, in a study of New England houses, how much description of the house at the time of its demolition mentions "the variation there was in design and structure from one section to an- staircase, the rich paneling in several rooms, and the locks and hinges other. Many localities developed a distinctive style or type of design [which] were the originals." This house, a photograph of which ap- peculiar to that region alone. The gambrel-roofed cottage of Cape pears in this book, was a gambrel-roof structure, a type of building Ann comes to mind, as does the peculiar "off-center" four-bay Nan- which apparently never met with much favor in Berkshire. Recently tucket house, or the distinctive Cape Cod, low-slung gabled house of the "Palladian-type" window which was in this house (probably a weathered shingles. At least of the surviving examples in Berkshire, later addition) has come to light, along with some pilasters, locks and the typical Lenox house is of the type represented by the Walker- other architectural elements apparently saved at the time of its raz- Rockwell house, the Paterson house and the house on Pittsfield road ing; they show abundantly that it was a fine early house and it can be now owned by Elise Farar. It is a two-story house, gable end at the surmised that others like it must have existed in Lenox, but do no side, or, in the case of the first two, a hipped-roof construction. It is a longer. frame house, five bays wide, with center doorway and hall and re- Little here can be said of the "shingle-type" cottage built in large strained but well-executed wood detailing on the exterior. Chimneys numbers by the summer residents late in the nineteenth and early in are located not in the center, but on the outer end walls, and the house the twentieth century. This is a separate subject and, although some sits closely to the ground. Such houses were built in Lenox from late research has been done on this period of dwelling in Newport, Rhode in the eighteenth century until sometime in the nineteenth (the Island and elsewhere, it is elsewhere a largely neglected period of Walker-Rockwell house was built in 1804). The interiors of Lenox American architecture. There is still material in Lenox for such a houses seem to have been void of detailed woodwork, using instead study. simple fireplace mantels and raised panel doors, with sometimes a If the dwellings of early Lenox did not escape destruction in large paneled wainscoting but rarely a full or elaborate raised-paneled wall. numbers, the public buildings did, and these deserve more detailed 118 Lenox: Massachusetts Shire Town Early Buildings of Lenox 119 attention. There is no town which has been more anxious to preserve hipped roof, also found on the Paterson house. The Academy build- its early public buildings and, in all cases, the noteworthy ones of ing is surmounted by a cupola and vane, smaller in size than that pic- Lenox have not only survived but have been put to constructive use, tured on the original Town House, but similar in type. Many of the not merely, Williamsburg-fashion, serving as decorative reminders details such as the cornices and moldings are very much like those of a palmy past. found on the Elise Farar house on the Pittsfield road. A similar door- The earliest of these structures is the original "Town House," as it way and other details could also have been found at one time on the is called on the Eldad Lewis map. It was, as we have seen in an earlier Gilmore house (Lithgow) on Old Stockbridge Road before it was chapter, built as the first court house to be used by the county when razed by Lenox School, though at the time of its destruction it had its seat was at Lenox. An illustration of this building as it originally been so Victorianized as to be almost unrecognizable as an early appeared also is printed in this book. It was a distinctive frame build- house, probably built about 1790 by Thomas Landers. ing built between 1788 and 1791. It is described by one writer: The Academy building is a forthright New England interpretation of the Federal style, clapboarded and almost austere in its exterior It was 40 foot square and stood about its length west of the present town building [west of the present Town Hall]. It was of wood, constructed for the courts only. appearance (see photograph in this volume), but a well-proportioned The entrance was from the west, through double doors around which was some and functional building of great simplicity and beauty in its setting carving, and over it a fanlight window. There were lobbies on either side of the under the trees of the shaded main street. This building has been door, IS feet in length and 8 feet in width, for jury rooms. The ceiling of the court- twice threatened with destruction within the last few years: once it room was arched, and it comprised what is now both stories of the building, and was contemplated to demolish the structure as no longer of use (it is the whole area, with the exception of the jury rooms there were three windows presently used by veterans' organizations and the Girl Scouts), and on the east side of the house, five on the west side, and four on each of the other sides, in two tiers. In each of the windows there were 24 lights of glass, IOXI2. The later a fire broke out but was fortunately discovered in time. It is specifications called for a cupola with a spire and vane.2 buildings such as these which, in a village or town, make the differ- ence between mediocrity and distinction in appearance. Where the Early in the twentieth century, when the new Town Hall was to eighteenth and nineteenth century structures have been razed and be built, this structure was moved to a new location on the north side have given way to gas stations and supermarkets, or jerry-built mod- of Housatonic Street and converted into a business block. Its cupola ern structures, the street then resembles every other street of its type and vane, decayed because of weather, were removed and, unless one up and down the land. Too many Berkshire buildings of distinction knows the building, it is not recognizable as the interesting early have fallen before the axe or the bulldozer blade: the Woodbridge structure it is. An admirable project for our restoration-minded times house in Stockbridge, the Peace Party house in Pittsfield, the "Bul- would be to strip this structure of its later additions, move it to a finch" church, the Goodman house, to name only a few. It is impor- suitable site and restore it to its original appearance. It is, in fact, the tant that the Academy buildings and churches and dwellings of the only eighteenth-century building of note left standing in Lenox, and eighteenth and nineteenth century stand for posterity. would make a remarkably handsome structure, properly rejuvenated. Probably the building which most dominates the Lenox landscape The second structure, which occupies a site on the main street, is and did so even more in the last century before trees and shrubbery the old Academy building, the date of which is given as 1803. It is a growth partly concealed it is the Congregational church, known usu- plain frame structure of five bays, similar in feeling to the Walker- ally as the "Church on the Hill." It is a fine building, sensitively pro- Rockwell house on Walker Street, though larger. It has the same portioned and perfectly sited. It is, in fact, such a totally satisfying I20 Lenox: Massachusetts Shire Town Early Buildings of Lenox I2I building architecturally that its admirers have looked far and wide The church was finished on schedule in October of 1805 and was for its architect; one gasoline company in its advertising of trip tours dedicated the following January. It has remained in use since, though through Berkshire admonishes tourists to be sure to see this church, for a time before heat was introduced, it was closed during the cold- "attributed to Bulfinch"! est months of winter. Its interior, to one who admires its external ap- Again, as with the Academy building, its details are subtle but well pearance, will come as a distinct disappointment. The early box pews done. The cornice is restrained but effective, the use of the Palladian- and the original pulpit and raised "front gallery" have disappeared type window over the entrance is not overpowering, and the mass and yielded to a Victorianization which is far from attractive. I would and structure of the church building are well calculated. The tower is hope that members of the congregation might, one day, restore the not so elaborate as some, but is satisfying and lacks the fussy detail church to its original appearance, much as was done in Old Benning- which is found on several New England steeples. ton, in order that the building show its distinctive beauty complete, Several years ago the pastor of this church unearthed the original not marred by inharmonious details. agreement made between the church fathers and the builders of the The final building in Lenox with claim to architectural distinction structure. It sets at rest for all time the question of the identity of its is the Lenox Library Association Building, known formerly as the architect, and it also provides us a fascinating comment on the build- "new court house." This was built, as we have seen, in 1816 when ing habits and customs of early nineteenth-century New England. the first court house proved too small for county use. A committee The builder was Benjamin D. Goodrich of Richmond, a man who, consisting of Joseph Woodbridge of Stockbridge, Caleb Hyde of I suspect, was responsible for several buildings in Berkshire possessing Lenox, John Whiting and Henry Brown, high sheriff of the county, similarities of detail and construction. The specifications are explicitly were responsible for the building of this structure as well as the jail, set forth, and little is left to chance. It was Goodrich, however, who the jailer's house and "all appurtenances thereto belonging." would have been responsible for the touches like the mouldings and The original plans for the court house are well preserved in the the finish. Lenox Library, which now makes maximum and effective use of the Many students of architecture have remarked on the importance of building. For a time, when the courts moved to Pittsfield, the future the "Builder's Assistant" handbooks which were published both in of the "new court house" was in doubt, but it was purchased from this country and in England. It will be noted that the Meeting House the county by Mrs. Adeline E. Schermerhorn and deeded to the Committee in this case specifically refers to Plate No. 33 in Asher Lenox Library Association. It is a fortuitous ending for such a fine Benjamin's Country Builder's Assistant. A comparison between the building. Its architect was the well-known designer and builder, Cap- picture of the Church on the Hill tower with that reproduced from tain Isaac Damon of Northampton, who was responsible for many the Benjamin book (shown in this book) will quickly show that the civic buildings and churches in Western Massachusetts at the turn of design, with minor variations, is identical. The cost of building this the nineteenth century. outstanding church wsa $4,833.33, with some labor undoubtedly The structure is a massive, but well-proportioned one of brick furnished, as the agreement states, by "mechanics of the town of with pilasters and pillars of Ionic design applied to the facing of what " Lenox, who are Proprietors in said house Curious as to the is, in reality, a massive brick façade. The cornice and surmounting relative cost of building, I asked a contractor friend what the identi- details, including a well-designed belfry, the use of a pedimented cal building would cost to build in 1968, 163 years later. His estimate: cornice, and the recessing of the lower floor windows lend a grace $250,000! and lightness to the building. It was restored a few years ago, through I22 Lenox: Massachusetts Shire Town Early Buildings of Lenox I23 the generosity of Mr. Grenville L. Winthrop and, although the in- portionable bigness, all well fixed with Patent Springs; to be a double door in the front of the Tower, and a single door in each end of the same; the Roof and sides to be boarded with good terior arrangement is quite different from that of the court house, it is sound hemlock boards; all the inside work below and the front of the Galleries to be done harmonious and useful. It is heartening to see a structure of the archi- with good clear stuff; to be well painted inside and out with three coats, and to be plastered with three coats; the shingles to be laid not more than five and one fourth inches out; the clap- tectural importance of this one so well preserved and serving a com- boards to be laid out not more than six inches and to lap at least two inches; the Bell to be munity after more than a century and a half.4 hung and suitable apparatus provided for it; a lightning rod to be put up made of refined Iron of suitable bigness; to be an elegant iron vane and brass ball properly gilt and ornamented; the A thorough and detailed history and analysis of the architecture of Steeple and the workmanship of it to be made comparable to the plan of a steeple laid down in Berkshire has yet to be made. When it is, however, these buildings Plate No. 33 in Benjamin's Country Builders assistant. And the said Goodrich further covenants and agrees to procure and furnish all the materials of Lenox will represent the best of their period. They all, even the for completely finishing said house except the Stone Work and Bell, and that he will do most unpretentious of the dwellings, represent the quiet restraint and the same in all its parts in a good substantial, workmanlike and elegant manner, conformable to the most approved modern architectural principles, and of good sound and suitable ma- innate good taste of their builders and owners, and contribute much terials, and that he will finish the outside of said house by the first day of November, A.D. 1804, and complete the same by the aforesaid day of October 1805. And the said Goodrich further to the unobtrusive but satisfying beauty of the town. agrees that he will make such alterations as to the elevation of the steeple, and do all the other works not particularly herein mentioned in such a manner as the said Committee upon con- sultation with him shall from time to time advise and direct and that he will employ any of the mechanics of said town of Lenox, who are or may be Proprietors in said house, who are able and willing to perform any part of the work as well and upon as reasonable terms as he can NOTES procure it done by others. And the said contracting parties of the second part in their said capacity in consideration of the covenant and agreement of the said Goodrich on his part above specified, on their part I. Quoted from Tucker galley #17, Life in Early Lenox. covenant and agree to and with the said Goodrich that they will payhim the said Goodrich the sum of four thousand eight hundred and thirty three dollars and thirty three cents, in the fol- 2. Quoted from Tucker galley 50, Courts and Courthouses. lowing manner, to wit all the timber and materials for said house, and at the prices mentioned 3. The agreement is interesting enough to quote in full: in the schedules hereunto annexed, amounting to the sum of two thousand one hundred fifty three dollars and 66 cents. The timber for the frame to be delivered by the first day of March ARTICLES OF AGREEMENT made and concluded this nineteenth day of October in the year of next, rough hewed or sawed, the residue of the materials of wood by the first day of May our Lord one thousand eight hundred and three by and between Benjamin D. Goodrich of next, the Glass and Nails by the first day of June next, and the other materials, when wanted Richmond in the County of Berkshire and Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Joiner, of the upon said Goodrich giving one months previous notice, provided however if any parts of one part, and William Walker, Caleb Hyde, Oliver Belding Junr., Joseph Goodwin, Josiah Materials shall not be delivered by the time specified the said Goodrich shall have the money Newell, Nathaniel Miller and Ebenezer Williams all of Lenox in said County, a Committee in lieu thereof on demand and the sum of six hundred sixty nine dollars and ninety two cents- appointed by the said town of Lenox to contract for the building a Meeting House in said by the first day of May next and the sum of six hundred and sixty nine dollars and ninety two Lenox, of the other part. cents by the first day of November then next following and the sum of thirteen hundred and The said Benjamin Goodrich for the consideration herein after mentioned and expressed, thirty nine dollars and eighty four cents by the first day of October in the year of our Lord doth covenant, promise and agree to and with the said parties of the second part in their said 1805 and also that they will have the foundation completed ready for the raising of said house capacity as contracting Committee for said town of Lenox, that he the said Benjamin will, on on or before the tenth day of July next- or before the first day of October which will be in the year of our Lord one thousand eight In testimony whereof the parties have hereunto interchangeably set their hands and seals the hundred and five, erect, build and finish a Meeting House in said town of Lenox, and near words "shall have" were interlined before signing where the old one now stands, of the following description and dimension, and in the follow- (Signatures) ing form and manner. The body of the House to be sixty four feet long and fifty feet wide and 4. The total cost for the new court house, including the jail, jailer's house and a projection of eight feet by twenty six at the south end for a Tower or Steeple, the Posts of the house to be twenty seven feet high; to be forty six Pews on the lower floor conformable to the enclosures was $26,059.11. plan adopted by said town of Lenox; to be thirteen pews in the Gallery, besides two pews to Wm. Rotch Ware in Colonial Architecture says of the building: "This is one of the be made and raised over the stairs; The upper Pillars to be of the Ionic order with Capitals of very few buildings having any pretension to architectural design left to us the same order, The Arch over the body of the House to be an elliptical arch; the flooring over and under the Gallery to be horizontal; the front gallery to be made in a circular manner, with Damon was a leading architect of Western Massachusetts from 1812 to 1840. He four posts in the same, and two good strong posts in the side gallery. The Pulpit to be built built at least I3 churches in this region and nearly all the town halls, court houses upon a Post with a Corinthian Capital, with two flights of stairs the railing and banister of and bridges." (A comparison of the brick church on the Main Street of Old which to be of good cherry or mahogany wood; the Pews below to be built of stuff nine eighths of an Inch thick when worked; the windows to be twenty-four squares each, the Glass Deerfield and the 1816 Lenox court house, both Damon buildings, shows many nine by eleven, except the Venetian and other ornamental windows which are to be of pro- similarities of design, though with variations in detail.) Tanglewood I25 arming book: A young college student named Eustace Bright sur- rounds himself with a company of young children improbably and unconventionally named Periwinkle, Squash Blossom, Primrose. To these youngsters, clustered about his feet at Tanglewood, he retells stories of classic mythology: of Midas and his gold, of Mercury and his fleetness, of the half-horse, half-human centaurs. As the shadows creep down the side of the mountain, across the stream in the glen,1 and the sun sets behind the hills, the children are entranced by the unfolding of these tales. In the chapter on Hawthorne I have already detailed the acquaint- anceship between the writer and Mr. Tappan (William Aspinwall Tappan of Massachusetts, wealthy, philanthropic, friendly). The Tappans had acquired "Highwood," the estate of Samuel Gray Ward (1850), and were later to build their own house farther west on ad- jacent land, and to name it "Tanglewood" after the story that had enthralled them. It was this estate which was later to become the home of the music festival. It would be good to say that the Berkshire Symphonic Festival TANGLEWOOD was the first of its kind, either here or anywhere. But such is not the case. The Norfolk Music Festival in Connecticut dates to 1899, start- ed early by Mr. and Mrs. Carl Stoeckel. The Bethlehem Bach Festi- val, in Pennsylvania, was established first in 1900, and the South IVEN the combination of Berkshire's location, its physical Mountain Music Festival in Pittsfield built its "Temple of Music" in G surroundings, its large number of culturally-inclined persons 1918, a full two decades before the permanent building at Tangle- and the very American quality of liking gatherings, some wood. The contributions of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge of Boston sort of festival was almost inevitable. Those who early had the vision and Pittsfield are too numerous to detail here,2 but her benefactions of a culture center in the Berkshire hills could not possibly have to chamber music and her support of South Mountain laid the sup- known the national and international repute which such a fete would port for the establishment of a still more ambitious festival, which bring to Lenox: some "outlanders" know Lenox only as the "Tangle- was to become Tanglewood. wood town," and letters come addressed, "Tanglewood, Massachu- The mythical root of the music festival, now world famous, was setts." the remark of Henry Hadley, noted composer and conductor who, The roots of this well-known summer phenomenon run deep in- during a Stockbridge stay, confessed that he wanted most to conduct deed. They run through three phases of Lenox growth: Hawthorne a full symphony orchestra "under the stars." The idea was well re- christened the locale when he wrote his fanciful, mystical and mytho- ceived and Hadley called upon three energetic Berkshire women, logical Tanglewood Tales. It is, in many ways, Hawthorne's most dis- Mrs. Owen Johnson and Miss Gertrude Robinson Smith of Stock- I24 I94 Appendix Appendix 195 HAMPTON TERRACE, located on Walker Street, opposite Trinity time prior to 1920 it was owned by Mrs. William Slater. Judge and Church. Built in 1882 by Mr. John Struthers and named WYNN- Mrs. Charles Bosworth conducted it as a farm and raised fine horses. STAY. Later owned by Mr. Robert Bonner, whose daughter Miss Mr. and Mrs. Leonard C. Feathers acquired it in 1936 and changed Kate Bonner sold in 1936 to Carl Geise. Present owners Mr. and the name to WATERFORD. They sold it in 1942 to Mr. and Mrs. Mrs. Carl Bodendorf. (See also WYNNSTAY) John L. Senior, who again changed the name to HIGHWICK FARM. HIDDEN HOUSE, located on Greenwood Street, south side, oppo- (See also WATERFORD and HIGHWICK) site Cemetery on the Hill. This was established about 1870 by Mrs. HOMESTEAD, located on the west side of Cliffwood Street at the Grace Kuhn and was then known as HILLSIDE. Later purchased by corner of Yokun Avenue. The original house was designed by Mr. and Mrs. Ross W. Whistler, about I9II, who changed the name McKim, Mead and White for the Misses Appleton in 1885. It was to HIDDEN HOUSE. Sold in 1940's by the heirs to a family named later owned by the Anson Phelps Stokes family prior to the building Mears. of SHADOWBROOK. For many years it was rented to the Dahlgren HIGHLAWN, located on present site of BLANTYRE Original estate family and was later destroyed by fire. Property was later divided established early (1842) by Russell Cook of Boston; later owned by and the property is now owned by Mrs. Hayden Channing and Mrs. George Dorr, whose heirs sold to Robert Patterson. (See also BLAN- Englebert Krichels. (See THREE ACRES and ANNE'S ACRES) TYRE) INTERLAKEN, located on the east side of Old Stockbridge Road HIGHLAWN HOUSE, located on Lenox-Stockbridge Road. House about three miles from the village. This estate was established in 1881 built about 1900 by Mr. and Mrs. W. B. O. Field. Now owned by by D. W. Bishop. The house was demolished in 1922. At this site, their daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Helm George Wilde. approximately, the first jail was built and there is now a marker on HIGHWOOD, located on south side of West Street, overlooking the spot. Property is now part of the development known as Berk- Lake Mahkeenac, extending through to Hawthorne Street. Original shire Estates South. estate was one of the first in Lenox, developed by Samuel Gray LAKESIDE, located on the west side of Route 183 beyond SHADOW- Ward (not to be confused with the politician, Samuel Ward) in 1846. BROOK. This estate was established in 1885 by Charles Astor Bristed, Sold in 1860 to William S. Bullard and it remained in the Bullard and has been in the family since that time. It is now owned by M. family until the 1960's when it was purchased by Mr. and Mrs. John Symphrosa Bristed Livermore and Grace Bristed Jackson. Mason Harding. It was on Highwood porch that the Tanglewood Tales were supposedly sited. LAUREL LAKE FARM, located on the Lee road at the corner of Lee Road and Plunkett Street. This was established in 1880 by Mr. John HILLSIDE (See HIDDEN HOUSE) O. Sargent, later owned by his daughter Miss Georgiana Sargent. HOLMWOOD, built in 1919 by Margaret Emerson Baker (Mrs. Now owned by Mrs. Mary Nicholls. Raymond T.), widow of Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, on the site of LITHGOW, located on the west side of Old Stockbridge Road at the the George Westinghouse home. Acquired by Foxhollow School foot of Lanier's Hill. Estate was established in 1870 by Mr. Alfred for Girls in 1939. (See ERSKINE PARK) Gilmore, who bought it from Edward Pierrpont. The land was part HOMEPARM, located on Under Mountain Road and adjoining the of an early grant to the Landers family, and the house in part dated Golf Course. Built late in 1880's by Dr. H. P. Jaques. For a short to the late eighteenth century, though the Gilmores "modernized" 9/11/2018 John I. Kane - Historic Saranac Lake - LocalWiki log in or account 60 localwiki Search Historic Saranac Lake Explore About Blog Donate API Help Historic Saranac Lake Explore Map Activity Add a new page John I. Kane Edit Info Courtesy of Chip Nagle Winslow Kane, John I. Kane, Mrs. Simmons, Edith Seaman, Marjorie Kane, Howard Seaman Adios II Born: Died: Only the Finest: Memorials by McKim, Mead & White at Green- Wood I Green-Wood Page 6 of 21 reinforced concrete, etc." it notes that the "sacrophagus" would be completed by the end of the month), is located in section 80, lot 1696, just to the right of the entrance to the Egyptian Revival mausoleum of Peter Schermerhorn and family (dated 1847 above its entranceway). The Kane Memorial, a sarcophagus decorated on its top, ends and sides, has both extraordinary lettering and elegant carving. Kane, who died in 1913, was related to many of New York's leading families; his grandfather was John Jacob Astor, his wife was Annie C. Schermerhorn (Peter Schermerhorn's granddaughter). The Schermerhorn Mausoleum, just behind Kane's memorial, was built in the midst of the 100 acres that the Schermerhorn family sold to Green-Wood Cemetery in its earliest years-the knoll upon which it sits had been the location of the Schermerhorn's barn. Kane was a great fan of scientific explorations and funded many. It appears he lived off his inheritance; as one obituary reported, "he never engaged in business." He was a member of New York's leading clubs, including the New York Yacht, Knickerbocker, Union, South Side Sportsmen, Automobile Club of America, and Metropolitan. As per Roth, in 1904 Kane hired McKim, Mead & White to plan his residence at 610 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. It was designed by Charles McKim and his principal assistant, William Symmes Richardson, at a cost of $511,472 (approximately $13,759,000 in today's money). It has since been demolished -Rockefeller Center stands there now. https://www.green-wood.com/2018/only-the-finest-memorials-by-mckim-mead-white-at-g. 8/20/2018 Only the Finest: Memorials by McKim, Mead & White at Green-Wood I Green-Wood Page 7 o The John Innes Kane House, by McKim, Mead & White, under construction, circa 1905, at 49th Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York. Kane died here in 1913; as per his obituary in The New York Times, "His Forty-ninth Street residence attracted immediate attention when completed in 1909, because of its attractive simplicity. It was built in the style of the Italian renaissance, and its furnishings were bought from all parts of Europe." M-KIP or on The John Innes Kane House, completed. The Green-Wood Historic Fund Collections. This McKim, Mead & White work-John Innes Kane's spectacular house-must have pleased his heirs; they hired the same firm to design the beautifully- detailed sarcophagus in front of his in-laws tomb. Roth mistakenly describes the Kane Memorial as a "mausoleum." He further states that it dates from 1914, cost $4842 (just over $120,000 in today's money), and that the original drawings for it survive at the New-York Historical Society. https://www.green-wood.com/2018/only-the-finest-memorials-by-mckim-mead-white-at-g... 8/20/20 How It All Began The nation's land trust movement originated in the little town of Stockbridge. by Thomas Conuel S tockbridge, Massachusetts, is a small, picture-per- places had simply succumbed to brambles and bur- fect, tourist town in the southern Berkshires, once docks. The rest of the town was no better. Stockbridge, home to Norman Rockwell and still on the 1960s with its hollows and small hills and open vistas, was nostalgia map for hosting Arlo Guthrie and Alice's certainly the most beautiful spot in the Berkshires- Restaurant. But the tourists, and even many locals, are part of an enchanting countryside nestled near the unaware of the fact that Stockbridge is also the site of meandering Housatonic River. But to Mary Hopkins' the creation of the first public land trust in the United critical gaze, deterioration had set in. She believed that States. It was here the idea originated that one could the time had come to preserve and tend what nature save lands in trust for all to enjoy solely for their esthet- had bestowed on Stockbridge. ic value. On August 22, Hopkins went around the town and put In the summer of 1853, according to author (and sculp- up notices at the post office, on a large elm outside the tor) Margaret French Cresson, a woman named Mary building, and at several other places in the community, Hopkins happened to ride her trusty white horse through inviting the citizens of Stockbridge to a public meeting the Stockbridge Burying Ground and was appalled at on the 24th of August "to take measures for the regular what she saw-fences "in such decrepit condition that all improvement of the Burying Ground, the streets, the the neighborhood COWS in the morning when they were walks, the public grounds and Laurel Hill." At the meet- turned out to pasture wandered in of their own volition, ing, the citizens in attendance agreed to form a village nibbled what sustenance they could find among the rank improvement society, which they decided to call the growth, knocked over tombstones in their excursions and Laurel Hill Association. As part of their covenant, the roamed about at their own sweet will." association agreed to maintain the streets and cemetery, And there was more. There were few trees, no paths, and preserve and beautify Laurel Hill, a small oak-cov- no driveway, and the grass needed mowing, or in many ered hill with large rock formations on the east side of town. The Sedgwick family had given the town the land in 1834 as a public park, but since then the park had become a wild and tan- gled place. At age 38, Mary Hopkins was a woman who "combined a very real executive ability, an attention to detail of a very high order and a steam-roller energy description included in the group's centennial book, The Laurel Hill Association: 1853-1953. Her idea was that the Laurel Hill Association would assume responsibility for upkeep and maintenance of the land in trust for the general public. This concept of public land was not new. Practically every village and town in New England had a town com- mon-public land for public and private use. But the notion that one should preserve and maintain a piece of land simply because it was beautiful or inspiring was new. Snow-laden white pine, Winchendon Nowadays, search online for land 12 MASSACHUSETTS AUDUBON SOCIETY, Sanctuary magaz Winter 2007-2008 Whether it's partnering with a local outfitter to pro- vide students with an educational experience on the river, working with local school systems to integrate the environment into the curriculum, or inviting experts to the NRWA's resource center in Greenfield to discuss river-related topics with adults, association members know there will be a substantial payoff. "For many stu- dents this could be a turning point in their lives," says Campbell. "Frequently, we hear that it's a student's first time on a river." Partnering is another strategy both organizations have used with great success. Campbell says that her group has paired with local, state, regional, and federal governmental agencies, environmental groups, recre- ational groups, and industry on a variety of projects. "You really need a partnership approach for all kinds of issues," she says. In order to gain a designation of American Heritage River for the Connecticut, the CRWC has linked up with museums, environmental groups, and a host of sporting groups. And it is likely the council will be partnering on a new campaign to raise an estimated $150,000 to cre- The Davidsons, founders of the Connecticut River ate a water quality testing lab at its Greenfield head- Watershed Council, 1959 quarters. Today, most of the state's thirty-seven major river basins have watershed protection groups. The Connecticut and the outer layer of pollution has been peeled away, it has the Nashua run far cleaner than they did forty years ago. revealed the broader, stealthier source of contamination The goal of swimmable water that Marion Stoddart beneath. River advocates no longer can point to a dis- doggedly pursued for the Nashua River has been charge pipe and say "Gotcha!" The problem is, instead, achieved, and the Connecticut River is starting to have one of pollution by a thousand cuts. salmon once again travel upriver to spawn. But, in a way, "It's every person who doesn't pick up after his dog, or the hardest work remains to be done. who washes the car in the driveway and lets the suds On the Nashua, Stoddart again has turned her atten- run into the street drains, or who uses chemicals on a tion shoreward, striving to complete a walkable green- lawn that runs down to the river," he says. "It's not any way the length of the river-a challenging assignment one of these things but the cumulative impact of them where urban industrial buildings virtually abut the all that's the challenge." water. Connecticut River advocates are trying to elimi- The good news is that various programs have sprung nate barriers to spawning fish by removing dams where up to raise public awareness of these issues. One such possible and creating fish ladders in other locations. program, GreenScapes, is a collaborative effort to The CRWC is also waging a court battle to reverse a encourage low-impact landscaping and responsible decision granting Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant stewardship of water resources. Another, Think Again, its second temperature increase for the water it dis- Think Blue, aims to get people to refrain from throwing charges into the river. River advocates say that the deci- cigarettes on the ground and overfertilizing their lawns, sion, which is not the first one upping the temperature and to pick up after their dogs. of Yankee's discharge, was made without the benefit of "It's hard to measure the success of these programs scientific data on the effect on salmon and shad. Water through demonstrated water quality," says Cohen, "but temperature serves as a trigger for migrating fish. "We I'd like to think that they're working." have experts who have done the science and who can Although she continues to work on behalf of the document a dramatic decline in these two species since Nashua River, Stoddart is cognizant of the enormous the first temperature increases," says Campbell. changes that have already been made. She recently Now that the rivers have been mostly cleansed of walked along the river's edge and marveled to see two their point-source pollution-waste from identifiable rope swings dangling from tree limbs out over the water. single sources-river advocates are aiming for a more "I thought it would take my whole life to achieve this," difficult target. Nonpoint source pollution, largely she says. "I never dreamed we could make this kind of runoff from roadways, parking lots, lawns, and farms, is difference in thirty-eight years." ubiquitous. Cohen of the Riverways Program likens the process of Gayle Goddard-Taylor is a field editor for Sanctuary addressing river pollution to peeling an onion. Now that magazine. SANCTUARY WINTER 2007-2008 11 3. trusts and you will find the after- math of the movement that began back in Stockbridge. There are more than 120 land trust organizations listed by the Massachusetts Land Trust Coalition, although, ironically, the Laurel Hill Association is not on the list. The association still soldiers on in Stockbridge but strictly as a village beautification society, content now to place flower boxes along the town streets. The oldest continuous land trust in the nation is The Trustees of Reservations. Its inception dates back to 1891, when a nascent land- scape architect and protégé of Fredrick Law Olmsted named Charles Eliot set out to purchase and preserve wild and beautiful places around the state. His idea, a new one at the time, was to acquire these lands, protect them, but open them to the public for enjoyment- just as a library or museum collects and preserves books and paintings Stone bridge in mist and snow, New Salem for the edification of the public. The concept of preservation and stewardship of lands not privately held was not something and a leader in land acquisition and stewardship. the country's first settlers gave much thought to. The As with the original idea of land trusts, Mount Grace start- Pilgrims and the successive waves of settlers who followed ed inauspiciously and grew slowly, propelled at first by a put aside land for the common good almost from the desire to keep a parcel of historic land away from the moment they began building houses and churches and encroachments of haphazard development and creeping grouping themselves into towns and villages. But the com- sprawl that were changing the very nature of the North mon land was held for its utility. The flinty doctrine of Quabbin region. Keith Ross, a professional forester in the Calvinism that dominated parts of New England in those North Quabbin region, gathered some like-minded citizens early decades considered esthetics or pure enjoyment of together in 1986 and incorporated the group as the Mount almost anything as an affront to God. Grace Land Conservation Trust (Mount Grace in Warwick is Boston Common, the oldest public park in the country, a 1,600-foot monadnock). With $12 in the bank, Ross and his was purchased in 1634 when English settlers designat- group borrowed money, prevailed on the town of Athol to sign ed its lands a common pasture. But preservation of land over its right of first refusal, and then purchased the 365-acre (and water) solely as an enhancement to a community's Lawton Tree Farm, a longtime supplier of Christmas trees to esthetics was not even a remote thought for most resi- the community but slated to become a 200-house-lot subdivi- dents of the colonies and later the United States. Good sion. A natural innovator, Ross and his fledging land trust land and water were everywhere. The idea that some- then resold the property to the Massachusetts Department of day you might have to set aside and protect a parcel of Environmental Management, which then designated the land from the predations of your fellow citizens was land the Lawton State Forest, which it remains today-a incomprehensible. parcel of fine land open to the public. Leigh Youngblood, executive director of the Mount It was a way of saving land and doing business that Grace Land Conservation Trust (one of the biggest and depended on a network of like-minded partners-an most active regional land trusts in Massachusetts), is idea that Leigh Youngblood embraced when Keith Ross one of many activists who have steered their organi- hired her as a part-time assistant in 1994. Six months zations to become forces in local and regional land after hiring Leigh, Keith Ross stepped aside-his work management. The Mount Grace Land Conservation as the founder of the land trust completed. Since then, Trust-stretching from Ashburnham and Westminster the Mount Grace Conservation Land Trust has grown. in the east to Montague, Greenfield, and Leyden in the It has played a lead role in preserving 20,000 areas in west-covers a twenty-three-town region in north- north-central Massachusetts, owns and manages nine- central Massachusetts and serves as both a resource teen conservation areas, and monitors conservation SANCTUARY WINTER 2007-2008 13 Spruce swamp, Warwick restrictions on some thirty-nine properties as well as credited with preserving much of the Berkshire land- promoting its message of protecting land and encourag- scape with hundreds of land preservation agreements, ing stewardship of the land throughout the region and and in leading the land conservation movement in New the state. England. "Today, it's pretty much impossible to do a land pro- "It's almost a business today," he says. "When I was tection project that doesn't involve a lot of partners," doing it, I'd think of myself as a bit like an art dealer, says Bernie McHugh, president of the Massachusetts going out appraising land and then trying to get people Land Trust Coalition. The price of real estate and the together to buy it and keep it for the public, like you ever-expanding push of suburban sprawl call for more would a great painting. money and sometimes complex deals to protect favored George Wislocki says that now we talk not just about spots. "You can't blame it on the landowners," said getting the land but also of managing it, and keeping it McHugh. "Every square foot of land that goes on the for other generations. "But it all started with the Laurel market today is up for grabs." Hill Association out there in Stockbridge," he says, "the George Wislocki of Pittsfield is probably the dean of oldest existing village improvement society in the land trust managers in Massachusetts, perhaps New United States." England. He founded the Berkshire Natural Resources Council along with Donald B. Miller, former publisher of Thomas Conuel is a field editor for Sanctuary magazine. The Berkshire Eagle, in 1967. Now retired, Wislocki is 14 MASSACHUSETTS AUDUBON SOCIETY Want to learn more about Lenox history? Bryan, Clark W. The Book of Berkshire: Describing and Illustrating its Hills and Homes. North Egremont, MA : Past Perfect Books, 1993. Circulating copy at the Lenox Library: Nonfiction 917.441 Bryan Reference copy at the Lenox Library: Reference Office Nonfiction 917.441 Bryan Online edition at Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/bookofberkshired00brya Chague, Jan. History of Lenox Furnace and Lenox Dale. Lenox MA: privately printed, 2015. Available for sale at the Lenox Historical Society Reference copy at the Lenox Library: Reference Office Nonfiction 974.412 Chague Digital Commonwealth. Images from the Lenox Library archives and the Lenox Historical Society. Accessible through https://lenoxlib.org/local-resources/digital-commonwealth/ Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration of Massachusetts. The Berkshire Hills. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1939. Circulating copy at the Lenox Library: Nonfiction 917.441 Federal Reference copy at the Lenox Library: Reference Office Nonfiction 917.441 Federal Online edition at Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/berkshirehills00fede Field, David D. A History of the County of Berkshire, Massachusetts, in Two Parts. Pittsfield, MA: S. W. Bush, 1829. Reference copy at the Lenox Library: Reference Office Nonfiction 974.41 Field Online edition at Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/historyofcountyo00fiel Gilder, Cornelia Brooke, and Julia Conklin Peters. Hawthorne's Lenox: the Tanglewood Circle. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2008. Circulating copy at the Lenox Library: Nonfiction 974.412 Gilder Reference copy at the Lenox Library: Reference Office Nonfiction 974.412 Gilder Jackson, Richard S., and Cornelia Brooke Gilder. Houses of the Berkshires: 1870-1930. New York: Acanthus Press, 2011. Circulating copy at the Lenox Library: Nonfiction 974.41 Jackson Reference copy at the Lenox Library: Reference Desk 974.41 Jackson Kennedy, Lucy. Lenox at 250: An Updated History. Kindle ebook, 2016. Available for sale at Amazon.com Lenox Library Association. Images of America: Lenox. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2016. Available for sale at the Lenox Library and The Bookstore Reference copy at the Lenox Library: Reference Office Nonfiction 974.412 Lenox Mallary, R. DeWitt. Lenox and the Berkshire Highlands. New York: G.P. Putnam's sons, 1902. Circulating copy at the Lenox Library: Nonfiction 917.4412 Mallary Reference copy at the Lenox Library: Reference Desk 917.4412 Mallary Online edition at Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/lenoxberkshirehi00mall One Hundredth Anniversary of the Founding of Lenox Academy. Pittsfield, MA: Sun Printing Company, 1905. Circulating copy at the Lenox Library: Nonfiction 974.412 Lenox Reference copy at the Lenox Library: Reference Office Nonfiction 974.412 Lenox Online edition at Internet Archive: : https://archive.org/details/onehundredthanni00leno Owens, Carole. The Berkshire Cottages: a Vanishing Era. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Cottage Press, 1984. Circulating copy at the Lenox Library: Nonfiction 974.41 Owens Reference copy at the Lenox Library: Reference Desk 974.41 Owens Owens, Carole. The Berkshires: Coach Inns to Cottages. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2004. Circulating copy at the Lenox Library: Nonfiction 974.41 Owens Reference copy at the Lenox Library: Reference Office Nonfiction 974.41 Owens Seaman, Judy. Lenox Through the Years 1767-2017. DVD, color, 1 hour 56 mins. Available for sale at The Bookstore Tucker, George H. A History of Lenox. Lenox, MA: Lenox Library Association, 1992. Circulating copy at the Lenox Library: Nonfiction 974.412 Tucker Reference copy at the Lenox Library: Reference Desk 974.412 Tucker Wood, David H. Lenox: Massachusetts Shire Town. Lenox MA: Published by the Town, 1969. Circulating copy at the Lenox Library: Nonfiction 974.412 Wood Reference copy at the Lenox Library: Reference Desk 974.412 Wood Yudkin, Jeremy. The Lenox School of Jazz: A Vital Chapter in the History of American Music and Race Relations. South Egremont, MA: Fashaw, 2006. Available for sale at the Lenox Library Circulating copy at the Lenox Library: MUSIC Nonfiction 781.65 Yudkin Reference copy at the Lenox Library: Reference Office Nonfiction 781.65 Yudkin 12/1/2020 Mail - eppsterz(@comcast.net - xtinity Connect [New post] Lowell and The Berkshires. On the road with Geral 11:04 AM To eppster2@comcast.net Reply Forward Delete III Respond to this post by replying above this line New post on On the road with Gerald Dickens Lowell and The Berkshires. by geralddickens As we leave the Thanksgiving weekend behind us SO the memories of tours and performances past are tumbling daily onto my phone and many are based firmly in New England. The first recollection is of the mill town at Lowell where Charles Dickens visited during his first trip to the United States in 1842. The young, brash author had enjoyed success after success following the publication of The Pickwick Papers in 1836 and was riding a wave of popularity, a wave that he would surf right across the Atlantic and into Boston harbour where he was greeted and feted with huge banquets, or 'Boz Balls', thrown to celebrate his achievements. But the young Charles Dickens' visit was not just travelling to greet his adoring public and to play the celebrity role, he had a genuine enthusiasm to observe aspects of American life and to see if there was anything that he, and ultimately Britain, could learn from how a relatively young nation was dealing with issues that the old one was failing with. At the top of his list was the conditions in the mills that proliferated in and around Boston, and he had asked to be taken to Lowell to observe a modern mill at first hand. He was astounded by what he saw and wrote glowingly about his experience in his travelogue American Notes commenting particularly on how well the workers were treated, noting that that in their lodgings they had access to a piano and were allowed to publish their own magazine, The Lowell Offering. htps://connect.xfinity.com/appsuite/#!!&app=io.ox/mail&folder=default0/INBOX 1/1 12/2/2020 Xfinity Connect Re_ New post] Lowell and The Berkshires Printout I have returned to Lowell since then and one other particular happy memory was when I performed Doctor Marigold, the beautiful story of a cheerful cheapjack travelling the country and selling his wares from the steps of his caravan. Marigold addresses the audience directly and tells his life story which is both tragic and wonderful. He explains how at a country fair he discovered a little unwanted girl unable to hear or speak and felt so drawn to her that he adopted her on the spot. The two learned how to communicate by developing their own rudimentary sign language. When I performed the piece in Lowell I was accompanied on stage by an interpreter who not only signed the entire show for a largely deaf audience, but also taught me a few signs so that I could include them in my show: it was a profoundly moving experience. Another New England venue which has become part of my tour more recently is the small town of Lenox in the Berkshires where I perform in a beautiful historic home, the Ventfort Hall Mansion. I have visited Lenox twice and on each occasion have been greeted with thick snow which has made the experience even more special. The mansion itself is tucked away from the road and on when I first drove up the driveway my jaw dropped for I had driven straight into the scene described by Charles Dickens when Scrooge sees the vision of his old school: 'They left the high-road, by a well-remembered lane, and soon approached a mansion of dull red brick, with a little weathercock-surmounted cupola, on the roof, and a bell hanging in it. It was a large house, but one of broken fortunes' https://connect.xfinity.com/appsuite/v=7.10.3-14.20201117.065843/print.html?print_1606935190905 4/7 12/2/2020 Xfinity Connect Re_ New post] Lowell and The Berkshires_Printout Ventfort doesn't have a bell, and is not of broken fortunes, although it is undergoing a process of restoration and rescue, giving one the impression that just a few years earlier it probably had lived down to Dickens' description: 'The spacious offices were little used, their walls were damp and mossy, their windows broken, and their gates decayed. Fowls clucked and strutted in the stables; and the coach-houses and sheds were over-run with grass. Nor was it more retentive of its ancient state, within; for entering the dreary hall, and glancing through the open doors of many rooms, they found them poorly furnished, cold, and vast. There was an earthy savour in the air, a chilly bareness in the place, which associated itself somehow with too much getting up by candle-light, and not too much to eat.' Thank heavens there are people who care so passionately about the past and wish to preserve it, for Ventfort Hall Mansion is now a warm, welcoming home and a perfect venue for me to perform in. https://connect.xfinity.com/appsuite/v=7.10.3-14.20201117.065843/print.html?print_1606935190905 5/7 12/2/2020 Xfinity Connect Re_[New post] Lowell and The Berkshires_Printout With thoughts of my film very much in mind, it would have been wonderful to use the house as a location, and the snow would have added a perfect backdrop. The town centre of Lenox itself also reminded me of a film location, this time not A Christmas Carol but Frank Capra's fabulous 'It's a Wonderful Life'. With street lights twinkling onto the thick snow it was easy to imagine gawky James Stewart running through the streets shouting out with joy. When I drove away from Lenox I left the magic of the snow behind me as if the whole experience had been a dream - a series of visions to make me feel better about myself To rent my version of A Christmas Carol use this link to my website: http://www.geralddickens.com/films.html https://connect.xfinity.com/appsuite/v=7.10.3-14.20201117.065843/print.html?print_160693519090 6/7 BERKSHIRE COUNTY Chapter 10. THE AMERICAN LAKE DISTRICT AFTER a year on his sizable farm in Lenox, young Samuel A Cultural History Gray Ward was writing his father with enthusiastic satisfac- tion: "I have harvested a hundred bushels of excellent pota- toes [and] am thinking of translating Goethe's auto- biography this winter. 1 Within the twenty years to come, many another celebrated man of letters was to discover in Berkshire a similar opportunity for cultural and agricultural accomplishment, and the land was to prove undeniably good for both activities, The irrepressible Dr. Holmes would one by RICHARD D. BIRDSALL day take considerable pride in having planted 700 trees on the rolling expanses of Canoe Meadows; Hawthorne would spend serene hours with his dearly loved chickens behind the little red cottage near Stockbridge Bowl; and Melville-the only one to depend heavily on the land for sustenance- would trudge home many nights exhausted from his work in the fields at Arrowhead. And from Canoe Meadows would come some of Holmes' finest odes; from the Rose Cottage, The House of the Seven Gables; and from Arrowhead, Moby Dick. Impelled by his frail health and by his "unsatisfied passion for the country and the land," 2 Samuel Gray Ward had led the way to Berkshire, and living there from 1844 to 1850 he remained the most loyal Berkshire supporter among the host of distinguished visitors in the county. Indeed, so quickly NEW HAVEN did he become a part of Berkshire life that he himself never seemed a visitor at all, and his closest Berkshire friend, To Thomas Wren Ward, Oct. 20, 1845; TWW. YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 2. Samuel Gray Ward, "A Long Letter to My Grandchildren," Ward Family Papers, Collected and Written by Samuel Gray Ward (Boston, privately printed in an edition of twelve copies, Norwood Press, 1900), p. 88. 323 1959 324 Berkshire County The American Lake District 325 Charles Sedgwick, could describe him, only three months tion, and my friends the farmers were greatly edified and after his arrival, as "very popular and more beloved than amused at my beginnings. I got up a farmers' club to some old settler."(8 Later he was to serve as the common de meet at each other's houses at stated times in the eve- nominator between Fanny Kemble and Charles Sumner and nings, and to measure and compare crops etc. which between Longfellow and the Sedgwicks, but even then he brought me quite near to them. Then there was shooting never sacrificed his place in the affections of the Lenox towns enough to afford an excuse for long rambles with dog people. and gun Ward's regard for Lenox went back to the boyish recollec When his father's plan of retirement in 1850 obliged him to tion of a carriage tour he had made with his mother through abandon the pleasant environs of Lenox for the practical western Massachusetts to the Lebanon Springs. Four years at business world of New York City, the North Stockbridge Harvard and two years in Europe had not dimmed the mem- Farmers' Club saw him go with sincere regret and voted: ory, and he at first regarded his second trip across the Barrier "Resolved that the farmers' club deplore his loss as a member as a romanticist's return to nature. Once settled, however, he of the club, as a citizen and resident of Berkshire as a public looked at his surroundings more realistically and soon wrote misfortune." to his father: "We seem to have made a happy selection in Neither Dr. Holmes nor Melville was ever to become so this part of the country, for we find simple and economical completely a part of the rural scene as Ward was becoming habits united with an excellent society." Because he en- during these years of bucolic retreat. "I love farming," he joyed a generous allowance from his family, his own habits wrote to his father with candor. "There is such a variety and never were and never needed to be economical, but his ap- simplicity, such an adaption of means to ends, such room for proach to his new life was nonetheless sincere and practical. the exercise of ingenuity and contrivance, as well as for the "City-bred people," he had realized from the outset, "never cultivation of perseverance and patience that I find an end- understand country-bred people, and are not admitted to the less interest in it." Less than two weeks later he was writing 'freedom' of the country. This barrier I wanted to break still another letter filled with the enjoyment of country life: down, and succeeded SO effectually that I was accepted as one "We have mid-winter weather and the most perfect sleighing. of themselves." 5 In retrospect he was to write further: Yesterday morning being a bright morning we went Although I was not robust enough for hard labour, farm- over to Lebanon, Anna and I in an open sleigh. We started ing, under such circumstances, I had a great delight in. after breakfast, and when we returned at noon the thermom- I could do anything that was to be done with horses, eter stood no higher than 7° and considerable wind; yet we ploughing, harrowing, etc.; ploughing particularly, and did not suffer and had a charming drive of twenty-two miles. driving at the same time, required just enough attention Think of that! Cold weather here is more bracing and less and skill to help and not to interrupt the flow of medita- chilling I think than on the coast. 6 Ibid., p. 181. To Kate Minot, Sept. 2, 1844; MC. 7. C. M. Sedgwick to Samuel G. Ward, Mar. 5, 1850; SGW. S. G. Ward to T. W. Ward, June 3, 1844; TWW. 8. S. G. Ward to T. W. Ward, Dec. 1, 1845; TWW. Ward, Ward Family Papers, p. 180. g Idem, Dec. 12, 1845; TWW. 326 Berkshire County The American Lake District 327 The very civilized Emerson never tired of commenting Whatever Emerson might think of Berkshire isolation, the with wry humor on his friend's strange attachment to the fact remained that Lenox in the 1840's harbored a small but comparatively rustic rural life, and on the occasion of Ward's first winter trip to Boston, he wrote playfully: growing corps of literati whose knowledge owed apologies to no one and whose sophistication could rival any to be found I hope the city looks friendly and domestic to her one- in America. And if Ward's peculiar genius drew virtually time son, and not reproachful and too mindful of his nothing from the Berkshire tradition, still he discovered wanderings. Tis a good goblin, and the most devout among the isolated hills an unsurpassed workshop in which lovers of nature will find the Exchange, the Tremont to experiment upon and expand that genius. With adequate House and the Concert Room tolerable in February. The time for reading in his "warm and bright" winter library; woods of Berkshire (a week ago all cased in diamond) the with welcome occasions for thinking as he jogged easily along frozen lakes and skies a little too pure must reckon them- behind his plow in springtime; with pleasant opportunities selves happy if a fortnight hence they preserve the least for conversations with Fanny Kemble, the Reverend Henry charm for your imagination. Indeed what a maceration Neill, the Sedgwicks, and his sometime guests, Charles Sum- and self-immolation in these children of art and civility ner, Longfellow, and Judge Lemuel Shaw; and with the to have lent their grace to those rocks and wilderness SO prospering business of his father to assure him a comfortable long! I praise and admire you, though would never see subsistence, young Samuel Ward could hardly have asked for the Saddleback mountains again. Well I long to hear the more. Even the dubious Emerson could not resist a wistful tale of your horrible sufferings in savage life, and shall inquiry. "Do the muses speak in these sharp whistling hurry to town before the charm of your escape is worn winds?" he asked. "Are your Berkshire torrents chained up? off. 10 I have always wished to know how hill countries look in win- ter but I doubt I shall never have vigor enough to go and Actually Ward's years in Berkshire were perhaps not SO "sav- see them." 11 age as Emerson liked to think of them. The demands on the WO years in Lenox saw the completion of the Goethe time of a gentleman farmer never proved unreasonable, and translation and the end of an intellectual phase in Ward's life he could find ample leisure, especially in the winter months, which went back to Margaret Fuller's dominating influence not only for an extensive correspondence with Emerson but for his proposed translation of Goethe and later for those re- during his Cambridge years. Neither Berkshire nor America markable essays of literary criticism one day to be published played an active role in this ambitious undertaking, and in the Aesthetic Papers and the Massachusetts Quarterly Re- certainly it could scarcely have stood further from those in- view. digenous portraits of rural life which Catharine Sedgwick had created only a few miles away. Yet impelled by a deter- 10. R. W. Emerson to S. G. Ward, Jan. 31, 1845; SGW. Though the mination to educate Americans in an appreciation of the bulk of the letters of Emerson to Ward appear in either Emerson's Letters to a Friend, ed. Charles Eliot Norton (Boston, 1899) or Ralph L. masterworks of western culture, Ward had made a significant Rusk, The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson (6 vols. New York, contribution of which both Berkshire and America might of collation. I have worked from the manuscripts in order to avoid the necessity 1939), well be proud. After such a performance, Emerson perhaps 11. To S. G. Ward, Dec. 17, 1844; SGW. 329 328 The American Lake District Berkshire County and thorough knowledge of what already exists in the felt that Ward might be profitably encouraged in his agricul tural pursuits, and in April of 1845 he wrote without whimsy world. 14 "Yesterday I was in town and saw at Munroe's the last proof Ward's idea of a "creative criticism" that would always sup- sheet of 'Goethe.' It seemed a good time to greet you on your ply a regenerating force in a nation's literature found sym- mountains, as you are regaining your freedom again, if with pathetic response in the Lenox pastor Henry Neill: regrets like Gibbon's. The reluctant spring has yielded us your sketch of the history of literature among the some golden days and I do not know any idleness SO delicious nations beautifully and directly led to the announce- as dilettantism in fruit trees. Grafting and pruning turn a ment that there might be such a thing as creative criti- day into pure dream 12 cism, ever new and advancing until every point of view For three more years Ward continued to enjoy an existence was exhausted and on until there were no more forms nicely balanced between culture and agriculture, and his es- in which the facts could arrange themselves, which might say on criticism in the Aesthetic Papers 13 unmistakably estab- never be, and thus criticism be endless and ever-increas- lished him in his enviable role as Berkshire's literary gentle I believe you might on this hint point out man-farmer supreme. The sanity of Ward's views on the ing. some of the lines and forms which criticism will take problems facing the American critic is evident: after the German phase is exhausted, just as you have Our first misfortune is, that there is a reference to a philosophically and satisfactorily pointed out and remarked on the forms which it does take and has taken. standard from without, viz., from England. As the spirit You have assigned in your article many new causes for that dictates this is, from many causes, unfair and de- preciating, a natural consequence has been to cause all existing facts not generally recognized as entering into our own criticism to take the opposite ground, to over- them. 15 praise that which we felt to be undervalued or invidi- Berkshire's once stern and uncompromising orthodoxy ously regarded. although all original literature indeed have been undergoing a radical change when a comes from and refers to the heart of the people, it can- must Congregational cleric could speak with such perception introduce on not, except in a rude age, address itself to that people, literary criticism, and Ward himself did much to except through a class capable of receiving it. If great cosmopolitan currents of thought into the county. Yet during charm works do not find such a class in their own age, they wait these same six years the genial glow of his personal till time and their own influence create it. We be- perhaps contributing even more to "literary Berkshire" which lieve a conscious greatness inseparable from a critical was than was his critical work. For Ward, the isolation than literature; and such, therefore, we look for in this coun- Emerson so often mentioned never had anything more try:-a literature and art based on thorough criticism, geographical validity. He possessed a rare genius for dispens- during ing warm hospitality and drew upon that genius freely 12. Idem, Apr. 30, 1845; SGW. his Berkshire years. 13. This journal was edited by Elizabeth Peabody, but ceased publica- S. G. Ward, "Essay on Criticism," Aesthetic Papers (1849), p. 24. tion after the first issue. As a contributor, Ward was in the company of Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne. 14. 15. Henry Neill to S. G. Ward, June 26, 1849; SGW. 330 Berkshire County The American Lake District 331 Hardly had he settled in Lenox before he issued an inv tation to Charles Sumner and Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe an was always to make a profound impression on everyone she invitation which both men accepted with alacrity. Sumner encountered among the hills. With no thought for the pro- from who was then in Pittsfield with the Appletons recuperating prieties of polite society, she lived with an unconsciousness of self and with an unlimited self-confidence which were to add ber an illness, traveled the seven miles to Lenox in Septem to the already diversified literary society of the County some- ble and there encountered again the beautiful Fanny Kem Butler, with whom he had been SO much impressed in thing of the flavor of the Elizabethan era which she intui- Boston. With Ward, he watched while "in a field not far off, tively experienced in her study of Shakespeare. In fact, Berkshire itself, at least in the minds of outsiders, the girls and others engaged in the sport of archery. Mrs Butler hit the target in the golden middle." 17 If Mrs. Butler eventually came to share with the unpredictable Mrs. Butler did not, as later romanticists would have liked to think, hit her reputation for freedom and for an open disregard of con- vention; and Puritanical Berkshirites were sometimes scan- the heart of this austere and handsome Boston bachelor "in dalized by this emancipated new society prospering in their the golden middle," at least she inspired in him a sincere admiration and friendship, and probably Berkshire never very midst. Thus when, one fine autumn, Fanny Kemble joined Mary Channing, Fanny Wright, the Pomeroys, and a bold, masculine, and unaccommodating" personality.18 "Your again could be separable in his mind from her "peculiar, group of Mrs. Sedgwick's girls for an omnibus outing to Bash Bish Falls, such a demonstration of "eating, drinking, danc- presence," he wrote to George Hillard from Lenox, "would help me bear the weight of Fanny Kemble's conversation; for, ing, singing, tearing, climbing, and screaming" ensued as had never before been seen in southern Berkshire, and popular of her superiority." 19 much as I admire her, I confess to a certain awe and a sense indignation ran SO high that the spirited ladies soon found themselves the target of a liberal deluge of rotten eggs. 20 During her many summers in Berkshire, Fanny Kemble Berkshire literary circles could chuckle to themselves over was to inspire in many this same awe she had inspired in such an indication of prim disapproval, but they could not Sumner, in some an even greater admiration, and in a few and would not tolerate any serious expression of critical reaction of shocked surprise. Living sometimes with the a censure from outsiders. To the vicious and widespread rumor Charles Sedgwicks and sometimes at the Curtis Hotel, she that Fanny Kemble posted over the Berkshire hillsides seated Butler 16. Fanny in Kemble had married the Philadelphia socialite Pierce astride her capital horse-a rumor to which Scott's Weekly Butler 1834 and they had two daughters. By 1844, however, she and Paper of Philadelphia lent its sanction in an article disre- had separated-partly over the slavery issue and partly a spectfully entitled "Unwomanly Freaks"-Charles Sedgwick hopeless difference of opinion regarding wifely obedience-and in over 1848 they were formally divorced. took instant and angry exception. The story, he wrote curtly 17. Charles Sumner to George Hillard, Sept. 10, 1844, in Edward L. to the editor of Scott's Weekly, "is utterly false. No one in 317. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner (3 vols. Boston, 1877), 2, Lenox has seen Mrs. Butler ride astride." 21 Perhaps unaware of her gallant defenders, Fanny Kemble 2, 319. 18. C. Sumner to Dr. Samuel G. Howe, Pittsfield, Sept. 11, 1844, ibid., blithely continued to neglect whatever proprieties did not 19. Ibid., 2, 319. 20. Fanny Kemble to Kate Sedgwick, Oct. 2, 1839; SP. 21. To W. Scott, no date; MC. 332 Berkshire County The American Lake District 333 please her, and on occasion she managed to shock polite society just as thoroughly as she shocked Berkshire's the and 50's from degenerating into sheer bohemianism for its recall people. with That eager celebrity-hunter Maunsell Field towns- own sake and which allowed them instead to develop a at Sedgwick house when: the delight, in his reminiscences, a certain evening was to healthy perspective toward the fine points of etiquette and a refreshingly relaxed attitude toward the bourgeois niceties. "You know the sort of life that is lived here," wrote Mrs. Rev. Kemble, and sitting on either side of her was the Fanny Seated in this window, with her back to the river, Kemble approvingly to Mrs. Jameson: "the absence of all form, ceremony, or inconvenient conventionality whatever. men of Dr. Parker and the Rev. Justin Field, both were We laugh, and we talk, sing, play, dance, and discuss; we ride, drew the Protestant Episcopal Church. Thereupon clergy- I drive, walk, run, scramble, and saunter, and amuse ourselves partie up a chair, and, facing the lady, completed the extremely with little materials (as the generality of people her carrée. She was doing the talking just then, and would suppose) wherewith to do SO sionate subject was horses, for which animals she had It might well have surprised and disappointed her to know to fondness. From horses in general, she soon a pas- that the Berkshire hostelers and shopkeepers in whose sturdy war "this or cavalry horses. "By the bye," she went passed independence and homely wisdom she SO often delighted at I say, met Sir reminds me that the last time I was in England on to first found her formidable and terrifying. 24 Even had she tain of Harry Smith. He told me that he was a known, however, she could hardly have changed in herself called horse at Waterloo, but that his command cap- that blunt outspokenness which had become SO much a part Duke into action during the day. In the afternoon was not of her personality, and in time the common people of the where of Wellington, at the head of his staff, rode the County with whom her active life brought her into contact in he was, and called to him, 'Come, sir, up to learned to be themselves with her and to meet her on her troop motion-get your troop in motion!' Now get your Sir own terms. She was probably seldom more thoroughly pleased the Harry did not yet know any thing about the fortunes of than when the little man in the lobby of the Curtis Hotel asked, day; so, saluting his commander, he hesitatingly whom she had abruptly reprimanded, "You should remove she 'Which way, sir?' As she gave the Duke's your hat. Gentlemen always do SO in my presence," quietly clenched rose to her feet like a tragedy queen, and, reply, with and firmly replied, "But I'm not a gentleman, ma'am, I'm a her hand, shouted, "Forward, sir, by God!" At this butcher." 25 immediate auditors started as if electrified; but She was to encounter this same faculty for proud independ- sation calmly resumed her chair, and went on with the she ence many times during her stay in Berkshire, especially in proprieties. as if unconscious that she had violated any conver- of the the years after she had settled into "the Perch," her little cot- tage on the edge of Stockbridge Bowl; and it would never fail Perhaps it was this very unconsciousness which saved to impress and delight her. Many years after she had left Fanny Kemble and the Berkshire literary society of the 1840's both Berkshire, she was to remember one summer afternoon when, (New 1875), pp. 201-2. 22. York, Maunsell B. Field, Memories of Many Men and of Some Women 23. Kemble, Records of Later Life, p. 165. 24. Pittsfield Sun, Oct. 29, 1885. 25. The Berkshire Hills, Federal Writers Project, p. 126. 334 Berkshire Count The American Lake District 335 mowing meadow, she heard herself sharply rebuked yeomen having ordered her a barrel of beer for the group of lating line of distance is overtopped by a considerable an trying old to introduce such a deleterious habit; 26 and for mountain with a fine jugged crest, and ever since early he trip had the son of the village baker. "Now Mrs. Kemble, with lady she could still recall a particular afternoon even fishing morning, troops of clouds and wandering showers of rain and the all-prevailing sunbeams have chased each between asked, "I want to know what would be the difference other over the wooded slopes, and down into the dark stead all that we see here now if we were in England hollow where the lake lies sleeping, making a pageant England, of America." "Well, William," she had answered, "in in- far finer than the one Prospero raised for Ferdinand and all that we see here now would probably be the Miranda on his desert island. 28 property "Oh, of one man." To which his only reply had been, Like Bryant before her, she never tired of wandering over Kemble, My! That's bad!" "This fellow," commented Mrs. the hills, and like him, although far more wholeheartedly, she "was as ignorant as it is possible for a Massachusetts contributed her own talents with tireless generosity to the man to be; but think of the intelligence evinced by both his cultural life of the County. She could hold any Berkshire question and answer." 27 audience, whether in the Lenox Court House or in Pittsfield's Probably the Berkshire hills never played host to a guest Burbank Hall, spellbound with her unequaled Shakespear- charms. more appreciative of both their natives and their natural ean deliveries, and no Sedgwick soirée, either in Lenox or in Fanny Kemble filled her letters with highly colored Stockbridge, was ever considered complete until she had read and descriptions of the beauties she had come to know and a scene from Macbeth or had sung a Scotch or German ballad no prospect ever became more precious to her than love, the to her own piano accompaniment. A born entertainer, she one visible from her little cottage on a Lenox hilltop: could feel equally at home acting on a New York stage or Immediately the sloping before me, the green hillside, delivering a poem for the Lenox Academy commencement. Fanny Kemble was in short the personification of all that sinks summit of which stands the house I am inhabiting, on was brightest and most alive in Berkshire cultural life, and softly down to a small valley, filled with thick, rich in 1848 she enjoyed the rare distinction of emerging in Long- wood, in the centre of which a little jewel-like lake lies fellow's slow-moving diary as one of the few aspects of the gleaming. Beyond this valley the hills rise one above Berkshire summer that never lulled him to sleep. Longfellow broken, irregular outline that the eye dwells on with a another to the horizon, where they scoop the sky with recorded a multitude of impressions of the County during his two extended summers there-comments on the rivers and ever new delight as its colors glow and vary with the the factories, on the hillsides, on the Sedgwicks, on the moun- cending or descending sunlight, and all the shadowy as-- tains and the woods-and he found inspiration there for a procession of the clouds. In one direction this undu- famous poem and for his only novel; but every entry seemed 26. Kemble, Records of Later Life, pp. 11-12. wrenched from a drowsy mind and even the Housatonic, and Fanny wrote a very readable novel of Berkshire life, Far Away life 27. Kemble, Kemble Further Records, pp. 192-93. Near the end of her which Melville thought "sparkling," appeared to him as nothing but a "shallow brown stream, not very clear." He Long Ago, London, 1889. 28. Kemble, Records of Later Life, p. 164. 336 Berkshire Counts The American Lake District 337 might, in fact, have been thus describing his own benumbed sleep in summer is very great." 30 He never, in fact, managed brain during those dreamy summer days in Pittsfield and to finish Kavanagh during that summer in Berkshire and Lenox, and try as he might to "be up and doing" in accord was compelled at last to postpone the conclusion until he situde. with his own cheerful philosophy, he could not conquer las was back in the more invigorating air of Cambridge. Still, most of the writing and much of the limited stimulus came His wedding trip over the hills to Pittsfield had given him from Berkshire; and if the resulting novel never rose above no warning of his own inherent unsuitability for country mediocrity, perhaps it was because, as Longfellow's Mr. life. He had remained at Elm Knoll with the Appletons for Churchill remarked, scenery cannot "create genius. At best a few happy weeks in 1843, had seen there on the staircase the it can only develop it." 31 soon-to-be-immortalized old clock, and had returned, full of Longfellow himself admitted feeling "perplexed about inspiration, to Cambridge to write: Kavanagh," and certainly it is a perplexing book. Hardly a 5 Somewhat back from the village street novel at all, it reflects in its strangely confused and episodic Stands the old-fashioned country-seat. progress the sluggish inattention of a sleepy brain driving Across its antique portico itself on to the unwelcome task of composition. The shallow Tall poplar trees their shadows throw; and conventional romanticism of the plot and the unimagina- And from its station in the hall tive descriptions of the countryside proved nothing but a thin An ancient timepiece says to all- excuse for a series of notebook epigrams painstakingly strung "Forever-never! Never-forever!" together with numerous obiter dicta on everything from na- tional literature 32 to theological liberalism. The little New And in the golden moments of dalliance at Cambridge in England village of Fairmeadow was unmistakably patterned 1846, with his last classes over and the prospect of a long after Lenox, although SO hopelessly romanticized as scarcely summer vacation stretching before him, he could still reflect: to retain any shreds of individuality; but the hero-"tall, "I have a longing for Berkshire or the seaside. Both Nahant very pale, with beautiful black eyes and hair"-was merely a and Stockbridge beckon let if brother to dozens of identical Byronic heroes of the early my mind into more poetic mood by the sweet influences of me see I cannot bring nineteenth century. Stripped of his attractive poetic façade, sun and air and open fields." 29 30. Ibid., 2, 120. In reality the mood he at last settled into was to be neither 31. H. W. Longfellow, Kavanagh, pp. 114-15. poetic nor inspired, and by 1848 he could only conclude: "I 32. In a conversation between the schoolteacher Mr. Churchill and find it quite impossible to write in the country. The influ- the editor Hathaway, Longfellow sets forth his view of national litera- ences are soothing and slumberous. In coming here, I hoped ture: "In a word," says Hathaway, "we want a national literature alto- to work successfully on Kavanagh; and as yet I have written gether shaggy and unshorn, that shall shake the earth, like a herd of buffaloes thundering over the prairies! Let us have our literature scarcely a page. The capacity of the human frame for national. If it is not national, it is nothing." To which Churchill (speak- ing for Longfellow) replies: "on the contrary, it may be a great deal. (2 vols. Boston, 1886), 2, 49. 29. Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Samuel Longfellow Nationality is a good thing to a certain extent, but universality is better." Kavanagh, pp. 114-15. 338 Berkshire County The American Lake District 339 sional Longfellow became surprisingly empty, with only? occa- authentic touch to enliven his pedestrian efforts; in the tradition of Berkshire novels which had begun with Moreover, the Grand Junction Railroad was opened A New England Tale and would end with Elsie Venner. Young Kavanagh, Longfellow decided, must come to Fair- and through the town, running in one direction to the city, meadow to succeed the "painful preacher of the word," who ing the white villages like pearls upon its black thread in the other into unknown northern regions, string had, for fifty years, been hardening the hearts of his parish- ioners with Calvinist hellfire.36 In happy contrast, Kavanagh By this, the town lost much of its rural quiet and seclu himself "did not SO much denounce vice as inculcate virtue; sion. The inhabitants became restless and ambitious, They were in constant excitement and alarm, like chil. he did not deny but affirm; he did not lacerate the hearts of his hearers with doubt and disbelief, but consoled and com- dren in story-books hidden away somewhere by an forted and healed them with faith. His words were who visits them regularly every day and night, and occa ogre sionally devours one of them for a meal. always kindly; he brought no railing accusations against any man." 37 Here was the keystone which Longfellow would add Nevertheless, most of the inhabitants considered the railroad a great advantage to the village. Several ladies to his plot, and if not wholly effectual, it at least provided one of the few unifying themes of the novel. were heard to say that Fairmeadow had grown quite Even late in the summer of 1848 Kavanagh remained un- metropolitan; and Mrs. Wilmerdings, who suffered under a chronic suspension of the mental faculties, had finished, and Longfellow was still uttering lethargic com- plaints. "It is impossible to do anything here in the way of - a vague notion, probably connected with the profession of her son, that it was soon to become a seaport. 33 writing," he grumbled in his diary. "Such an empty house one's head becomes in this 'land of drowsy-head.' Yet, in Not entirely unaware of the book's shortcomings, Long spite of himself, he was at last learning to enjoy the languid title fellow had realized shortly before its publication that "The Berkshire summer and could go on to recount: "We drove to is better than the book, and suggests a different kind of Stockbridge to dine with Mrs. Sedgwick; a pleasant dinner. it. book. One It more long, spiritual chapter must be written for Mr. Theodore from town. After dinner a drive along the Lee must go into the book as the keystone into the road by the meadow and the river. The evening we arch. An idea so very obvious, and yet coming SO late!" 34 passed at Sam Ward's. Rackmann played Chopin and Mendels- found Berkshire, Longfellow discovered, as Catharine Sedgwick had In sohn and Schubert. Mrs. Butler sang a ballad. said that and before him and as Holmes would find later, the fullest everything seemed to be Sedgwick in this region; the very strongest expression of Calvinism; 35 and by adding the grasshoppers in the fields chirp, 'Sedgwick! Sedgwick!'' 38 contemplated "spiritual chapter" to Kavanagh, he placed it Less than two weeks later Longfellow "left Pittsfield for 33. Longfellow, Kavanagh, pp. 100. Cambridge. Farewell to Melvill Hall, the lake, the piny 34. Life of Longfellow, 2, 136. mountain, the breezy orchard! Farewell Fayaway; and the 'Nay, "Dr. Todd preached. Among other things he said of the hard-hearted. recorded: 35. Ibid., 2, 54. In his diary for Aug. 16, 1846, Longfellow 36. In 1845 the Calvinist Reverend Samuel Shepard of Lenox died will dropping not be from the Saviour's side upon the stones below, and yet they they may go up Calvary so far that they can hear the blood after a fifty-year pastorate and was replaced by the liberal Reverend Henry Neill. moved.' The parish consider it a great sermon." 37. Longfellow, Kavanagh, p. 101. 38. Life of Longfellow, 2, 121. 340 341 Berkshire County The American Lake District playful Major! Farewell the sleepy summer, and the lote born extrovert he plunged at once into the midst of County he drives!" 39 activities, and by the end of his first Pittsfield summer The Berkshire hills were never again to welcome Long was already serving conscientiously on the judging commit- fellow for any extended stay, but only a year later they were tee for the ploughing contest of the annual Berkshire Fair to welcome a second and rather more adaptable Bostonian and was mounting to the church pulpit to deliver an ode Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes traveled to Pittsfield in 1849 composed especially for the occasion. and there he built, on what remained of the old Wendell es The Ploughman 42 tate, the impressive "Holmesdale," where he was to spend seven delightful summers. Unlike Longfellow, he had felt Clear the brown path, to meet his coulter's gleam! drawn to Berkshire from the first, and is credited with hav Lo! on he comes, behind his smoking team, ing remarked: "The best of all tonics is the Housatonic." With toil's bright dew-drops on his sunburnt brow, Certainly the poems which Holmes composed during his The lord of earth, the hero of the plough! summers at Canoe Meadows drew much from rural life in Berkshire-so much, in fact, that they prompted Longfel. Still, where he treads, the stubborn clods divide, low to observe: "Do you know, I see the Pittsfield farm in The smooth, fresh furrow opens deep and wide; your book,-not exactly 'hay in your hair,' but buckwheat Matted and dense the tangled turf upheaves, in your laurels, which I much delight to see. These blossoms Mellow and dark the ridgy cornfield cleaves from the roadside and odor of pennyroyal give a freshness to poems which nothing else will. I hope one day to turn a If her chained bandogs Faction shall unbind, portion of the Housatonic-what runs over your dam above These stately forms, that bending even now -on to my mill wheels." 40 Bowed their strong manhood to the humble plough, But Longfellow was never to carry out his intention of re- Shall rise erect, the guardians of the land, turning, and Holmes remained the reigning summer poet of The same stern iron in the same right hand, the Berkshire hills. "If you would be happy in Berkshire," he Till o'er their hills the shouts of triumph run, once wrote, "you must carry mountains in your brain," 41 The sword has rescued what the ploughshare won! and he loved the mountains as he knew the sea-drawn Long- fellow never could. With the characteristic enthusiasm of the More homely. and local than Bryant's contributions, and it proved the best-loved of all the odes written for the Fair; 39. Ibid., 2, 122. The Longfellows spent the summer of 1848 at Major from that summer forward, neither Great Barrington's Thomas Melvill's spacious summer resort Melvill Hall. It was later Samuel B. Sumner 48 nor Pittsfield's William Pitt Palmer renamed Broadhall and purchased by the Morewoods. Today the build- ing serves as the nucleus of the clubhouse of the Pittsfield Country Club. The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes (Boston, 1900, have 40. Longfellow to Holmes, October 28, 1850, Final Memorials of 1st 42. ed. 1858), pp. 97-98. The inspiration for the ode appears to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Samuel Longfellow (Boston, 1887), been Herman Melville's uncle, Thomas Melvill. p. 389. During the 1850's Sumner delivered his poems on seven public for 41. Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table occasions 43. in Berkshire, the most famous one being that composed (Boston, 1895, 1st ed. 1858), p. 265. the Stockbridge celebration to honor Cyrus Field in Aug. 1858. Sam- 343 342 Berkshire County The American Lake District was ever to challenge Holmes' position as Berkshire's OCC For Holmes nearly every activity eventually had its turn sional poet par excellence. With a generosity flowing from during those unparalleled Berkshire summers. He rode most his his boundless energy, he was to compose two poems for the "little horse" on long pilgrimages through the hills, ladies of St. Stephen's Episcopal church, another for the often perhaps to Lenox to visit Dr. Neill or the Sedgwicks herself" 1850 dedication of the Pittsfield cemetery, and odes for the and to admire Fanny Kemble-' "the tragedy queen those Commencement of the Pittsfield Young Ladies' Institute -and then he would return "once more up among and for the Berkshire Horticultural Society 44_all this even other hills that shut in the amber-flowing Housatonic-dark the while his Autocrat and Elsie Venner 45 were in process of but clear, like the lucid orbs that shine beneath composition and while he was indulging his scientific facul stream, of auburn-haired, sherry-wine-eyed demi-blondes ties by working on electrical experiments. "I did not tell lids This contemplation of Holmesdale and Canoe Meadows al- you," he wrote to his mother in 1854, "that I had been at most invariably stiffled all restraint, and he could write only work with electricity as a part of my summer plan of in in superlatives of: structive amusements. The old machine is mounted on its the home overlooking the winding stream and the ancient footing, or rather, with new splendor, and gives smooth, flat meadow; looked down upon by wild hills, sparks an inch long. I find that many of my old tastes where the tracks of bears and catamounts may yet some- return upon me whenever they get a chance; chemistry will times be seen upon the winter snow; facing the twin have its turn by and by, perhaps mineralogy and the rest of summits which rise in the far north, the highest waves them.' 46 of the great land-storm in all this billowy region,-sug- gestive to mad fancies of the breasts of a half-buried and uel B. and Charles A. Sumner, Poems by Samuel B. and Charles A. Titaness, stretched out by a stray thunderbolt, forest Sumner (New York, 1877), pp. 132, 134. hastily hidden away beneath the leaves of the Atlantic Cable Poem that home where seven blessed summers were Huzza! the magic cable's laid; and now, across the main, passed, which stand in memory like the seven golden holy Britannia hails her daughter fair, who answers back again: candlesticks in the beatific vision of the With lightning flash, through watery depths that roll and surge between, 47 Columbia's President responds to Britain's smiling Queen dreamer 44. This latter ode, entitled "The New Eden," was first printed by Henry Marsh in the Pittsfield newspaper-a concession granted by his dark, unhappy portrait of Elsie Venner-a portrait and Against this idyllic background Dr. Holmes was to draw Holmes on condition that he be allowed corrections and be given one hundred copies printed on note paper. After sixteen proofs had been strangely in contrast with his own cheerful disposition Elsie corrected, the poem finally appeared in the Berkshire County Eagle. with the sun-drenched hillsides which he loved.48 Cf. J. E. A. Smith, The Poet among the Hills (Pittsfield, 1895), p. 146. Venner, 49 in fact, came essentially from a grimly sober strain 45. The final contribution of the Holmes family to Berkshire culture was to come many years later when Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., donated 47. 48. The town of Pigwacket Center in the novel would appear in Holmes, Autocrat, pp. 244-45. 1,000 volumes from his father's library to the Berkshire Athenaeum. several respects to be a fictionalized Pittsfield. 46. John T. Morse, Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes (2 49. Elsie Venner appeared serially in the Atlantic Monthly from Dec. vols. Boston, 1896), 2, 280-81. 1859 through Apr. 1861. 344 Berkshire The American Lake District 345 sion; in his nature which hated Calvinism with an instinctive and not entirely by coincidence did it fall directly into pas Holmes himself, clung in their anti-Calvinism to a solid com- the main liberal theological stream of Berkshire fiction mon sense and totally rejected such rampant enthusiasms Mrs. "You see exactly what I wish to do," Holmes later wrote as transcendentalism. "I am SO tired," Catharine had writ- Stowe; "to write a story with enough of interest in it to ten to Holmes in 1846, "of the little kernel of the transcen- lar characters and incidents to attract a certain amount of dentalists involved in a mass of elaborate shellwork-of the of attention. Under cover of this to stir that mighty popu glimmering of a few stars thro' a tangled thicket, of the automatic agency in its relation to self-determination question 50 exaggeration of involvement, like wrapping a very small Elsie Venner, as its author was the first to admit, was a holiday gift in a series of hyeroglyphic papers, that it is a re- for with a purpose. Dr. Holmes was proposing to slay once novel and lief as well as a delight to have sound sense in sound plain in all the despised dragon John Calvin and all his vestiges English and graceful and poetic in the form in which it nineteenth-century America. Profoundly convinced that springs from the poet's head." 54 relations orthodox theology presented a hopelessly false view of the Yet there was at least one writer in Berkshire in the early of man to God, he set himself the task of 1850's whom the local Calvinistic theology neither depressed with clinical matter-of-factness 51 into the unsympathetic probing nor worried-a writer whose novels not only owed nothing mad," doctrine of original sin. "Any decent person ought to to Calvinism but who probably never recognized the ex- maintained the Autocrat, "if he really holds such go istence of theological questions. This was the astoundingly opinions." 52 prolific historical romancer George Payne Rainsford James, could Even in the 1850's the spiritual atmosphere of Berkshire that gregarious and slightly eccentric Englishman who Calvinism still do much to nourish in Holmes that strong anti- lighted briefly in Stockbridge in 1851, wrote a few more of Berkshire hills he discovered a Calvinism which far he had brought with him from Boston. Among the his best-selling novels there, and quite unconsciously con- tributed to the Berkshire cultural tradition a little of the from dead; and whether or not it actually provided the was flamboyant romanticism of his indefatigable personality. him tivation for Elsie Venner, it must, at least, have kept taut mo- in He had first come to America in 1850, seeking a speedy re- sented novel. Certainly Berkshire's religious atmosphere of his that inborn indignation which was to be the mainspring 53. Like the Sedgwicks, the mass of Berkshirites opposed Emerson's flight from orthodoxy. "They [the transcendentalists]," wrote Catharine, a dramatic contrast to the enlightened theology pre- of "seem to me a sort of darkling flight over earth, heaven and hell and Cambridge which he knew. In Berkshire, too, he of a way off into space. It is not the first time a turbid stream has been mistaken for a deep one" (C. Sedgwick to Jane Sedgwick, Mar. 6, encountered the highly sympathetic Sedgwicks, who, course like 1842; Miscellaneous SP, Harvard). And Charles Sedgwick, who was 50. Sept. 13, 1860, in Morse, Life and Letters of Holmes, I, 263. generally a good barometer of the Berkshire mind, and who was not 51. Throughout Holmes one of the summers in which he was working at all unhappy in 1846 when the Fourieristic community Brook Farm ing, book, he made kept in his home a caged rattlesnake; finding it fascinat- on the was destroyed by fire, wrote to Sam Ward in March: "it is right that the Morse, pains the writing to make the reptile vivid to the reader. spared Cf. no in a careful study of its eyes, strikes, and habits, and Lord should not smile on such an ill-devised Harem as that in the land of the Pilgrims-that a house where men are 'to toil for heirs they know Life and Letters of Holmes, I, 258. not who should be burnt down" (Charles Sedgwick to Samuel G. Ward, 52. Holmes, Autocrat, p. 42. Lenox, Mar. 16, 1846; SGW). 54. Nov. 14, 1846; Holmes Collection, Harvard Library. 347 346 Berkshire County The American Lake District covery from recent financial reverses through the expedient contain. He had a large library of reference and other of a whirlwind lecture tour and intending at the same time works." 57 to fasten a wary eye on his American publisher. In June of Hawthorne once loyally insisted that James' novels were 1851 he abruptly decided to rent the Ashburner house in "admirable stories; admirably told," 58 and certainly Harper Stockbridge, and after a year of healthy, outdoor life among and Brothers had good reason to treat their endlessly produc- his the hills, Evert Duyckinck could observe that "the American tive novelist with anxious and kindly concern. During them sun has much improved his countenance but he is still baggy lifetime he produced ninety-one works,58 many of for an and English in figure." 55 three-volume historical romances and many destined Duyckinck might have remarked also that he was still in- immediate ascent to high rank in the midcentury best-seller curably English in his way of life; and with his box of snuff list. "He turns out a novel every six months," observed James 5 and his indispensable red bandanna he presented a strangely Harper to Thackeray, "and the success is always the same incongruous appearance in the quiet village of Stockbridge. and tremendous. The main reason is that his romances Insisting upon open grates and log fires in his sitting rooms, always be safely placed upon the family table, with the the he cultivated that peculiarly English talent for highly pro- can certainty that no page will sully, or call 60 the blush to, ductive activity concealed behind a façade of gentlemanly cheek of any member of the household." idleness. He would, according to his onetime friend and Berkshirites, James might provoke amusement liked but collaborator, Maunsell B. Field, spend every evening and he Among never inspired either awe or withdrawal. They morning "industriously pegging away at book-making, al- him and accepted him with little hesitation, and he providen- serious though to the casual observer he appeared to be the least arrived in Stockbridge just in time to fill the Ward he occupied man in the place. He never did any literary work tially created by Sam Ward's departure. Like heartily after eleven a.m. until evening. He was not accustomed to vacancy a cheerful, social, outgoing man, possessed of a and put his own hand to paper, when composing, but always em- was convivial personality and bubbling over with anecdotes draw out ployed an amanuensis. At this time he had in his service in recollections; and like Ward, he could effortlessly Haw- that capacity the brother of an Irish baronet, who spoke and writers of shy or chilly natures-notably the reticent wrote English, French, German, and Italian, and whom I had procured for him at the modest stipend of five dollars a 57. T. Fields, Yesterdays with Authors (Boston, 1859), and p. a 63. Ibid., pp. 203-4- week." 56 And, recalled a later amanuensis, "He would walk 58. James Of these, seven were written in Berkshire in the year the Reign half up and down in his library and dictate by sentences 59. was there: #75: Henry Smeaton, A Jacobite Story vols. of London, he always kept a paper of snuff upon the table. He had James I, 3 vols. London, 1851; #76: The Fate, 3 Christian a sketch of the plan and plot of the book in outline prepared of George #77: in Graham's American Monthly Magazine (1851), Revenge, before, and a very brief analysis of what each chapter would 1851; Justian and Theodora, A Sonnet to Jenny Lind; #78: The Clouds Lacy, 1852; #79 (with Mauncell B. Field): Adrian, or London, 55. Luther S. Mansfield, "Glimpses of Melville's Life in Pittsfield," London, the Mind, 3 vols. London, 1852; #80: Pequinillo, 3 Landeck. vols. American Literature, 9 (1937-38), 38. Letter of Evert Duycinck to his of #81: in Harpers', June to Nov. 1852, The Bride of wife, Aug. 7, 1851. 1852; 60. Stewart M. Ellis, The Solitary Horseman; or, The Life and Ad- 56. Field, Memories, p. 203. ventures of G. P. R. James (Kensington, 1927), p. 134 n. 349 348 Berkshire County The American Lake District thorne, who so much needed and appreciated the healthy as the Harriet Hosmer "in very tight yellow little sociation of uncomplicated, sunny dispositions. In the gen of breeches" young 65 delivering a comic lecture did seem a tlemanly pursuit of agriculture, he never quite equaled such events were readily offset by the eminently re- Ward's vigorous activity, and his friend Maunsell Field had bizarre, spectable presences of the "dear little Swedish 66 of spinster" Henry to admit that "notwithstanding his long India rubber boots Frederika Bremer summering with the Sedgwicks,6 and affectation of rustic attire, he was not a success as a Ward Beecher in Lenox for his annual pursuit of "cloud farmer." 61 Still, he never tired of swamping on his damp culture," and of Jenny Jerome, Ellen Emerson, school. Charlotte little plot of land just to the north of Monument Mountain, 62 Cushman, and Lydia Saltonstall at Mrs. Sedgwick's and Sam Ward, Fanny Kemble, and Catharine and Charles unaware of this atmosphere of refinement gen- Sedgwick, and James imparted to the midcentury villages Not the rest of Berkshire was sometimes resentful and to some- his of Lenox and Stockbridge an air of quiet distinction and a tility, times only amused. Orville Dewey once extended us brilliant if largely imported cultural life which set them off a mildly satiric invitation to "descend upon wisdom, even from the rest of Berkshire. The people of Lenox, com- daughter the heights of Lenox-from the schools of comedy, mented Lenox Academy's principal Mathew Buckham, were from fiction and fine writing, from tragedy and "elevated by education and refinement far above the rusticity from mountain-mirrors reflecting all surrounding beauty, SO characteristic of too much of our New England yeomanry, from down to plain, prosaic still-life in Sheffield." 67 And ten years sar- yet they do not aspire to the pomp of gay life, or the afterward a correspondent in the Pittsfield Sun reported pageantry of fashion." 63 Most of them, in fact, aspired only that "the quagmire called Nigger Pond formerly crossed to being themselves; and if the prospect of Fanny Kemble donically in Great Barrington, has, according to the last survey, dancing with Kossuth in the parlor of the Curtis Hotel 64 or the line north into Stockbridge. It is now called few Agawam 61. Field, Memories, p. 203. Lake." 68 Catharine Sedgwick had managed by a untactfully years 62. "Swamping" was a term applied to lumbering in swampy areas- earlier to antagonize the citizenry of Pittsfield that "Pitts- a practice then becoming widespread in those parts of New England remarking in an article for Graham's Magazine the whole being subjected to increased population pressure. This was probably field is the metropolitan village of Berkshire and the origin of the term "swamp Yankee"-hardly applicable to the aristo- must yield to it in working day prosperities cratic James. County in refinement and rural beauty Pittsfield is inferior vil- we 63. Mathew Buckham, "Lenox as a Jungle for Literary Lions," Chap- [but] think to some of our more secluded and unambitious Lenox ter XI of Godfrey Greylock [J. E. A. Smith], Taghconic (Boston, 1852), p. 95. lages." 69 Thereafter, residents of Stockbridge and 64. J. T. Cutler, "The Literary Associations of Berkshire," New England Magazine, new ser. 9 (1893), 3-22. Kossuth came to Berkshire on that great war of opinion, which, I fear, will come only too soon" in 1850 and caused a considerable stir, but a few Berkshirites, among them Orville Dewey, feared that the new nationalism would eventually (Dewey, Fanny Autobiography, Kemble to William pp. 226-27). Minot, Lenox, Dec. 22 (no year); MC. cause general war. Dewey wrote to his enthusiastic daughter at Lenox 65. 66. H. D. Sedgwick, "Literary Berkshire," p. 566. his belief that the United States must give Kossuth nothing more than 67. Dewey, Autobiography, p. 203. favorable opinions: "Moral influence gradually changing the world, is 68. Pittsfield Sun, Aug. 18, 1859 what I want. But Kossuth and the Liberals of Europe want to bring 69. Reprinted in Pittsfield Sun, June 20, 1844- 351 350 Berkshire County The American Lake District learned to keep their feeling of conscious superiority to them Parkhurst was never to forget his six-year pastorate in Lenox selves, and Charles Sedgwick wisely restricted to his own, cor- and the beauties of the Berkshire hills; and Gladden, after respondence his pride in Lenox. "Please set it down to the a in Williamstown, was to take precious time from his at- credit of Lenox," he boasted privately "that it is the only preaching year to write From the Hub to the Hudson-"an and town in the county, and almost in the State, where a 'Know- tempt to show people how and where they may cheaply Nothing' representative was not elected; almost the only pleasantly spend their few days of summer vacation. town in the State, where a 'Know-Nothing' lodge has not A book that helps anybody to see and enjoy the Connecticut been formed." 70 Valley or the Berkshire Hills, will be likely to do less harm of Perhaps, in reality, even the convivial Charles did not find than a book about the Mode of Baptism or the Origin the new refinement and busy cosmopolitanism of Lenox Evil." 74 5 quite SO pleasantly restful as the old uninterrupted quiet Pre-eminent among the rusticating clerics, however, had was before the fame of Catharine and the conveniences of the Beecher himself, who had come to Lenox in 1853, down railroad had brought on the "press of population." "I have bought John Hotchkin's farm there, 75 and had settled "The become sadly hardened to the decencies of life," he confessed comfortably for summers of leisurely contemplation. to Sam Ward, "and have done little but dodge strangers chief use of a farm, if it be well selected, and of a proper when I could and breast myself to the shock when discerned soil," he wrote, "is, to lie down upon. Mine is an excellent in some lurking place 71 Yet when Fanny Kemble farm for such uses, and I thus cultivate it every day. Large returned from New York in 1858, she felt none of Charles' are the consequence, of great delight and fancies more reservations and rejoiced to "find both villages in a perfect crops than the brain can hold. My industry is exemplary. Though glory of dissipation-masquerades, private theatricals,--ba but a week here, I have lain down more hours and in whole more at the town hall and tea drinkings at the 72 than that hard-working brother of mine in the And Catharine thought Lenox "at its culminating point of places that he has dwelt here. Strange that industrious lying and gaiety. Henry Ward Beecher begins the programme on Sun- year down should come so naturally to me, and standing up day with brilliant sermons and Rackemann closes the week lazing about after the plow or behind his scythe, SO naturally and with a 'successful soirée' 73 to him! My eyes against his feet!" 76 Like Parkhurst No county ever found more enthusiastic publicists than did Berkshire in Henry Ward Beecher and in those two Washington Gladden, From the Hub to the Hudson did (Boston, his part other distinguished clergymen Charles Parkhurst and Wash- 1869), publicist p. for the county by urging Bryant to "turn your of 74. iv. Berkshire's own cleric, Orville Dewey, also poetical ington Gladden, who SO generously reported the charms of as a to account by describing the beautiful ride up the valley the Berkshire to the outside world. Even after settling in New genius Housatonic and this our beautiful Berkshire" and to "request sum- York to launch his famous crusade against Tammany, Dr. the [Twenty-One] Club to meet at my house some day in the coming mer" (Dewey, Autobiography, pp. 215-16). 70. Letters of Charles Sedgwick (New York, 1863), p. 147. The $4,000 purchase price of the farm had been raised for Beecher 1853; 71. Sept. 6, 1853; SGW. by 75. his Brooklyn parishioners. Lenox Church Records, Sept. 1, 72. To Kate Minot, 1858; MC. typescript, p. 383. 73. To Anna Barker Ward, Aug. 14, 1854; SGW. 76. Beecher, "Dream-Culture," Star Papers, P 268. 353 352 Berkshire County The American Lake District Gladden, Beecher felt moved to spread his doctrine of the Berkshire graveyards inspired not triumphant his contempt first trip but to good life in Berkshire as far beyond the mountain barriers as a grim fascination with Nathaniel death Hawthorne and decay. On had prowled curi- he could, and it was with this thought in mind that he first Berkshire into in the tomb of the Thomas Allen family in the the white Pitts- 1838 began work on his Star Papers. He intended, he said, "to urge those who can command leisure in September or October ously field cemetery and had noted with morbid interest discover avoiding all beaten paths of pleasure, to make a tour mold the coffins, and twelve years later he was to through the mountain country of western Connecticut and on preoccupation with the sight of an old decaying along Massachusetts. If you are young, and not abundant in means, a wood strange pile near his cottage. Much of what he saw, his and can get a friend to accompany you, go afoot. If you are whatever reflections those sights inspired during into his able, go on horseback. If you wish to take your wife, your with months in Lenox, eventually found its way and trans- mother, or a sister, then a light, four-wheeled, covered buggy eighteen notebooks, there to await a possible resurrection is to be elected." 77 formation in the pages of some future story or romance. Yet Beecher knew enough of the New England mind to Always a restless wanderer, Hawthorne had because brought he knew his realize that a mere prescription for summer loafing and day family to Berkshire in June of 1850, partly in Salem as Sur- dreaming was not enough unless it be justified for the Puritan conscience, and to that conscience he spoke next nowhere of the Port; Mrs. Caroline Tappan had 80 kindly nominal else to go. He had lost his job offered Rusticating, he wrote in words reminiscent of Bryant's ap- veyor him the use of her little red cottage in Lenox.80 at a preciation of nature, "if it gives great delight, if it keeps the and perhaps he felt he owed to Sophia and to Una cents and soul awake, sweet thoughts alive, and sordid thoughts dead rate; Julian this temporary security. "We give only wrote three happily of a Sophia soon if it be like a bath to the soul, in which it washes away the grime of human contacts it will have answered a quart household for best economics, of milk "Butter is fourteen cents a pound, and at purpose which is in vain sought among stupid convention- the most superb buckwheat at half the price we gave alities." 78 Even the thought of death became more endur- the East." 81 able in Lenox with the comforting prospect of burial in the Hawthorne himself found relative happiness in Lenox, had at graveyard on the hill. "No dark and sickly fogs ever gather at for the first few months. The Salem Customs House evening about it. It lies nearer heaven than any place about. least him physically tired, The Scarlet Letter had enervated and the It is good to have our mortal remains go upward for their left his spiritual resources, and he needed the relaxation With burial, and catch the earliest sounds of that trumpet which outdoor life which Berkshire could give him. his shall raise the dead!" 79 vigorous Una and Julian he cultivated his fruit trees and corn 1841? patch and observed the chickens in his "sumptuous" the hennery "self- Three years before Beecher's arrival in Lenox, another -especially the "laughably womanish" ways and very different visitor had sojourned there-a visitor in whom 80. The cottage actually stood two hundred yards inside the Stock- 77. Idem, "A Country Ride," Star Papers, p. 175. bridge border, but mail always came to Lenox. 78. Idem, Star Papers, p. 269. 79. Ibid., p. 180. Nathaniel 81. Hawthorne and His Wife (2 vols. Boston, 1885), I, Sophia to her mother, June 23, 1850, in Julian Hawthorne, 371. 355 354 Berkshire County The American Lake District important gait" of his favorite speckled hen. 82 "We are get- months he almost never failed to walk every day to the Lenox ting along very well," he wrote contentedly to his friend post office and thus to make an acquaintance with the coun- Bridge at summer's end. "Una and Julian grow apace, and tryside nearly as intimate as Bryant's and Ward's. His note- so do our chickens, of which we have two broods. We books for 1850 and 1851 are full of those walks on the Lenox have become so intimately acquainted with every individual roads. Among the finest testaments ever written to the e of them, that it really seems like cannibalism to think of eat- beauty of the Berkshire hills, they rank with Bryant's poems ing them. What is to be done?" 83 and with Melville's prose idylls. Yet for Hawthorne, the The problem, however, did not weigh heavily on his mind, feeling toward Berkshire was one of admiration rather than and he gave himself over to the delights of outdoor life with of that deep attachment felt by Ward and Holmes, and it rare openheartedness and abandon. He climbed one of Berk- was the majesty of the distant scene-of Monument Moun- 7 shire's miniature mountains with Sophia in "mellow au- tain, Taconic Dome, and Rattlesnake Hill-which most often tumnal sunshine"; he fished and boated with Julian in a caught and held his eye. He might write occasionally in his leaky punt; he went sledding with the children on crisp notebook of a wasp or a chickadee or a clump of violets, but in winter afternoons. And nearby "Tanglewood" glen lured these were phenomena he could find quite as readily him out to muse and ramble in every season-in midsum- Salem or in Concord, and they could never excite in his won- mer a dense, shadowy obscurity, in October "absolutely full dering mind the same interest as the variations and seasonal of sunshine." "The trees are sunshine, and many of their changes of the distant hills. golden leaves being freshly fallen, the glen is strewn with Melville was to swear fealty to Greylock; Hawthorne, to sunshine, amid which winds and gurgles the bright, dark Monument Mountain. From the second-floor study of his little brook." 84 No wonder Hawthorne could suddenly find red cottage he could look across his lake in every season to his soul SO full of sunlight that he composed the Wonder- that remarkable expanse of greenery and crumbling marble Book-admittedly not a major work but certainly among rising 1,400 feet into the air-in August "in the early sun- in the most relaxed and cheerful sketches he ever wrote. shine; its base enveloped in mist," looking like an island Whatever the weather, he would never miss the short the sky; 86 in October "the foliage having its autumn hues daily trip to Luther Butler's for milk, and in Butler he like a headless sphinx, wrapt in a rich Persian shawl"; in discovered, as Sam Ward had earlier, a man of striking in- February "black and shaggy"; and in May responding 87 "with tegrity and earthly wisdom-in short, the embodiment of livelier effect to the shine and shade of the sky." the noble Berkshire yeoman.85 And during those same Yet most of these observations were destined to remain 82. Hawthorne, American Notebooks, p. 130. buried in his notebooks-never to be resurrected anywhere 83. Hawthorne to Bridge, Aug. 7, 1850, in Horatio Bridge, Personal in his creative works-and the atmosphere of Berkshire was Recollections of Nathaniel Hawthorne (London, 1893), p. 138. to prove, at last, not SO much an inspiration as a relaxation. 84. Hawthorne, American Notebooks, p. 133. 85. Both of the Hawthornes appreciated, though with a slight air capable of appreciating you and him from a native honor and tone of of condescension, Luther Butler. Sophia wrote Anna Ward: "I had high feeling born with him" (Lenox, Mar. 23, 1851; SGW). a good talk with Luther Butler today. What a noble nature he has. It 86. Hawthorne, American Notebooks, p. 131. is delightful to hear him speak of you and Mr. Ward. He really seems 87. Ibid., pp. 132, 134, 138. 356 Berkshire County The American Lake District 357 The long walks and the happy hours of leisure did bring a two romances have met with there. She says they have made genuine re-creation of his artistic powers; but unlike the a greater sensation than any book since 'Jane Eyre'; but prob- young and still uncertain Melville, Hawthorne had achieved ably she is a little or a good deal too emphatic in her repre- his ultimate creative potentiality before he came to Lenox sentation of the matter. I am going to begin to enjoy and he was no longer groping for any answers that the Berk the summer now, and to read foolish novels, if I can get any, shire surroundings could provide: The idea for The House and smoke cigars, and think of nothing at all; which is of the Seven Gables had its roots, of course, in his native equivalent to thinking of all manner of things." 91 Among Salem, and he carried it with him to Lenox nearly formed other things during that summer and fall he was to think The first summer there gave him leisure for planning, but in about The Blithedale Romance-and to "seize the skirts of September, although he had begun to write, he felt obliged ideas and pin them down for further investigation," 92 as to warn publisher Fields: "I shan't have the new story ready was his wont in summertime. by November, for I am never good for anything in the By fall the feeling of depression was again descending on literary way till after the first autumnal frost, which has some him--a feeling brought on partly by a climate he found in- what such an effect on my imagination that it does on the creasingly oppressive and partly by the growing difficulty foliage here about me,-multiplying and brightening its of securing solitude at the red cottage. He was not, by na- hues; though they are likely to be sober and shabby enough ture, a thoroughgoing recluse, but at Lenox, as at Salem after all." 88 The autumnal frost of 1850 must have been a and at Concord, he discovered only a few people whom he particularly salutary one, for on January 26, 1851, he car- sincerely enjoyed and multitudes who thrust themselves ried the final pages of his manuscript to the Lenox post of- upon him against his will. All too soon the Lenox cottage fice. became a kind of shrine to which "secret criminals" and By the following summer he was beginning to tire, and "spiritual invalids" 93 came in search of soul-massaging at perhaps Berkshire had already begun to lose something of its the hands of the now famous author of The Scarlet Letter original fascination. "The truth is," he wrote to sister Louisa, and on which a few intruded merely to catch a glimpse of the "the pen is so constantly in my fingers that I abominate the great man's face. sight of it." 89 Still, he had almost completed in a little over Occasionally, too, Hawthorne's inherent reticence de- a month "a book of two or three hundred pages for children, prived him of associations which he might well have come and I think it stands a chance of a wide circulation 90 to enjoy. The Charles Sedgwicks made every effort to be This was the Wonder-Book and brought an end to his Berk- kind during the first summer; and Sophia, at least, felt a shire productivity. It also brought to an end, at least tem- deep gratitude for their generosity. "The truest friendliness porarily, his depression of a few days earlier, and by July is the great characteristic of the Sedgwick family in all its 15 he was writing contentedly to Fields: "Mrs. Kemble branches," she had written her mother in August. "They writes very good accounts from London of the reception my 91. Fields, Hawthorne, p. 34. 88. James T. Fields, Hawthorne (Boston, 1871), p. 28. 92. Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Memories of Hawthorne (Boston, 89. Julian Hawthorne, Hawthorne and His Wife, I, 408. 1897), p. 130. 90. Horatio Bridge, Recollections of Hawthorne, p. 141. 93. Hawthorne, Hawthorne and His Wife, I, 358. 358 Berkshire County The American Lake District 359 seem to delight to make happy, and they are as happy as pile of history and romance. Longfellow, I believe, is of my being comfortable." 94 But even four months later summer days themselves. They really take the responsibility not yet at the Ox-bow, else the winged horse would Charles Sedgwick was writing to Sam Ward: "Of the Haw- neigh at the sight of him. But, here in Lenox, I should find our most truthful novelist, who has made the scen- thornes we know nothing, I have made three or four calls there, five or six- Hawthorne has never been here but once ery and life of Berkshire all her own. On the hither side of Pittsfield sits Herman Melville, shaping out the wife when he was specially invited to spend the day. But my is indefatigible." 95 gigantic conception of his 'White Whale,' while the gigantic shape of Greylock looms upon him from his willingly to only a very few. The James Russell Lowells andi Hawthorne, in fact, opened the door of the red cottage study-window. Another bound of my flying steed would bring me to the door of Holmes, whom I mention the biographer, Joel T. Headley, stopped to see him in Sep- last, because Pegasus would certainly unseat me, the next tember; Fanny Kemble would ride up whenever she was in minute, and claim the poet as his rider.98 the Berkshire to converse "in heroic phrases with the inmates of and red house" or to snatch up young Julian "the Apostate" Whatever the uncertainties in Hawthorne's feeling toward R. gallop away with him on her large black horse; and G.P Melville, there is no reason to think his tribute to him any James excellent man and his wife a plain, good less sincere. The two men had met on August 5, 1850-per- kind-hearted woman"--could offer just the kind of haps the most fruitful and significant meeting in the history cheerful, undemanding, uncomplicated friendship that Haw- of American letters. In a railroad car rumbling up the thorne most desired. But even with the jovial James he could Housatonic from New York City, the distinguished attorney not always conquer diffidence, and once even hid like David Dudley Field, en route to his summer home in Stock- "frightened schoolboy" when James and Maunsell Field a bridge, encountered editor Evert Duyckinck, on his way to presented themselves at the front door.97 Yet, like visit Melville at Pittsfield, and together they arranged a another shy man, he could become bolder on paper than many he rendezvous. Duyckinck, a friend of both Melville and Haw- of ever dared to be in reality, and he left it to Eustace Bright thorne, agreed to bring Melville to Stockbridge on August the Wonder-Book to pay his tribute to Berkshire writers: 5 for an all-day outing at Monument Mountain, and Field I wish I had Pegasus here. promised to take care of the rest. Invitations were quickly forthwith, and gallop about the country, within a cir- I would mount him 98. Nathaniel Hawthorne, A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys (Bos- cumference of a few miles, making literary calls on ton and New York, 1883, 1st ed. 1851), p. 196. Pittsfield's poet, William brother-authors. Dr. Dewey would be within my reach, my. Pitt Palmer, called the Berkshire of the 1850's an idyllic era in Berk- at the foot of Taconic. In Stockbridge, yonder, is Mr. shire-in an interlude between the ruggedness of the "Stump Age" James, conspicuous to all the world on his mountain- and the bustle of the urban. In 1885, Holmes wrote a Pittsfield friend lamenting the urbanization of the town: "such a beautiful, healthful, 94. Lathrop, Memories of Hawthorne, pp. 130-31. central situation could not resist its destiny, and you must have a mayor, 95. Charles Sedgwick to S. G. Ward, Dec. 29, 1850; SGW. I suppose, by and by, and a common council, and a lot of aldermen. 96. Hawthorne, American Notebooks, p. 232. But you cannot lose the sight of Greylock, nor turn the course of the 97. Field, Memories, p. 205. Housatonic" (J. T. Morse, Holmes, I, 201). 360 Berkshire County The American Lake District 361 his Mathews and Joel T. Headley, to editor J. T. Fields and issued-to Hawthorne and Dr. Holmes, to Cornelius ant's Monument Mountain and a toast to "the dear old nd bride, and to Field's daughter Jenny and her enthusiastic poet"; and then Hawthorne, in rare high spirits, was off ut again, lurking behind the dark edges of the Ice-Glen and h's and best-nearly every trace of shyness and moodiness young escort Henry D. Sedgwick, Jr. Hawthorne was at his shouting threats of certain destruction on the whole party. 101 ot ro Duyckinck reported delightedly to his wife on the gone- out- Two days later, still full of enthusiasm, he was writing to he come of the plotted meeting: Bridge: "Duyckinck, of the Literary World, and Herman Melville are in Berkshire, and I expect them to call here ns As we scrambled over the rocks at the summit a black this morning. I met Melville the other day, and liked him uc thunder cloud from the south dragged its ragged edges SO much that I have asked him to spend a few days with me al talked toward us-the thunder rolling in the distance. They before leaving these parts." 102 They came the next morn- it of shelter and shelter there proved to be though ing and found Hawthorne's little corner of Lenox "one of 75 looked unpromising; but these difficulties, like others, the most purely beautiful spots in the region. Haw- vanish on trials and a few feet of rock with a damp un- thorne gave us some Heidsieck which a literary friend had lisher derground of mosses and decay actually sheltered pub- presented to him, popping the corks in his nervous " Fields curled whiskers, his patent leathers and his way 103 Thereafter, Melville came often to the red cot- bride's delicate blue silk. Dr. Holmes cut three branches tage, and Hawthorne opened his door hospitably to him as for an umbrella and uncorked the champagne, which he had done to few others among his Berkshire neighbors. was drunk from a silver mug. The rain did not do its Una and Julian adored "Mr. Omoo," rode on his big New- worst and we scattered over the cliffs, Herman Melville foundland dog, and listened wide-eyed to his fabulous stories low to seat himself, the boldest of all astride a projecting of the South Sea Islands; and Sophia, with keen penetration, cliffs stick of rock while Dr. Holmes peeped about the recognized in him "A man with a true, warm heart, and a and protested it affected him like ipecac. Haw- soul and an intellect,-with life to his finger-tips and I thorne looked wildly about for the great carbuncle. am not sure that he is not a very great man." 104 Mathews read Bryant's poem. The exercise was glori- Sophia was to think still more highly of Melville when she ous. discovered him to be that anonymous critic-"so fearless, SO rich in heart, of such fine intuition"--who had written in the Mathews was later to catch the "glorious" mood even bet- Literary World high praise of Mosses from an Old Manse. 105 ter. "Higher, higher up we go," he exclaimed in retrospect, Hawthorne, meanwhile, was just beginning to read Mel- "stealing glances through the trees at the country under- 101. Fields, Yesterdays with Authors, p. 53. At ing in every direction like sparks among the bushes." 100 neath; off rambling, scrambling, climbing, rhyming,-puns fly, 102. Hawthorne to Bridge, Aug. 7, 1850, in Bridge, Recollections of Hawthorne, p. 137. the top, they paused for a rest and for a reading of Bry- 103. Duyckinck to his wife, Aug. 9, 1850, in Mansfield, "Glimpses of Melville's Life," p. 34. 99. 100. Aug. 6, 1850, in Mansfield, "Glimpses of Melville's Life," 104. Sophia to her mother, Sept. 4, 1850, in Lathrop, Memories of Cornelius Mathews, "Several Days in Berkshire," Literary World, p. 30. Hawthorne, p. 135. Aug. 24, 1850. 105. Sophia Hawthorne to E. Duyckinck, Aug. 29, 1850, in Jay Leyda, The Melville Log (2 vols. New York, 1951), I, 391. 362 Berkshire County The American Lake District 363 ville's works "with a progressive appreciation of the author No writer ever put the reality before his reader more un Melville continued to haunt the red cottage, and in March, 'Mardi' flinchingly than he does in 'Redburn,' and 'White Jacket Hawthorne, who rarely visited anyone else in Berkshire, a reader to swim for his life. It is SO good that one scarcely is a rich book with depths here and there that compel brought Una with him for two days at Arrowhead. The two men sought out the barn both for seclusion and as a refuge pardons the writer for not having brooded long over it, so from the weather, and there they smoked and talked meta- as to make it a great deal better." 106 Probably the physics by the hour, Hawthorne seated on a carpenter's ship between relation bench and Melville sprawled in the hay. They must be sure, complete Hawthorne and Melville represented the most remarked Hawthorne, to commemorate the occasion by pub- his meeting of minds that either experienced during lifetime-a meeting leading not merely to philosophical lishing "A Week on a Work-Bench in a Barn." The same Perhaps the main basis for this profound rapport between dialogue but to deep friendship and mutual understanding carefree spirit evidently continued throughout the spring, and in June Melville was insisting that "we-that is, you and the two lay in their common concern for the darker human I-must hit upon some little bit of vagabondism before au- depths-depths which Melville had quickly recognized in tumn comes. Greylock-we must go and vagabondize self: Hawthorne and had thus unconsciously revealed also in him- there." 108 Instead, they settled in August for a trip to Leba- non with Evert and George Duyckinck to see the Shakers. In that same month, Hawthorne, still tolerably cheerful, There is a certain tragic phase of humanity [he wrote] was recording in his notebook: "a cavalier on horseback which, in our opinion, was never more powerfully em- [came along the road, and] saluted me in Spanish; to which bodied than by Hawthorne. We mean the tragicalness I replied by touching my hat, and went on with the news- of human thought in its own unbiassed, native, and pro- paper. But the cavalier renewing his salutation, I regarded founder workings. We think that into no recorded mind him more attentively, and saw that it was Herman Mel- has the intense feeling of the visible truth ever en- ville! After supper Melville and I had a talk tered more deeply than into this man's. By visible about time and eternity, things of this world and of the truth, we mean the apprehension of the absolute con- next, and books, and publishers, and all possible and impos- dition of present things as they strike the eye of the sible matters, that lasted pretty deep into the night 109 to him. man who fears them not, though they do their worst It was such lengthy talks as these with Hawthorne that gave There is the grand truth about Nathaniel to Melville the spiritual reinforcement he SO much needed Hawthorne. He says No! in thunder; but the Devil for Moby Dick. "If ever, my dear Hawthorne," he wrote in himself cannot make him say yes. For all men who June, "in the eternal times that are to come, you and I shall yes, lie; and all men who say no,-why, they are in the say sit down in Paradise, in some little shady corner by our- happy condition of judicious, unincumbered travellers selves then, O my dear fellow mortal, how shall we in Europe; they cross the frontiers into Eternity with pleasantly discourse of all the things manifold which now SO nothing but a carpet-bag,-that is to say, the Ego. 107 106. To E. Duyckinck, Aug. 29, 1850, in Leyda, I, 391. 108. To Hawthorne, June 22, 1851, in Mansfield, "Glimpses of Mel- 107. Ibid., I, 410. ville's Life," p. 46. 109. Hawthorne, American Notebooks, p. 220. g 364 Berkshire County The American Lake District 365 distress us,-when all the earth shall be but a reminiscence mind like Melville's such companionship could come only yea, its final dissolution an antiquity." 110 rarely, and in his eagerness to realize it fully, it seemed in- ut is Yet by the fall, Hawthorne's feeling of depression had ex evitable that he should ask too much. Himself willing to ot tended even to his relations with Melville. The powerful [give everything to the relationship, his demands on the man ro intellect and the penetrating eyes suddenly only wearied he idealized could only be excessive. He wanted both friend he and oppressed him, and the easy-going companionship of and father-confessor, and Hawthorne, by nature a reserved James came to seem infinitely preferable. Even in the late and solitary figure, had already given all he could-more, ns spring, he had begun to show signs of restlessness, and un- perhaps, than he had ever given to another man. 1C der the seemingly inevitable monotony of too much rustica In respect to length of residence, Melville was to be more al tion had written to Longfellow: "I mean to come to Boston truly a Berkshirite than Ward or Holmes; yet each of them, 75 in a month or two. I need to smell the sea-breeze and dock within the space of a few months, had managed to become a mud, and to tread pavements. I am comfortable here, and as more intimate part of the local scene than Melville ever happy as mortal can be; but sometimes my soul gets into a managed to become in all the years he lived there. The fail- ferment, as it were, and becomes troublous and bubblous ure to integrate, however, came not SO much from deliberate with too much peace and rest." 111 By July his growing dis- choice, as it had with Hawthorne, as from an eccentricity in content was bubbling over unrestrainedly, at least in the his personal outlook which grew more pronounced with privacy of his notebook: "This is a horrible, horrible, most every year of spiritual solitude. At first, that "promoter of hor-ri-ble climate; one knows not, for ten minutes together universal happiness," Mrs. Sarah Morewood, had welcomed whether he is too cool or too warm; but he is always one or him delightedly into her social orbit. In the one-time Melvill the other; and the constant result is a miserable disturbance Hall adjoining Arrowhead she and her husband gathered of the system. I detest it! I detest it!! I detest it!!! I hate Berk- around them as many of the local literary élite as they could shire with my whole soul, and would joyfully see its moun- muster-a perfect "maelstrom of hospitality" 113 Mel- tains laid flat here, where I hoped for perfect health, ville played the part of bon vivant with a flourish. He loved I have for the first time been made sensible that I cannot with the picnics on Constitution Hill or at the edge of Lake impunity encounter nature in all her moods." 112 Pontoosuc, the overnight outings on Greylock, the frequent In November, unable to live with his own dissatisfac- musicales; and he would spend long afternoons and evenings tions any longer, Hawthorne abandoned the little red cot- in the excellent Morewood library. tage for good, and Melville was left spiritually alone. He But the Melville who firmly refused to "believe in a Tem- was to remain in Berkshire ten years longer and was never perance Heaven," 114 who cheerily bade Hawthorne "have again to find SO intimate and sympathetic a companion as ready a bottle of brandy," 115 and who blatantly accused the he had found in Hawthorne. For a brooding and restless local clerics of peddling round "indulgences from divine or- 110. Eleanore Melville Metcalf, Herman Melville, Cycle and Epicycle 113. E. Duyckinck to his wife, Aug. 13, 1851, in Leyda, I, 425. (Cambridge, 1953), p. 108. 114. Melville to Hawthorne, June 1, 1851, in Hawthorne, Hawthorne 111. May 18, 1851, in Life of Longfellow, 2, 208. and His Wife, p. 403. 112. Hawthorne, American Notebooks, p. 215. 115. Idem, June 29, 1851, ibid., p. 400. pg 367 366 Berkshire County The American Lake District dinations," 116 was not destined for lasting social success in and with Smith, Melville took long cross-country tramps puritanical Pittsfield. John Morewood would not tolerate -to the Hopper, to Balanced Rock in Lanesboro, and to impieties, and even as early as the fall of 1851 Mrs. More tiny Ashley Pond high on Hoosac Mountain. Himself a man of limited literary talents, Smith functioned admirably ero wood was writing to George Duyckinck: "It is a pity that Mr. Melville SO often in conversation uses irreverent lan (as the common denominator between local and imported the guage-he will not be popular in society here on that very culture, and through his untiring intercessions Melville's account-but this will not trouble him- I think he cares works were assured ample publicity in the Berkshire press. ins Still, Mrs. Morewood was right in assuming that Melville uc very little as to what others may think of him or his books cal SO long as they sell well I laughed at him somewhat cared little for the opinions of the world; and eventually, he and told him that the recluse life he was leading made hi came to feel an attachment for the land in Berkshire sur- 75 city friends think that he was slightly insane-The replied passing any personal attachment there, excepting only that that long ago he came to the same conclusion himself but if with Hawthorne. Paradoxically enough, neither Longfellow he left home to look after Hungary the cause in hunger nor Hawthorne-both born and bred on the land-could would suffer." 117 ever feel SO deep a love for inland Berkshire as did Melville, In reality, Melville was not quite the hopeless recluse that the seaman who had sailed SO many months before the mast. Mrs. Morewood thought him. Dr. Holmes at least neither Both of them went hurrying back to the smell of the sea and regarded him as insane nor was shocked by his heterodox left it to Melville to discern with a sailor's eye the funda- theology, and once engaged him in a discussion of East In- mental unity of nature and her moods. 121 "I have a sort of dian religions and mythologies which, according to the sea-feeling here in the country," he wrote to Duyckinck, omnipresent Maunsell Field, "lasted for hours. I never "now that the ground is covered with snow. I look out of my heard better talking in my life we took no note of time window in the morning when I rise as I would out of a port- and the Doctor lost his dinner as we lost ours." 118 Nor was hole I of a ship in the Atlantic. My room seems a ship's cabin, Holmes the only Pittsfield resident whom Melville's theo+ and at nights when I wake up and hear the wind shrieking, logical eccentricities could not alienate. Both the engineer almost fancy there is too much sail on the house, and I had is and part-time littérateur John E. Hoadley 119 and the poet better go on the roof and rig in the chimney." 122 And in historian Joseph E. A. Smith 120 remained steadfast friends, summertime, he could imagine his piazza a quarterdeck: 116. Herman Melville, "The Lightning Rod Man," The Complete sitting here, one is often reminded of the sea. For not Stories of Herman Melville, ed. Jay Leyda (New York, 1949), p. 221. only do long ground-swells roll the slanting grain, and 117. Dec. 28, 1851, in Mansfield, "Glimpses of Melville's Life," P. 48; little wavelets of the grass ripple over upon the low 118. Field, Memories, p. 202. piazza, as their beach, and the blown down of dandelions 119. Hoadley was to marry Melville's sister, Catherine, in 1853. 120. Smith arranged concerts for Burbank Hall, was editor of the 121. Melville did escape from Berkshire for two long sea voyages, but Berkshire County Eagle for a time, and under the pseudonym "God- both times he returned to Arrowhead. frey Greylock" wrote several books on Berkshire legends and Berkshire 122. Melville to Duyckinck, Dec. 12, 1850, in Meade Minnigerode, literary society, and with his excellent History of Pittsfield emerged as Some Personal Letters of Herman Melville and a Bibliography (New one of the leading local historians of his time. Haven, 1922), p. 71. 369 368 Berkshire County The American Lake District is wafted like the spray, and the purple of the mountain fire-then spread my MSS. on the table-take P. one M. is just the purple of the billows, and a still August noon my business squint at it, and fall to with a will. At 2-1/2 broods upon the deep meadows, as a calm upon the I hear a preconcerted knock at my door, which (by which re- Line; but the vastness and the lonesomeness are SO oce quest) seems to wean me effectively from my writing, continues till I rise and go to the door, however anic, and the silence and the sameness, too, that the first peep of a strange house, rising beyond the trees, is for interested I may be. all the world like spying, on the Barbary coast, an un- My friends the horse and cow demand their dinner-and known sail. 123 I and give it them. My own dinner over, I rig for my the sleigh go and with my mittens and rubbers start off is the Farming, however, he would readily admit possessed its village-and if it be a "Literary World" day, great unromantic aspects, and "no man by that means accumulates satisfaction thereof. a fortune from this thin and rocky soil." 124 Indeed, in June of 1851 he was already complaining to Hawthorne: "but see Neither Catharine Sedgwick nor Dr. Holmes nor Sam or my hand! four blisters on this palm, made by hoes and ham- ever knew the Berkshire countryside SO intimately Melville. mers within the last few days." 125 Yet he felt stifled by the Ward expressed that knowledge SO eloquently as did he had pur- city and probably more than once during his time in New York "mounted [his] green jacket and strolled down to the Within Field's History of Berkshire 128 for use as a guidebook three- a fortnight of his arrival in Pittsfield, Battery to study the stars"; 126 and bitterly though he might chased with his brother Robert,129 had embarked on a he complain of hardships and of persistent duns, he evidently and, tour through southern Berkshire. Thereafter, country found the regularity of his farm routine preferable to the un- day wagon tired of taking long hikes into the hilly of the certainties of the city life from which he had come: never grew north or of admiring the autumn brilliance later of the and he was to fill his letters to Duyckinck and "It I rise at eight-thereabouts-and go to my barn-say foliage, stories with sensitive descriptions of the countryside. wrote to good morning to the horse and give him his breakfast. his a most glowing and Byzantine day-" he hues of (It goes to my heart to give him a cold one, but it can't has Duyckinck been that first fall, "the heavens reflecting heavens the them- be helped.) Then, pay a visit to my cow-cut up a pump- October apples in the orchard-nay, the harvest-home kin or two for her, and stand by to see her eat it-for it's the looking SO ripe and ruddy, that it must be Saddle- a pleasant sight to see a cow move her jaws-she does it selves with the angels, and Charles' Wain be heaped high as SO mildly and with such a sanctity. My own breakfast over, I go to my workroom and light 127. Idem, Dec. 12, 1850, in Minnigerode, Some Personal Letters, 123. Melville, "The Piazza," Complete Short Stories of Melville, p. pp. 70-71. in Chester Dewey's section on Berkshire Natural History Tree 440. that 128. Melville It was found inspiration for his short story The Apple 124. Melville, Israel Potter, His Fifty Years of Exile (New York, 1855), p. 10. Table or Robert Original was Spiritual chairman Manifestations. of the Viewing Committee of the Berkshire writer of 125. Melville to Hawthorne, June 1851, in Leyda, I, 412. 126. Melville to E. Duyckinck, Mar. 7, 1850; Duyckinck Collection, Agricultural 129. Society, and Herman was later Gazette. to be the ghost NYPL. his report in the Berkshire Culturist and 371 370 Berkshire County The American Lake District back with Autumn's sheaves. You should see the maples the silent grass-growing mood in which a man ought you should see the young perennial. pines-the red blazing ness, always to compose" 133_imparted no placid contentment to of the one contrasting with the painted green of the others feverish brain creating Captain Ahab. On the contrary, Melville and the wide flushings of the autumn are harmonizing [both the the book proceeded from a mind possessed; it was, as I tell you that sunrises and sunsets grow side by side in these said Hawthorne, "broiled in hellfire." woods, and momentarily moult in the falling leaves. 180 Of to those Berkshirites who read Moby Dick, many no doubt Three years later he was to christen the rounded hill two agreed with critics who pronounced it either incomprehen- the one miles southwest of Arrowhead October Mountain "on ac sible or impossible. From Lenox, however-from letter count of its bannered aspect in that month." 131 for whose opinion Melville really cared-came a is in But deep though Melville's attachment to Berkshire was man of appreciation. "A sense of unspeakable security "on destined always to remain, his life among the hills hardly me warm at this moment," he wrote gratefully to Hawthorne, would touched Moby Dick at all. The hints of a rural existence were account of your having understood the book. I later to reveal themselves at least superficially in Pierre and down and dine with you and all the Gods in old Rome's Haw- more than superficially in many of his stories, but Moby Dick sit Pantheon." Had the meeting between Melville and had progressed beyond the reach of passive external influ- thorne in Berkshire never occurred, Moby Dick would On prob- the ences before Melville reached his decision to settle in Pitts- have been a different and less powerful book. in field. As Hawthorne had brought with him to Lenox the ably through the Berkshire hills and the long afternoons author blueprint for The House of the Seven Gables, SO Melville trips barn at Arrowhead, Melville had discovered in the 134 had brought the skeleton of Moby Dick, and neither book the of The Scarlet Letter that "infinite fraternity of feeling" ever really belonged to Berkshire. 132 At Arrowhead he did which dignity to his own tumultuous uncertainties. bosoms find a quietness and a regularity of routine highly favorable Hawthorne's gave heart, Sophia once remarked, "opens the one- for that delicate operation of "taking the book off his brain," of man audience, did much to encourage the creation of Moby men," and certainly a sympathetic audience-even a but the even tenor of life in Berkshire-"The calm, the cool- 130. Melville to Duyckinck, Oct. 6, 1850, in Minnigerode, Some Per- sonal Letters, pp. 68-69. Dick. Once the inmates of the red cottage had left Berkshire be- 131. Melville, "Cock-A-Doodle-Doo!" Complete Stories of Melville, p. 138. hind, could readily discover. "My Dear Lady," he assured water. Melville turned to the only other creative inspiration Sophia 132. Melville did owe one of his symbols to Berkshire, and that was he in 1852, "I shall not again send you a bowl of salt bowl of Ahab's scar-inspired almost beyond a doubt, by the great Pittsfield early The next chalice I shall commend, will be a rural elm. Cf. Moby Dick (Modern Library, New York, 1926), p. 121: "Thread- ing its way out from among his gray hairs, and continuing straight milk." 135 The salt water had been dedicated to Hawthorne; down on either side his face you saw a slender the milk was to be dedicated to "Greylock's Most Excellent mark, lividly whitish. It resembled that perpendicular seam sometimes made in the Majesty": straight, lofty trunk of a great tree, when the upper lightning tearingly darts down it, and without wrenching a single twig, pulls and grooves 133. Hawthorne, Hawthorne and His Wife, p. 402. out the bark, from top to bottom, ere running off into the soil, leaving 134. Metcalf, Herman Melville, pp. 128-29. the tree still greenly alive, but branded." 135. To Sophia Hawthorne, Jan. 8, 1852, ibid., p. 131. 373 372 Berkshire County [The American Lake District of running handy little cross-road through a In old times authors were proud of the privilege of ded stacle in the way manor." 136 On a more philosophical icating their works to Majesty. A right noble custom the which we of Berkshire must revive. For whether we will that level, wild it represents part of Melville's growing conviction of the pre- or no, Majesty is all around us here in Berkshire, sitting cariousness of human life and sanity: as in a grand Congress of Vienna of majestical hilltops had called it the Terror Stone. Few could be its and eternally challenging our homage. Pierre to climb its giddy height, and crawl out upon of one But since the majestic mountain, Greylock-my own bribed hovering end. It seemed as if the dropping would more immediate sovereign lord and king-hath now more seed from the beak of the smallest flying bird the trees. top- for innumerable ages, been that one grand dedicatee of the earliest rays of all the Berkshire mornings, I-know ple the immense very familiar mass over, thing crashing to Pierre; against he had often not how his Imperial Purple Majesty (royal-born: Por phyrogenitus) will receive the dedication of my own climbed to where it sloped in little crumbling stepping- beeches, It was it, a by placing long poles against it, and SO creep- poor solitary ray. ing up or by climbing high up the neighboring forehead-like Nevertheless, forasmuch as I, dwelling with my loyal places; lowering himself down upon the he been neighbors, the Maples and the Beeches, in the amphi- and then the elastic branches. But never had be, theater over which his central majesty presides, have summit enough-or by rather foolhardy enough, it may of the received his most bounteous and unstinted fertilization, fearless crawl on the ground beneath the vacancy Stone it is but meet, that I here devoutly kneel, and render up -to higher end; that spot first menaced by the Terror my gratitude, whether, thereto, The Most Excellent should it ever really topple.11 Purple Majesty of Greylock, benignantly incline his hoary crown or no. wrote one Boston reviewer, "might be supposed the quiet to Pierre, from a lunatic hospital rather than from those very In its final conception Pierre proved to be not quite so emanate retreats of Berkshire." 138 Most probably, artistic however, undoing. Pitts- "rural" a book as Melville might like to have thought it. The retreats" had proved Melville's "quiet to interest him, the novel- setting is in part Berkshire-intermixed with certain aspects field society had apparently ceased best offered his masterpiece an indif- of Lansingburgh, New York-but it is a Berkshire so roman- ticized and encumbered with unorthodox prose as scarcely to reading public had and at Hawthorne had deserted Berkshire the Ma- for be recognizable. The Balanced Rock of Lanesboro is there, ferent With reception, no one left except his "loyal neighbors perspective on but it is there for symbolic and not at all for realistic effect. good. ples and the Beeches," Melville was the losing disillusioned his Pierre: On one level it represents Melville striking out angrily at himself "This day and I was will forsake the censuses of men, and seek the exclaiming with those people, not only in Berkshire but everywhere, who failed to understand his books-who, "in their hoodwinked unappreciativeness," saw this wondrous "Memnon Stone" 136. Melville, Pierre, or The Ambiguities, ed. R. Forsythe (New York, as no Memnon Stone at all, but as "nothing but a huge stum- 1930), p. 148. 137. 138. Ibid., Review in 149. the Boston Post, July 1852, in Leyda, I, 456. p. bling block, deeply to be regretted as a vast prospective ob- g 375 374 Berkshire County The American Lake District suffrages of the god-like population of the trees, which now the clergy, at times combined with highly descriptive letters scenic to seems to me a nobler race than man. Their high foliage shall which were reminiscent of his earlier gay stories- drop heavenliness upon me; my feet in contact with their passages Duyckinck. On another level many of these and mighty roots, immortal vigor shall SO steal into me." 139 His Evert "Cock-A-Doodle-Dool" "Poor Man's Pudding," of objectivity with regard to his own philosophy was gone; he notably "The Lightning-Rod Man"-were personal expressions could not recognize his own excesses; and living in a self- determination to adopt an attitude of resignation of imposed spiritual solitude at Arrowhead, he had no one to his his own disappointments and failures, to assure the triumph In tell him that he had gone too far. 140 to cheerfulness over disillusionment, to cling to optimism. narrow al After Pierre, however, economic necessity forced Melville "The Lightning-Rod Man," he was rejecting both Berkshire-"the the to write more reasonably, and he set himself doggedly to the of which he heard SO much in earth"-and 75 task of composing short novels and stories which might please Calvinism will not of purpose, make war on man's his the undiscriminating public. In these, he often turned to Deity fearful sense of defeatism which he saw threatening I trod daily life in Berkshire, perhaps for lack of any more accepta- the own sanity: "I seized it; I snapped it; I dashed it; Man's ble inspiration, and he found there ample materials for both In that same year he had published "Poor realism and symbolism. And if his outlook remained often it Pudding" and a year earlier "Cock-A-Doodle-Dool"--two farmers morose and almost always negative, at least he was again writ- realistic portrayals of the poor but courageous first of ing about the familiar scenes and normal people that the grimly he discovered in the countryside around him. The the reading public could readily accept. Among his Berkshire went still farther and presented a savage satire on stories there was only a single exception-the morbid "Tar- these complacent attitudes of such books as Catharine "Of Sedgwick's all the tarus of Maids," in which he transmuted a winter trip to Carson's paper mill in Dalton into a darkly symbolic narra- The assumptions of humanity over humanity," made Poor Rich Man and the Rich Poor Man. he tive. Borrowing a page from Poe and another from Haw- preposterous angrily, "nothing exceeds most of the criticisms well-warmed, thorne, he turned the mill into a dungeon of ghastly females wrote on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, and the quiet Housatonic into the weird Blood River. and well-fed." 141 Yet, for the most part, he contented himself either with Two later came "I and My Chimney" and "The was embittered social commentary or half-humorous thrusts at years and with them further indication that Melville Piazza" objectivity. "I and My Chimney" still suggested resig- 139. Melville, Pierre, p. 120. regaining and resentment and "The Piazza," unhappy 140. In Pierre, Melville makes an interesting inversion of Edwardsean theology. Like Edwards, Melville was passionately concerned with find- bitterness nation (illusions and aspirations, he concluded, must neces- ing absolute and eternal foundations, but unlike the theologian, Mel- ville failed. Speaking from this tortured doubt rather than Edwards' Melville, "Poor Man's Pudding," Complete Stories Melville of Melville, entered faith, but agreeing with Edwards fully that the distance between earth 141. In his copy of The History of Berkshire County, there no dan- and heaven was very great, and that man's ways were not God's ways, p. 177. note beside the author's reassurance that efforts was and Bible Melville proceeded to advise men (through the philosopher, Plotinus a marginal society's becoming impoverished by charitable "is very im- Plinlimmon) to scale down their conduct to the relative morality which ger societies. of "The danger," wrote Melville sardonically, not will not lead them to destruction in this world. minent." 376 pg Berkshire County The American Lake District 377 sarily takable collapse upon close scrutiny), but both chuckle, hints of a new humor and geniality. gave He unmis- the scene of the hero's birthplace to Berkshire. Himself a poke his family harbored as to his sanity and either, he at the doubts not heartily perhaps but not mirthlessly could spiritual exile in the world, Melville discovered in Potter a lonely figure toward whom he could feel a kind of embittered which good-natured his fun at the grimly tolerant could sympathy. Potter's Berkshire is the Berkshire hill country hardy Berkshire neighbors regarded any eccentric spirit with which Melville knew, altered only to agree with historical ro knew he as to build a piazza on the north side of his so fool- fact, but it is a countryside seen more often through old and he or not: had sound reasons, whether they chose to sympathize house. He disillusioned eyes and not with the wholehearted apprecia- tiveness that Melville usually reserved for his hills. The final ns Well, the description indeed sounds rather like Hawthorne: south al balmy morning, side. in the Apple-trees month of are there. Pleasant, of a Ere long, on the mountain side, he passed into an ancient October, that orchard, white-budded, as for May, a bridal; to sit and see natural wood, which seemed some way familiar, and 75 shot. one green arsenal yard; such piles, of and, in midway in it, paused to contemplate a strange, moldy The Very fine, I grant; but to the north is Charlemagne: ruddy pile, resting at one end against a sturdy beech. Though wherever touched by his staff, however lightly, this pile trace into maple wood at top. Sweet, in opening away a west side, look. An upland pasture, alleying would crumble, yet here and there, even in powder, it trace, upon I the hill-side, otherwise gray and spring, bare-to to preserved the exact look, each irregularly defined line, of what it had originally been-namely, a half-cord of say, the oldest paths by their streaks of green. Charlemagne. Sweet, indeed, I can't deny; but, to the north earliest is stout hemlock (one of the woods least affected by expo- sure to the air), in a foregoing generation chopped and So, Charlemagne, he carried it. It was not stacked up on the spot, against sledging-time, but, as world, 1848; and, somehow, about that time, all round long after sometimes happens in such cases, by subsequent over- for these kings, they had the casting vote, and voted the sight, abandoned to oblivious decay-type now, as it themselves.142 stood there, of forever arrested intentions, and a long life still rotting in early mishap.143 perb "The Piazza" was, in fact, at least on this surface level, a su- prose idyll in praise of the Berkshire hills. Except for his two lengthy sea voyages and a series of un- years During of the the intervals between short stories in these happy lecture tours, Melville was to remain in Pittsfield until a "saner" so ambitious nor SO original Potter, novel neither 1850's, Melville had found time for Israel early 1863, becoming increasingly ingrown with the passing years. The gay conversationalist and excursionist of 1850 and 1851 as he and far more acceptable to the public. He as Pierre, but had disappeared, and in his place was a meditative hermit raphy of a known legend-in this case, from a imaginative short works, was from to do with so many of his later and less adapted it, whom one Williams College student, Titus Coan, making a 5 pilgrimage to Arrowhead, found somewhat disappointing: a Revolutionary exile-and skillfully transferred biog- In vain I sought to hear of Typee and those Paradise 142. Melville, "The Piazza," Complete Stories of Melville, p. 439. islands, but he preferred to pour forth his philosophy 143. Melville, Israel Potter, p. 274. 379 378 Berkshire County The American Lake District and his theories of life. The shade of Aristotle arose like never rest until he gets hold of a definite belief. It is a cold mist between myself and Fayaway. We have quite strange how he persists-and has persisted ever since to I enough of Greek philosophy at Williams College, and I knew him, and probably long before-in wandering confess I was disappointed in this trend of the talk, But and fro over these deserts, as dismal and monotonous as what a talk it was! Melville is transformed from a Mar the sand hills amid which we were sitting. He can nei- he quesan to a gypsy student, the gypsy element still re ther believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief; and he maining strong in him. And this contradiction gives him is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or the the air of one who has suffered from opposition, both other. If he were a religious man, he would be one of the literary and social. With his liberal views he is appar most truly religious and reverential; he has a very high ently considered by the good people of Pittsfield as little and noble nature, and better worth immortality than 75 better than a cannibal or a "beach-comber." His attitude most of us. 145 seemed to me something like that of an Ishmael; but per In October of 1863 Melville sold Arrowhead to his brother haps I judged hastily. I managed to draw him out very freely on everything but the Marquesas Islands, and Allan and went back once more to New York City. He was, when I left him he was in full tide of discourse on all in his own words, returning to "my native town, after a things sacred and profane. But he seems to put away the twelve years' visit in Berkshire." 146 In that same year, Cath- objective side of life and to shut himself up in this cold arine. Sedgwick left her native Berkshire for good and jour- North as a cloistered thinker. neyed down the Hudson to New York to live out the the re- maining four years of a long and productive lifetime; and During these later years in Berkshire, as Melville dissociated 1860's thus saw Berkshire's existence as a meaningful cultural himself from society, he retreated into a ceaseless pursuit of unit dissolving. The Berkshire Medical Institution expired; the those frustrating metaphysical reflections which brought no a wealthy summer resident from New York endowed final answers. Preoccupied by doubts and always searching Lenox Library; a Gothic edifice replaced the old Bulfinch desperately for the certainties and absolutes which his spirit church; and the century-old Pittsfield elm, symbol of Berk- demanded, he had eventually come to care little for compan- shire tradition, was cut down. No longer a state of mind, a ionship and nothing for public opinion. In 1856 Hawthorne Berkshire had become by the end of the decade merely saw and talked to him for the last time and exhibited his cus- geographical location. tomary sympathy and understanding: 145. Leyda, 2, 529. Melville, as he always does, began to reason of Provi- 146. Melville to Miss Sophie Van Matre, Dec. 16, 1863, ibid., p. 664. dence and futurity, and of everything that lies beyond human ken, and informed me that he had "pretty much made up his mind to be annihilated;" but still he does not seem to rest in that anticipation; and, I think, will 144. Quoted in Raymond Weaver, Herman Melville: Mariner and Mystic (New York, 1921), p. 351.