To Senator H.C. Lodge: A Call for Reform in the Congo

King Leopold II of Belgium

Published in the Boston Daily Globe on January 12, 1907, the following letter expressed Charlie Gibson, Jr.’s support of a Senate resolution introduced by Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge the previous year:

Hon. H. C. Lodge, Senior Senator from Massachusetts, US Senate:

            Dear Sir—I have learned with much gratification of the resolution which you have introduced in the senate, to empower this government to take such steps as may be possible to urge the government of the Congo to carry out, with some degree of effectiveness, reforms in the administration of that state.

            I have been cognizant, in company with many thousands of others in this state, for some years of the oppression and cruelties inflicted upon natives of the Congo by officials and others there.

            I believe there is a strong feeling upon the part of bankers and business interests, entirely apart from the religious movement, that in the cause of humanity such brutalities and oppression should, if possible, be stopped at the earliest moment.

            May I, therefore, in company with them, respectfully urge you to use every power at your command to induce the US senate to take such action as is desirable and at the present time. Believe me to be, with high regard, yours very truly,

            Charles Gibson.

            Boston, Jan. 5, 1907.

In writing the above letter in support of the senator’s resolution (full text provided below), Charlie added his voice to the growing international movement against the cruel and oppressive policies that Belgian King Leopold II inflicted upon the Congolese. 

Charles Gibson Remembers Mark Twain

Travelling with members of the Boston Authors Club, including club president and “Battle Hymn of the Republic” author Julia Ward Howe, Charlie Gibson, Jr. attended the dedication ceremony of the Thomas Bailey Aldrich Memorial Museum (author Aldrich’s childhood home) in 1908. Held in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the event featured many distinguished speakers, including Mark Twain, who had been Aldrich’s close friend.

Nearly forty years later, Charlie wrote a short article on Twain’s tribute to Aldrich that day, which was published in late 1945 in the Mark Twain Quarterly, the official publication of the International Mark Twain Society. Entitled, “My Last Impression of Mark Twain,” Charlie wrote that Twain would “always remain the picture indelibly imprinted upon my mind, as he appeared on the stage” at the Aldrich Memorial. For Charlie, Mark Twain’s performance stood out as an example of the author’s great genius and extraordinary abilities.

To the Heroes of the Sea

“The tremendous drama attending the tragedy of Warren’s going, the terrific explosion through the whole metropolitan area of New York, the blowing to atoms of the officers and crew, . . . whirled into the snow storm and melting with the snowflakes into the sea; its repercussions here . . . were calculated to stir the emotions to their depths, and I think they have.”

The above excerpt comes from a letter Charlie Gibson, Jr. wrote to his nephew Henry Allen after the death of Lt. Warren Winslow, another nephew, aboard the USS Turner, which exploded and sank off the coast off New York in January 1944 (see “The USS Turner Disaster,” August 7, 2015). Lt. Winslow, like most officers aboard, went down with the ship.

While there is little documentation to provide us with greater insight into just how deeply this bereavement affected Charlie, he did write a poem that could be read as an expression of grief. Entitled “Antinous,” it is an elegy “to the heroes of the sea who have given their lives during the war.” Select stanzas of the poem, which is quite long, appear below.

A few details concerning the poem’s classical references and central theme are necessary to make its meaning clearer. Although Charlie describes the poem as an elegy to American sailors killed in the war, like his nephew, he does not speak directly to them or Lt. Winslow. Rather, his poem is an elegy to Antinous, the lover of the Roman emperor Hadrian (76–138 CE). Antinous was universally admired for his youth and beauty. He met a similar and equally tragic an end as Lt. Winslow when he drowned in the Nile.

Charlie holds Antinous up as the “symbol of youth,” and this relates to the central theme of the poem, therefore explaining why it is Antinous and not Lt. Winslow whom Charlie addresses. As the “symbol of youth,” Antinous represents, for Charlie, all the young sailors killed in the war, and in a more general sense the poem expresses the sorrow over so many young lives cut short by war. Charlie does not write of war-time death in romantic or glorifying terms as Lord Tennyson did in “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” Rather, his lines speak only of pain and grief and the profound absence felt in Charlie’s family and so many others as a result of the Second World War.

The USS Turner Disaster

 

Recently during my summer internship with the Gibson House, archiving a collection of family manuscripts, I was surprised to discover evidence of yet another Gibson family member death at sea, that of Lieutenant Warren Winslow, the twenty-five-year-old son of Rosamond Gibson Winslow (“Little” Ros). (An earlier GHM blog post covered the death of John Gardiner Gibson, Jr. aboard the Lyonnais; see “History Repeats Itself,” January 1, 2015.) Lt. Winslow, a Harvard graduate called to service when he was attending Harvard Law School, was one of the 139 sailors lost when the USS Turner, a naval destroyer, sank to the ocean floor just a few miles northeast of Sandy Hook, New Jersey, on January 3, 1944.

A series of explosions aboard ship that morning completely wrecked the vessel and started fires that could not be effectively controlled. While the navy later could not determine the exact cause of the first explosion, an investigation turned up no evidence of enemy action or sabotage. The official report could only suggest that stored ammunition on board had something to do with the incident, as the first explosion occurred in an area containing ammunition meant for transfer later that day.

After a sixteen-day voyage on the Atlantic, the USS Turner had anchored a few miles off of Sandy Hook early on the morning of the third and had begun preparations to sail for Gravesend Bay, New York, to transfer its cargo of ammunition to Fort Lafayette in Brooklyn. The sky was overcast and snow was falling in the area. Nearby were other naval vessels, including the USS Stevenson and USS Thorn, which maintained a continuous underwater sound search. These sonar sweeps detected no enemy craft in the area.

So it came as a complete shock when, at about 6:17 a.m., a violent explosion rocked the USS Turner. 

On Charlie Gibson

Something about Charlie Gibson fascinates. His many quirks, his devotion to preserving the past, the tragedy of his being born in the wrong era, his egoism, and his inflexibility are all what make him so very human. He also provides rich ground for the student of history as one peels back the layers of his personality. Recently, while digging around in the archives, I stumbled on a transcript of an interview with an acquaintance of Charlie's, Mr. Lester Beck. While I found the interview charming, it simultaneously reaffirmed and challenged what I thought I knew about Charlie. Here are some of my favorite bits:

"Q.: Mr. Beck, how did you meet Charles Gibson? 

L.B.: I had been living in Boston, and I read a Life magazine article about him. It was about 1939 or 1940. One day, I just stopped in--I just stopped at the house here and told him I was interested in old homes and such, and so he invited me in, and showed me around. At that time India’s separation from Great Britain was a big event, and Mr. Gibson was corresponding with Ghandi. 

[Editorial note: The Life magazine article mentioned was published in 1941 and was entitled "John Marquand's Boston." The image above is from that article. Charlie is sitting at the desk, while author John Marquand is on the right.]

L.B. [upon being brought by the interviewer into the dining room]: He still ate in the dining room by himself. I believe he always ate in this room. He didn’t seem to have many friends, particularly. He always had the table set with everything on it--much more, many more things than are set out now. He ate alone, here [to the right side of the table, upon entering]. He ate very sparingly. Very sparingly. He was cash conscious. He was also very class conscious. He said there were some people who had to do these things [indicating pantry area]. I don’t believe he ever had more than one servant, but he did always have one, a butler, or handyman, or whatever they called them. I remember once he had a butler--a young man--and one time the police came after him [the butler] for something, and Mr. Gibson complained that the police tracked [dirt] all over the carpets.

[Editorial note: It is highly unlikely that Charlie had a butler at this time, especially if he was so cash conscious. He more likely had a hired hand, a "man of all work" who did a variety of tasks.] 

L.B.: Mr. Gibson was always thinking that things weren’t what they once were. Boston was changing. Harvard admitted people who once would never have gone there, he said. He lived for this house. He lived for the old times. He was so fond of his mother. He was conscious of who he was. But he was very careful [of money]. I remember once when I came over he suggested that we go 'round to the Ritz Carlton bar for a drink. When we put on our coats to go out, he put on a raccoon coat with a big split up the sleeve. He wore it that way. We went to the bar, and after we had had drinks, and he had paid for them, the waitress stood by [waiting for her tip]. He waved her away, and said, “I’ll take care of you later.” He never did, though. He was very careful with money, and class conscious.

     No, he really didn’t want things to change. He was part of the old times, the formal times. He always shopped at Brooks Brothers. He was always dressed properly.

     I especially remember one thing about him: he was a chain smoker. He was always smoking, and of course there were ashes, so he carried everywhere in the house with him a little broom on a long handle. When he dropped the ashes, he would brush them into the rug and say it was good for keeping moths away."

What I find most striking about this interview is Mr. Beck's overall characterization of Charlie as someone who "really didn't want things to change." He mentions this several times, and this is what has always struck me as a mainstay of Charlie's personality. What Mr. Beck seems to have witnessed in many forms is that for Charlie Gibson, the passage of time was a painful ordeal.

by: Katie Schinabeck, Former Museum Guide

Sources: 

Beck, Lester. Interview with Gibson House Museum Staff Member. 29 October, 1988.

Letters from Cuba: Fourteen Months as an Army Surgeon

“I am writing this letter from the camp of the 7th US Cavalry with two troops of which I have been out on a practice march since Jan’y 13th. . . . We are now in our third week and on our way home and we hope to reach Havana in about five days. I have a fine little horse that I have had for about 6 months and he is standing the march splendidly.”

These words Dr. Freeman Allen wrote from Cuba to future wife Mary Ethel Gibson in January 1901. The doctor had been in Cuba for a year by that point, hired on contract by the US Army as acting assistant surgeon in western Cuba. Altogether, the young army doctor spent fourteen months on the island as part of the American occupation force in the years after the Spanish-American War (Feb.–Dec. 1898).

The Gibson Family in the Civil War: Part II

Today, we continue with Rosamond Warren Gibson’s recollections of her time in New Orleans during the American Civil War:

“We reached New Orleans on March 29th, and found that friends had secured a delightful little house for us in the Rue Conti, run by a madame and her daughter. The rooms were filled with flowers, and a delicious breakfast greeted us. Our visit was a curious and interesting one, as the city was filled with Northern officers and their wives, and the few Southern women remaining there drew aside their skirts as we passed. Governor N. P. Banks (formerly Governor of Massachusetts, but at that time Military Commander of New Orleans) was the reigning king, and Admiral Farragut the hero. One evening we went to a large reception at the Governor’s where I was introduced to the Admiral and walked about on his arm. When I begged him to give us a gunboat to go home by the Mississippi River, as our passage through the Gulf had been such a horrid one, he said, “Oh yes, you can have two. Just ask Admiral Palmer,” (James S. Palmer) who was a friend of Mr. Hammond’s. As the pilot of one boat arrived next day with the top of his head shot off by sharp-shooters, we decided we had better stick to the Gulf! There were many of our friends there from Boston, and others who were in and out all day long, bringing flowers and news of the fighting up the river. In the evenings we sat talking and singing with the windows open."