Madame's Nightshirt
Mrs. Peperium
My father and his second wife had some traditions they used to enjoy with us, his children. One was a grand trip to some far off place in honor of our high school graduation. When my turn came, I did not draw the France, Spain and Portugal bonanza one of my sisters had. Nor did I draw see-the-UK-in-40-days my brother did. I drew Atlanta. Atlanta, Georgia, home of the Coca-Cola Corporation. My Dad's wife's mother had moved to the suburbs there and invited them to visit that summer. My Dad thought it important for me to really "see the country" I had been born in. His idea of seeing the country meant things like panning for gold, visiting a Tennesse Walker ranch where the very comely female ranch hands told him to "Come back ra-all so-ooon, ya hee-ahre". (I'm sure he heard) and trout fishing. But what I recall most of his idea of seeing the country was a brief stop at Gettysburg.
When we arrived at the Gettsyburg battlefield, our guide told us it was the very same temperature that it had been during the 3 day battle nearly 120 years before. It was about 100 degrees or something positively ridiculous like that. It took little imagination to imagine how unbearable the battle that left 50, 000 dead, wounded and missing for all involved was, including the inhabitants of the small town that had to help clean up afterwards. Suffice it to say, my Dad felt there was little need to traverse the battlefield and we soon sped away to a fine dinner and comfortable hotel rooms.
My next visit to Gettysburg came about 16 years later. Mr. P, my husband and confirmed Civil War enthusiast, decided after my best friend's wedding in Connecticut to "swing by Gettysburg" on our way home to Michigan. Since I hadn't a clue as to how much of a swing it really was to "swing by Gettysburg" on our drive back to Michigan, I most readily consented. I wanted to really see the battlefield this time since Mr. P had been teaching me so much about the Civil War. Imagine my surprise and dismay when we woke up, ready to hit the battlefield very early in the morning to a forecast for the very same degree of temperature it had been during my last visit to Gettysburg and the very same temperature it had been during the battle. Trouble was ahead. Trouble because I'm of Scottish descent and ridiculous heat makes me go wobbly. Combine my heat wobbliness with Mr. P's Civil War enthusiasm and you've got a cocktail that just doesn't mix.
Mr. P, understanding my inherent weakness suggested we skip breakfast and head straight out to the battlefield. I agreed. Before long, Mr. P had me out of the car and climbing through fences, over rocks and hills to hear what took place where. It was more than impressive and really too much for me to take in. Then the heat kicked in and I started going wobbly. By the time I saw the mid morning sun reflecting off the gigantic, gleaming monument to the boys of Pennsylvania, I thought I would faint right there on the spot. Since former President Eisenhower was not at home (his home is in the middle of the battlefield) and thereby able to gallantly offer much needed assistance, I did what I could do. I laid across the seat of the car while Mr. P yelled what happened during Pickett's Charge from the middle of the field. Again, it took little imagination to imagine how awful the battle of Gettysburg had to be for each man involved with his boiled wool uniform, 60 pounds or so of equipment, and completely surrounded by thick black powder smoke and the stench of 1000's of decomposing fellow countrymen, horses, and mules laying everywhere he stepped.
In spite of the ugly reality and brutality that is Gettysburg, something rather neat happened during this visit. We reached Little Round Top very early on and I was still upright. As it was the place where a man from Maine had distinguished himself as a battlefield leader, I was quite keen to see it. It was so early in the morning, there was only one other person there at Little Round Top, a man. Mr. P and I exchanged pleasantries with him. We noticed his car had a Maine license plate and we asked him what part of Maine he hailed from. "Brunswick" he said. Then he told us he was history professor at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. The man who had distinguished himself at the Battle of Little Round Top on the 2nd day of Gettysburg, prior to the Civil War was a professor at Bowdoin College too, General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. It was quite a delight to watch Mr. P and this history professor climb over the rocks and try to figure out exactly how Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain's portion of the great battle went down.
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain was born in Maine. He went to Bowdoin College in 1848. Then, after a few years of more study at a seminary, became a professor of rhetoric at Bowdoin and later in life, a General in the Army of the United States, the Governor of Maine as well as the President of Bowdoin. When Joshua was a student at Bowdoin, Bowdoin had become a magnet for the highly-educated and religious Northern anti-slavery crowd. Brunswick was also a extremely lovely town with very fine homes and the inhabitants must have enjoyed a very civilized and elegant existence. Harriet Beecher Stowe's husband was a professor at Bowdoin. Many involved in the Abolishionist Movement in Brunswick worshipped every Sunday at First Parish Church. It was there, while sitting in the pew listening to the preacher, that Harriet Beecher Stowe, still in the depths of grief over the loss of her baby boy, had her vision for what was to become Uncle Tom's Cabin. As President Lincoln has long been thought to have said upon meeting Mrs. Stowe, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war." While still a student at Bowdoin, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain regularly visited at Mrs. Stowe at her elegant home on Federal Street where she would read aloud to him her book as she was writing it.
The preacher at First Parish Church at this time was George E. Adams. Rev. Adams and his wife had not been blessed with children so they adopted his orphaned niece from Boston, Fanny. Fanny Adams was quite an artistic young woman and she played the organ at First Parish. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain fell in love with Fanny. He asked for her hand. After waiting 2 years, her father, the Rev. Adams, finally granted Fanny's hand to Joshua and they were married. Soon after the marriage, Rev. Adams wife, Fanny's adopted mother, died. After a proper interval, the Rev. Adams married again. His new and much younger wife was from a Boston family, Hannah Root, sister of George F. Root.
George F. Root, early on in his career had been a voice teacher at the Abbott School for Young Ladies in Brunswick, Maine. If recalling correctly, he went on to teach and write, and more importantly, publish, very popular music and songs in New York City. In 1860, he moved his family to Chicago to join his older brother's music publishing company, Root & Cady. George was a devout Congregationalist and had worshiped at First Parish Church in Brunswick. This must be how his sister Hannah came to the attention of the widowed Rev. George Adams. George F. Root was to go on to pen many popular songs for the North during the Civil War like Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (which the Japanese borrowed the tune of during WWII to make a song for their fighting boys), Just Before the Battle Mother, but his most famous song by far was The Battlecry of Freedom. If recalling Rev. Adams' history correctly, Bowdoin students went to Rev. Adams Brunswick home on Park Row after Lee's surrender which was witnessed by his son-in-law, Joshua to ask him his opinion. The Rev. Adams' opinion was to sing his brother-in-law's song, The Battlecry of Freedom. The Rev. Adams' brother-in-law, George F. Root, was to die on August 6, 1895 on the island in Maine he had spent the previous 12 summers on, Bailey Island.
George F. Root first started coming to Bailey Island because his brother-in-law, the Rev. George Adams, always persuasive on any subject, had convinced him to do so. This was most remarkable because when George Root first came to Bailey Island, his brother-in-law had been dead for nearly 10 years. But before his death, Rev. Adams had been called to a church some of his wife's other relatives were founding, Trinity Congregational, in Orange New Jersey. There, Rev. Adams, had convinced his family and parishioners of the natural beauty and fairness that surrounds Bailey Island and the entire area known as Harpswell, Maine. Harpswell is literally right down the road from Brunswick, the Rev. Adams former home. From the Rev. Adams 1873 diary entry of his return to Harpswell :
Drove 14 mis. Harpswell neck where 'people are fisher men, farmers, and sailors, Every individual house that I used to see has been replaced by a fine, large, new one : and there is not, in the whole United States, a town whose population average so well as to their condition.
Reading Rev. Adams' words today, it was no wonder that the increasingly affluent anti-slavery formerly of Brunswick and Bowdoin College went on to build their summer colony on an island where where the average islander enjoyed a high standard of living. Rev. Adams words and the later behavior of his extended family and church from Orange, New Jersey and their descendants must be one of the first as well as finest examples of Liberal White Guilt we have.
In 1883, the widow of Rev. George Adams, as well as stepmother-in-law to now General as well as former Governor of Maine, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Hannah Root Adams, paid Bailey Islander, William H. Sinnett, 30 dollars for a smallish piece of oceanfront land on what was to become "The Seabank". It took one month for islanders to build a modest college for her and her 2 daughters, Mary and Sarah. In the years to follow, Mrs. Adams family, the Roots and the Woodmans, and plus her husband's parishioners from Orange New Jersey, the Thorpes, Sewards, and Manns were to build classic shingled Maine cottages all along the Seabank. Then, as all the plots on The Seabank were taken, more cottages were built along the Giant's Stairs. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain would sail out from Harpswell or, catch ferry from Portland if he was there on business, to visit all his relatives and extended family. The last recorded visit by him to Bailey Island was to a wedding of a cousin by marriage at The Crags, a cottage near the Giant Stairs, in the summer of 1908.
Now I'm very sketchy here on the family connections but from the best I can determine, the Manns had cousins in Orange, New Jersey who were Swedenborgians. Swedenborgianism is at best a 2 sacrament church and at worst, a cult since the fellow who developed it claimed to have been visited by Jesus Christ and told things contrary to Christian teachings. Among the Manns on Bailey Island, as well as a very prominent Mann was a Rev. Mann who, if recalling correctly, studied at Swedenborgiansim at the University of Chicago. The Rev. Mann was a follower of the Swedenborgian Henry James Sr, father of Henry James the novelist (following a cult religion does kind of explain why there wasn't a Henry James III, doesn't it?). Like Henry James Sr., the Rev. Mann was anti-ecclesiastical and fell afoul of his Chicago congregation. By 1885, the Rev. Mann had a new New Church in Orange, New Jersey where he, his wife and six children spent their winters. The summers were spent on Bailey Island where they seriously engaged in Swedenborgianism and all of its fruits well into the 20th century as you will learn in future essays if I'm not sued first.
In 1894, a Rev. Kimball's wife inherited a large parcel of land near Little Harbor on Bailey Island. (Catch the name fellow TNC'ers? I have more research to do and if there's the connection I believe there is, then I completely understand why Roger Kimball completely eschews modern culture. Until we know for a fact that there is indeed a blood connection, let's just say old Rev. Kimball was seriously into communial living and I know where all the n*ked bodies are buried.) The Rev. Kimball convinced his flock to join him in an experiment against reality. He gave some of his parishioners equal share of his wife's land so that they could build a summer communial community. The Rev. Kimball's wife must have somehow been related to the Root, or Mann family on the Seabank and who were by now spread out into newer and much larger cottages over at Jockey Hill It was on Jockey Hill at Tekitisi (pronounced Take It Easy) the cottage of his son, Charles Root, that George F. Root, the author of the Battlecry of Freedom, died in the summer of 1895. His daughter, authoress of 30 novels written to appeal to the young intellectual Christian Scientist prune of the day, Clara Louise Root Burnham was to die in her cottage next door, The Moorings, in the summer of 1927.
Charles Root and the Rev. Kimball were pals with a artistic and literary bent. Plus Charles Root had bucketfuls of cash thanks to his dad. During the summer of 1894, Portland born-Cyrus Curtis cruised (literally) into Mackeral Cove on Bailey Island on his 300 foot yacht, The Lyndonia* to visit with the Rev. Kimball and Charles Root. Cyrus Curtis also asked Charles Root to join him in saving a sinking ship, The Saturday Evening Post. Charles Root declined Cyrus Root's invitation. As the world headed into a new century, the 20th, Bailey Island was attracting more and more of the highly-educated types who were seeking to get in touch with the simple things in life like public nudity. Frank Aydelotte, the President of the Quaker college on the hill in Philadelphia, Swathmore, was now a summer resident. During his time at Swathmore, Frank changed (if I have this correctly) the traditional teaching method to be a blend of Quaker teaching methods and the teaching method of his alma mater, Oxford University. It is called the Honors System. Frank Aydelotte went on to be a great influence upon the summer boys of Bailey Island, encouraging them to get as much education as possible. Some of them went on to be some of America's first perpetual college students.
In 1911, a local newspaper, The Casco Bay Breeze, published this wheeze about the summer families of Bailey Island:
It must be borne in mind that numbers alone is a very minor consideration in making a summer resort ideal; there is a certain tone and refinement in the personnel of a summer colony which, subtle but distinct, attracts the highest class of people to its shores. And it is exactly this tone that Bailey's possesses. It is composed of people of intellectual attainment and ability far beyond the ordinary people who represent the advanced thinkers and businessmen of the country, men who are exemplifications of the highest type of American citizenship. The spirit of co-operation [translation; relationship between islander and highlander or summer people] on the island is noticeable almost as soon as one sets foot on it.
I call it a wheeze because of another anecdote, this one of an islander, I ran across in a little-known book of my late maternal grandfather's, Charlie York, Maine Coast Fisherman. Charlie was born on Bailey Island and lived there until the 1940's. This is his recollection of the 4th of July celebration on Bailey Island in 1925 in full view of the summer colony descended from the Bowdoin anti-slavery crowd and their equally educated friends:
...When I was a young feller I had joined the Redmen at Orr's Island, and after the Ku Klux Klan come to our town in 1924 I joined that. i never enjoyed any Lodge so much as I did the Klan at first. It had the principle of brotherly love for feller members and they was a high moral tone to it...
Bigest time we ever had was the Fourth of July, 1925. About a hundred klansmen, most of 'em from Orr's and Bailey's, had a parade in full regalia at ten o'clock in the morning. I guess evry man, woman, and child that lived there and was able to walk watched the parade, and most all the summer people. They was booths for ice cream, cold drinks, and sandridges(sic). I was in charge of one where you could buy three baseballs for a nickel and try to hit an image of the Pope at the back of the tent. They was a toy bowlin' alley, and games for children, and a 600-pound tuna and a large shark was hung up for display. We had a grand clam and lobster bake at 6:00, and fireworks after dark.
It has long been accepted that the KKK came to Orr's and Bailey to help garner support among the islanders for a bridge to be built between Orr's and Bailey. However, another anecdote yielded the full truth for the KKK presence that I just ran across in an even lesser-known book, as it is a vanity press-published one by the wife of a descendant of the Rev. Adams' parishioners from New Jersey whose summer cottage along the Seabank is still in the family, some 125 years later :
During the bridge conflict, the Ku Klux Klan arrived on Orr's island. Their principles of brotherly love for fellow members had a high moral tone and many respected members became members in the hopes that they would straighten out a huge number of messes. Huge KKK letters were painted on the Spring House, partially owned by Ethel Johnson who lived next door and was against the bridge. Rip Black admitted, "Know more than I should about KKK on Spring House, you can take that as you want."...
Rip said the KKK's main objective was to keep out the Catholics and keep young people on the island. He explained how unequal the treatment of Catholics was in those days: a Catholic friend of his was expelled in high school for doing exactly what he had, for which he had received only a reprimand from the principle..."
It is more than ironic that the highly-educated and over enlightened descendants of a summer colony founded by prominent high-minded abolitionists as well as relatives of General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain went on to partake in and enjoy a 4th of July celebration hosted by the KKK, just 11 years after Joshua's own death and only 40 years after the end of the Civil War.
* It is more than doubtful that Cyrus Curtis came to Bailey Island on the Lyndonia in the summer of 1894 as according to U.S. naval records, the Lyndonia was not built until 1907. However, there are photos still in existence of the Lyndonia in Mackeral Cove so she did visit Bailey Island, only much later than thought. Curtis must have sailed over from Portland in the summer of 1894 on a smaller craft.
The Swedenborg business is fascinating. The whole thing really took hold here in Cincinnati in the mid-nineteenth century, and a number of my ancestors got all wrapped up in it (earlier ancestors were accusors during the Salem witch trials, and I'm an Episcopalian, so perhaps we have a genetic bent towards heresy).
A few years ago, it came time to sell the family pile, which actually had a "Swedenborg Room." I found myself the proud inheritor of a life-sized oil painting of Emanuel Swedenborg, a full library of his pontifications, and an oil painting of Milo Williams' daughter (he was a founder of Urbana College, which is I believe to be the only Swedenborgian institution of higher ed.)
We had our last Swedenborgian family funeral in 2002 (a liturgical train wreck), and there are still two Swedenborg churches in Cincinnati.
It's rather strange religion, though. I tried wading through one of Swedenborg's books once, and it was completely odd. As best as I can tell, it's like Mormonism, but for educated people.
Posted by: Nasty, Brutish & Short | July 03, 2007 at 04:06 PM
Fascinatin' stuff, Mrs. P. I've known of the Chamberlain/Stowe/Bailey's gunnegshun for some time, but never in anything like this detail.
When we come up this summer, we're planning to introduce the Llama-ettes to the full-bore Joshu-ay treatment in Brunswick.
BTB, my apologies for not following up on your pre-vacation note - I didn't see it until several days after the fact and haven't talked to Mom since then. We'll sort it out some time.
Posted by: Robbo the Llama Butcher | July 03, 2007 at 05:05 PM
In The Education of Henry Adams, Adams notes in his first chapter that, as to Massachusetts and New England, "Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, had always been the systematic organization of hatereds...." The author of these words would not be surprised at a KKK rally in Maine: "The chief charm of New England was harshness of contrasts and extremes of sensibility -- a cold that froze the blood, and a heat that boiled it--so that the pleasure of hating -- one's self if no better victim offered -- was not its rarest amusement; but the charm was a true and natural child of the soil, not a cultivated weed of the ancients."
Posted by: Crackie | July 03, 2007 at 07:24 PM
N.S.B., hmmm, I too am descended from an accuser at Salem with persecution long being a familial strong suit...
This Swedenborgan thing -- just typing it brings to mind Ginger Rogers in Bachelor Mother attempting to speak Swedish -- is warped. I like the idea of Mormonism for the educated. Are the figures in your paintings wearing clothes? The nudity thing is what I think sets them most apart from the Mormons...
I love the idea that the 60's kids still earnestly believe they were the first ones to go au naturale...
Robbo, this is only the begining...As for Mamma Llama, perhaps next year you and all the Llamas can drop by. If you do the Chamberlain connection, you must come to Maiden Lane on Bailey off of Washington and Barker Pt - there you will find The Seashell and you will see the bank and orchard I grew up playing in. Watch out for snakes, unless you like them. And, if you are extremely clever you will find the spots down along the Giant Stairs where I went through my own Swedenborgan stage as an art student... No one, absolutely no one has figured those spots out yet, except for my husband and that was because he was shown... We were down at your club. Is your boat in the water? I'm guessing you would be a sailor but you've spoken quite a bit about fishing so you might have a power boat...who knows?
Crackie, a wry smile was evinced upon reading your words...
Posted by: Mrs. Peperium | July 05, 2007 at 11:13 AM
Most of the accusors seemed to have been from the Putnam family--those are my ancestors. Perhaps we are cousins? Maybe you and I can go in together, and accuse someone of witchcraft, for old times' sake?
Nudity and Swedenborganism is a new one to me. Never heard of that, all my ancestors were total prudes.
Posted by: Nasty, Brutish & Short | July 05, 2007 at 12:28 PM
The Swedenborgians' only contribution to society of any merit is Bryn Athyn Cathedral in Pennsylvania, which is rather handsome.
Posted by: Andrew Cusack | July 05, 2007 at 01:05 PM
Mrs. P - I will make a point of wandering down to have a dekko at the scene of your childhood romps, even though, like Indiana Jones, I hate snakes. And I shall probably never view the Giant Stair in the same light again!
No boat at the moment, as working for Uncle wouldn't quite cover the costs. (And never a stink pot, even if I could afford one!) However, one of Mamma Llama's friends has offered to take me out in his when we go up. Also, we are planning to enroll the eldest gel in sailing camp at teh club starting next year.
Posted by: Robbo the Llama Butcher | July 05, 2007 at 04:40 PM
Then your eldest will be sailing with our nieces. The noose is drawing tighter...
Posted by: Mrs. Peperium | July 05, 2007 at 07:53 PM
Nasty, Brutish & Short, I need to look up which girl it was but my memory is it was not the one whose father owned Tituba, but perhaps, only perhaps at this point, her cousin. Putnam is a name that is around in our family tree and a branch of cousins did go out to Ohio in the very early 1800's to settle land that the government awarded them in return for land and property they lost when the British burned their town -- thanks Basil-- some 217 years ago this Sunday actually, so it is possible we have some of the same blood coarsing through our veins.
As for starting new witch hunts, sure. But only if Father M. promises to ride shotgun. Just to give it the real 21st century authentic flair...
Posted by: Mrs. Peperium | July 06, 2007 at 08:59 AM