From collection Creating Acadia National Park: The George B. Dorr Research Archive of Ronald H. Epp

Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4

Page 5

Page 6

Page 7

Page 8

Page 9

Page 10

Page 11

Page 12

Page 13

Page 14

Page 15

Page 16

Page 17

Page 18

Page 19

Page 20

Page 21

Page 22

Page 23

Page 24

Page 25

Page 26

Page 27

Page 28

Page 29

Page 30

Page 31

Page 32

Page 33

Page 34

Page 35

Page 36

Page 37

Page 38

Page 39

Page 40

Page 41

Page 42
Search
results in pages
Metadata
Memoir of G.B. Dorr 1853-1865
Memoirs of G. B DORR
1853-1865
The Memoirs of George B. Dorr
The writings contained in "The Memoirs of G.B.Dorr" files are copies of The Dorr
Papers held at The Jesup Memorial Library. An original hard copy is held by the
Bar Harbor Historical Society.
These fragmented essays were written during the last two decades (1925-1944)
of his life. Episodic blindness contributed to their unfinished state. Many are
undated and incomplete. None have been published and many are working
drafts.
Dorr does not appear to have intended that these were parts of an evolving
autobiography. They were based on recollections of events that were retold to
clerical assistants-often over a dictaphone-- for an unidentified audience. There
are several lists of topics to be developed and to be combined into
complementary essays.
Ultimately they remain fragments of a life gathered here for the first time by an
approximated timeframe based on their content. They share "historical
associations" with Dorr's published writings (e.g., The Sieur de Monts
Publications).
Additional memoirs are placed in the subject matter series. See memoirs in the
files "France & Frenchman Bay," "Old Farm," "Psychical Research," and "Travel.".
filemoirs821
R. H. Epp
V
Communication
Mithesert
Mount Desert Ferry.
Ferry
Running down by train to the Ferry and taking a fast
and o omfortable steamboat aoro 8 the Bay, they made a slow
trip by waiting for the freight the train had brought and
passengers' baggage to be taken on board, was a beautiful
in summer
experience/and made a splendid approach to Bar Harbor, but
at other seasons it was 1ess pleasant.
Then Sorrento was included in the trip, both coming and
going, and there was delay there also over freight. In zero
weather ice collected in the upper bay and the steamer at times
had to butt its way slowly through it, and the only comfortable
moment for the passenger was when, after a night of travel, a
hot breakfast of coffee and fried eggs was served from the galley
on the lower deck, with johnny cake at times.
Maintaining this steamer service, was expensive to the rail-
road, accidents barred, which was thankful when the opportunity
came to substitute for it service by bus and truck over a good
motor road and a good bridge aoross the Narrows, over which all
tolls had been given up. Accidents, too, were possible and
costly. The first was when the slip at the Ferry gave way and
let the passengers of a local excursion train, crowded upon it,
down into the sea with much loss of life. The second, though
it might have been serious too, had its amusing side. A popular
Captain on the run--his name was Diokson but familiarly and
affectionately known as Captain Dick --put a new hand on to steer
2
/Ferry -8
at the wheel. The man was nervous over the responsibility
and annoyed Captain Diok by asking too frequent questions as
to his course. The Captain told him, leaving the Ferry, the
course laid out, to steer straight ahead and he would tell him when
to change.
The man did 80, looking at the compass, not where
he was going --of which indeed there should have been no need.
But Captain Dick, occupied with other matters or engaged perhaps
in friendly discourse, forgot to give him his new direction when
the moment came to change, and at last he did look up and the
boat was steering straight as a for its first objective, which
was the lighthouse. He had just time to slightly swerve her
course toward the shore before she struck, which sheered her off
to safe beaching, though not without injury to the vesselwhich
was of new make, built expressly for the Bar Harbor summer season
trip.
Captain Diok was oashiered for six months but his popularity
saved him, and presently he was restored to the service and
remained upon it so long as boat service across the Bay continued.
July 17th, 1938.
Text:
A Word about myself to string
some memories upon.
My father was Charles Hazen Dorr, of Boston, the
youngest son of Samuel Dorr, a merchant trading in
West India goods during his earlier life; and/later,
president of the New England Bank which he had taken
part in founding, a memberas Representative and
Senator of the Massachusetts Legislature, of whomo
more is told elsewhere, and of Mary Grey Ward, his wife,
daughter of Thomas Wren Ward of Boston, originally of
Salem, a sea captain sailing on ships owned by William
Grey of Salem, and his father, Captain William Ward
of Salem in his early life; then a merchant on his
own account in New York and Boston; finally, agent
for Baring Brothers in America till the business was
taken over by his son Samuel Grey Ward, my mother's
older brother; Interestered in public matters awlays,
he was treasurer of Harvard College for twelve years
and treasurer of the Boston Antheneum Library
My father was born in his father's house near the
waterfront, looking out over the harbor, a residential
section then, in a house his father sobd three years
'after to purchase one on Tremont Street near the foot
2.
of Park Street, a residential section also at that
time though wholly given up to business now these
many years.
My father and mother were married on
1850.
Buying land soon and building a home for
themselves on the eastern shore of Jamaica Pond. A
beautiful location fronting through tall trees the
sunset v&ew across the lake from the top of a steep
bank.
There my older brother, William Ward Dorr,
and I were born,
He in
and I on the 29th of December, 1853
during a
wild snowstorm through whose deep drifts my father
plowed his way on foot to carry the good news to
my grandfather Ward then living, with my grandmother,
in his Park Street home, my father's parents having
died years earlier.
So much for introduction.
I came into consoious life at three o'clock that
stormy morning and have remained in it till now through
a period of many changes whose issuance none can see.
My brother and were brought up in Jamaica Plains
Ward
until 1861, when, my grandmother/having died and my
grandmother left alone, we moved to Boston, occupying
his house on Park Street for a time, then building
our own house on Back Bay, on Commonwealth Avenue
close beyond the public garden which was our winter
home thereafter till my parents had died and I have
lived in it alone a dozen years, carrying on the
old traditions of hospitality and friendly living
a tradition for which the. house had gained a reputation
during my parents lifetime.
My brother and I were sent, as the general custom
day
was in these days, to a school, a famous school
it was in its time, kept by
Dixwell, himself
son of an old 6hina merchant of my grandfather's time
and from there we went, according again to the Boston
tradition of our day, to Harvard College, my brother
leaving after two years to study architecture abroad
and I, my course interrupted by a muscular trougle in
my eyes, when I also a winter abroad with my father,
while my brother returned to Beston for a winter
with my mother who could not leave herself on account
of my grandmother, which did not prevent my taking
my A B degree in due course however, my father reading
to me while we stayed abroad, history being the subject
I had specialized upon for my concluding college years,
the elective system having been just introduced by
What I would like to tell is of them, the places
we visited the books we read, the thoughts that
came to us. And to do this rightly I must go
back, too, and tell somewhat of the time that went
before, when my mother specially was reading actively
all that lay within her reach of the poetry of her
time, of its religion and new thought, and of the
fiction that portrayed its life.
It was an
extraordinarily XXFRI wide field that opened out
to us in this way, sympathetic 88 we were together
and living in a great midst of a great period of
change and new development.
My parents both
were born into the midst of what is called the
Romantic Period of English literature, a great
period compared with any other that I know, the
great period in Greeçe apart, and a period of
extraordinary change in the world's religious
attitude of thinking men and women which in the
end must shape the whole world thought.
We are
producing no great literature today nor are likely
to while such rich fields are opening up in science
and socialogy.
It is enough to live and watch
development or take part in them if one feels one
make contributions. I am not interested in the
detail of facts, whether in the past or present;
it is the great fundemental questions that hold
my interest, of life and existence.
Since my
days at Harvard in the early 1870s a vast panorama
has been spread before us and we do not know how
to interpret it.
We cannot go back to the
old and we cannot penetrate the two but must
wait for it to unfold itself.
Philosophy
cannot deal with it and it is but an idle word when
the attempt is made. The inconceivable envelops
us and all we can do is to relate the different
aspects of our existence, one within another.
The time we spent abroad was rich to me and to
us all in its revelation of the past in terms of
human experience which includes above all the emotional
side of life to which facts are but the frame and
the question that continually thrusts itself upon
me in these later days is why, but there are none
to answer it, few to comprehend the import of the
question.
The old philosophies do not touch it
They revolve in a world of their own making
with
positive to build upon though I feel that we can
certainty that certain things are not. And
much. But within our world, foundationness
Fire can be positive, and must be positive,
values. And values are not material but
hence they too spring
MHS. Endicott Family Papers. B35.f. 22.
(Text after 1816 letters)
This house on Park Street, one of the best residences in
Boston at that time, looking out west across the Common, became
my grandfather's home for the remainder of his life. His home
following his marriage to my grandmother had been in Pearl Street
and it was in Pearl Street that his and his wife's first children
were born, my mother's older brother, Sanuel Gray Ward, being
their first child to be born in Park Street.
My grandfather prospered so well during his connection
with Mr. Goodhue that, with bad times threatening and having
had experience of the dangers and uncertainties involved in
the business of that period, largely still confined to long
sea voyages and the risks connected with them, he decided to
devote himself to the good management of what he had and to work
of a public nature, to his own satisfaction and bringing him the
regard of others.
When Thomas Wren Ward began, late in life, as he tells in
bis journal of that time, to gather together his early letters
and papers, he found many lost, leaving the record fragmentary,
with long gaps between. The following letters tell what little
we do know of that period, including the attitude he had taken
in his mature life on the subject of religion:
Insert letters from TWW to Wm.Ward of
Nov. 3, 1820, July 30, 1825
[G.B.Don]]
Diotaphone - Wednesday evening, May 17, 1939.
Notes -- Coastal Maine was originally no coast at all but lay
far inland, the anoient coast-line being indicated by the great
fishing banks where in places the sea bottom comes BO near the
surface that icebergs stand on it and, maiting, drop their loads
of stone and gravel, building it up still higher, waves breaking
on them here and thereo Soundings show that the whole gulf of
Maine and southward to Cape Cod was a forested lowland but
recently in a geolggio sense, collected waters, soundings show,
flowing out through a deep ravine they touohed between Georges
Bank extending northward from Cape Cod and the corresponding
present
prolongation southward of the great peninsula of/Nova Sootia.
Looking out over its waters from the summit of Cadillao
Mountain, highest point upon our coast from the Bay of
Fundy to the Gulf of Mexico, and wondering what anciently
had lain beneath them, I asked a great authority upon ancient
life as fossils bring it baok to us where the great ice-sheet,
deeply grinding, has spared them, what I could people that forest
with in pre-glacial times, and he told me of horses, broad-footed
for walking over marshland and living by browsing, not by grazing,
broad-leaved
in dense forests of/deciduous grees.
Transcribed May 16.
Continuation of text
The gift of the State of Massachusetts, the War
the Revolution over, to the descendants of the two
former grantees, reealds has in the case of each the
interestins of recording the generous recognition
of Massachusetts
of benefits received, pleasant to meet with in a public
body.
In the case of the Degrogoires the feeling was
distinctly, where no legal claim existed, that of
gratitude for the help France had rendered the colonies
in their struggle th great Britain in sending over Admir
DeGrasse, with a fleet to aid the colonies, Massachusetts
especially
as a maritime state with already extensive commerce
especially appreciated this warmly
Im the case of Sir Francis Bernard, it put on
record appereciation of the good battle he had made againat
strong influences in England to gain for the colony, now
become a state, the coast of Eastem Maine, with it s
many harbors, its wealth of forest trees, its wealth
of fish for salting. It was a greater benefit, looking
to the future, than Massachusetts at that time could
realize
2 May 16.
and which e ven yet can only be understood in part.
The new developments of the time are even now swiftly
given an importance not to be measured at this time.
Marx Men passed swiftly but the results of their
actions beeamo-part stayed and have become part of the new
present.
One sale the DeGregoires made has special interest.
It is that of a great tract of the in erior of the Island
o f wild, forested lands to William Bingham Bf Philadelphia,
said to have been the wealthiest citizen of the time in
the United States and investing in forest lands alike in
Maine and Western Pennsulvania, some part of which even
yet remains in he hands of the Bingham heirs, so-called.
His daughter married the young Alexander Baring when he
oame to this country for a two years' stay. Later
London
he became head of the great banking house
of Baring Brothers and Company and having received
a peerage was sent over as Lord Ashburton, in 1842,
to negotiated the delicate bo undary question between the
United States and England which had stirred up much
angry feeling. All the rugged coast from Oldfarm south
was included in the Bigham purchase Oldfarm itself
had alread been taken up and cleared when the
first Bingham pruchases were made up n Mount Desert Island
3 May 27
last save the
and 1t was the Lynam farm Yana at Schooner head to be
ocoupied.
From Oldfarm west and north the whole shore,
on the contrary, was early taken up by hardy colonist
soamon all, sailing down from western ports as far as to
CApe Codo They are interesting men, these early settlers
true
ready to turn their hand to Yankee fashion, to whatever
came their wayn from ship-building to farming.
Downing, Andrew Jackson, born in 1815-52
Am American nurseryman, landscape gardener, and pomologist,
born at Newburgh, N.Y.
His influence upon American
horticultural development is probably unsurpassed. To
him must be accredited the introduction and development
of the free or English school of landscape gardening in
America. He planned the grounds about the National Capitol,
the White House, and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington,
D.C. To his foresight and to his spirit as communicated to
others, we owe our present American system of broad free
municipal parks. Downing's monumental work, Fruits and
Fruit Trees of America 91845) greatly extended by his
brother, Charles, together with his mumerous essays, form
the buok of his contribution to the literature of horticulture.
Another important work is the Treatise on the Theory and
Practice of Landscape Gardening (1841). Those essays were
first published in the Horticulturist, of which hewas editor
at the time of his death, and afterwards in book form under
the
title of Rural Essays (1854) for which book George William
Curtis wrote a memoir of Downing. He W as drowned while attemptin
to save the lives of others on the burning Hudson River
Steamer Henry Clay.
The gift Oit the State of Massachusetts, the War
the Revolution over to the descendants of the two
ymer granteear POORLES has in the case of each the
of recording the generous recognition
Massachusette
Oil benefits received pleasant to meet with in a public
bodyo
T- the a ce of the Degrogotics the feeling was
distinctly where no legal.olaf existed that of
cratitude GOT the HOLD France had rendered the colonies
134 their struggle St. great Britain the sending over Add
DeGrasso methia fleat to aid the colories Massachusett
88 a MATERIALS state with already extensive commerce
this warmly
C
OC SIL Francis Bernard ft put on
record Eopereotecon of the good battle he had made again
atrong in Sugland to gain for the colony, now
a SCOTE Eastern MEMBER with it s
wealth OF Forest trees its wealth
Tryes E greater benefit looking
at that time could
PUBTSI qunon wan open OTC ASJTH
eut ueum Pedeeto pua an ueeq pretty pay
WIBJPTO essyond eun UT popnTouT SBM
nos WOTT 46800 pe39nr eye ITV CHUTTOOT Actual
yorat dn pay YOTUM pue 802878 penrun
eut WT1sonb Arepuroq eu4 07
' UT Be ques BBW B
peateoed Sufary pup pas Sufreg TO
esnoy queen eut TO prey eurooeq ou
CABAS OMA B BTR oa oureo
oq the Supreg SunoA ett POTTEED BTH
'pottoo-os Coxyou am JO epual eq USA EUR med ne
ueae TOTUM JO freed TOTAL put OUTEN
UT extre spuct ENT SUTTSGALT pue petting are
UT OWTA our TO ABOTHATEOM eqt Reeq OAL PFUC
JO on spreat
PUBTBI em TOSTOTIC 155 OCH PO E AT
Turoeds 5.80 optil etter OTBS eur
eut JO Rapa euroaeq pus pokage BUGTOOU
drett JO eus ang
STORIE
Court Line 433 permstem aquanting
OTH
2010 do
that Schooner head to be
pooupibally
bot and north the whole shore,
waszearly taken up by hardy colonist
summerically dailing do restern ports as far as
interestic mon, these early sett
handwritiYankoo fashion, to whate
thomas From ship-building to farming.
March 7, No 1
My own interest in public reservations had an ancestry
offer
from that of President Eliot and his son, for it had its root
far back in old Salem and Medford gardens and the England fro
which they came, whose tradition has come down to us for
generations, the early colonists holding here the memory of them
as they did of the names of the places whence they came. I loved
the beauty and fragrance of flowers, the flowers which once
stretched in a broad bolt around the world in the northern
hemisphere, whose traces one finds today in strangely separated
ies
territory of Siberia and northern China, England and northern
Europe and our own eastern states from New England to the Hudson.
I loved to think of them in t he early days of the flowering
plants when t hey came in as a new creation in an ancient and more
their
barren world, sending forth from-their color standards and their
fragrance as the spring came round to attract the insects that
fertilized them and then when winter came again drawing to
their lives beneath the protecting soil that nourished
them and the winter snow.
It is a great history and full of
charm and the garden that by family truditions take me back to
generation after generati on fromthose that I hav known myself
Leave-- need no costly architectural setting nor expert care.
English cottagers grew them by the wayside in old coaching days
and they brought beauty into the bareness of their lives.
m
b
2.
Such thoughts I had in mind when I 8 tarted the Mt.
Desert Nurseries on the land of the old farm grant myfather
had purchased among the early summer residents on the Mt
played in
Desert Island shore wheromy mother, who had retent such
gardens as a child, made herself the first pleasure garden
on the Island, wonderfully not discovered by the humming birds
that winter in the south when it bloomed that summer. Mt.
Desert grew
a wonderful place for gardens of that time,
where the hardy p rennial plants we loved 80 we ll, as all folks
do who c an plant themselves as did our grandmothers and great-
grandmothers
back to colonial times, and I wished
dreams
not realizing the difficulties that such
encaunter,
taxaprock
of spreading the beauty that touched our springs, into the lives
of men when they lived among them over the whole coast from the
Penobscot north to the St. John.
But I had seen, too, alike abroad and in American, the
wreckage of great natural landscape by the hotel builder and
the private owner and when President Eliot brought out his
plan for the protection and saving of our Mount Desert landscape,
it made a strong appeal
The time fitted well,for it lay
between two periods , of the private owner grown suddenly to wealth
and thu of the multitude set into movement by the new mechanical
age.
3.
But for the Government's help and the rapid development at the
time/ of our national parks out west, nothing on t he scale required
could have been a chieved. Many factors came together and entered
into the creation of this first eastern National Park and first
of all national parks in America to be created out of private
funds , Auxxix development apart. It is a development that
the national government may well take hold of in the future,
affecting as it does deeply and intimately the lives of men who
need to see their world more widely and the possibilities it holds
for them, their home life around, But tht time is not ripe for
it on the greater scale which will bring the beauty and the interest
of nature widely into the lives of men.
Cylinders of Monday and Tuesday evening, Jan. 2 and 3.
2.
1
Gardens naturally do not exist within walled cities
or castled areas built for defense; no space can be given
up to them. But wherever men could expand with safety and
residence was settled, there gardens of certain flowers
sprang up in earliest time, wherever space was to be had and
security counted on.
In England, unless in the abbeys
destroyed by Henry the Eighth, of which we know too little,
gardens can scarce have existed when baron was at war with baron,
throughout the land. And gardening as a special art can scarce-
ly have existed before Elizabethan days, when
within the realm of
was active and men accumulated
wealth. But from that time on they rapidly progressed and
the south coast of England was their earliest home.
M
What I would like to tell is of them, the places
we visited the books we read, the thoughts that
came to us.
And to do this rightly I must go
back, too, and tell somewhat of the time that went
before, when my mother specially was reading actively
all that lay within her reach of the poetry of her
time, of its religion and new thought, and of the
fiction that portrayed its life.
It was an
extraordinarily wide field that opened out
to us in this way, sympathetic a8 we were together
and living in a great midst of a great period of
change and new development.
My parents both
were born into the midst of what is called the
Romantic Period of English literature, a great
period compared with any other that I know, the
great period in Greece apart, and a period of
extraordinary change in the world's religious
attitude of thinking men and women which in the
end must shape the whole world thought. We are
producing no great literature today nor are likely
to while such rich fields are opening up in science
and socialogy.
It is enough to live and watch
development or take part in them if one feels one
make contributions. I am not interested in the
detail of facts, whether in the past or present;
it is the great fundemental questions that hold
my interest, of life and existence.
Since my
days at Harvard in the early 1870s a vast panorama
has been spread before us and we do not know how
to interpret it.
We cannot go back to the
old and we cannot penetrate the two but must
wait for it to unfold itself.
Philosophy
cannot deal with it and it is but an idle word when
the attempt is made.
The inconceivable envelops
us and all we can do is to relate the different
aspects of our existence, one within another.
The time we spent abroad was rich to me and to
us all in its revelation of the past in terms of
human experience which includes above all the emotional
side of life to which facts are but the frame and
the question that continually thrusts itself upon
mG in these later days is why, but there are none
to answer it, few to comprehend the import of the
question.
The old philosophies do not touch it
revolve in a world of their own making
with
build upon though I feel that we can
cointy that certain things are not. And
much.
But within our World, foundationess
welves.
we can be positive, and must be positive,
And values are not material but
hence they too spring
NOV
1900.
17
!
Royce
I had the rare good fortune of having in my
father and my mother two people with a delightful
gift of narrative.
What they told of lived.
My
father was the more reserved but he had a delightful
sense of humor and I find myself still at stories
he
told me of his youth objectively
always,
for
of his inner self I never heard him talk.
It
was too intimate and personal.
My mother had
a wonderful gift of description and drew a wide
circle of younger folks about her always when she
was in the mood to talk.
So that between them
the time of their own childhood lived again for me.
My mother had wonder description power, making
feel with her what she had felt
herself and felt again in recording it.
But
neither she nor any of my grandfather/ Ward's family
which
had the gift of humor,/my father and his sister,
my much-loved anut, had so strongly.
I have often
thought wherein it was that humor lay.
It is
I think the faculty of seeing things from two contrasting
points of view and with detschment, not taking them
too sericusly.
Humor needs sympathy, it involves
it; but if the sympathy be too strong or the situation
too serious, humor is lost in sympathy.
And this
forms a criterion by which one can judge men's degree
of dévelopment.
But humor passes into irony, loosing
an
the kindly quality that is for me/essential feature.
Jones
William James had wit, often with a shing; his wife
could see be
amusing
had humor and tp/intimately/asphe lit up some story
She was telling.
I remember one such occasion
when she told how she and her daughter Beggy, a
naturally reserved and introspective person, and a
dressmaker staying in the house got intoxicated
on some mushrooms they had gatherd on the lawn and
of the way they acted with unextinguishable laughter
while the dressmaker's assistant, who had not partaken,
wrung her hands in anguish and begged them to be sober.
Prof. Royce, the philosopher, and collaague of William
Roya
James at Harvard, talked with infinite humor when he was
then
in the mood and was/most amusing to listen to, as well
as interesting, but he rebelled in indignation when it
was directed against things he took seriously, for seious-
ness was the very essence of his nature.
July 17th, 1938.
Text: A Word about myself to string
some memories upon.
My father was Charles Hazen Dorr, of Boston, the
youngest son of Samuel Dorr, a merchant trading in
West India goods during his earlier life; andrater,
president of the New England Bank which he had taken
part in founding, a memberas Representative and
Senator of the Massachusetts Legislature, of whomo
more is told elsewhere, and of Mary Grey Ward, his wife,
daughter of Thomas Wren Ward of Boston, originally of
Salem, a sea captain sailing on ships owned by William
Grey of Salem, and his father, Captain William Ward
of Salem in his early life; then a merchant on his
own account in New York and Boston; finally, agent
for Baring Brothers in America till the business was
taken over by his son Samuel Grey Ward, my mother's
older brother; Interestered in public matters awlays,
he was treasurer of Harvard College for twelve years
and treasurer of the Boston Antheneum Library
My father was born in his father's house near the
waterfront, looking out over the harbor, a residential
section then, in a house his father 300d three years
'after to purchase one on Tremont Street near the foot
2.
of Park Street, a residential section also at that
time though wholly given up to business now these
many years.
My father and mother were married on
1850.
Buying land soon and building a home for
themselves on the eastern shore of Jamaica Pond. A
beautiful location fronting through tall trees the
sunset vaew across the lake from the top of a steep
bank.
There my older brother, William Ward Dorr,
and I were born.
He in
and I on the 29th of December, 1853
during a
wild snowstorm through whose deep drifts my father
plowed his way on foot to carry the good news to
my grandfather Ward then living, with my grandmother,
in his Park Street home, my father's parents having
died years earlier.
So much for introduction.
I came into conscious life at three o'clock that
stormy morning and have remained in it till now through
a period of many changes whose issuance none can see.
My brother and were brought up in Jamaica Plains
Ward
until 1861, when, my grandmother/having died and my
grandmother left alone, we moved to Boston, occupying
3
his house on Park Street for a time, thon building
our own house on Back Bay, on Commonwealth Avenue
close beyond the public garden which was our winter
home thereafter till my parents had died and I have
lived in it alone a dozen years, carrying on the
old traditions of hospitality and friendly living
a tradition for which the. house had gained a reputation
during my parents lifetime.
My brother and I were sent, as the general custom
day
was in these days, to a school, a famous school
it was in its time, kept by
Dixwell, himself
son of an old 6hina merchant of my grandfather's time
and from there we went, according again to the Boston
tradition of our day, to Harvard College, my brother
leaving after two years to study architecture abroad
and I, my course interrupted by a muscular trougle in
my eyes, when I also a winter abroad with my father,
while my brother returned to Beston for a winter
with my mother who could not leave herself on account
of my grandmother, which did not prevent my taking
my A B degree in due course however, my father reading
to me while we stayed abroad, history being the subject
I had specialized upon for my concluding college years,
the elective system having been just introduced by
What I would like to tell is of them, the places
we visited the books we read, the thoughts that
came to us.
And to do this rightly I must go
back, too, and tell somewhat of the time that went
before, when my mother specially was reading actively
all that lay within her reach of the poetry of her
time, of its religion and new thought, and of the
fiction that portrayed its life.
It was an
extraordinarily XXFPI wide field that opened out
to us in this way, sympathetic a8 we were together
and living in a great midst of a great period of
change and new development.
My parents both
were born into the midst of what is called the
Romantic Period of English literature, a great
period compared with any other that I know, the
great period in Greeçe apart, and a period of
extraordinary change in the world's religious
attitude of thinking men and women which in the
end must shape the whole world thought.
We are
producing no great literature today nor are likely
to while such rich fields are opening up in science
and socialogy.
It is enough to live and watch
development or take part in them if one feels one
make contributions. I am not interested in the
detail of facts, whether in the past or present;
it is the great fundemental questions that hold
my interest, of life and existence.
Since my
days at Harvard in the early 1870s a vast panorama
has been spread before us and we do not know how
to interpret it.
We cannot go back to the
old and we cannot penetrate the two but must
wait for it to unfold itself.
Philosophy
cannot deal with it and it is but an idle word when
the attempt is made. The inconceivable envelops
us and all we can do is to relate the different
aspects of our existence, one within another.
The time we spent abroad was rich to me and to
us all in its revelation of the past in terms of
human experience which includes above all the emotional
sido of life to which facts are but the frame and
the question that continually thrusts itself upon
me in these later days is why, but there are none
to answer it, few to comprehend the import of the
question.
The old philosophies do not touch it.
They revolve in a world of their own making /
with nathing
positive to build upon though I feel that we can
say with certainty that certain things are not. And
that after all is much. But within our gorld, foundation&ess
though it be, I feel we can be positive, and must be positive,
in determining values. And values are not material but
spiritual. And hence they too spring
The families of all all etuboys attending Differences
School had summer homes to which they moved in spring,
returning in the fall, a custom then of recent origin
made possible by the railroad. Some went to the North
Shors, others to Sahant, reached by staanboat; others
to the South Shore, where there was splendid opportunity
for small-boat sailing, The boys whose homes word by
the sea lived on the water through the Edward
(1848-1891)
Burgess, the famous jacht and sup-defander builder, was
one of the older boya at Dixwell's when I entered and
got his interest in boats and early training in this way
at Beverly. Charles Francis Adams, the recent Secretary
of the Navy and famous for his skill in sailing cup-
defenders, got his on the South Shore.
Others families moved into the country, to Chest-
nut Hill and Brookline, Milton and beyond, the boys
coming in by train to school, their fathers to business,
and Beacon Hill and the Back Bay were like a deserted
city through the Summer.
We went to Canton, an old town on the Boston and
Providence Railroad a few miles beyond Milton and its
Blue Hills, in order to be near my grandmother, who had
2
all tobays illending
a STREET home there and a famous garden, taking many
prizes at the Boston shows. It came about because
my grandfather, told by his doctor to get himself a
country home, bought an old homestead there of the
Visions family, relations of his friends the Bow-
ditches, one of whom, Ingersoll Bowditch, had built
himself a country home alongside the Nichola homestead,
which first my ancle, Samuel Gray Ward, on coming from
Lanox, bought and occupied, then we, when business took
him to New York to lives
There, in real country, with woods and a lake for
neighbors, dogs and horses for companions, my brother
and I grow up, springs and falls, till collage days.
It was great country for us. My brother, a born
sailor by inheritance from my mother's family, rigged
up a row-boat with a sail, and sailed the laks; I
roamed the woods, meadows and pasture-lands about us,
gathering wild flowers and collecting birds' eggs in
the spring. But when the hot, dry summer came we went
to the seashore for my mother's sake, and it was on one
of these mid-summer trips that we first came to Mount
Desert.
123
Rozeju
toldn
Dict. list
'It was a pleasant part of England
1.
192
"Gardens do not naturally exist
2
gardens
The earliest
Herbalists
3
The summer we spent toget er in England
4.
That summer in Eng. with its leisurely quest 5.
*
RP turning from a brief trip, my father
6. *
Gladstone
Our summer in 1875 in Eng
happy one
70%
Those years of intimate companionship
8.
When Edward Dorr came out
9.
Returning from our wintter on the Nile
10.
The tracing out of
11.
This search after my father's
12.
That summer in England in 1875 marks
13.
During one of my later trips abroad, friends 14.
(Shrewsbury)
Leaving York-- Dukeries
15.
That summer I came to !now my England
16.
Ihad the rare Good f ortune --mother and father 17.
This quest after the homes my father took.
18.
1930
That whole summer's journey
19.
Kent
20
Monday evening, Mar. 13.
Some fragments for use in text.
My grandfather kept the letters he received in his long
correspondence with the Barings and wter-press copies of those.
he wrote, meaning to use them in writing a history of his
time when he was through, which would have at least, he wrote
"be true." But he unwisely mentioned it in a letter to one
of the Baring firm, written near the aid, and they ,alarmod
lest things should come out they might not wish Kt to give
the public, asked my unole who succeed d in the agency, to burn
the whole, which he did, without even Oxamining the aononts
for historioa material, as his son, Thomas Wron Ward the
second, who is living still, in his early nineties, told me
a few years since, looking back his doing it at
is father's bidding, when he first
Viewer Controls
Toggle Page Navigator
P
Toggle Hotspots
H
Toggle Readerview
V
Toggle Search Bar
S
Toggle Viewer Info
I
Toggle Metadata
M
Zoom-In
+
Zoom-Out
-
Re-Center Document
Previous Page
←
Next Page
→
Memoir of G.B. Dorr 1853-1865
Details
1853 - 1865