tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43642516528300131882024-03-24T03:09:58.051-04:00The Gibson StudyWelcome to The Gibson Study, the official GHM blog! Whether you're a recent visitor, museum member, or researcher, please enjoy exploring our digital content. Visit us in person in Boston's Back Bay!Gibson House Museumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00685472634101571238noreply@blogger.comBlogger70125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4364251652830013188.post-91257637923868442672024-03-22T15:27:00.000-04:002024-03-22T15:27:08.467-04:00Artists Known: Two Dressmakers in Gilded Age Boston<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; white-space-collapse: preserve;">"Mrs. M. A. Friend" and "Mrs. J. E. Chapman," creators of some of the gowns in the Gibson House collection, were self-made women, in more than just business. Even their ages were reinvented several times over the years, with different dates given to census takers. In a world that frequently defined women by the men around them, they belonged to a group that allowed (conditional) self-determination: career women. Both set out to make their mark in the female-dominated field of dressmaking.
<br /></span><span id="docs-internal-guid-a7d2ad78-7fff-66c3-ddb7-d4096b453cc1"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Margaret Alice McKenna Friend was born around 1850 in New Ipswich, New Hampshire; Julia Evelyn Dobson Chapman between 1850 and 1857 in New Brunswick, Canada. The former would end up separated from her husband by 1900, with three daughters. The latter, who had no children, remained married to Everett Chapman, with whom she ran a dressmaking business, until her death.
<br /></span></span></span><span id="docs-internal-guid-09296f07-7fff-8dc0-33c1-d1c0eaeb72a4"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The two women's paths converged in the same place: the Boston dressmaking world. Margaret first appears in the 1882 city directory working at 25 Winter Street; from then until her last listing in 1902, her business would move several times. The Chapmans seldom moved, settling at 579 Dudley Street in Roxbury from 1892 until their business closed in 1923.</span></span></span></div><p><span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_jWup-TUvDYD51JOhsp-9Zx2CffZY7AjPriwsLjnCzDxvJcYlxDyEpCiLgt8AsLbuGCJ4NoaJPliXGPvAkOKFexYZvJ-sv5A_OvoaMTCd0TEymlodXj_LxDQ4NF-CIzcsyOjHd65Nawq9Y2E8UZHksT3-KQRzOo0idS0elAvQGwkcE-nvCKH8sJ4/s1454/Screen%20Shot%202024-03-22%20at%203.17.00%20PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="958" data-original-width="1454" height="422" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_jWup-TUvDYD51JOhsp-9Zx2CffZY7AjPriwsLjnCzDxvJcYlxDyEpCiLgt8AsLbuGCJ4NoaJPliXGPvAkOKFexYZvJ-sv5A_OvoaMTCd0TEymlodXj_LxDQ4NF-CIzcsyOjHd65Nawq9Y2E8UZHksT3-KQRzOo0idS0elAvQGwkcE-nvCKH8sJ4/w640-h422/Screen%20Shot%202024-03-22%20at%203.17.00%20PM.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: xx-small;">Punch Magazine, July 28, 1877</span></td></tr></tbody></table></span><span style="font-size: 11pt; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">While Margaret was the sole proprietor of her business, the Chapmans worked in tandem. Rare in dressmaking, husband-and-wife teams had the distinct advantage of bringing a man’s social privilege to the business enterprise. Reflecting this bias, only Everett appears in directories representing the Chapmans; he is described as a “ladies’ tailor.” Surviving gowns are “signed” by Julia, however, so she likely did the prestigious work of design, cutting and fitting, and dealing directly with clients.</span></span></div><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-8ede5281-7fff-ebe8-ec0b-8073b6c57eaf"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiH6heLljDj95iaWup5J7hb5hsz-w3KyErj5hJ1OYUw4HfkcysKErY7BVsbH_8oNOBY6COjoGmQA50zan4JJLaR1r8piBCmKOTfwYwhW-kkedm5NyAiWcjvWIOtmBRbl2IOpFDFxk3L196Xzz1KExl8LL1K5x2rJZpl9oxO9HjnAx9FcSIYAFWl3w/s4032/IMG_9565.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiH6heLljDj95iaWup5J7hb5hsz-w3KyErj5hJ1OYUw4HfkcysKErY7BVsbH_8oNOBY6COjoGmQA50zan4JJLaR1r8piBCmKOTfwYwhW-kkedm5NyAiWcjvWIOtmBRbl2IOpFDFxk3L196Xzz1KExl8LL1K5x2rJZpl9oxO9HjnAx9FcSIYAFWl3w/s320/IMG_9565.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: xx-small;"><i>Collection of the Gibson House Museum</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table></span></span></p><div><span><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Dressmakers’ shops generally had hierarchies. Apprentices formed the base, learning the trade (although the unlucky only sewed seams until their apprenticeships ended). Above them were stitchers or seamstresses, employees who assembled garments. And at the top of the pyramid was the proprietress, often called "Madame," to whom the most complex tasks fell: draping patterns for garments and fitting them. Some dressmaking shops seem to have been close-knit institutions, but this system, while it provided some economic freedom for women, also presented avenues for exploitation. Women with money were the most likely to be able to afford the start-up costs of a business. Here, as in all elements of life, race, ethnicity, and class played a role in who ended up a "Madame" and who spent her career in the workroom. Julia’s and Margaret’s employees are not documented, with one exception: an eighteen-year-old bookkeeper named Bertha Thorne, who boarded with the Chapmans in 1910<span style="font-size: 11pt;">.</span></span></span></span></div><p></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1cf10ce4-7fff-17a6-f5fc-d4ac44ce8073"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Clientele could be difficult, too. For high-ranked dressmakers, balancing consumer demands with reasonable expectations was a necessity. A customer might return from Paris with a couture gown, for example, and commission a dressmaker to make an equally sumptuous evening bodice for it with only leftover silk. One of the biggest potential issues for a dressmaker was client bill nonpayment, a situation that reflected patriarchal social realities. A woman’s ability to pay her bill usually depended on her husband’s willingness to open his purse—and with popular lore being full of derogatory stereotypes of predatory dressmakers “forcing” women into extravagance, he might well be inclined to refuse. A dressmaking proprietress could sue for recompense, but a successful suit commonly hinged on an ability to pay court fees, something few could sustain for long.
</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-18bbf551-7fff-4460-12f3-5c841fbc11e2"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">It’s no wonder that the average lifespan of a dressmaking business in Gilded-Age Boston was about six years—a fact that makes Margaret’s twenty-year career remarkable, and Julia’s thirty-one years in business nothing short of exceptional (although she had the benefit of a man’s name on the enterprise). This perhaps accounts for the wide breadth of Julia’s work that can be found in the Gibson collection: gowns dating from the 1890s almost until the 1910s. So much work from one local dressmaker, all with attribution, is rare indeed. While the Gibson House holds only one dress by Margaret Friend, it’s still unusual: a work of commercial art produced by a woman that can be definitively linked back to its designer.</span></span></span></div><p style="text-align: left;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVqE0eMiGhyphenhyphen7AvQfQGJFY4tf0nO6Ync5w3kkAEMq2J7NOcwm4i3Qq5iX5PbQWTrXbZSCOJ82yedgHnb6yx0ZJat3mQIfAVVTqE5oHiVi-Vg0p5uibdKzH2Z4xUwCMOHQ1FjBu-akW3Ejd4fL4S7IadowEF_vu8bVZRa689t3N9Uu9fhG8CPz4spzI/s4032/IMG_8243.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVqE0eMiGhyphenhyphen7AvQfQGJFY4tf0nO6Ync5w3kkAEMq2J7NOcwm4i3Qq5iX5PbQWTrXbZSCOJ82yedgHnb6yx0ZJat3mQIfAVVTqE5oHiVi-Vg0p5uibdKzH2Z4xUwCMOHQ1FjBu-akW3Ejd4fL4S7IadowEF_vu8bVZRa689t3N9Uu9fhG8CPz4spzI/s320/IMG_8243.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Collection of the Gibson House Museum</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-17680977-7fff-65f2-70de-a1af263e8990"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The end of each woman’s career differed greatly. <br /></span></span></span><span id="docs-internal-guid-17680977-7fff-65f2-70de-a1af263e8990"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Julia Chapman died around 1923, while the business still operated. Afterwards, Everett closed the shop and moved with Julia’s sister Gertrude, who had worked with the couple for many years, to a farm in Maine. He died in the 1930s. Margaret Friend left dressmaking in 1902, and by 1909, when she was almost sixty, had, remarkably, reinvented herself as a fashion journalist. She regularly traveled between Paris and the United States, writing for Vogue even during World War I. She died in 1930, while living with her daughter in New York City.
<br /></span></span></span><span id="docs-internal-guid-e1b84dbd-7fff-b65d-b80e-e534cb0fb611"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Through the lenses of these women’s lives and work, we can see two possible roads that one could travel to success in dressmaking. Perhaps most notably, these women managed to fashion lives for themselves in a way that few working women were able to at the time, crafting self-identities with as much skill and care as their artistic creations.<br /></span></span></span><span><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></i></span></span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">- Catherine Carver, Office Assistant, Guide, and Museum Technicia<span style="font-size: 11pt;">n</span></span></i></span></span></div><p></p>Gibson House Museumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00685472634101571238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4364251652830013188.post-59146826028881766782023-08-25T11:35:00.005-04:002023-08-25T11:35:52.723-04:00Summering in Nahant<span style="font-family: georgia;">There were two social seasons in the elite Bostonian’s calendar: the winter season in Boston, which began in mid-November and lasted until the beginning of Lent; and the summer season, which ran from about May through September. In the summer season, the wealthy decamped for their summer homes on the coast and in the mountains. One of the most popular spots was Nahant, an island community about an hour north of Boston.<br /><br />The Gibson family owned a summer home on Nahant called “Forty Steps,” named after the beach that the house overlooks. Catherine Gibson inherited the home from her father, Samuel Hammond, in the 1850s, and continued to summer there for most of her life. <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1DWYeo6Kr9B-ft20cHWWvjaXwUb82FiEsx7nMp6WJSRtP6WyCSaj3K9SpONDeJ60LBfEE5G-6AYdZKVk8Ttd_jxTeojMVn6vVjg31PVY-PfWyVsRiI6uJ5MVDLqAwAHssJtMx9f1mllCcFJFBSsr-T6klW3zrZXJz47XxHGlP5lcieBJFV00SqeI/s5313/DSC00596.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3542" data-original-width="5313" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1DWYeo6Kr9B-ft20cHWWvjaXwUb82FiEsx7nMp6WJSRtP6WyCSaj3K9SpONDeJ60LBfEE5G-6AYdZKVk8Ttd_jxTeojMVn6vVjg31PVY-PfWyVsRiI6uJ5MVDLqAwAHssJtMx9f1mllCcFJFBSsr-T6klW3zrZXJz47XxHGlP5lcieBJFV00SqeI/w400-h266/DSC00596.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Forty Steps, Nahant (Gibson House Museum)<br /><br /></span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></span><span><a name='more'></a></span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">When her son Charles married Rosamond Warren, he found a partner who was also deeply tied to Nahant. The Warrens owned Rose Cottage; Rosamond would go on to spend all but five summers of her life on Nahant. Her memoir is chock-full of pleasant recollections of time spent with family and friends there. She remembers greeting the men off the ferry at 2pm, which shuttled the businessmen from Boston back to Nahant daily. She also recalls the bathing houses lined up along the shore, for people to change into their bathing costumes.<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO0WIjhpSmHSr9zPEpUeAQsvfpUnyShDtUPqzIpNXLBAzuqcLLNmOqcKYEURp9rwwxyb8oVz8n_TRVUDUvj-5YbooD9Sf7pGU20-j_xLe61wzxhqNw8oZIWU1fEO1CuUyKPP4-M4X6KKJhH0pwa7wGfKAj5cSAm22MtpDGnwiHQWV6gJRaC6H6ReM/s3488/Rosamond%20Warren%20Gibson%20C%201934.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3488" data-original-width="2208" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO0WIjhpSmHSr9zPEpUeAQsvfpUnyShDtUPqzIpNXLBAzuqcLLNmOqcKYEURp9rwwxyb8oVz8n_TRVUDUvj-5YbooD9Sf7pGU20-j_xLe61wzxhqNw8oZIWU1fEO1CuUyKPP4-M4X6KKJhH0pwa7wGfKAj5cSAm22MtpDGnwiHQWV6gJRaC6H6ReM/s320/Rosamond%20Warren%20Gibson%20C%201934.jpg" width="203" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Rosamond Warren Gibson, c.1934, Nahant <br />(Gibson House Museum)</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table>It was a complicated endeavor to pack up and head off to Nahant for the summer. The staff would close up the house in Boston and pack up theirs and the family’s trunks. As one family member remembered, “We would order a horse-drawn dray…and they would drive up…and start at eight-o-clock in the morning loading trunks and suitcases and silver and laundry and extra groceries…” After the dray left with the luggage, the family and staff would follow via the Boston to Lynn train.<br /><br />During the summer, the Gibsons and their neighbors spent time swimming, playing games, and entertaining friends. The 4th of July celebrations were one of the highlights of the summer and the children would win prizes for different races.<br /><br />Rosamond passed her love of Nahant to her children. Ethel, her eldest, got married at the Village Church in June of 1911; afterwards, her mother wrote to Ethel, “Wasn’t it a wonderful wedding? I think it was the loveliest thing I ever saw. The place like a fairy cottage… No one the worse for the champagne and yet everyone had all they wanted.”<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Charlie Gibson was equally attached to the family summer home. In his later years, he spent his summers tending to the rose gardens, and they became a destination for travelers to the Boston area. The gardens were even written up in the <i>New York Times</i>.</span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtynCrAcppxbAMYwHrUF0V74SxSQoClxgMZibNnrXPx6bDRqVMxGLnvCZNRCL9Phb10SO54xbUxPehTiH3jMu0DHMHKwlexoYNkToGV8hFEfGmkzDi48cSzQWIBIQqkwAk00jcj7x-F9sebS3RSVEuHpRK34aTPaBinhsGkMsgdeJvztTqVyg7Em8/s600/1992.470.97%20Garden%20at%2040%20Steps_result.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="386" data-original-width="600" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtynCrAcppxbAMYwHrUF0V74SxSQoClxgMZibNnrXPx6bDRqVMxGLnvCZNRCL9Phb10SO54xbUxPehTiH3jMu0DHMHKwlexoYNkToGV8hFEfGmkzDi48cSzQWIBIQqkwAk00jcj7x-F9sebS3RSVEuHpRK34aTPaBinhsGkMsgdeJvztTqVyg7Em8/s320/1992.470.97%20Garden%20at%2040%20Steps_result.bmp" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Rose gardens, Nahant (Gibson House Museum)</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br />It seemed that Nahant held a special place in the hearts of so many who spent their summers there. Charlie’s cousin-in-law, Lord Lyon Playfair, wrote “Beautiful walks and drives are to be found at every turn; whilst Nahant has happily remained free from the features of the fashionable watering-place, and from the dissipations of summer resorts better known to the outer world.” And, indeed, as Newport became an opulent destination for the New York elite, Nahant remained a more muted and less showy summer locale for the Boston set.</span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>On Saturday, September 16, 2023, the Gibson House is hosting "<a href="https://www.thegibsonhouse.org/events">By the Seaside: A Literary Walking Tour of Nahant</a>." Space is limited - <a href="https://fareharbor.com/embeds/book/thegibsonhouse/items/479431/calendar/2023/09/?flow=468779&full-items=yes" target="_blank">register</a> today!</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>- Meghan Gelardi Holmes, Curator</i></span></div></div></div></div>Gibson House Museumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00685472634101571238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4364251652830013188.post-79927612078166744362022-05-03T10:48:00.001-04:002022-05-03T10:48:48.748-04:00Venice and Boston: A 19th Century Love Affair<div style="text-align: center;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-949fdcde-7fff-f288-c683-138a9136237e"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This blog post is one of a two-part series on collections at the Gibson House Museum from Italy.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>When you leave the Music Room at the Gibson House, a small wooden icon frames the doorway above you. Visitors ask about this object regularly: What is it? Who is the saint depicted? Why is it located in such a prominent spot? As one of the only overtly religious items in this Brahmin (and, therefore, staunch Protestant) household, it does catch your eye.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlp5DdS5TOlHpu27xzzjUALSJtVOQ4Z3ATv4clp9cwTuBNHeQx-zonJpyzdeJ8QsNPVF4ruEgoKNkgo8F6UcrV6nGmNbr4N4sWyk1lSE4Vj24D_U_LHF4q2GSWArKe8z-AM8oO1M7L0PRy4E_ijtT6lnkl2akN_xBtLjXvWlANR-x2Kff1TDZZ/s4608/1993.058.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4608" data-original-width="3456" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlp5DdS5TOlHpu27xzzjUALSJtVOQ4Z3ATv4clp9cwTuBNHeQx-zonJpyzdeJ8QsNPVF4ruEgoKNkgo8F6UcrV6nGmNbr4N4sWyk1lSE4Vj24D_U_LHF4q2GSWArKe8z-AM8oO1M7L0PRy4E_ijtT6lnkl2akN_xBtLjXvWlANR-x2Kff1TDZZ/w150-h200/1993.058.JPG" width="150" /></a></div><br />The icon is of St. Mark (San Marco), the patron saint of Venice. On the wall to its right is a copy of Flora, a well-known painting by Venetian Old Master Titian. If Paris is sometimes considered the essential European destination for American travelers today, Venice held the same appeal for late-nineteenth-century American travelers. It wasn’t necessarily a center for contemporary art or fashion; rather, it represented an old Europe that Americans found exotic and romantic. Venice was no longer an international powerhouse, but its Renaissance-era art and architecture reminded travelers of its previous glory (in a distinctly non-threatening way).<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhSucpgpMk9yAVtxN1l8wK9YYbjLBiEbWGI6v2SNZfbSHpjzWkMnewnomTaLqf2XOJ8UH36hUZGEE3pKhpS9owqwY79d2IFvu85oX5kHNmDSRf9_yXWKDdb0EoxBrZ8rRjqhQmwpKANWdxxa1wKFle9bzTG6_RyLv7NRy08ecdTaIfjstTqEnf/s4608/1993.057.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4608" data-original-width="3456" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhSucpgpMk9yAVtxN1l8wK9YYbjLBiEbWGI6v2SNZfbSHpjzWkMnewnomTaLqf2XOJ8UH36hUZGEE3pKhpS9owqwY79d2IFvu85oX5kHNmDSRf9_yXWKDdb0EoxBrZ8rRjqhQmwpKANWdxxa1wKFle9bzTG6_RyLv7NRy08ecdTaIfjstTqEnf/w150-h200/1993.057.JPG" width="150" /></a></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div><br /></div>Local Boston tastemaker Isabella Stewart Gardner was completely smitten with Venice. She traveled there regularly, and used the architecture of the city as inspiration—and as literal building blocks—for her collections at Fenway Court (now the <a href="https://www.gardnermuseum.org/">Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum</a>).<br /><br />Members of the Gibson family likely traveled to Venice, possibly as part of a Grand Tour (of which Venice was an essential stop). During this period there was quite a robust market for large-scale copies of Old Master works, and the Gibsons may have purchased the copy of Flora during their travels. We can liken these kinds of copies to very fancy postcards; they allowed tourists to take a little piece of Italian visual culture home with them. The icon, on the other hand, may have been taken directly from a church in the city. Travelers in this period thought nothing of grabbing a chip off the Parthenon or the Colosseum to take back home, and the regulations surrounding antiquities were not yet developed. Taken together, these objects point to the love affair Bostonians had with Venice in the second half of the nineteenth century. <br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><i>On Tuesday, May 3, and Saturday, May 7, the Gibson House Museum is offering the specialty tour “The Gibsons in a Global World,” which explores the house and collections with a focus on objects from outside the United States, including Italy. Book your tour today at <a href="https://www.bostondesignweek.com/">Boston Design Week</a>.</i></div><br /><div style="text-align: right;"><i>- Meghan Gelardi Holmes, Curator</i></div><br />To learn more:<div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><a href="https://warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/knowledgecentre/arts/literature/americans-writing-venice/">Americans Writing Venice: Edith Wharton and Henry James</a>, Warwick Knowledge Centre (October 2011)</li><li><a href="https://www.gardnermuseum.org/blog/venice-fenway-architectural-elements-courtyard">From Venice to the Fenway: Architectural Elements in the Courtyard</a>, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (April 2021)</li></ul><span id="docs-internal-guid-6adc5c95-7fff-026a-3712-c19bf712ec90"><div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span></div></div><br /><br />Gibson House Museumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00685472634101571238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4364251652830013188.post-57651380174586981242022-04-29T15:39:00.000-04:002022-04-29T15:39:25.843-04:00The 19th Century Allure of Roman Ruins<div style="text-align: center;"><i>This blog post is one of a two-part series on collections at the Gibson House Museum from Italy.</i></div><span id="docs-internal-guid-a1b0ab32-7fff-640b-97c5-f9669c9aa480"><br />In 1898, after a year of study at MIT for architecture, Charlie Gibson took an extended trip to Europe. It was common for wealthy American men to make such a trip—to cap off their education and before settling down to work and family—known in nineteenth-century parlance as a Grand Tour. The Grand Tour could include a variety of European destinations (some even traveled as far as Turkey), but the essential stops were London, Paris, Venice, and Rome. Travel to Rome, in particular, was seen as a chance to complete a classical education, specifically through study of the architecture and history of ancient Rome.<br /><br />Traveling to Rome was difficult in the nineteenth century. A robust tourist industry had developed by the eighteenth century, and yet transportation, lodging, and access to reliable guides remained sketchy. Some Italian architects and artists made a living serving Grand Tourists. Giovanni Batista Piranesi was one. Starting as early as 1740, Piranesi worked in Rome producing views of the ancient Roman ruins. For many, Piranesi’s depictions of Rome were the way they imagined and understood the city.</span><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrSaA1VSGk-kyfhPCo6rnxRKRB63Sgg4d5lBm_MyRqi8FWsxYtciVzbsl1Q_SfCUegjoxuSIe9vVp4dkeuk2QLjSxo9_JMskcnqzfBbF-W41YDACtEPt3mc8OTXMZ6nyKrWUCxAu5neCaQyKTKDVQSXO6prekimkrHWHonuEvAh6PftyOJrMuX/s1200/main-image.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="843" data-original-width="1200" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrSaA1VSGk-kyfhPCo6rnxRKRB63Sgg4d5lBm_MyRqi8FWsxYtciVzbsl1Q_SfCUegjoxuSIe9vVp4dkeuk2QLjSxo9_JMskcnqzfBbF-W41YDACtEPt3mc8OTXMZ6nyKrWUCxAu5neCaQyKTKDVQSXO6prekimkrHWHonuEvAh6PftyOJrMuX/w400-h281/main-image.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Veduta dell'Anfiteatro Flavio, c. 1771 <br />Giovanni Batista Piranesi</td></tr></tbody></table><span></span><span><a name='more'></a></span><span><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-4Qgt1Xe3AyxOan9bzBgSJX1D7T9w1r_3ADWftXGMllfSzyIj0FSFfm33GmP_HbbNv9n_vIdymuQgzIxKpWIMu4lIGQd77dv3HCCbFvmA7SHXe9_MognNJlJ7accqMgGaizwTpE6QIDERy18K-d7YL21RCllyxyA1aBY9lzfHoqYK03OLbulx/s2048/RS%20East%20Wall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-4Qgt1Xe3AyxOan9bzBgSJX1D7T9w1r_3ADWftXGMllfSzyIj0FSFfm33GmP_HbbNv9n_vIdymuQgzIxKpWIMu4lIGQd77dv3HCCbFvmA7SHXe9_MognNJlJ7accqMgGaizwTpE6QIDERy18K-d7YL21RCllyxyA1aBY9lzfHoqYK03OLbulx/w400-h300/RS%20East%20Wall.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Red Study, Gibson House Museum</td></tr></tbody></table>Piranesi’s prints of Roman ruins inspired many artists. Indeed, Piranesi himself was inspired by painters like Giovanni Paolo Panini, who had pioneered a way of depicting ancient Rome that romanticized the ruins through artistic techniques focusing on pastoral landscapes. Matthew DuBourg, a British-based engraver in the early nineteenth century, created a number of hand-colored prints of Roman ruins inspired by the capriccio style popularized by Panini and Piranesi.<br /><br />While we do not have a record of Charlie Gibson traveling to Rome as part of his European trip, he didacquire a set of six DuBourg engravings, including of the Arch of Constantine, from the estate of his cousin, Mary Ann Palfrey Russell. The Arch of Constantine, made for the first Roman Emperor to recognize and sanction Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire, is in a prime location between the Colosseum and Roman Forum; any traveler to Rome would be hard-pressed to miss it. For Charlie Gibson, these objects made sense in a room devoted to a certain kind of western civilization: the Ancient Roman Empire, the British Empire, and the United States.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><i>On Tuesday, May 3, and Saturday, May 7, the Gibson House Museum is offering the specialty tour “The Gibsons in a Global World,” which explores the house and collections with a focus on objects from outside the United States, including Italy. Book your tour today at <a href="https://www.bostondesignweek.com/">Boston Design Week</a>.</i></div><br /><div style="text-align: right;"><i>- Meghan Gelardi Holmes, Curator</i></div><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">To learn more:</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pira/hd_pira.htm">Giovanni Batista Piranesi</a>, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (October 2003)</span></span></li><li><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="http://omeka.wellesley.edu/piranesi-rome/18th-century-rome">Piranesi in Rome</a>, Wellesley College</span></span></li></ul><p></p><div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span></div>Gibson House Museumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00685472634101571238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4364251652830013188.post-47854748931669513582022-02-24T12:55:00.000-05:002022-02-24T12:55:03.659-05:00The Acquaintance of Charlie Gibson, Jr. and Isabella Stewart Gardner<div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Oftentimes visitors to the Gibson House Museum ask our guides about Charlie Gibson Jr.’s <a href="http://thegibsonhousemuseum.blogspot.com/2017/09/boston-interconnected-then-and-now.html">relationships with other well-known Bostonians</a>, especially <a href="https://www.gardnermuseum.org/about/isabella-stewart-gardner">Isabella Stewart Gardner</a>. Although the two were neighbors for nearly forty years, there is not much evidence that they were close. (Isabella Stewart Gardner was both a generation older than Charlie and was part of a higher social class.) There </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, however, evidence that they were acquaintances.
</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">
</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Isabella Stewart Gardner was, and still is, considered one of the most prominent, and perhaps <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi1T1Q4y_ZGr3cBhz8ayiUlQ-bVbWFtRlMVFyyLCug8EHjZDwYukjX18K_v1SERwhGYQKYzg-XhA9piwkRl0ybKDs8CJG2jzBOWUSFI0eP2ED3Mtdwe6JzgFivPsDXtRwEhhsAevegTydi29oPoPqfY3lxyHid_bQZnj3pjo1I1JJr7Tqn8P_Fy=s1080" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="960" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi1T1Q4y_ZGr3cBhz8ayiUlQ-bVbWFtRlMVFyyLCug8EHjZDwYukjX18K_v1SERwhGYQKYzg-XhA9piwkRl0ybKDs8CJG2jzBOWUSFI0eP2ED3Mtdwe6JzgFivPsDXtRwEhhsAevegTydi29oPoPqfY3lxyHid_bQZnj3pjo1I1JJr7Tqn8P_Fy=s320" width="284" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Drawing Room at 152 Beacon Street, 1900.<br /><i>Image: Gardner Museum</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table>eccentric, members of Boston’s elite in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She was born in New York City in 1840 to a wealthy family. In 1860, just before she turned twenty, she married Jack Gardner and they moved to Boston, to 152 Beacon Street in the Back Bay. Although the couple traveled abroad quite a bit, Beacon Street was their home until Jack’s death in 1898, after which Isabella purchased land in the Fens for the museum and home they had been planning. During this same period, Charlie Gibson was born (1874), grew up in the Back Bay at 137 Beacon Street, and went on the trip to France which inspired his travelogue, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Two Gentlemen in Touraine</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (1899). The Gibson family lived just two blocks from the Gardners during the entire time they resided in the Back Bay.
<br /></span><span><a name='more'></a></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">For much of her adult life, Isabella, was a well-known and beloved patron of the arts in Boston, fostering close-knit communities of artists, writers, and intellectuals. She often hosted art-related galas, much like the famous one on opening night of her museum, on January 1, 1903. That night alone she hosted hundreds of Boston’s elite as they enjoyed a concert performed by members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Cecilia Society. Charlie would have been aware of the concerts, lectures, exhibitions, and performances Isabella frequently hosted, as well as her patronage of writers, but there is no documentation of their first meeting.
<br /></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">No matter the way in which they first came to know one another, records indicate that Charlie and Isabella were nonetheless acquainted with one another. Charlie visited Fenway Court at least three times between 1894 and 1904, as his signature can be found in her guest book. He also wrote three poems dedicated to Isabella and her home. These poems and two letters Charlie and Isabella exchanged can be found in the Gibson House and Gardner Museum archives.
<br /></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The letters are simple inquiries on both accounts. Sometime in the late 1800s (the exact date is unknown), <a href="https://www.gardnermuseum.org/experience/collection/28389">Charlie wrote</a>, “as a humble worshiper of the Arts” to ask to be allowed to visit Fenway Court after hearing so much of its grandeur. He includes a few lines of verse about the palazzo, asking if Isabella might be amenable to guiding him through her home so that he may “feel the measure of its magic name!” The second letter, from 1906, is a request from Mrs. Gardner for Charlie to send her his book of poems, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Spirit of Love and Other Poems</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, when it came out for Christmas.<br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh3NWehqNL7Npg7FuuQDsQESs91YOdn5rS2pGNl9Fh__ku9SQmuxs92h9O2UX8e1XMwTfe6ex2Fq8xADRT_S0Q2p0B6YU0YG8LCYHarjvyTYcMqXWMXY2XvQcjUcIhNyYo0Aio27fnZSyoezbAhYezrwnmpRIrTUs1SIb1a5yV4ipYW85X-xcL6=s591" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="591" data-original-width="470" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh3NWehqNL7Npg7FuuQDsQESs91YOdn5rS2pGNl9Fh__ku9SQmuxs92h9O2UX8e1XMwTfe6ex2Fq8xADRT_S0Q2p0B6YU0YG8LCYHarjvyTYcMqXWMXY2XvQcjUcIhNyYo0Aio27fnZSyoezbAhYezrwnmpRIrTUs1SIb1a5yV4ipYW85X-xcL6=w318-h400" width="318" /></a></div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">The poems, in comparison, are filled with more emotion and heartfelt words. The first of these, “<a href="https://www.gardnermuseum.org/experience/collection/28390">Green Hill</a> (Lines written beneath a tree, while waiting for its mistress),” written on May 15, 1898, during what may have been Charlie’s second visit to Fenway Court. It describes the beauty of the Fens surrounding the house on that spring evening and is dedicated to “Mrs. Gardner with the sincere compliments of Charles Gibson.” Five years later, Charlie wrote Isabella another poem about her home/museum, “<a href="https://www.gardnermuseum.org/experience/collection/28389">Fenway Court</a> - Written after a Fresh Visit.” “Fenway Court” expounds on the beauty of the interior of the home and how it was alive with “art/that fan the senses and awake the heart;”
<br /></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgWFUDl5MDk9o2lwz3NtSMiCPF7IhajyyIinhUHmGLbu4HSF5SK3Dj0ouweF3oMoKFKkDv26WxNv7wcoYBsx0fGH4M8JlkqNWDbzxfUJWau3dU8NGNa4j3X-i0oNF812n87WJ3SCLpvmxJmXdmzavDLSMUXPlUbjZ11z3iVVXQb5rnwo9DGyHvf=s777" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="777" data-original-width="422" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgWFUDl5MDk9o2lwz3NtSMiCPF7IhajyyIinhUHmGLbu4HSF5SK3Dj0ouweF3oMoKFKkDv26WxNv7wcoYBsx0fGH4M8JlkqNWDbzxfUJWau3dU8NGNa4j3X-i0oNF812n87WJ3SCLpvmxJmXdmzavDLSMUXPlUbjZ11z3iVVXQb5rnwo9DGyHvf=s320" width="174" /></a></div>“‘There’s a great spirit gone!’/Not dead. Its truthful image is impressed/Deep in the sculptured corner-stone,/In all the artistry of genius dressed.” So begins the final of the three poems Charlie dedicated to Isabella and her beautiful palazzo, titled “The Legacy of Fenway Court.” Charlie wrote this poem some time after Isabella Stewart Gardner died in 1924. “The Legacy of Fenway Court” expresses raw grief at the loss of such a prominent patron of the arts, but at the same time displays hope for a future where her memory will live on in her museum.
<br /></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Although it had been a number of years since his last visit (likely in 1904), Charlie still felt close enough to both Isabella and Fenway Court to compose this poem. He may have written this as an ode to a friend or, more likely, a well-connected patron of the arts, a person whom he may have wished to know better. If she felt so inclined, Isabella would have been able to connect Charlie with more people, more artists and writers, who would help him further his own career and relationships in the community. With the connections he would be able to gain by becoming part of Isabella’s circle of intellectuals, Charlie would have been able to gain significance as a pillar of the writing community, something that he wanted throughout his life. The two may not have been friends, but Isabella Stewart Gardner and Charlie Gibson were most certainly acquainted and connected by their deep passion for literature and fine arts.</span><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">- Beck Green (Boston University), Curatorial Intern, Fall 2021</span></span></div><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p>Gibson House Museumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00685472634101571238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4364251652830013188.post-35983804547245903622021-12-22T11:38:00.008-05:002021-12-22T11:38:41.678-05:00To Mold or Not To Mold: A History of Food Molds from the Victorian Era to Today<div class="separator"><div style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The kitchen pantry at the Gibson House stores an extensive collection of food molds. While the preponderance of these molds are metal, their form and decoration change depending on their purpose. Ranging from simple lady finger pans to ornamental scaled fish, they provide insight into how function and entertainment converged upon Victorian food culture.<br /><br />One notable feature of these objects is their versatility. Molds made of copper, pewter, or tin could be used for the baking, steaming, and setting of jellies, cakes, custards, and puddings. One type of mold in the Gibson kitchen is an ice cream mold, a technology pioneered by Agnes Marshall. Her 1885 seminal work, <i>The Book of Ices: Including Cream and Water Ices, Sorbets, Mousses, Iced Souffles, and Various Iced Dishes</i>, showed readers how to use her inventions, including molds and ice cream freezers, alongside recipes. Molded foods were conveniently labor saving for kitchen staff and women homemakers. They could be prepared around a day before the meal, then the mold could be removed just before serving.</span></div><div style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-dcbf2b8c-7fff-0521-b6fd-79cebe57c5ef"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="border: none; display: inline-block; height: 415px; overflow: hidden; width: 553px;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><img height="300" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/18eKjuKkEGG0q18itlkOuuwDWY_0hJ6_QUy-Mu3PIcnsr3bR3CCW6iG7oe8R0xvlUUwLSv2_a5awuxy44hxCEVaYUH5zTVsOWQHxG6-BuWm6d_siyhxcoiRNnOo_7S6R9UTiN2ly=w400-h300" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" width="400" /></span></span></span></span></div><div style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span><a name='more'></a></span>Furthermore, molds integrated foods exclusive to upper classes, such as ice cream, among the masses. Commercial ice cream production began in 1851, but manufacturers faced difficulties. Ice creams often separated during production, and bonders such as gum arabic, agar, sugar, or gelatin resulted in undesirable flavors, textures, or freezing temperatures. Thus, pioneers such as Agnes Marshall and Fannie Farmer were fundamental to distributing affordable recipes and technologies to women in middle and working classes. In 1896, Farmer published the most-purchased cookbook in American history, <i>The Boston Cooking School Cookbook</i>. She demystified food preparation through a scientific approach and popularized standardized measurements into American home cooking. Farmer writes, “The prejudice of thinking a frozen dessert difficult to prepare has long since been overcome.” Her recipes for ices provide detailed instructions on preparing molds, as well as advice for increasing accessibility among average people, such as substituting snow for ice.<br /><br />Where these women helped to integrate molding into everyday practice, chef Charles Ranhofer maintained the elite status of molded foods. In his book surveying cuisine between 1862 to 1894, <i>The Epicurean: A Complete Treatise of Analytical and Practical Studies on the Culinary Art</i>, he focuses on cold service, or molded meats. Ranhofer writes, “The cold service is the most elegant and artistic one of the culinary art. It requires taste, skill, and much study in order to learn the necessary moldings, modelings, and requisite cookery…. Any ordinary cook can attain renown by studying the complicated ways of preparing cold dishes ... for by it he elevates his trade to a positive art.” Below is one example of this culinary craftsmanship, where bone broth, pistachios, truffles, eggs, and ham become a piece of sculpture.<img height="296" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/sK1Qa4BotI-x1PVhKT31E2HsMzZ488gHQQGPewDJZkjZe4KN1faJ2qwbVT2IsBvltsK0pHq7MVfj4TfnM89b3TqzChM6SJSBwZVPQ6icXRKRxcsDlY6RDlwzK_NFJhQ4BuZ3-oKe=w400-h296" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;" width="400" /></span></div><div style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />That the molds at the Gibson kitchen more closely resemble the approach of Agnes Marshall rather than Ranhofer indicates that the Gibsons and their kitchen staff had a preference for the practical over the extravagant. However, this style of jellies, custards, and ices were nonetheless trendy and popular. In addition to creating shareable dishes, smaller forms such as these fish were used for garnishes and individual servings. <br /><br />It wasn’t until the invention and distribution of instant gelatin in 1897 that molded jellies became accessible to people of all classes. Previously, only the rich could afford to serve jellied foods due to the fact that kitchens prepared their own gelatin from animal bones, which was labor and time intensive. However, gelatin dishes continued to maintain their class connotations. Recipe books such as this one, found in Charles Gibson junior’s personal papers, made recipes from exclusive hotels such as the Waldorf Astoria accessible to their clientele through brand partnerships.</span></div><div style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><img height="216" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/x2UBk-MMoQWmBMTHLAW1wX_RzsgeAi0yN21eBVCEsfTvMvUeRqaLsBH10-5Hs3Oa3tdFd4w0AWKblu8tHLo_OAmDGbeoKLsZuhAoSrtZw7F1wUrUNCmNCdzAgWBv3xtG95jOy4pI" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;" width="177" /><img height="220" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/66r7CXe09he2wp6cFI_RxwJ2JmPgXOHJNexS19o5kmHrjHml6TsCH7pPxW4Yk3IU-X1lJJVG7pqggITfsRosa5FcaR5uP3jlL6w2xUPHw5dad5KJPWW5kLPMtby6OJV7CBWt7eWu" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;" width="355" /> </span></div><div style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">During the economic crisis and food shortages of the Great Depression, Jell-O cemented itself as a staple of the American diet because gelatin was readily available and affordable. By the 1950s, jello salads became a veritable symbol of American domesticity and homemaking. The combined utility of instant-convenience foods, such as canned or powdered ingredients, with extravagant fruit and vegetable garnishes meant that the meal maintained its association with social aspiration. <br /><br />Molded foods fell out of fashion by the 1980s, as fad diets promoted the restriction of sugar intake and changing tastes and technologies displaced the reputation of molded foods as convenient, affordable, and visually pleasing. In a 1983 <i>Washington Post</i> article, Linda Greider writes, “Most of the molds on the market today are watered-down versions of classic earlier designs…. Cheap, light molds batter and bend easily, after which their usefulness as molds is ended.” Once molded foods lost their association with higher-class aspiration and entertainment, so did their utility. Ultimately, the transformation of extravagant, yet surprisingly labor-saving and cost-effective, molded ices and gelatin in the Victorian era into culturally iconic Jell-O salads in the 1950s demonstrates the reliance of our eating habits on not only ingredients, but also practicality and technology.</span></div><div style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">- Miranda Leclerc (Fall 2021 Curatorial Intern, Simmons University) <br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div></div></div></div><div class="separator"><div style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Borella, Mr. and Katherine Golden Bitting Collection on Gastronomy. <i><a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/45046069/" target="_blank">The court and country confectioner: or, The house-keeper's guide</a></i>. [London, G. Riley and A. Cooke et, 1770] </span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Dahlberg, A. C. <i><a href="https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uiug.30112019761029" target="_blank">A Study of the Manufacture of Water Ices and Sherbets</a></i>. Geneva, N.Y.;:New York State Agricultural Experiment Station and Cornell University. 1926.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Farmer, Fannie. <i>The Boston Cooking School Cookbook</i>. Boston: Boston Cooking School, 1896.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Greider, Linda. “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/food/1983/08/17/fitting-the-mold/58b3 a30-fc0d-4afd-a531-743688bfd1d4" target="_blank">Fitting the Mold</a>.” Washington Post. August 17, 1983.</span></li><li><span id="docs-internal-guid-e3620042-7fff-70d5-33d1-22510455ef39"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Grey, Sarah. “<a href="https://www.seriouseats.com/history-of-jell-o-salad" target="_blank">A Social History of Jell-O Salad</a>.” </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Serious Eats,</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> August 10, 2018. </span></span></span></li><li><span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-84666296-7fff-913b-1cda-99a264722096"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Marshall, Agnes B. </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=qmYDAAAAQAAJ&pg=GBS.PP1&hl=en" target="_blank">The Book of Ices</a></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">. London: Marshall’s School of Cookery, 1885.</span></span></span></span></span></li><li><span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-22e8f898-7fff-b351-4d71-5a30be2a7d48"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Ranhofer, Charles. </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://n2t.net/ark:/85335/m5th5f " target="_blank">The Epicurean: A Complete Treatise of Analytical and Practical Studies on </a></span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://n2t.net/ark:/85335/m5th5f " target="_blank">the Culinary Art</a></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">. New York: Charles Ranhofer, 1894.</span></p></span></span></span></span></span></span></li><li><span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">“<a href="https://www.idfa.org/the-history-of-ice-cream" target="_blank">The History of Ice Cream</a>.” International Dairy Foods Association, July 12, 2021.<br /></span></span></span></span></span></li></ul></div></div>Gibson House Museumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00685472634101571238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4364251652830013188.post-75379991283922362252021-07-15T15:53:00.001-04:002021-07-22T16:15:16.990-04:00In Sickness and In Health: Dr. Freeman Allen, Mary Ethel Gibson, and Mental Health and Addiction<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-e87f05d3-7fff-1e54-70d8-ea41d7462ae2" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">This blog post is part of an occasional series about the <a href="https://www.thegibsonhouse.org/the-archives.html" target="_blank">Gibson House Museum Archives</a>, a repository of personal documents and photographs from the Gibson family. The archives are accessible by appointment; contact </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: blue; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">mgholmes@thegibsonhouse.org</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> to make arrangements.</span></span></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-51e4c8ae-7fff-9dbd-161b-6c55983cd34d"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I said that although I had always thought that it might be best to resume work in Anesthesia on a moderate scale, that you had absolutely declined to have me do this and that I had definitely made up my mind to be guided by you in the matter, and that of course if you did not want me to do it and would not stand for it, that settled it. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> . . . </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I will now follow your advice and take a rest before the walk which I hope will take place. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am, darling little Wesscat, with more love and gratitude than I ever felt before in my life, and many kisses for your sweet little self, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Your affectionate husband </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Freeman”</span></p></span></span></div></blockquote><p><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-dd580198-7fff-4cbb-65b4-642b4e62ba07" style="font-family: georgia;"></span></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img height="333" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/v_s1CkMaXnxxyFpW0zyJ-yDwTyiIn6_H6omcgZ2Yxswp38lNKNdMy77sv9d7hAfzGOinqHF52KvWCzbybjpSkQZOuvdWuAWpYTHN8JIqOP1e8x0BOCj5Mex4DfGeXJZ3a8iR_nOl" style="font-size: 11pt; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;" width="256" /></span></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: xx-small;">Gibson House Museum Archives.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Dr. Freeman Allen wrote these words to his wife, Mary Ethel Gibson Allen, in 1926 while he was a patient at Bloomingdale Hospital in New York. A physician and pioneer in the anesthetics field, Freeman suffered from depression and narcotic addiction, and he spent the last five years of his life being treated in institutions. Throughout it all, he wrote letters to his wife, updating her on his health as well as relaying mundane matters like requests for bowties and candies. As an intern at the Gibson House Museum this spring, I was tasked with reorganizing the over 400 letters that comprise the Mary Ethel Gibson Allen and Dr. Freeman Allen correspondence sub-series. The letters span thirty-six years, starting with their over decade-long courtship and ending with his death by suicide in 1930. The true story of his death was discovered by the museum just a handful of years ago; this revelation is recounted in a blog post <a href="http://thegibsonhousemuseum.blogspot.com/2015/03/history-repeats-itself-again.html#more">here</a>. My work in the archives this semester allowed me to follow Freeman and Mary Ethel’s relationship from its timid beginnings to its resilience in the face of illness and shame. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></span><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span><a name='more'></a></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">In referencing a book he was reading, Freeman wrote to his wife that “[t]he man committed a worse crime than mine and yet it was a more manly one. If I can possibly succeed in this treatment I shall have expiated my crimes to the best of my ability. . . . I think in your letters you had better make frequent and explicit references to my sins.” Freeman’s feelings of guilt are clear in his letters. He was ashamed to return to the medical field, and he seemed equally ashamed to return to his wife. He felt his mental state was unmanly; indeed, drug use and addiction in the 1920s was seen as feminine. Contemporary public health officials claimed that opiates made users idle and enhanced "the desire to live at the expense of others and by anti-social means.” Being treated in a hospital while his wife was home taking care of their son and dutifully supporting his treatment, he likely felt that he was upsetting the bourgeois gender roles he was raised with. Furthermore, Freeman was one generation removed from the era in which the face of morphine and opium addiction was middle- and upper-class white women. Opiates were frequently prescribed by physicians for “feminine” maladies, such as dysmenorrhea, headaches, and nervous disorders. Freeman’s own mother, Georgiana Stowe, became addicted to morphine after being prescribed the drug following her son’s birth.</span><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Modern psychiatry was still in its infancy when he sought treatment, but Freeman understood that his issues stemmed from a medical disorder. In 1926, Freeman wrote to his wife that “however disgraceful it may be . . . it is a nervous breakdown and is a disease and must be treated, and this essential fact is what I have been losing sight of right along. As you say I must recognize that I am ill, and am being treated radically for a serious trouble.” Psychiatry has advanced significantly over the last century, and depression and substance abuse are widely understood to be disorders instead of moral failings.</span><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-6e0b5daa-7fff-1e73-ee85-de493d3a995c"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivQdkPyr4JTH5JX8XRoEGcljGbJmppiJLfS2u_UrGBYNmoHtAGGwrdtcv3cTgOa-4MTh5wI9z4t3lBsbwJbi7D3HKVBfh_7no4QApYeKUUmCTTZyDzD6rZiGRIxwaSCsdlQ7daehc/s600/1992.470.81+Mary+Ethel+Gibson+Allen+%2526+Henry+F.+Allen_result.bmp" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="389" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivQdkPyr4JTH5JX8XRoEGcljGbJmppiJLfS2u_UrGBYNmoHtAGGwrdtcv3cTgOa-4MTh5wI9z4t3lBsbwJbi7D3HKVBfh_7no4QApYeKUUmCTTZyDzD6rZiGRIxwaSCsdlQ7daehc/s320/1992.470.81+Mary+Ethel+Gibson+Allen+%2526+Henry+F.+Allen_result.bmp" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Mary Ethel and Freeman at 40 Steps, Nahant<br /><i>Gibson House Museum (1992.470.81)</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">While we only have a few of her letters, it is clear that Mary Ethel wrote to her husband loyally and offered advice and support throughout his final years. Freeman wrote often of how “grateful” he was for her letters and closed his correspondence with tender words such as “Goodnight Wesscat/With much love and kisses I am/Your loving/FREEMAN.” He commonly addressed his wife as Wessiecat, and Mary Ethel addressed her husband as Robbie Rat. I grew invested in Wessiecat and Robbie Rat’s relationship while reading their abundance of letters, and I felt quite emotional reading Freeman thanking Mary Ethel “for all [her kindness]” in his final letter. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I hope my contribution to the collection will aid future researchers. While a large portion of the letters date from Freeman’s final years, their correspondence spans over three decades. The couple regularly wrote to each other whether they were across town in Boston, travelling across the country to California, or mountain climbing in Switzerland. The letters are an amazing insight into the experience of a man suffering from depression and addiction in early 20th century America. In addition, it is a story of love both in sickness and in health. </span><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">- Anna Boyles (Spring 2021 Curatorial Intern, Simmons University)</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>To learn more:</i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">David T. Courtwright, "Addiction to Opium and Morphine" in </span><span id="docs-internal-guid-cfc6c39a-7fff-9c0a-0b9f-a103995f3b46"><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dark Paradise: A History of Opiate Addiction in America </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001).</span></span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mara L. Keire, "Dope Fiends and Degenerates: The Gendering of </span></span><span id="docs-internal-guid-af09d8e3-7fff-5f4c-2d7b-8b6408f43499"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of Addiction in the Early Twentieth Century,” <i>Journal of Social History</i>, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Summer, 1998). </span></span></span></li></ul><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span></p>Gibson House Museumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00685472634101571238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4364251652830013188.post-82943942912051967792021-04-02T12:43:00.003-04:002021-04-02T12:43:40.914-04:001898 Mangle: Laundry Is the Mother of Invention<div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Have you ever wondered what doing laundry was like in the 1800s? Today, most laundry routines consist of shifting clothes between washing machines and dryers. But what kind of technology was involved in laundry in the nineteenth century?</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC4VHWACeDFs5Mgk3lFsDHxB4wsKuT8dwAUrWGIS7JTh7PxewIj-8Dxka0rmyhD1e8kr0GhEXBOqVjVHCl-hZkmbZfHElLD2mOuFEL5P4SEE8gGA_ZsO-xFJX4zUuxalI5XCvMsok//" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="526" data-original-width="850" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC4VHWACeDFs5Mgk3lFsDHxB4wsKuT8dwAUrWGIS7JTh7PxewIj-8Dxka0rmyhD1e8kr0GhEXBOqVjVHCl-hZkmbZfHElLD2mOuFEL5P4SEE8gGA_ZsO-xFJX4zUuxalI5XCvMsok/w400-h248/image.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Trade card for the Bench Wringer<br /><i>Collection of Historic New England</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table>Laundry in the Victorian era would have been a very time-consuming process. Collecting, cleaning, and drying out the clothes would have taken hours. According to <i>The Library Company of Philadelphia</i>, “clothes would be soaped, boiled or scalded, rinsed, wrung out, mangled, dried, starched, and ironed, often with steps repeating throughout.” Victorian clothing often included delicate fabrics, intricate detailing, and unique closures, all of which would have affected how a garment was cleaned. Making laundry even more challenging was the fact that many households in the 1800s did not have running water.</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><a name='more'></a></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">
People living in rural areas would often have to travel a distance to a water pump. Families in urban areas would often only have access to communal water sources that were far away from the home and in demand. The Gibsons' neighborhood was a notable exception since the Back Bay area had indoor plumbing at this time. The Back Bay area was one of the earliest Boston neighborhoods to have indoor plumbing. In the late 1800s, the water was provided by the Fort Hill Tank, but as time went on more advanced tanks were used. The technology used to clean clothes also rapidly evolved.</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-518c77b0-7fff-61d3-ecfe-e9a3c9d6e6a8"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI75wcQhQxHoXfY52O7G09FzU2NMtxrtYJvaksLWEYDSMoZIXzjAChk_ispb8zh9M3H85fmj4K1hMmcIqz9bX7hmWaj6OX1vfB3n8gRrIxoFig3dCHuVfdBnCRxiVI-la190ZKU4M//" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="273" data-original-width="250" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI75wcQhQxHoXfY52O7G09FzU2NMtxrtYJvaksLWEYDSMoZIXzjAChk_ispb8zh9M3H85fmj4K1hMmcIqz9bX7hmWaj6OX1vfB3n8gRrIxoFig3dCHuVfdBnCRxiVI-la190ZKU4M//" width="220" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Mangle, c.1898<br /><i>Gibson House Museum (2007.35)</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table>Inventions to ease the laundry process were created throughout the 1800s and 1900s. Irons, ironing boards, boiling tubs, washboards, and mangles—large wringers used to extract excess water from fabric—were all invented or improved during this period. The <a href="https://www.thegibsonhouse.org/mangle.html" target="_blank">wooden and metal mangle</a> featured at the Gibson House was made by the <a href="http://waywiser.fas.harvard.edu/people/2858/american-wringer-company" target="_blank">American Wringer Co.</a> in 1898. Laundry was placed in between the two large rollers, and then the crank handle on the side was turned to squeeze out any liquid. While it reduced the amount of physical work involved in wringing out clothes by hand, the mangle still required arm strength and patience to operate. Mangles were especially useful in cities that were starting to restrict the use of clotheslines, such as Boston.</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-518c77b0-7fff-61d3-ecfe-e9a3c9d6e6a8"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Middle-class and elite families like the Gibsons could afford hired help to do their laundry. For example, <a href="https://www.thegibsonhouse.org/domestic-staff.html" target="_blank">Mary McDonnald Crocker</a>, a long-time domestic worker employed by the Gibsons, is most likely the person who operated the mangle. Mary would have completed many different household chores during her eighteen-year-long career with the Gibsons, but her duties as laundress were perhaps the most laborious. Overall, this mangle provides an interesting glimpse into the lives of domestic workers, the technology of the Victorian era, and the division of labor in a household.</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>- Megan Watts, Curatorial Intern, Fall 2020</i></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>To learn more:</i></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"<a href="https://stagecoachinnmuseum.com/a-wrinkle-in-time" target="_blank">A Wrinkle in Time</a>," <i>Stagecoach Inn Museum</i></span></span></span></span></span></li><li><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-a7ae6adc-7fff-a89f-f212-6c6192042c41"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Marcis Kempe, “<a href="https://www.mwra.com/04water/html/historypaper/kempe-historypaper-all.pdf" target="_blank">New England Water Supplies – A Brief History 385 Years of Drinking Water, 125 Years of New England Water Works Association</a>,” </span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Journal</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of the New England Water Works Association, September 2006.</span></span></span></span></span></li><li><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"<a href="https://librarycompany.org/2017/08/28/white-clothing-and-victorian-laundry/" target="_blank">White Clothing and Victorian Laundry</a>," <i>The Library Company of Philadelphia</i>, August 28, 2017.</span></span></span></span></span></li></ul></div><span id="docs-internal-guid-518c77b0-7fff-61d3-ecfe-e9a3c9d6e6a8"><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Gibson House Museumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00685472634101571238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4364251652830013188.post-88099729999624105932021-02-11T10:42:00.002-05:002021-02-12T06:37:56.043-05:00Thomas Dalton, Boston Abolitionist (1794—1883)<p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmC0YwddZ3TNu0KixJM1gXp4bgSfu0q4g9g8T_Ij96_2Cft4j3_ZEG5ZB6k5fg3ldTMss_Pf17F7xIek56bddtr_zhBbK1BQFWYiEY3QgwElRcfh0_3sgMiCAyC99OMxjtD6KE8Jk/s1224/1992.401.82++Thomas+Dalton+%25281%2529.BMP" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1224" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmC0YwddZ3TNu0KixJM1gXp4bgSfu0q4g9g8T_Ij96_2Cft4j3_ZEG5ZB6k5fg3ldTMss_Pf17F7xIek56bddtr_zhBbK1BQFWYiEY3QgwElRcfh0_3sgMiCAyC99OMxjtD6KE8Jk/w188-h320/1992.401.82++Thomas+Dalton+%25281%2529.BMP" width="188" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Gibson House Museum( 1992.401.82)</i></span> </td></tr></tbody></table>The women of the Gibson Family—Catherine Hammond Gibson, Rosamond Warren Gibson, and Mary Ethel Gibson Allen—kept albums filled with photographs of relatives and friends. These images were typically studio portraits, traded as part of the custom of leaving calling cards when paying someone a social visit. At the Museum, we find them to be a helpful "who's who" of Boston, and especially the Back Bay, in the nineteenth century.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In two different albums, Catherine included a photograph of Thomas Dalton. Dalton was a free African-American man born on the North Shore in Gloucester in 1794 who became a well-known activist and abolitionist in Boston's Black community. At the age of twenty-three, Dalton moved to Boston, where he first worked as a bootblack. He eventually opened his own used clothing store on Brattle Street and went on to become a prosperous merchant. His store, located near today's Government Center, was at the foot of the west slope of Beacon Hill, the center of Boston's Black community.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: georgia;">In 1826, Dalton co-founded the Massachusetts General Colored Association (MGCA), said to be the most progressive Black civil rights organization in the early nineteenth century. The MGCA focused on abolishing slavery in the United States, and also getting rid of segregation and discriminatory laws in Massachusetts. The leaders of the organization, of which Dalton was president, were the leading lights of Boston's Black community. In 1833, Dalton led the MGCA to join the New England Anti-Slavery Society, and the two organizations worked together throughout New England.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Dalton and his second wife, Lucy Lew Dalton, were particularly interested in eliminating segregation in schools, and that cause was a major focus for their entire lives. Dalton helped organize the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiel_Smith_School" target="_blank">Abiel Smith School</a>, a public school for Black children.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Why is Thomas Dalton's photograph mixed in with those of Gibson relatives and neighbors? We aren't sure. Carte-de-visites, or photographs published on cards, were very popular during the second half of the nineteenth century. In addition to trading images with friends and family, it was very common to collect images of well-known figures. Celebrity carte-de-visites were sold at stationery shops, much like souvenir postcards are sold today.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Although Boston had a long history of slaveholding during the colonial period, it became a hotbed of abolitionist activity in the decades leading up to the Civil War. Reformers like William Lloyd Garrison and activists like Frederick Douglass were able to raise money for abolition and protest against discriminatory laws like the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which affected free black communities in the North. A strong anti-abolition faction existed within wealthy white Boston society, however, especially among merchants who profited from the cotton industry and had no interest in disrupting the economic benefits accrued from the system of slavery. We don't know whether the Gibsons were supporters of abolition or not, or how they might have responded to the outbreak of the Civil War, which happened the year after Catherine Hammond Gibson and her son Charles moved into the house at 137 Beacon Street.</span></p><p style="text-align: right;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">- Meghan Gelardi Holmes, Curator</span></i></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>We would love to know more about this photo! <br /></i><i>Please contact curator@thegibsonhouse.org if you have any information to share.</i></span></p><p style="text-align: right;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />To learn more:</span></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span id="docs-internal-guid-edbda184-7fff-71b3-1b97-eb2986a8a16d"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Amanda Scherker, “<a href="https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-victorian-brits-obsessed-trading-tiny-photo-portraits" target="_blank">Why Victorian Brits Became Obsessed with Trading Tiny Photo Portraits</a>” (Artsy, September 9, 2019)</span></span></span></li><li><span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Adelaide M. Cromwell, <a href="https://archive.org/details/otherbrahminsbos00crom/mode/2up" target="_blank">The Other Brahmins: Boston’s Black Upper Class, 1790-1950</a> (Little Rock, University of Arkansas Press: 1994)</span></span></span></li><li><span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Marc Arkin, “<a href="https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1717&context=faculty_scholarship" target="_blank">A Convenient Seat in God’s Temple: The Massachusetts General Colored Association and the Park Street Church Pew Controversy of 1830</a>” (Fordham Law School, 2016)</span></span></span></li><li><span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">“<a href="https://capeannslavery.org/thomas-daltons-career-as-an-abolitionist-a-timeline/" target="_blank">Thomas Dalton’s Career As An Abolitionist: A Timeline</a>,” Cape Ann Slavery and Abolition</span></span></span></li></ul></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><br /></span><p></p><p style="text-align: right;"><br /></p>Gibson House Museumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00685472634101571238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4364251652830013188.post-27696982185412969902020-12-10T14:03:00.005-05:002020-12-15T06:47:38.066-05:00Little Women Clubs and Boston Philanthropy<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA_JSdIq9wv_iUMkubv_YTLOhFrEcHosV6vlFRSD7osUAFpGbJfzmwwkt34wvgfJ_JBECxKnDwjE6AoF28NkTdBgdlVcoUMnWg28labE_bmhvdoolLHtEk9n5lGXjZYBM2O72jn50/s2048/Little_Women.JPG" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1370" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA_JSdIq9wv_iUMkubv_YTLOhFrEcHosV6vlFRSD7osUAFpGbJfzmwwkt34wvgfJ_JBECxKnDwjE6AoF28NkTdBgdlVcoUMnWg28labE_bmhvdoolLHtEk9n5lGXjZYBM2O72jn50/s320/Little_Women.JPG" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Illustration by Jessie Wilcox Smith, c. 1915.</span></td></tr></tbody></table>Louisa May Alcott’s <i>Little Women</i>, published just after the Civil War, was a runaway best seller that impacted generations of readers and significantly influenced American culture as a whole, through countless editions, versions, sequels, translations, images, plays, and films. <i>Little Women</i> was so compelling that it inspired young fans to create spontaneous clubs, such as the “Little Men and Little Women,” the “Alcott Reading Club,” and the “Alcott Literary Club.” Inspired by the March sisters’ <i>Pickwick Portfolio</i>, five sisters from a small town in Pennsylvania created a family newspaper in 1871 that boasted a thousand subscribers nationwide before winding down a few years later.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> <br /></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A charming spinoff, <i>The Little Women Club</i> (1905), by Marion Ames Taggart, a children’s book about four friends aged eleven to thirteen who decide to form a club and who enact the novel in their daily lives, seeded Little Women Clubs across the United States. The clubs became so popular that adults soon took notice and began taking control. Some clubs were created to preserve the Alcott homestead, Orchard House, transforming it into a house museum. Young settlement workers followed the trend, creating a Louisa M. Alcott Club for Jewish immigrants, which aimed to “instruct small girls in all branches of housekeeping.” There was an Alcott Club sponsored by Hull House in Chicago, and a San Francisco chapter of the Little Women Club that provided poor children with “practical and moral training” and a few weeks of country life under the care of settlement workers. Little Women Clubs became generally associated with mental cultivation, character development, and philanthropy.</span></span><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHKLbPnALxhmgxPpfWbuzVsbFQsgWzy8BHe8oraomHeIPFwa86JW8WJzZjgVMHqr5Ss1pCoUe1D49xiZ-1rwVNB2fLJhfX-BnQOXmJoYmvwWFca29ErvLj26EfzgWp6J23RQJnSGI/s2048/Taggart.JPG" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1344" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHKLbPnALxhmgxPpfWbuzVsbFQsgWzy8BHe8oraomHeIPFwa86JW8WJzZjgVMHqr5Ss1pCoUe1D49xiZ-1rwVNB2fLJhfX-BnQOXmJoYmvwWFca29ErvLj26EfzgWp6J23RQJnSGI/s320/Taggart.JPG" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-0b19a2a7-7fff-3c4c-ff3b-0a6eba241244"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">
In December of 1905, Rosamond Warren Gibson attended a Congregational church fair in Norwood, Massachusetts, which was sponsored by the “Mission Circle” and the “Little Women.” Rosamond was on the Committee of Arrangements. Cake and candy tables, a fancy table (featuring precious or whimsical handmade items for sale), and a photo and art table were all well patronized. Entertainment consisted of a cantata entitled <i>Santa Clause’s Mistake</i>, a dumbbell drill by two squads of girls, with piano accompaniment, and “a tambourine drill in Spanish costume by 12 young ladies.” Designed to promote mental cultivation, character development, and philanthropy, Little Women Clubs were an outgrowth of two important social trends spanning the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: the women’s club movement and the settlement house movement.</span></p></span><span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">
</span><p></p></span><span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Along with other members of their affluent Boston social circle, Rosamond and her extended family devoted a large part of their lives to philanthropic work at all levels. It was an expectation of the Brahmin elite and a habit inculcated from childhood. As a young woman in Nahant in 1868, Rosamond joined a sewing circle of forty women called the “M. A.s,” or “Maiden Aunts,” that sewed for charity and met at one another’s houses every week—meetings that filled the women with sisterly esprit de corps. Rosamond eventually became president of the society, and the Maiden Aunts celebrated their fiftieth anniversary in 1917.
</span></p></span><span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While Rosamond and her daughters focused on supporting girls’ clubs in the Boston area, Charles, Jr. ("Charlie") took an early interest in boys’ clubs. In 1896 Charlie organized and participated in an amateur theatrical at Copley Hall “for the benefit of the Ellis Memorial Boys’ Club of Boston” and for the establishment of Patronages (similar to American boys’ clubs) in the south of France. According to the <i>Boston Globe</i>, Charlie was well established in the culture of amateur theatricals in Boston, beginning from when he was about ten years old, when he was cast in the play <i>False Colors</i>, taking the part of the “negro boy” and likely performed in blackface. Regrettably, from a twenty-first century perspective, themes and imagery from blackface minstrelsy and ethnic theater were de rigueur in such productions, and the Boston circuit was no exception. The <i>Globe</i> reviewer continued, “Since that time, [Gibson] has appeared in many different parts, playing frequently in the theatricals given by the Nahant club. He is one of the prime movers in matters of this kind. He appears to best advantage in comedy.”</span></p></span><span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Throughout his literary career, Charlie championed American authors, such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Mark Twain, and Louisa May Alcott. Soon after Clara Endicott Sears published <i>Bronson Alcott’s Fruitlands</i> in 1915, which appended Louisa May Alcott’s satiric prose piece, <i>Transcendental Wild Oats</i>, she entertained seventy-five members of the Boston Authors’ Club at Fruitlands, her summer home in Harvard, Massachusetts. Among the honored guests were Mrs. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “who motored in from Cambridge,” and Charles Gibson. Fruitlands was the site of Bronson Alcott’s experimental utopian community of the 1840s. Sears purchased the property and outbuildings, transforming it into an important historical and cultural museum in the early twentieth century. As the <i>Boston Globe</i> reported in June of 1916, “After the luncheon, Miss Sears and her guests visited the Bronson Alcott House, which is on the grounds of ‘Fruitlands’ and which was so intimately connected with the late father of the late Louisa Alcott, the author of so many books for young people. One of the features of the occasion was the reading of an original sonnet by Mr. Charles Gibson, entitled ‘Fruitlands.’”
</span></p></span><span><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By the 1920s, Little Women Clubs had become a well-worn trope in American culture, linked to quaint domesticity and traditional femininity, values that were being challenged by feminism, women’s suffrage, and the emergence of the “new woman.” “Day-Dreams,” a humorous poem by Dorothy Parker, appeared in the <i>Boston Globe</i> in July of 1922. “We’d build a little bungalow,” the poem began, “If you and I were one, / And carefully we’d plan it, so / We’d get the morning sun.” The feminine narrator goes on to portray a life of rustic wedded bliss—but one which the poet, Parker, ironically undercuts, hinting about a less appealing reality: spoiled dinners, “black and dry”; burned fingers; scrubbing; cooking; and sewing. Parker seems to ask, “Little bungalow or stifling birdcage?” The poem concludes archly,</span></p></span></span><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’d buy a little scrubbing-brush</span></p></span><span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And beautify the floors;</span></p></span><span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’d warble gaily as a thrush</span></p></span><span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">About my little chores!</span></p></span><span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But though I’d cook and sew and scrub,</span></p></span><span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A higher life I’d find;</span></p></span><span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’d join a little women’s club</span></p></span><span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And cultivate my mind.</span></p></span></span></blockquote><span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- Todd S. Gernes, Ph.D. (Associate Professor, Stonehill College)</span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>References</i> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: georgia; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Louisa May Alcott, <i>Little Women; or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, Parts I and II</i> (Boston: Little Brown, and Company, 1915 [1868 &1869]).</span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">Beverly Lyon Clark, <i>The Afterlife of Little Women</i> (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014).</span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">Rosamond Warren Gibson (1846–1934), <i>Recollections of My Life For My Children</i> (privately printed at Meador Press, 1939).</span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Boston Globe</i>, 1899–1922, accessed through Newspapers.com, September–December, 2020.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">Marion Ames Taggart, <i>The Little Women Club</i> (Philadelphia: Henry Altemus Company, 1905).</span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">Briana M. Spencer, “Material Girl: The Subjective Role of Objects in Dorothy Parker’s Poems and Short Stories” (MA Thesis, Department of English, University of North Carolina Wilmington, 2005).</span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">Mehitable Calef Coppenhagen Wilson, <i>John Gibson of Cambridge, Massachusetts and His Descendants, 1634–1899</i> (Mehitable C. C. Wilson, 1900).</span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>San Francisco Examiner</i>, 1900–1905, accessed through Newspapers.com, September–December, 2020.</span></li></ul><p></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Gibson House Museumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00685472634101571238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4364251652830013188.post-7727162698711936312020-09-23T06:03:00.004-04:002020-09-23T06:03:37.984-04:00Power in Suffrage<div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">This blog post is part of a series about the Gibson family and the lead-up to the 1920 presidential election, which promised "a return to normalcy" after many years of social upheaval. Read about Boston's experience of World War I <a href="http://thegibsonhousemuseum.blogspot.com/2020/09/charlie-gibson-boston-and-war-in-europe.html">here</a> and Boston during the flu epidemic of 1918 <a href="http://thegibsonhousemuseum.blogspot.com/2020/09/epidemic-in-city.html">here</a>.</span></i></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The first two decades of the early twentieth century saw huge social movements in the United States, most notably the suffrage movement. Women had been fighting for their right to vote for many years, but the movement gained more traction in the 1910s. Women across the country marched, protested, and rallied for suffrage. An anti-suffrage movement also existed, largely driven by white, upper-class women. These women, although still second-class citizens in the United States, possessed a degree of relative privilege due to their race and class. The Gibsons belonged to this group, and the Gibson women used their position to advocate against women’s suffrage. </span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mary Ethel, the oldest Gibson daughter, was an anti-suffragist. In 1914, she and many other Back Bay women sold red roses to the public just ahead of a suffrage parade. As red was the color of anti-suffrage, the women intended for the thousands of roses to make a “dignified protest” against the suffragists in Boston. She protested alongside other women from her social circle during this event. Mary Ethel may have also participated in other anti-suffrage events in Boston; her sister and mother may have felt similarly about the cause.</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-db35a032-7fff-4ea6-84fa-b26504335a54"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="185" data-original-width="323" height="229" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz1e33abb28E_JnIsEAwXl6m7eaiL-h0ea3pQy8j-D1qxXQ89UbT8mgp96-jzX4wL0B0QehVWtkYZ3nSGl2L7pG68mYNBCdKwJES9F-ebbpkym7_QcJDHK3sXjbs2DmS51OvGbxK0/w400-h229/image.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Boston Globe</i>, October 17, 1915.</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />The upper-class culture of Beacon Street led to its becoming a center of anti-suffrage in Boston. In fact, suffragists in Boston called the street “enemy’s country” because of its large anti-suffragist population. These privileged women could not take part in governmental politics, but were able to be involved in and influence the social politics of their upper-class culture through their connections. <br /></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span><a name='more'></a></span> <br /></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While some wealthy Boston women advocated against suffrage, others used their status to advocate for the cause. Several major suffrage groups emerged in Boston in the late 1800s and early 1900s, largely composed of women from Boston’s “elite circles of education and wealth.” These circles included many well-known white families of the time, such as the Agassiz, Shaw, and Grimke families, who each had political and social influence in the city. The suffrage groups, including the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, College Equal Suffrage League, and Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government, sought out other educated, affluent women to join the movement. Since society largely restricted them from working, they had the time to devote to the cause and did not fear the loss of jobs or other repercussions of their political involvement. When recruiting other suffragists, women typically did not stray far from their socio-economic circles or race. </span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-db35a032-7fff-4ea6-84fa-b26504335a54"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Working-class women, too, became players in the fight for suffrage in the early 1900s. Unions across the state allied with existing suffrage groups to combine their efforts in the movement. Because working-class women made up a significant number of potential female voters, both working-class and upper-class women organized events and speakers for their cause. College-educated suffragists saw the value of aligning with working-class women and sought them out, but working-class women, too, showed agency in their decision to join forces with those in the upper classes. </span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-db35a032-7fff-4ea6-84fa-b26504335a54"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In 1910, the Gibsons employed five women in their home: Annie A. Kelley as a cook, Jane C. Clark as a waitress, Beatrice Hardon as a laundress, Cecelia Wain as a lady’s maid, and Nora Radican as a chambermaid. Their personal ideas or experiences regarding suffrage do not survive in the historical record, but they may have supported the cause. As young immigrants, these women likely hoped to gain political autonomy and may have wanted to become active members of their new country. At a 1915 event in Boston, laundry workers marched and held signs for the cause; perhaps Beatrice Hardon was in attendance. </span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="386" data-original-width="220" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhShYTB1FtMbbJYxX9RxvKVbDRraG594cEiYAiAXnPtWnTEBxxTXRuYxCrSL4svhOkwTYwpMca3OKm1ElVL6_GhTg666Y-V0ag_nfihE4ZZg6s_yzqRhbsPsgLTd5LuuOom_hyeFQg//" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="137" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Parade route map, 1915.<br /><i>Massachusetts Historical Society</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-db35a032-7fff-4ea6-84fa-b26504335a54"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On October 16, 1915, suffragists organized the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Victory Parade. The parade weaved through the Back Bay and along Beacon Street to end at a “mass meeting” on Huntington Avenue and West Newton Street. The Gibsons likely witnessed the march from their home, as anti-suffragists on Beacon Street protested the event by adorning their homes with red decorations, the color of anti-suffrage. Suffragists, however, outnumbered the “anti” demonstrators, with 9,000 marching. The parade was split into divisions, with several including working women, like the domestic workers at the Gibsons’ home. White suffragists largely excluded women of color from the march, however, with only a handful of Black women present in the hundreds of rows of marchers.</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="336" data-original-width="297" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie58sMjIIWa1ui3SVIWLDREhsZRZCVijoa8xMu1NzHV_jBJmXK77W5-YfbVGoqvm23PPbSvCyF4pDT5rjxc_wOceVss7ck43Sk4gXQvKi_g06HS_1W5lIuPV6Av1qOdYNBu3qFL1M//" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="212" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Boston Globe</i>, October 14, 1915.<br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />In 1920, the U.S. ratified the Nineteenth Amendment for women’s suffrage; however, this historic moment did not mean that all American women were able to vote. Restrictions, such as poll taxes and various education requirements, excluded a large percentage of women of color from voting. Moreover, white women often did not use their new voting rights to fight against the disenfranchisement of women of color. Instead, white suffragists in major suffrage groups, such as the National Women’s Party and the National American Woman Suffrage Association, believed the fight for suffrage had been won. They felt states should decide which women could vote, which allowed Southern states to block women of color from voting. These groups feared losing support from white voters, believing that the disenfranchisement of Black women was a race issue instead of a women’s issue. Laws denied indigenous women citizenship and voting rights until 1924 (some native women were not granted the right to vote by their state until 1962); the Chinese Exclusion Act prevented Chinese women from voting until 1943; and laws withheld Black women’s rights until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. </span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-db35a032-7fff-4ea6-84fa-b26504335a54"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><div style="text-align: right;">—Betsey Donham, Intern (Smith College)</div></span></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Visit the Gibson House Museum to see our outdoor exhibit, "1920: The Gibsons' New Normal," on view from October 1 through December 17, 2020. </span></i></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;">For further reading:</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;">"<a href="https://www.masshist.org/features/suffrage/aftermath" target="_blank">19th Amendment and the Aftermath</a>." <i>Massachusetts Debates a Woman's Right to Vote</i>. Massachusetts Historical Society</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"<a href="https://www.masshist.org/features/suffrage/antislavery" target="_blank">From Anti-Slavery to Women's Rights</a>." </span><i style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Massachusetts Debates a Woman's Right to Vote</i><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">. Massachusetts Historical Society</span></span></li><li><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-d1fabd16-7fff-6497-59a9-df93171a82e3"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Orleck, Annelise. “Common Sense: New York City Working Women and the Struggle for Woman Suffrage.” In </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working-Class Politics in the United States, 1900–1965, 2d ed</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 87–114.</span></span></span></span></li><li><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-413f82c2-7fff-9216-f6c4-b2149290d9e4"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Sklar, Kathryn Kish and Jill Dias. “Introduction.” In </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">How Did the National Woman's Party Address the Issue of the Enfranchisement of Black Women, 1919–1924</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">. (Binghamton, N.Y.: State University of New York at Binghamton, 1997).</span></span></span></span></span></span></li><li><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-b9674434-7fff-ba99-3696-381a97e97a50"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Strom, Sharon Hartman. “Leadership and Tactics in the American Woman Suffrage Movement: A New Perspective from Massachusetts.” </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Journal of American History 62</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">, no. 2 (1975): 296–315.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li><li><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;">"<a href="https://suffrage100ma.org/suffrage-centennial-display-panel-project/" target="_blank">The Suffrage Centennial Display Project</a>." <i>Suffrage 100 MA</i>. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li></ul></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><span id="docs-internal-guid-db35a032-7fff-4ea6-84fa-b26504335a54"><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Gibson House Museumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00685472634101571238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4364251652830013188.post-3770714664896932532020-09-22T21:29:00.002-04:002020-09-23T06:05:50.878-04:00Epidemic in the City<div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">This blog post is part of a series about the Gibson family and the lead-up to the 1920 presidential election, which promised "a return to normalcy" after many years of social upheaval. Read about Boston's experience of World War I <a href="http://thegibsonhousemuseum.blogspot.com/2020/09/charlie-gibson-boston-and-war-in-europe.html#more">here</a> and the Gibsons and suffrage <a href="http://thegibsonhousemuseum.blogspot.com/2020/09/power-in-suffrage.html">here</a>.</span></i></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">In the spring of 1918, in the midst of World War I, an influenza virus called Spanish Flu (or “Grippe”) because it was believed to have originated in Spain, spread through the United States. A lethal second wave began that summer in Boston. Much like the waves of the COVID-19 pandemic we are currently experiencing, the influenza of 1918 turned daily life upside down. </span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Influenza cropped up in Boston in late August of 1918 at Commonwealth Pier, where sailors trained before going overseas. Like the rest of the country, Boston was fully immersed in wartime efforts. Over 100,000 male Bostonians between the ages of eighteen and forty-five registered to be drafted in early September. The federal government’s Liberty Bond campaign to offset the cost of war was in full swing, with Boston expected to raise 129 million dollars through the sale of bonds at Liberty Loan parades and drives. </span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-66981a37-7fff-6fb0-b588-4bc1b7470bdd"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="257" data-original-width="345" height="149" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw6WuuFdGhmODIFmFTRtNRHaRP_x3IpU-Lc9judJu_RRVTpy5yOaeA5vQclr-vviOyZCsVRMcmpdhBPAZV5Rr6vw809Q_QaWAwb_a_HqITK2WLC04NOCOmqQYEl_KevKbkrkUWFq8/w200-h149/image.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="200" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Boston Globe,</i> September 2, 1918.<br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A “Win-the-War-for-Freedom” Labor Day parade held on September 2, 1918, consisted of 4,000 people; civilians, soldiers, and sailors from Commonwealth Pier mingled, spreading the virus among Boston residents. The parade wound around Boston Common, quite close to the Gibson family home at 137 Beacon Street. </span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><a name='more'></a></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="402" data-original-width="262" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJX3jv7zR87CYvg-CfHLr2m0aJbaHKRMjL2i0prnAyqATWGhyuUA16RqN8wteh3zhjCGdYbgKNlNKsNXn28BpTBSlb0t_QL354sK5hBRm5fKG31YpoqjfYlf5b2-jhyphenhyphenUIxwBPW-OM/w208-h320/image.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="208" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Rosamond Gibson and grandson in Nahant, c. 1924.<br /><i>Gibson House Museum</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As they had done for the past eighteen years, members of the Gibson family spent the summer of 1918 at 40 Steps, their home in the beachside town of Nahant north of Boston. The Gibsons’ home on Cliff Street was directly across from “Lodge Villa,” the summer home of the prominent family of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. By and large, the family was protected while the influenza epidemic engulfed Boston. </span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-66981a37-7fff-6fb0-b588-4bc1b7470bdd"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because of the Gibsons’ wealth and social status, they were less likely to be affected by the epidemic. A society column in the </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Boston Post</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> from October 1918 speaks to the privilege of upper-class Bostonians who could “bask in fresh air, sunshine and nature” outside the city. </span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-66981a37-7fff-6fb0-b588-4bc1b7470bdd"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Meanwhile, back in Boston, sailors at Commonwealth Pier first reported the influenza in late August. By mid-September, 2,000 sailors had become infected. At Camp Devens to the west of Boston, where between 45,000 and 50,000 military recruits trained, 195 soldiers had fallen ill by September 5; the following week, over 1,000 soldiers reported sick in one day. Dr. Roy Gist described the rapidity and magnitude of the virus’s destruction in a letter, writing that men were “dropping like flies.” About one third of the population at Camp Devens would develop the influenza over the course of September and October. </span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-66981a37-7fff-6fb0-b588-4bc1b7470bdd"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Battling “the Grippe”</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Like today, city officials in 1918 worried about where to put those becoming ill in epidemic numbers. The Chelsea Naval Hospital and the hospital on Gallops Island in Boston Harbor were put into use for soldiers and sailors. Sick sailors from Commonwealth Pier were also moved to an open-air hospital created in Brookline by the Massachusetts National Guard.</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="294" data-original-width="374" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF_VIWaL-N8FgKo1WPWZ_55GuzoQdTaYxYVNivMyzPQnJkRDpcFCBLXAM-Tgrf-6vLELWJDp8b0afz_7qedw9SzqhhKDMpKjxKtofu3lwg0-GSXmiJCU-bXNN3Wapucz1g-4KraZI//" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="305" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Camp hospital in Brookline, September 13, 1918.<br /><i>National Archives</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As sick Bostonians crowded into Boston City and Massachusetts General Hospitals, state and city officials moved to implement social distancing and promote sanitation. Much like our recent “lockdown,” schools were closed, on September 25. Within a few days, funerals were limited to close family members and hospitals barred visitors. Theaters, movie houses, saloons, bowling alleys, and soda fountains shut down. Public gatherings were discouraged, and the Boston police were supplied with masks.</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-66981a37-7fff-6fb0-b588-4bc1b7470bdd"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rules around sanitation and cleanliness were put into force, such as an anti-spitting law: one man, Acelino de Coste, was charged for spitting in a streetcar tunnel in early October and had to pay three dollars. Smoking was no longer allowed on subways and elevated trains. To stop the spread of germs, elevated train cars were cleaned daily, and more cars were put into use so that social distancing could be maintained as much as possible. <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="215" data-original-width="305" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYYdPg9KXDDADGzyqzWNWplbdHc0aKohg8uXD050PKOvB6aRDBJsemffr8F8DraQRinJ4N4hPBcmuoOZYkqeGitDp5614wYBGPeeOtvzYGVWio-BVsxrGL4R_7vReKIZO8WinJPSE//" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Boston Globe</i>, October 19, 1918.</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-66981a37-7fff-6fb0-b588-4bc1b7470bdd"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Essential workers, although they were not called that, were vital during the influenza pandemic. But because the U.S. had joined World War I a year earlier, nurses and doctors were away at various military camps across the country and in Europe. As an anesthesiologist at Mass General Hospital, Mary Ethel Gibson’s husband Freeman Allen signed an affidavit from Mass General in September 1918 to help support a committee working on war efforts, not on the influenza outbreak. </span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-66981a37-7fff-6fb0-b588-4bc1b7470bdd"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Even though the war was consuming the public’s attention, some officials were focused on fighting the influenza. State Representative Frederick Gillett and Senator John Weeks appealed to Congress for a million dollars for the U.S. Public Health Service to stem the tide of the outbreak. </span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-66981a37-7fff-6fb0-b588-4bc1b7470bdd"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To wear or not to wear a mask</span><span id="docs-internal-guid-66981a37-7fff-6fb0-b588-4bc1b7470bdd"><br /></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Though civilians were not required to wear masks, Boston Health Commissioner William C. Woodward strongly encouraged the use of masks, especially among nurses and doctors. On September 28, the </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Boston Globe</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> printed an article instructing readers on how to make gauze masks. A </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Boston Post</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> article dated October 6 featured Red Cross volunteers who gave out gauze masks and information about the pandemic from a “cottage” on Boston Common. At the time, <a href="https://update.lib.berkeley.edu/2020/05/23/did-masks-work-the-1918-flu-pandemic-and-the-meaning-of-layered-interventions/#:~:text=But%20back%20in%201918%2C%20public,the%20public%20were%20minimally%20effective.&text=Influenza%2C%20A%20Study%20of%20Measures,California%20State%20Board%20of%20Health." target="_blank">officials debated the efficacy of masks</a>, partly due to improper mask usage and a lack of appropriate supplies. </span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-66981a37-7fff-6fb0-b588-4bc1b7470bdd"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Open Sesame” or “Boston is wide open once more”</span><span id="docs-internal-guid-66981a37-7fff-6fb0-b588-4bc1b7470bdd"><br /></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cases of influenza and deaths peaked in October, but by the end of the month social distancing was over. On October 8, stores were reopened with shortened hours and fewer employees per shift. Boston’s hotels remained open, although meetings and dancing were prohibited. On October 20, the </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Boston Globe</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> reported that 50,000 people attended an “All-America Fair” on Boston Common, marking the end of the Liberty Loan campaign to raise money for World War I. Health officials believed public gatherings, like the celebration of the end of the war on November 11, 1918, and the holiday season, <a href="https://www.boston.gov/news/notes-archives-onthisday-1918-spanish-flu-arrived-boston" target="_blank">continued to circulate influenza among the population</a>. </span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-66981a37-7fff-6fb0-b588-4bc1b7470bdd"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A medical enigma</span><span id="docs-internal-guid-66981a37-7fff-6fb0-b588-4bc1b7470bdd"><br /></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Failure to stop the virus’s spread and its devastating results weighed on the medical community. At the time, medical experts did not know that the influenza was a virus. Efforts to understand the disease resulted in a study at Gallops Island on Boston Harbor. In November of 1918, a group of imprisoned sailors isolated at a quarantine station on the island voluntarily exposed themselves to patients suffering from influenza on the condition that they would be pardoned if they lived. Astoundingly, none of the sailors who participated in the studies perished or even became sick. Harvard professor and doctor Milton Joseph Rosenau summed up the studies’ results: “Perhaps, if we have learned anything, it is that we are not quite sure what we know about the disease.”</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-66981a37-7fff-6fb0-b588-4bc1b7470bdd"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In 1919, cases of influenza flared in January and February, abating by May, at which point over 6,000 Bostonians had died. Many who succumbed were adults between the ages of twenty and forty. In the United States as a whole, about 675,000 Americans died, and life expectancy dropped by twelve years in 1918 due to the epidemic. Because the war had been so all-consuming, the influenza pandemic was completely eclipsed. The misery, panic, and uncertainty the virus brought was not a narrative Americans wanted to dwell on. The pandemic eluded modern scientific knowledge and remained an unexplainable phenomenon. As 1920 approached, Americans looked toward a future that would dispel the nightmare of the past few years. </span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-66981a37-7fff-6fb0-b588-4bc1b7470bdd"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><div style="text-align: right;">—Rebecca Simons, Intern (UMass-Amherst)</div></span></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Visit the Gibson House Museum to see our outdoor exhibit, "1920: The Gibsons' New Normal," on view from October 1 to December 17, 2020.</i> </span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;">For further reading:</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;">"<a href="https://www.influenzaarchive.org/cities/city-boston.html" target="_blank">Boston, Massachusetts and the 1918-1919 Influenza Epidemic</a>." <i>Influenza Encyclopedia</i>. University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine.</span></span></li><li><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;">"<a href="https://www.wgbh.org/news/local-news/2020/04/29/comparing-the-coronavirus-pandemic-to-the-1918-spanish-flu-in-massachusetts" target="_blank">Comparing the Coronavirus Pandemic to the 1918 Spanish Flu in Massachusetts</a>." <i>WGBH News</i>. April 29, 2020. </span></span></li><li><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;">Gehrman, Elizabeth. "<a href="https://hms.harvard.edu/magazine/pandemic/grip-disease" target="_blank">In the Grip of a Disease</a>." <i>Harvard Medicine</i>. Spring 2020.</span></span></li><li><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;">"<a href="https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2020/05/11/historian-draws-parallels-between-the-1918-spanish-flu-and-todays-coronavirus-pandemic" target="_blank">Historian Draws Parallels Between the 1918 Spanish Flu and Today's Coronavirus Pandemic</a>." <i>WBUR</i>. May 11, 2020.</span></span></li></ul></div><span id="docs-internal-guid-66981a37-7fff-6fb0-b588-4bc1b7470bdd"><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Gibson House Museumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00685472634101571238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4364251652830013188.post-91731669613038767202020-09-22T20:22:00.002-04:002020-09-23T06:06:23.621-04:00Charlie Gibson, Boston, and the War in Europe<p style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">This blog post is part of a series about the Gibson family and the lead-up to the 1920 presidential election, which promised "a return to normalcy" after many years of social upheaval. Read about the Gibsons and suffrage <a href="http://thegibsonhousemuseum.blogspot.com/2020/09/power-in-suffrage.html">here</a> and Boston during the flu epidemic of 1918 <a href="http://thegibsonhousemuseum.blogspot.com/2020/09/epidemic-in-city.html">here</a>.</span></i></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><i>Charlie Gibson, a Citizen Soldier: The Plattsburg Movement and the First World War</i> </b></span></span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-04f52af2-7fff-b646-1cea-413349851800"><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On May 7, 1915, a German submarine <a href="https://www.loc.gov/collections/world-war-i-rotogravures/articles-and-essays/the-lusitania-disaster/" target="_blank">torpedoed and sank</a> the HMS <i>Lusitania</i>, a British cruise liner traveling from New York City to Liverpool, England. Almost twelve hundred people died in the attack, including 123 Americans. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="289" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHicmTy9nWfOJw2sVc7qs7QkykJE-T5XkNXJiRlykJyTZw41xgc6M768OQNNUAYfuFB2N2rUQ15TYzzrQG6vfCwBinispS5nuJAmON2DjzsCCby_KBb0tzWrj2VRaY1JLiXq6uFRo/w320-h203/image.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Gibson House Museum</span></i><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For almost two more years, President Woodrow Wilson maintained official neutrality and a policy of American isolation. Others in the United States believed that American entry into the conflict was inevitable and joined the Preparedness Movement, an effort to ready American troops for war. Led by individuals such as former president Theodore Roosevelt and General Leonard Wood, the Preparedness Movement gained much of its membership from upper- and middle-class Americans in the Northeast. </span><p></p><div style="font-family: georgia;"><span></span><span><a name='more'></a></span></div><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In 1913 and 1914, Wood oversaw the creation of several small summer camps across the country aimed at training college students for future military service. A month after the sinking of the <i>Lusitania</i>, the <i>New York Times</i> reported that a new summer camp for business and professional men would be held in upstate New York. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Known as the “Businessman’s Training Camp,” Plattsburg invited social elites to train for war. Ninety percent of attendees had college degrees, and membership included two Roosevelts and the general manager of the <i>Times</i>. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="294" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSldJdvV3HTA2OU1Jd9_XGowwZ4NJViOPPqa4uXdIACiYdoBhhCKUxStJ9oK1CZtXlilUbl1bHyBGvv5DBCNDrelWlQvEapaVpd7GMJGy6-ty_MwF__QurgXjJ3BhKRW2zztGUvx4/w209-h320/image.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="209" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Gibson House Museum</span></i><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Forty-year-old Charles H. Gibson, Jr. (“Charlie”)—a Republican son of one of Boston’s prominent families—may have been at the older end of new recruits. But on September 8, 1915, he traveled to the Plattsburg Barracks for four weeks of citizens’ military training. According to an article in the <i>New Republic</i>, Plattsburg wasn’t meant to militarize the United States. Instead, it would “civilize” the American military; its recruits saw national service as a core element of citizenship. </span><p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thousands of Plattsburgers eventually served after the United States joined the First World War on April 6, 1917. Charlie would not be among them. There are several possible explanations for his continued presence in Boston during the war, despite his earlier support for it.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">First, Charlie was unlikely to be drafted due to his age. More than 65 percent of the American military in the war came from a series of drafts, and the first rounds applied only to men ages 21 to 30. When the age for registration went up to 45 in September 1918, Charlie registered when he was just shy of 44. The draft ended just two months later, on November 11, 1918, when an armistice was signed in Europe. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Second, the death of Charles Gibson Sr. left the Gibson family without a patriarch. On his draft card, Charlie listed his mother Rosamond as his nearest relative. With his sisters both married and his mother widowed, he may have felt as though he needed to stay close to home. Years later, in 1934, Charlie would return to his childhood home to care for his mother, signaling the responsibility he felt towards her. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Third, Charlie’s status as a native, upper-class Bostonian may have insulated him from the pressure to enlist, something not true for immigrants and new citizens. Foreign-born soldiers composed <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/about-us/our-history/history-office-and-library/featured-stories-from-the-uscis-history-office-and-library/the-immigrant-army-immigrant-service-members-in-world-war-i" target="_blank">over 18 percent of the Army</a> during the First World War, likely including friends or relatives of the predominantly Irish staff of the Gibson House. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a member of the Republican Party, Charlie likely remained a supporter of the war. While his and his family’s day-to-day affairs may not have changed significantly as a result of the war effort, it had a broad impact in Boston and the Commonwealth. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><b>Massachusetts at War</b> </i></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The “Yankee Division,” officially known as the Twenty-Sixth Infantry Division of the Massachusetts Army National Guard, drew roughly 60 percent of its 28,000 infantrymen from cities and towns across the Bay State. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As the Boston Red Sox won their final World Series of the twentieth century (a competition permitted by special order after the government was persuaded it would help with the sale of Liberty Bonds), thousands of Massachusetts men were assembled in trenches on the western flank of the St. Mihiel Salient in France. The Twenty-Sixth Division’s participation in what would be a key victory for the American Expeditionary Forces was well documented in Boston’s newspapers and served as a source of pride for many New Englanders. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Other Massachusetts regiments also served in France, including the Boston-based Fourteenth Engineer Regiment and the Seventy-Sixth National Army Division. The Boston Navy Yard (now known as the Charlestown Navy Yard, two miles northeast of the Gibson House) outfitted almost every ship headed to fight in the Atlantic. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The city also exported food and critical supplies to Europe, and manufactured armaments, uniforms, shoes, and boots for the American and Allied armies. During the war, Boston served as a haven for political dissidents from other nations, including Ireland, Armenia, Poland, and Greece. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Less than 100 miles from Boston, a German submarine sunk several coal barges and fired shells at the <a href="https://www.wbur.org/news/2018/07/22/century-ago-german-sub-wwi-us" target="_blank">town of Orleans</a> on Cape Cod on July 21, 1918. This attack made Massachusetts the only part of the country to come under enemy fire in the First World War. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><b>The End of the War: Boston Celebrates</b></i></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1466" data-original-width="1808" height="162" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-OPkzRbjEaMKJ1qjmh9e92AMb_EvNsVN7MqnM_yiSW62WdtFuuZTQWlfIzUQaEUo9v7IKZsSrZxmJDERz1WbCXirCXPKiaODoA_ZYx2_GSMmqDYpsZd5re_hQWcEFSklFc7i3j4Y/w200-h162/165-WW-75C-50.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;" width="200" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Bostonians waiting for Peace Day Parade, 1918.<br /><i>National Archives</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYyek2bcOMek5Q-3Wz2eOstkpHPhN9oZZGZSHkv3bP-oZMMLQIFVAdtRO-GmpeWiFHwkiEMJIGNPfoq3vhuDBQKBNGVgTO3Vi9hDRxXXoz4ZtHJDFyipt5EsKXSpNIgEs0LQhkkoI/s1856/165-WW-75C-39.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1373" data-original-width="1856" height="148" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYyek2bcOMek5Q-3Wz2eOstkpHPhN9oZZGZSHkv3bP-oZMMLQIFVAdtRO-GmpeWiFHwkiEMJIGNPfoq3vhuDBQKBNGVgTO3Vi9hDRxXXoz4ZtHJDFyipt5EsKXSpNIgEs0LQhkkoI/w200-h148/165-WW-75C-39.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Float in the Peace Day Parade, 1918.<br /><i>National Archives</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br /></span><div><br /></div><div>“Scenes riotous beyond attempt of description, but riotous to a degree that thrilled the heart of every liberty-loving, proudly patriotic, boatful inhabitant of the most intensely loyal city of the world, took place in Boston’s streets yesterday.”</div><div><span><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the November 12, 1918, edition of the <i>Boston Globe</i>, numerous articles followed the city and state’s reaction to the end of the First World War. Calling November 11 an “unofficial holiday,” the <i>Globe</i> described how “restraint was unknown” and Americans went “insane with joy.” The paper mocked “unhappy, despised Kaiser”: </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...and poor old Bill would have seen himself, in effigy, dragged through the streets of the city: he would have seen his image, soaked in oil, burning fiercely to the intense delight of the populace.”</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In a November 10, 1918, editorial titled “When It’s Over, Over There,” the <i>Boston Globe</i> warned that while the fighting was over, the war was not. “The war is not over. The real war is just beginning—the war against ignorance, the war against poverty, the war against prejudice, the war against disease....The world of 1914 was one thing. The world of 1920 will have to be something radically different.” </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">—Kathrine Esten, Intern (UMass-Amherst)</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Visit the Gibson House Museum to see our outdoor exhibit, "1920: The Gibsons' New Normal," on view from October 1 through December 17, 2020.</i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><br /></i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;">For further reading:</span></i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;">Blakemore, Erin. "<a href="https://www.history.com/news/going-to-summer-camp-in-1913-meant-practicing-for-world-war-i#:~:text=Four%20hundred%20thousand%20men%2C%20including,Ronald%20Reagan%2C%20attended%20the%20camps." target="_blank">Going to Summer Camp in 1913 Meant Practicing for World War I</a>." <i>History News.</i> July 18, 2017.</span></p></li><li><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.worldwar1centennial.org/images/massachusetts/boston-at-War-text-draft-5.pdf" target="_blank">Boston at War</a>. <i>Over the Top: Magazine of the World War I Centennial. </i>March 2009.</span></p></li><li><span id="docs-internal-guid-04f52af2-7fff-b646-1cea-413349851800"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/bny_wwi.htm" target="_blank">Boston Navy Yard and the 'Great War,' 1914-18</a>, <i>National Park Service</i></span></p></span></span></li><li><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;">Clute, Penelope. "<a href="https://www.nycourts.gov/legacypdfs/courts/4jd/plattsburgh_city/Archives.pdf" target="_blank">The Plattsburg Idea</a>." <i>New York Archives.</i> Fall 2005.</span></span></p></li><li><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://www.hampton.lib.nh.us/hampton/history/military/26thDivisionYD/26thDivisionHistory1919.htm" target="_blank">History of the 26th Yankee Division</a>, American Legion Post 25</span></span></p></li></ul><p></p><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><br /></i></span></p></div>Gibson House Museumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00685472634101571238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4364251652830013188.post-44945609600398528562020-08-20T17:13:00.001-04:002020-08-28T14:05:34.717-04:00Part 3: The Poet<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>This post is the third of a three-part series on the life and writings of Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr., founder of the Gibson House Museum.
</i></span></span><i style="font-family: georgia; white-space: pre-wrap;">You can read the first part <a href="http://thegibsonhousemuseum.blogspot.com/2020/04/part-1-wounded-eros.html">here</a> and the second <a href="http://thegibsonhousemuseum.blogspot.com/2020/07/part-2-two-gentlemen-in-touraine.html#more">here</a>.</i></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; white-space: pre-wrap;">The mysteries of our lives resolve themselves very slowly with the progress of years. Every decade lifts the curtain, which hides us from ourselves, a little further, and lets a new light upon what was dark and unintelligible.</span></div><p></p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><div style="text-align: right;"><i>—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1896</i></div><p></p></blockquote><p><span id="docs-internal-guid-c777378f-7fff-f776-09a0-f459dab46bd3"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A portrait of the artist as a young man: independent and well-traveled, Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr. (1874–1954), the bachelor-poet of Boston, achieved early success. His first two books, <i>Two Gentlemen in Touraine</i> (1899) and <i>Among French Inns</i> (1905), both on French </span></span></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkbU5eUveqGLrffXIinBQxA6mu5ZyedlFGeMR55CA7G2nUo-ObNh_Jc0wKwIjQQWaBczd6jjvP1VSDZ_JWdNfhyphenhyphen36sGtxaaW8HkbvWlS0PY1m5-UX1UMNHdXe6VqhAUpqb2gvIfCY/s1448/Wounded+Eros.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1448" data-original-width="1148" height="513" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkbU5eUveqGLrffXIinBQxA6mu5ZyedlFGeMR55CA7G2nUo-ObNh_Jc0wKwIjQQWaBczd6jjvP1VSDZ_JWdNfhyphenhyphen36sGtxaaW8HkbvWlS0PY1m5-UX1UMNHdXe6VqhAUpqb2gvIfCY/w406-h513/Wounded+Eros.jpg" width="406" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr., c. 1920.</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span id="docs-internal-guid-c777378f-7fff-f776-09a0-f459dab46bd3"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">travel, were so popular they went into second editions. In <i>Two Gentlemen in Touraine</i>, Gibson explored the art, architecture, and social customs of rural France, depicting it as an enchanted “fairyland,”</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> a greenwood and pastoral escape route in the gay Arcadian literary tradition of the Victorian era—in sharp contrast to the cooler, monochromatic stones of old Beacon Street. As explored in the second blog post in this series, <i>Two Gentlemen in Touraine</i> told a thinly veiled autobiographical tale of initiation into the transatlantic gay subculture of the 1890s, with the Count Maurice Mauny Talvande as guide and mentor. <i>Among French Inns</i> takes the form of a travel book embedded in a comic novel—a farce—containing a wry parody of Isabella Stuart Gardner and John “Jack” Lowell Gardner, Jr. in the character of Mr. and Mrs. James Blodget Wilton.</span></span></span><p></p><p><span id="docs-internal-guid-89f1cebd-7fff-fc7b-43fa-9e66b17ffa2d"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Gibson’s first love, however, was poetry, and in the first decade of the twentieth century he produced two substantial volumes, <i>The Spirit of Love and Other Poems</i> (1906) and <i>The Wounded Eros</i> (1908). Working closely with the Riverside Press of Houghton Mifflin, he planned to produce a total of four volumes, to be bound as an elegant set, including <i>Odes and Elegies</i> (1908) and <i>Dialogues and Satires</i> (1909). The last two volumes were never produced, although most of the poems were prepared in manuscript.<span></span></span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>The Spirit of Love</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a comprehensive collection of Gibson’s poetic output from 1896, when he was about twenty-two, to 1902, when he was about twenty-eight. As a young man, he was most likely trying to come to terms with his sexuality in a challenging social and cultural context, and in his poetry he strove to name and honor a love that he did not yet fully understand:</span></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>To those who love, yet ne’er have known</i></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Whence their true love hath strangely grown;</i></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>To those whose heart do hear withal</i></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Celestial voices sweetly call,</i></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>That lift their very souls above;</i></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>To all who love, or sad, or gay,</i></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>To these I dedicate my lay.</i></span></span></p></blockquote><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><span id="docs-internal-guid-73fcd988-7fff-108c-0d7a-372d79a6df1d"></span></i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The dominant themes in Gibson’s early work are the mystery of passion and desire, unrequited love, poisoned love, social scorn, the danger of scandal, and the criminalization of love, “. . . strange things that bring this sweet desire, / To draw some other being near the soul.” In these years, he constructed a literary and sexual persona in the tradition of Oscar Wilde, and one can sense the impact on his writing, in his confessional and sometimes tortured lines, of the 1895 <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrTuOxArc5qtdlKRLUmLHhuMJ9G4OnqZG7-GhTBKPT1hAKoiyklO_On-6vhQKNopdjqMFbjVxsyO6ckBVckxbWHQpLepeOxIKjYHWIkqGGLh8kvkjOyX6WtrJcCdn2WQDYJyMjTBU/s815/Riverside+Press.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="815" data-original-width="503" height="328" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrTuOxArc5qtdlKRLUmLHhuMJ9G4OnqZG7-GhTBKPT1hAKoiyklO_On-6vhQKNopdjqMFbjVxsyO6ckBVckxbWHQpLepeOxIKjYHWIkqGGLh8kvkjOyX6WtrJcCdn2WQDYJyMjTBU/w203-h328/Riverside+Press.png" width="203" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Riverside Press published Gibson's poetry.</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Wilde trial in London for “gross indecency.”</span></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>But suddenly there came some note of scorn;</i></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>And in a moment all was fact again.</i></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our sweet imagination still returns</span></i></span></p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Into the cold and stilted forms of life.</span></i></span></p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>There are strange moments in our outward march,</i></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>When these dull things of earth shall come to pass.</i></span></span></p></blockquote><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><span id="docs-internal-guid-9e9f4755-7fff-8548-6b36-b52075b51edb"></span></i></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Many of the poems gathered in <i>The Spirit of Love</i> fall squarely within what many scholars have called the “homosexual pastoral tradition,” which includes both classical and modern works and has ranged from ancient Greek poets’ praise of boys in the gymnasia to Walt Whitman’s <i>Leaves of Grass</i> and beyond. Gibson’s poetry as a whole includes a wide variety of hints, circumlocutions, and double-voicings, one example being the 1893 poem, “The Green Book,” which reads like an apology for youthful indiscretion:</span></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Youth is ever green and young,</i></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Then guard thy song of youth, when sung</i></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>In the spring of life, and say</i></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>‘T was but a minstrel’s early lay.</i></span></span></p></blockquote><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><span id="docs-internal-guid-24960efc-7fff-2ad7-f70a-b07c1da9ab10"></span></i></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">In the nineteenth-century transatlantic gay subculture, the color green could very well have been a reference to Oscar Wilde himself. In 1892, Wilde’s acolytes wore green carnations to the opening night of his play Lady Windermere’s Fan. The green carnation became an emblem of Wilde and his circle. In 1894, author Robert Hichens wrote a notorious (and probably damning) </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5r73mKX4iWIYMewOSug_fVPSwQCMTJdVVWcOASRmgG6J42lPDYuMs7kgmd0Leqe7LFEaSNPNdADZ0UhT6JG_rm12cMUX31Ml-QGV4h2yjaIvbnRsIhxHYRWc4tvBSK5bPICZZiKg/s763/Green_Carnation.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="763" data-original-width="476" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5r73mKX4iWIYMewOSug_fVPSwQCMTJdVVWcOASRmgG6J42lPDYuMs7kgmd0Leqe7LFEaSNPNdADZ0UhT6JG_rm12cMUX31Ml-QGV4h2yjaIvbnRsIhxHYRWc4tvBSK5bPICZZiKg/w130-h210/Green_Carnation.png" width="130" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">parody of Wilde, a novel entitled <i>The Green Carnation</i>, which was published by D. Appleton and Company of New York. The Appleton family were friends, and, in fact, related to the Gibsons by marriage.</span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-38920e93-7fff-1734-5d6d-62291888b15d"></span></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">In 1908, Gibson published a more mature collection, <i>The Wounded Eros</i>, a carefully crafted sonnet sequence with an insightful introduction by the African-American poet, literary critic, anthologist, and fellow Bostonian, William Stanley Braithwaite (1878–1962). Braithwaite would eventually become one of the most important Black literary figures of his time, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with W. E. B. Dubois, Langston Hughes, and other key figures of the Harlem Renaissance. With Charles Gibson, Braithwaite shared a love of English Renaissance poetry and tended toward literary </span></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-cnHXAoxpzfnZW0KS2FWmHWyaOMx3uMetlwJRKIB1UosfQG_fk8DvzDBTqc6-2plHuFYnzWXSWtZ84VhJfgtsRKUVPez0giNT2443VZeiJGEuPaT6U3tpO5WOF-u4EQwAbPtFYnI/s1504/WSBraithwaite.tif" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1504" data-original-width="1425" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-cnHXAoxpzfnZW0KS2FWmHWyaOMx3uMetlwJRKIB1UosfQG_fk8DvzDBTqc6-2plHuFYnzWXSWtZ84VhJfgtsRKUVPez0giNT2443VZeiJGEuPaT6U3tpO5WOF-u4EQwAbPtFYnI/w198-h210/WSBraithwaite.tif" width="198" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">William Stanley Braithwaite,<br />from the <i>Boston Globe</i>, 1918.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">conservatism rather than modernism. In his introductory essay, Braithwaite, somewhat indirectly, referenced Gibson’s ambiguous stance as both author and narrator of the sonnet sequence, pointing to the precedent of Sir Philip Sidney, whose poetry epitomized homoerotic expression during the Renaissance, as well as the Greek homoerotic tradition. In case his readers missed the point, Braithwaite underscored that <i>The Wounded Eros</i> is “the story of an oblation full of inexplicable shadows,” and noted the “detached aspects” of the poems, even as the emotions they portrayed seemed raw, transparent, and close to the surface. “And while, after a close study of these sonnets, I am convinced of their origin in the imagination—that is to say, there being no likelihood that the story is of any actually known experience—I am impressed with the note of sincerity which will convince the reader of the poet’s serious and honest treatment of his material,” tactfully suggesting that there was little chance that Gibson was referencing direct experience of heterosexual relationships in his poem. Echoing this code toward the end of his life, Gibson would describe his identity as “Greek, Eastern or, then again, as Renaissance.”
</span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">By 1908, Gibson had shifted, in terms of cultural style, from the hyper-aesthetic mode of Oscar Wilde somewhat closer to the vigorous homoeroticism of Walt Whitman:</span></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>How shall I ever thank thee for the boon,</i></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Thou wingéd child, that lifted thus my soul,</i></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>And quenched the thirst for love, that many a bowl</i></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Of golden wine had failed, alas! too soon,</i></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>To satisfy, from eventide to noon?</i></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>For I, who lingered near some mossy knoll,</i></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Received thy love-tipped arrow as its goal;</i></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>And bare the wound, rejoicing with a tune.</i></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then bind, fair one, with love thy wounded swain.</span></i></span></p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Give him thine eyes, but breathe thy soul as well</i></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Into his welcome heart, that beats with pain,</i></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Lest it should have an hapless tale to tell.</i></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Ah! Spare me that, my love, and in thy train</i></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Shall Heaven be wherever thou mayst dwell!</i></span></span></p></blockquote><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><span id="docs-internal-guid-0b7bbacf-7fff-4b6b-a505-2c4a1b73e9a2"></span></i></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-10ee5e00-7fff-830f-ac1c-9c22d28dfda3"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Charlie Gibson’s poetry can be difficult to access for twenty-first century readers because of its coded language, veiled confessions, exaggerated formalism, and metaphysical eroticism. He was a liminal figure, frozen in time between Edwardian Boston and the advent of literary modernism. But he was certainly not alone, sharing common ground with poets such as Henry Harmon Chamberlin, Louise Chandler Moulton, Amy Lowell, Robert Frost, William Stanley Braithwaite, and, later, S. Foster Damon and John Brooks Wheelwright. Wheelwright’s masterful <i>Mirrors of </i></span></span></span></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKrS8RP8HdTrkdjL401vox-xDuJbW8fS1CPVIGhHBhOTzu171mLXmpshoBvvJ9hUB1ra4Sd12o6KRfkri2FZfVBbqxBxOskZE_JkryI6HLX-9ycCiz0vyRWfD7wT9A14wTf8hI8nE/s844/John_Brooks_Weelwright+%25281%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="844" data-original-width="802" height="329" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKrS8RP8HdTrkdjL401vox-xDuJbW8fS1CPVIGhHBhOTzu171mLXmpshoBvvJ9hUB1ra4Sd12o6KRfkri2FZfVBbqxBxOskZE_JkryI6HLX-9ycCiz0vyRWfD7wT9A14wTf8hI8nE/w311-h329/John_Brooks_Weelwright+%25281%2529.jpg" width="311" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">John Brooks Wheelwright by Albert Sterner (1863-1946), pencil drawing.<br /><i>Collection of Todd S. Gernes.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-10ee5e00-7fff-830f-ac1c-9c22d28dfda3"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>Venus: A Novel in Sonnets, 1914–1938</i> is perhaps the most apt comparison to Gibson’s <i>Wounded Eros</i>. </span><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Like Gibson, Wheelwright was born into a prominent Brahmin family and briefly studied architecture at MIT; he would later collaborate with Walker Evans and Lincoln Kirstein in photographing Boston-area Victorian architecture. While Gibson’s civic profile as Parks Commissioner, literary tastemaker, statesman, and public intellectual trended steadily to the political and cultural right (he was a Roosevelt-Taft-Harding Republican), Wheelwright, who was bisexual, evolved from Boston Brahmin to Trotskyist-socialist-modernist. Wheelwright’s sonnet sequence looks forward to a more minimalist, precise, and severe (though playful) modernism; Gibson unearths from historical memory a miscellany of sonnets, odes, songs, lines, and fragments, objects for his cabinet of curiosities, seedlings for his lovingly cultivated specimen garden.
</span></span></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">- <a href="https://www.stonehill.edu/faculty-staff-directory/details/todd-s-gernes/">Todd S. Gernes</a>, Ph.D. (Associate Professor, Stonehill College)</span></span></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">References</span></i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Henry Harmon Chamberlin, <i>Poems by Henry Harmon Chamberlin</i> (privately printed, 1911).</span></span></li><li><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">S. Foster Damon, <i>Tilted Moons</i> (New York & London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1929).</span></span></li><li><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Charles Gibson, <i>The Spirt of Love and Other Poems</i> (Boston: published by the author, Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1906).</span></span></li><li><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">_____. <i>The Wounded Eros: Sonnets by Charles Gibson</i>, with an introduction by William Stanley Braithwaite (Boston: published by the author, Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1908).</span></span></li><li><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Robert Hichens, <i>The Green Carnation</i> (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1894).</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">E. Keenaghan, “<a href="http://www.jstor.com/stable/j.ctt2tt8jz.15">Gay Poetry</a>,” in The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 4th ed., Roland Greene, et al, eds. (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press), 530 – 543</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rictor Norton, "<a href="http://rictornorton.co.uk/pastor01.htm">An Era of Idylls</a>," The Homosexual Pastoral Tradition, 20 June 2008</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></li><li><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Winfield Townley Scott, “John Wheelwright and His Poetry,” New Mexico Quarterly 24, 2 (1954).</span></span></li><li><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Douglass Shand-Tucci, <i>Boston Bohemia, 1881–1900. Ralph Adams Cram: Life and Architecture</i> (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995).</span></span></li><li><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Caroline Ticknor, ed., <i>Dr. Holmes’s Boston</i> (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1915).</span></span></li><li><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Alan M. Wald, <i>The Revolutionary Imagination: The Poetry and Politics of John Wheelwright and Sherry Mangan</i> (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1983).</span></span></li><li><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">John Wheelwright, <i>Mirrors of Venus: A Novel in Sonnets, 1914–1938</i> (Boston: Bruce Humphries, 1938).</span></span></li><li><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-a1e13f8c-7fff-c091-6a11-150a6ea0fdec"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">“<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/john-wheelwright">John Wheelwright</a>,” Poetry Foundation website. </span></span></span></span></li></ul><p></p>Gibson House Museumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00685472634101571238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4364251652830013188.post-84290646367009692592020-07-22T08:44:00.006-04:002020-08-10T13:52:13.752-04:00Part 2: Two Gentlemen in Touraine: A Pilgrimage to Fairyland<div style="text-align: center;"><i><font face="georgia">This post is the second of a three-part series on the life and writings of Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr., founder of the Gibson House Museum. You can read the first part <a href="http://thegibsonhousemuseum.blogspot.com/2020/04/part-1-wounded-eros.html">here</a>. </font></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font face="georgia"><br /></font></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-cb85bfe0-7fff-adf3-2134-11a60260de45"><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><font face="georgia">Let us then take a sweeping glance around, for we may not have another half so grand, half so fair, or half so high, while we are in the old Touraine which lies before us, there in the last orange glow of the departed sun. And if we follow these avenues of the roof below us, if we wind our way around these great towers, around the high and pointed roofs of slate, we may well imagine ourselves in some fairyland. This maze of cupolas, of domes, of towers, appears more bewildering to us than ever. And we lean against the stone, in an artistic intoxication, so overpowering is it.</font></i></span></p></span></div></span></span></blockquote><span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font face="georgia"><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-cb85bfe0-7fff-adf3-2134-11a60260de45"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">—Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr., <i>Two Gentlemen in Touraine</i> (1899)</span></p><div><br /></div></span></div>In 1899, when Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr. (“Charlie”) published <i>Two Gentlemen in Touraine</i>, a lighthearted but sophisticated book about the historic and picturesque French royal chateaux of Touraine, he was just twenty-four years old. A young Bostonian educated at elite New England prep schools, he also briefly attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he became captivated by French history and architecture. Charlie had talent, a refined sensibility, and an entrepreneurial spirit. His family, part of the last wave of Boston’s Brahmin elite, wanted him to become an engineer of some kind and so sent him off to MIT, then called Boston Tech and located, like his family’s fashionable brownstone residence, in the Back Bay. Charlie would later recall that he resisted such a utilitarian path. “I wanted only to create beauty, and, through my verse and my garden, I think I’ve done that.”</font></span></span><div><span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font face="georgia"><br /></font></span></span></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-646598d7-7fff-04db-7711-dc65c0a2da5a"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font face="georgia">In the twilight of the Brahmin era, estates and inherited wealth were divided and subdivided; young men had to pursue careers and establish themselves, socially and financially. And so Charlie’s decision to become a traveling bachelor-poet created tension at home, especially with his father, Charles Gibson, Sr. Although mitigated by a close and loving relationship with his mother, Rosamond Warren Gibson, this tension would come to define his life in significant ways. A similar pattern of intra-familial conflict would play out with other gay men of Charlie’s generation, and beyond, in legal struggles over inheritance and, in some cases, disinheritance.</font></span></span></div><div><span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font face="georgia"><br /></font></span></span></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-c151fd28-7fff-9497-97d6-257fc130342d"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font face="georgia"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrDvCU7dpbFaVzN3ap3JGwgiomxPBnBc7j8fs8AeqfOswGQhnFuv_hWlYgVb91rc1Lw1jwR8aDANiC9EIrOr9O8eM5BoQWcyDRWu6b8ULXVmabF4HSsLHJ52ZZzZ7vliQPQoxye8c/s581/charlie-s-manuscript.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="502" data-original-width="581" height="221" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrDvCU7dpbFaVzN3ap3JGwgiomxPBnBc7j8fs8AeqfOswGQhnFuv_hWlYgVb91rc1Lw1jwR8aDANiC9EIrOr9O8eM5BoQWcyDRWu6b8ULXVmabF4HSsLHJ52ZZzZ7vliQPQoxye8c/w256-h221/charlie-s-manuscript.jpg" width="256" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><font size="1">Manuscript copy of the first chapter of <i>Two Gentlemen in Touraine</i>.<br />Collection of the Gibson House Museum</font><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></font></span></span></div><div><span><a name='more'></a></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Charlie published the first edition of </span><i style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Two Gentlemen in Touraine</i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> under the pen name Richard Sudbury, a reference to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Sudbury, Mass., Wayside Inn. (Charlie later explained the tribute in a 1907 lecture on the art of poetry: “Longfellow was the epic poet of America, and the central poetic figure of our history.... [He] sang of the homely lives of his fellow countrymen, of their firesides and their patriotism. His poems dwell in the hearts of the people who do not understand the greater poets.”) The edition was a lovely volume, elegantly bound with thick, gilt-edged pages, aesthetic printing, and striking illustrations. The </span><i style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Buffalo Commercial</i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">’s assessment reflects the praise given its appearance: “The book is ... richly endowed with artistic temperament, and ... is in some details very unique and fascinating. But it is in externals that the book is most noticeable. The paper is of the finest quality; every page is beautifully ornamented, and the binding is rich, and the very best in every detail of the binder’s art.” </span><i style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Two Gentlemen in Touraine</i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> was a popular success, so much so that in 1906 two additional editions were published under Charlie’s own name in London and New York, including an “automobile edition” designed for the waves of international tourists then motoring through the French countryside.</span></div><div><span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font><br /></font></span></span></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-3f491dc9-7fff-52c5-89ee-f5e8bbc490ed"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font face="georgia"><i>Two Gentlemen in Touraine</i> displays a precociousness and technical sophistication beyond Charlie’s years at the time of writing. This likely reflects the influence of a more mature and cosmopolitan collaborator, a silent partner and counter-voice, Maurice Mauny Talvande, a.k.a. Count de Mauny, whom Charlie first met in Europe in 1894. That year, Charlie began writing <i>Two Gentlemen</i>, a quasi-autobiographical tale based on this relationship. The book takes the form of an extended dialogue between author/narrator Richard Sudbury and a fictitious French nobleman, with Sudbury standing in for Charlie and the character Comte de Persigny for Count de Mauny.</font></span></span></div><div><span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font face="georgia"><br /></font></span></span></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-975cbe7a-7fff-72f1-066b-5d7d8e24b5ed"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font face="georgia">Charlie and Mauny Talvande’s friendship and close collaboration deepened when Mauny Talvande returned with Charlie to the United States, subsequently giving talks on French architecture, history, and social customs. At the time, Charlie was about twenty; Mauny Talvande was approaching thirty. Charlie accompanied Mauny Talvande on his tour, assisting him in preparing his lectures and literary salons, one of which Charlie’s mother, Rosamond, graciously sponsored. The two men would soon collaborate on articles, from an ultra-conservative perspective, about moral education in France, historic buildings, and the sociology of modern France. Mauny Talvande was essentially a monarchist, an archconservative, and Charlie proved to be a sympathetic sounding board, and perhaps more.</font></span></span></div><div><span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font face="georgia"><br /></font></span></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-d0331bfc-7fff-ff23-a852-5b09841e76b8"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><font face="georgia">We had been attracted to each other, perhaps by the very difference of our temperaments, and had been in one another’s society almost constantly for a month. At the end of that time our roads had led us in different directions, and we had parted, not to meet again. But so much interested had we been in various discussions, which we had had upon the social questions of life, that we had opened a correspondence, lasting, almost without a pause, during the years that had since passed.</font></i></span></span></div></blockquote><div><font face="georgia"><br /></font></div><div><font face="georgia"><span style="font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Two Gentlemen in Touraine</i> can be read as a coded narrative about a gay pilgrimage, in the context of aesthetic tourism. Charlie paints an eroticized landscape of image and emotion that explores same-sex desire, a liminal space of touristic fantasy, a never-never land of sensual reverie, where peasants and noblemen, happily interdependent, find common ground in a time and place that never was. Significantly, <i>Two Gentlemen in Touraine</i> is a story of a romantic relationship that unfolded just prior to the 1895 criminal trial in England of Oscar Wilde for sodomy, which had a chilling effect on gay relationships and forced many queer men and women in Europe and America more deeply underground. The book also appeared before the early-twentieth-century advent of Freudianism, which cast same-sex relationships in a much more critical light. In this fleeting moment, Sudbury/Charlie “exchanged imaginations” with Comte de Persigny/Count de Mauny, whom the narrator describes in eroticized language:</span> </font></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-3e3b90b7-7fff-8381-d833-9183f9ec5a15"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><font face="georgia">
</font></i></span></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><font face="georgia">His tall figure stood before me, straight and distinctive in outline. I thought him wonderfully little changed since we had last met, though he spoke often of the gray hairs which I found it impossible to discover in his locks. He was a noble type of a Frenchman, the Comte. His light brown hair fell back in a slight wave, from his broad forehead, showing two large temples that were neither high nor low, but that spoke of a wonderful intelligence behind them. No one could look upon the Comte de Persigny and not be sensible that he was in the presence of a man of unusual qualities. The eyebrows, a little darker than the hair above, were smooth and even, though they seemed to protrude almost unnaturally, owing to the strong development of the forehead. Beneath them shone a pair of deep-set eyes, bearing that indescribable look which we find in all men who have thought much and thought deeply. It is difficult to convey the impression of this look in a man’s eyes to anyone who has not observed it for himself.</font></i></span></span></div></blockquote><div><span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font face="georgia"><br /></font></span></span></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-cf262a90-7fff-a084-a61d-658648f0a396"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font face="georgia">In 1898 Mauny Talvande married Lady Mary Byng, daughter of the 4th Earl of Stratford and a maid of honor to <div style="text-align: right;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuI3rrSKnzcw2u5Pdxx92zUqh2vKJbzM22SRElC04m-ipS-C7nl8HpwuRwDZUFBPDJpBBvCRyl-Fvf0q9kOS_vjEeu4gY96cdOmyjxlMdNzpjhyDC7wLyK01nvBFnii_VKe7dLFbM/s450/Portrait+of+Mauny-Talvandes.tif" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="450" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuI3rrSKnzcw2u5Pdxx92zUqh2vKJbzM22SRElC04m-ipS-C7nl8HpwuRwDZUFBPDJpBBvCRyl-Fvf0q9kOS_vjEeu4gY96cdOmyjxlMdNzpjhyDC7wLyK01nvBFnii_VKe7dLFbM/s320/Portrait+of+Mauny-Talvandes.tif" width="320" /></a></div>Queen Victoria. The couple maintained close connections to Boston society. (Isabella Stewart Gardner, in fact, was godmother of their daughter.) The marriage was ill-fated, however, and dissolved following Mauny Talvande’s involvement in a homosexual scandal related to his establishing a French boarding school for the sons of the British elite. Personal bankruptcy, bad press, and increasing skepticism about his social posturing and entrepreneurial confidence games led to his departure from Europe and Britain. He fled to a tiny island off the coast of Sri Lanka, which was, according to historian Robert Aldrich, a notorious site of homoerotic cultural encounters and sexual tourism from the Victorian period onward. There he built a fanciful estate called Taprobane, manufactured fine furniture, and became a published authority on tropical gardening. Charlie and Mauny Talvande would keep up an affectionate correspondence for the rest of their lives.</font></span></span></div><div><span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font face="georgia"><br /></font></span></span></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-87280417-7fff-ecbc-6917-eb2eb6570dc4"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font face="georgia">In the elegantly printed pages of <i>Two Gentlemen in Touraine</i>, we can discern thinly veiled fragments of autobiography as well as crosscurrents of popular culture: travel and tourism, complex and sometimes ambiguous responses to modernity, and contemporary taste in reading and intellectual culture. On a more personal level, however, the book documents a kind of love that was often misunderstood and harshly scorned by society. During one of their extended philosophical dialogues, Sudbury/Charlie reveals to Comte de Persigny/Count de Mauny,</font></span></span></div><div><span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font face="georgia"><br /></font></span></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-edd846df-7fff-5811-f76e-8942659aef88"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><font face="georgia">I have often argued in my own mind whether, in the case of such a possible affinity of two minds—such a Platonic friendship, be it in any class of society or life—whether these souls might not become intellectually satisfied with one another, and end by being sufficient to themselves. They would find, it is true, a great contentment in one another’s company. They would have a progressing influence upon one another, which might become, in time, almost sublime, but which, for its very purity and light, the world would certainly misunderstand. Therefore, in arguing with myself upon this ideal relationship, I have often thought that the misunderstanding of the world, in this self-absorption of the two minds, might defeat its own object rather than produce greatness, as you have said.</font></i></span></span></div></blockquote><div><span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font face="georgia"><br /></font></span></span></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-21425184-7fff-bdc5-43ba-ba1c230ba7c2"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font face="georgia">Comte de Persigny/Count de Mauny, the mentor in the relationship, seems to advise courage and fortitude:</font></span></span></div><div><span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font face="georgia"><br /></font></span></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1852dd39-7fff-e783-5847-ff06c573abb8"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><font face="georgia">They must not allow the world to misunderstand them ... for then they would be unable to accomplish much of what they would do. Yet how many men who have stood out upon the pinnacles of the world’s history have been misunderstood for this very reason! True greatness will never be thoroughly understood until the mind of the world is great enough to realize and to recognize that which is often overlooked, or, as you say, misunderstood.</font></i></span></span></div></blockquote><div><span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font face="georgia"><br /></font></span></span></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-a00be762-7fff-1e0f-1941-1bc0af5ac807"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font face="georgia">Although he was a successful and respected author and lecturer in the early twentieth century, Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr. became increasingly overlooked and misunderstood as he grew older and adamantly—perhaps obsessively—refused to change with the times. As he suggested in one of his later poems, he preferred to be remembered “... not as I am, with suffering that mars the countenance and seared with countless scars, / But as I was, a youth of twenty-three .…<span style="font-size: 14.6667px;">”</span> Charlie most certainly accumulated emotional scars during his lifetime, evidence, perhaps, of tensions within his family and social milieu over his sexual identity—his queerness—and with his cultural persona as bachelor-poet and bon vivant. His was a strategy of retrenchment, like that of other gay men at the turn of the century, creating his own hermetically-sealed worlds: a fairy-touched chateau in the French countryside, a book of inward-looking sonnets redolent of the gay pastoral mode, or a Back Bay house museum and literary shrine frozen in Victorian amber.</font></span></span></div><div><span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font face="georgia"><br /></font></span></span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><font face="georgia">- <a href="https://www.stonehill.edu/faculty-staff-directory/details/todd-s-gernes/">Todd S. Gernes</a>, Ph.D. (Associate Professor, Stonehill College)</font></i></span></span></div><div><span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font face="georgia"><br /></font></span></span></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-e3c097ba-7fff-2413-0f35-ae3b793e429d"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><font face="georgia">References</font></i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span id="docs-internal-guid-e3c097ba-7fff-2413-0f35-ae3b793e429d"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><font face="georgia"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Robert Aldrich, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Cultural Encounters and Homoeroticism in Sri Lanka: Sex and Serendipity</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Routledge, 2014).</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></font></p></span></li><li><span id="docs-internal-guid-e3c097ba-7fff-2413-0f35-ae3b793e429d"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font face="georgia">“C. K. Scott Moncrief (1889–1930),” <a href="https://www.ed.ac.uk/alumni/services/notable-alumni/alumni-in-history/ck-scott-moncrieff">University of Edinburgh Alumni Service website</a>.</font></span></p></span></li><li><span id="docs-internal-guid-e3c097ba-7fff-2413-0f35-ae3b793e429d"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><font face="georgia"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">S. Chomet, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Count de Mauny: Friend of Royalty</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Begel House Inc., 2002).</span></font></p></span></li><li><span id="docs-internal-guid-e3c097ba-7fff-2413-0f35-ae3b793e429d"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><font face="georgia"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Howard P. Chudacoff, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>The Age of the Bachelor: Creating an American Subculture</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Princeton University Press, 1991).</span></font></p></span></li><li><span id="docs-internal-guid-e3c097ba-7fff-2413-0f35-ae3b793e429d"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><font face="georgia"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">T. J. Jackson Lears, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880–1930</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (University of Chicago Press, 1981).</span></font></p></span></li><li><span id="docs-internal-guid-e3c097ba-7fff-2413-0f35-ae3b793e429d"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><font face="georgia"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Richard Sudbury [Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr.], </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Two Gentlemen in Touraine</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Herbert Stone & Company, 1899).</span></font></p></span></li><li><span id="docs-internal-guid-e3c097ba-7fff-2413-0f35-ae3b793e429d"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><font face="georgia"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Eugen Weber, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870–1914</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Stanford University Press, 1976).</span></font></p></span></li></ul><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-32a6b98c-7fff-2ea2-02fd-531683c36ced"></span></p></span></div>Gibson House Museumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00685472634101571238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4364251652830013188.post-4584414277022527282020-07-09T06:48:00.007-04:002020-08-10T13:54:41.126-04:00The Gibson House Icebox<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><font face="georgia">
Have you ever thought about what life was like before refrigerators? In 1830, a new invention changed the way Americans handled food: the icebox. <o:p></o:p></font></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><font face="georgia">Icebox.<br /><i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Gibson House Museum 2004.11</span></i></font></td></tr>
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At the Gibson House, an icebox can be found on the ground floor. It is a large, dark-brown box made from hardwood that looks almost like a drawer or large chest. It has multiple compartments to store different types of food; the compartments are lined with tin or zinc to insulate it. It is currently located in the kitchen, but originally it would have been kept outside the back door of the kitchen, on top of a zinc plate. <o:p></o:p></font></div>
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Ice harvesting began here in Boston in 1805. Ice was harvested in the winter from frozen lakes and ponds and was delivered from house to house by an “iceman.” <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Tudor" target="_blank">Frederic Tudor</a>, one of the Gibsons' neighbors in Nahant, founded the Tudor Ice Company and later became known as Boston’s “Ice King.” <o:p></o:p></font></div>
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The primary location of local ice harvesting in the 1850s was Jamaica Pond. By 1874, the <i>Boston Globe</i> reported that the Jamaica Plain Ice Company was cutting about 5,000 tons of ice a day. Prior to delivery, it was stored in insulated sheds that could contain up to 80,000 tons of ice. Once the ice was delivered, people would store it in their icebox, just like the one at the Gibson House.<o:p></o:p></font></div>
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By 1850, families were receiving ice deliveries once a week. Families would leave a card outside their door indicating how much ice they needed. During World War I, while men were off fighting, many women took on the job of delivering ice.<o:p></o:p></font></div>
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Iceboxes improved the American diet by allowing people to preserve food, as well as consume food from more distant locations. It is important to note that in the early years of ice delivery ice was primarily enjoyed by the upper-middle class because of the expense of maintaining an icebox in one’s home. In the twentieth century, however, iceboxes persisted in poorer households, while wealthier ones switched to electric refrigerators.<o:p></o:p></font></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><font face="georgia">Ice cream mold.<br /><i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Gibson House Museum 1961.51</span></i></font></td></tr>
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In the nineteenth-century, the primary purpose of ice was to preserve food, but it was also used for making ice cream. During the Victorian period, ice cream was a dessert that signified a family’s wealth. Every summer, Samuel Hammond, Charlie’s first cousin and neighbor, took his ice cream maker from their house on Beacon Street to their home in Nahant, where ice from their ice shed was used to make the ice cream. Servants used hand-crank ice cream makers to mix the ingredients together, and then they used ice cream molds to create interesting designs. The Gibson House Museum has a large collection of different ice cream molds that the family likely used to create lavish desserts for visitors. </font></div>
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<i><font face="georgia">The Gibson House was recently awarded a grant from <a href="https://masshumanities.org/" target="_blank">Mass Humanities</a>, with support from the <a href="https://www.neh.gov/" target="_blank">NEH</a>, to develop a new house tour focusing on the lives of the many young, immigrant women who worked as domestic servants at the Gibson House.<o:p></o:p></font></i></div>
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<i><font face="georgia">Stay tuned for the launch of this tour in Spring 2021!<o:p></o:p></font></i></div>
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- Tessa White, Suffolk University (Curatorial Intern, Spring 2020)<o:p></o:p></font></div>
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<i><font face="georgia">To learn more:<o:p></o:p></font></i></div>
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“<a href="https://www.jphs.org/locales/2004/6/1/harvesting-ice-on-jamaica-pond.html" target="_blank">Harvesting Ice on Jamaica Pond</a>”</font></div>
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“<a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/ice-harvesting-electric-refrigeration" target="_blank">Keeping Your Food Cool: From Ice Harvesting to Electric Refrigeration</a>”</font></div>
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“<a href="https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/22407/surprisingly-cool-history-ice" target="_blank">The Surprisingly Cool History of Ice</a>”</font></div>
Gibson House Museumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00685472634101571238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4364251652830013188.post-23861750373314957372020-04-24T06:39:00.002-04:002020-08-10T13:56:49.289-04:00Part 1: The Wounded Eros<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">This post is the first of a three-part series on the life and writings of Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr., founder of the Gibson House Museum. Stay tuned for parts two and three in the coming months.</span></i></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">Gibson in his rose gardens<br /> </span><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">at Forty Steps, c. 1910.</span></span></p></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">How does one measure a life dedicated to poetry, a writing life? Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr. dedicated his entire adult life to the art of poetry, as poet, critic, editor, and literary personality. He published his first poem in the <i>Boston Transcript</i> in 1894, and, toward the end of his career, he quipped to a curious listener at one of his many public readings, “My dear lady, I have been writing poems for fifty years. They are like the droppings of pigeons all over the house.” His manuscripts overflowed from portfolios, closets, desk drawers, cabinets, drawing rooms, and even toolsheds! In some ways, Gibson’s poetry was closely connected to the domestic spaces he crafted, curated, and inhabited--his “Victorian Museum,” the Gibson House, and the spectacular gardens of his family’s exclusive summer residence, <a href="https://thegibsonhousemuseum.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-forty-steps_1.html" target="_blank">Forty Steps, Nahant</a>. Like many traditional poets of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Gibson’s work is highly context-dependent. His poems tend to be formal, referential, commemorative, and backward-looking--vintage before their time--the kind of poetry that was almost completely obscured by the advent of literary modernism. On the other hand, viewed holistically, there is a compelling sense of quirky humor, passion, historicity, and mystery about Gibson’s writing, a body of work peppered with veiled autobiographical fragments that conceal as much as they reveal.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span><a name='more'></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 11pt;">Early in his career, Charles Gibson lectured and published popular travel books about French architecture: <i>Two Gentlemen in Touraine</i> (1899), penned under the name of Richard Sudbury, a nod to Longfellow’s <a href="https://www.wayside.org/discover/our-story" target="_blank">Wayside Inn</a> in Sudbury, Massachusetts, was a novelistic rendering of “French folklife, legend, and gothic architecture,” loosely based on Gibson’s romantic friendship with the (self-styled) Count Maurice Mauny Talvande (1861-1941), an eccentric polymath married to Lady Mary Byng (d. 1946), maid of honor to Queen Victoria. </span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 11pt;"><i>Among French Inns</i> (1905), a humorous and chatty travelogue, was published in at least four editions through 1911. Gibson’s first love, however, was poetry, which he published in tasteful limited editions, individually signed and sold by subscription, a genteel publishing practice with roots in eighteen-century manuscript circulation and nineteenth and early-twentieth private publication. The first printing of <i><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/695/the-education-of-henry-adams-by-henry-adams/" target="_blank">The Education of Henry Adams</a></i> (1907) falls into this category.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">In 1906, Gibson published his first book of poetry, <i>The Spirit of Love and Other Poems.</i> A spiritual autobiography in verse, Gibson, repurposing a poem from 1896, dedicated the book<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">To those who love, yet ne’er have known<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">Whence their true love hath strangely grown;<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">To those whose hearts to hear withal<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">Celestial voices sweetly call,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">From far on high, new thoughts of love,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">That lift their very souls above;<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">To all who, or sad, or gay,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">To these I dedicate my lay.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">In 1908 Gibson unveiled <i>The Wounded Eros,</i> a bitter-sweet sonnet sequence, with an interpretive introduction by the brilliant young African American literary scholar, editor, and poet, <a href="https://poets.org/poet/william-stanley-braithwaite" target="_blank">William Stanley Braithwaite</a> (1878 – 1962), who would later participate in the Harlem Renaissance, publish scholarship on English Romantic poetry, and write and publish his own verse. Braithwaite described <i>The Wounded Eros</i> as “a series of love-related sonnets” and an “episodic drama of a man’s heart.” Gibson would publish poems in newspapers, annuals, and even read them on Boston radio for the rest of his life.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">Like <a href="https://poets.org/poet/emily-dickinson" target="_blank">Emily Dickinson</a>, Gibson sought and received feedback on his poetry from <a href="https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/thomas-wentworth-higginson-1823-1911-correspondent/" target="_blank">Thomas Wentworth Higginson </a>(1823 - 1911), who thought the young poet’s work had promise but wanted originality. Writing to Gibson in 1907, Higginson provided harsh but valuable technical advice on rhyme, meter, diction, form, and literary influence. Like Dickinson, Gibson penned a variety of homely garden poems, and his work is suffused with nature imagery. As Gibson matured, he took a leadership role in Boston literary society, serving, for example, as the editor of the American Poetry Association’s <i>Year Book of Poems</i> for 1926. In his lectures and editing work, Gibson promoted the great “cultural and educational value of poetry” but, like William Stanley Braithwaite, staked out a conservative and staunchly anti-modernist aesthetic stance. “If we attempt too much,” he warned his readers in 1926, “either in ‘original sin’ or original virtue, we are more apt to fall to the ground, than if we keep the inspiration of the mind harnessed to reason and good form, rather than allowing liberty to degenerate into license, in our attempts to fly too far afield.” In the end, the “original sinners,” imagists such as Amy Lowell and Ezra Pound, for example, won the day, and Gibson became a poet that time forgot.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">And yet there is virtue in remembering. There is wisdom and recompense in not rushing to judgement. Through the lens of Charles Gibson’s life and writing we are able glimpse literary Boston at the turn of the nineteenth century, a lost world, a time and a place where art and poetry were essential aspects of everyday life. If we listen carefully, we can begin to understand what it means to have been a gay artist and intellectual in a Puritan city where social position and appearances mattered, a conservative aesthete in a dramatically changing social world, a genial extrovert and eccentric who became increasingly isolated as he aged in place, and who, in the end, became a “disembodied spirit,” as he put it, inhabiting a wondrous museum of Victorian antiquities of his own design.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px;"><i><span face="">- <a href="https://www.stonehill.edu/faculty-staff-directory/details/todd-s-gernes/" target="_blank">Todd S. Gernes</a>, Ph.D. (Associate Professor, Stonehill College)</span></i></span><br />
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<span face=""><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 14.6667px;"><i>To explore Charlie Gibson's life in more detail and in the context of the Gibson House Museum, we invite you to watch Dr. Gernes's short film, "<a href="https://vimeo.com/48716088" target="_blank">The Wounded Eros: Remembering Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr.</a>" </i></span></span></div>
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Gibson House Museumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00685472634101571238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4364251652830013188.post-25454237559268319012020-04-03T08:23:00.002-04:002020-08-10T14:00:20.165-04:00The Mystery of the High-Backed Chair<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">Tucked into a corner of the dining room at the Gibson House sits a high-backed armchair. In 2018, long-time museum patron Robert Severy offered to fund a restoration of this chair, as the red upholstery had cracked and faded. But what, exactly, would we be restoring? To solve this object mystery, we needed the help of two esteemed curators, a fabric reproduction specialist, and a restoration studio.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">Step 1: Research.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">Per Charlie Gibson’s probate inventory (an accounting of possessions taken at the time of death), we know the chair was in the Gibson House in 1954.<i> </i>Museum records indicated our chair was an 1850s copy of an earlier style of chair; however, a note in the files suggested the chair was originally caned and therefore much older. Which story was correct? We needed more information. </span></div>
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<i><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">Step 2: Call in the experts.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">Two furniture curators, <a href="https://www.mfa.org/about/department-contacts" target="_blank">Thomas Michie</a> (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) and <a href="http://www1.udel.edu/udmessenger/vol22no1/stories/alumni-jobe.html" target="_blank">Brock Jobe</a> (University of Delaware), were kind enough to come by and examine the chair from top rail to castors. Thanks to their expertise, we learned that our chair was an original William and Mary-era high-backed chair, of a type mass-produced in London in the late seventeenth century. It was originally caned. How did the chair make it to America? Not clear, but also not surprising, as these chairs were quite popular throughout the Atlantic World. It was evident that the chair had been re-made; the seat rails were trimmed to accommodate a slip seat, and the original feet were cut off and replaced with castors. The most exciting discovery was finding remnants of previous coverings, including eighteenth-century linen and Gothic-style oilcloth, underneath the late nineteenth-century red naugahyde upholstery.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">Step 3: Restoration time. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQzJ2pTMieYpe2VxfJSws41dNu6YCCkChdDgL87ri0-pgqvgimtkf88WLfSyxobQYIrLLMx0pT_b1WBSWd1IzL0h0rXTPLUzCEFivl-7sHuupFCXDFHQLmyC0FrQ5ZMGEU_kajVkA/s1600/IMG_2034.jpeg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQzJ2pTMieYpe2VxfJSws41dNu6YCCkChdDgL87ri0-pgqvgimtkf88WLfSyxobQYIrLLMx0pT_b1WBSWd1IzL0h0rXTPLUzCEFivl-7sHuupFCXDFHQLmyC0FrQ5ZMGEU_kajVkA/s200/IMG_2034.jpeg" width="150" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Remnant and reproduction cloth.<br /><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Photo: Marylou Davis</i></span></span></td></tr>
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<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">Since our chair had gone through a few different looks over its history, we first needed to determine which period to restore it to. The seventeenth-century original caning didn’t necessarily make sense in the context of a nineteenth-century Victorian home. Maybe the Gothic oilcloth better connected the chair’s story to the Gibson story? We hired fabric restoration specialist <a href="https://preservationct.org/marylou-davis-inc-2" target="_blank">Marylou Davis</a> to reproduce an exact copy of the fragment of oilcloth. First, she developed a pattern by hand and created stencils. Then, she stretched and hand-colored the canvas cloth to match the original sample. Finally, she printed and varnished the cloth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">Next, we sent the reproduction oilcloth and the chair itself to the restoration studio at <a href="https://trefler.com/" target="_blank">Trefler’s</a> for re-upholstery. The furniture conservators also did some structural work around the joints and finials, although it was important to us that we preserve the black-paint layers and patina. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">Step 4: Install and admire.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMOn9CmdY2dnnzqwTH8-ZSrtbmFiUoLtQZQWF108829AWRRJZxY4uIBQwKFHXxyULS2ej7BMWhlasufcFsQ9dHv6u7SMkvktxrYVJpDSqrd5VZB30korMvTTM69iReIbeFBLhMn94/s1600/evolution+of+the+gibson+house+chair.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1280" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMOn9CmdY2dnnzqwTH8-ZSrtbmFiUoLtQZQWF108829AWRRJZxY4uIBQwKFHXxyULS2ej7BMWhlasufcFsQ9dHv6u7SMkvktxrYVJpDSqrd5VZB30korMvTTM69iReIbeFBLhMn94/s320/evolution+of+the+gibson+house+chair.jpg" width="256" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Evolution of chair.<br /><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Photo: Kody Kirland (Trefler's)</i></span></span></td></tr>
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<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">After almost a year of research and restoration, our chair returned to the dining room last spring. The gold accents in the reproduction fabric are a perfect complement to the rich red carpet. And the fleur-de-lis design echoes the etchwork in the glass doors leading into the dining room. We now know more about the path this chair took to reach us, and we are better able to tell its story and put it in the context of the Gibson family collection. Unraveling this mystery has made this piece one of my favorites.</span></div>
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<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;"><i>- Meghan Gelardi Holmes, Curator</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;"><b>We are featuring some of our favorite objects over on Instagram. Come see! </b></span></i></div>
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<i><span face=""><span style="font-family: georgia;">@gibsonhousemuseum #FromHome #GibsonHouseFavorite</span><span style="font-family: times, times new roman, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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Gibson House Museumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00685472634101571238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4364251652830013188.post-52493351876265363732020-03-05T11:11:00.004-05:002020-08-10T14:02:19.075-04:00On the Occasion of the 250th Anniversary of the Boston Massacre<br />
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<span style="font-family: georgia;"><span face="">On March 5, 1770, a riot broke out on King Street (now State
Street) in front of the Custom House in Boston. Soldiers fired into the crowd
and killed five civilians. This dramatic event came on the heels of weeks of
upset between colonists and British soldiers occupying the town. Its
reverberations would be felt all the way through the American Revolution.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-LB2fwYoGrAMQSR74lWU-DOUPaZ0D04pYk-pMjAyhRwvCRekEz89YNsTZkc1tUViti8hvVlyc4oMTetQQtGGzNeNYUb6bJ_SkZvYKmkHYyr4qh6CfCt-SVQwuNHeyvJ0HNeB9sAo/s1600/A23E8D49-F220-457B-AE7F-5C8C2A1A6D4D.JPG" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-LB2fwYoGrAMQSR74lWU-DOUPaZ0D04pYk-pMjAyhRwvCRekEz89YNsTZkc1tUViti8hvVlyc4oMTetQQtGGzNeNYUb6bJ_SkZvYKmkHYyr4qh6CfCt-SVQwuNHeyvJ0HNeB9sAo/s320/A23E8D49-F220-457B-AE7F-5C8C2A1A6D4D.JPG" width="240" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Red Study at the Gibson House Museum.</span></i></td></tr>
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<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">A copy of the famous print of the Boston Massacre, as the
event would come to be known, hangs in the red study at the Gibson House. You might
know the one I’m talking about. It shows a line of soldiers, in red coats with
muskets, firing into a crowd. Three men in the foreground are seen shot and
dying on the street. (This particular copy does not include Crispus Attucks, an African-American man born
into slavery, and a well-known victim of the Massacre.) Well-dressed colonists look on in horror.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: georgia;"><span face="">Paul Revere produced this illustration<span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:GHM%20Curator" datetime="2020-03-05t10: 41;"> </ins></span>just
three weeks after the event, titling it “The Bloody Massacre Perpetrated in
King Street, Boston.” (He appears to have copied the image from the work of fellow
printer, Henry Pelham, whose similar depiction was published around the same
time.) The print became a famous, and important, piece of propaganda. It did
much to inflame colonial sentiments against the British, even as it depicted an
inaccurate portrayal of the actual event.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">Why is there a copy at the Gibson House? This particular
print was produced for the 1876 Centennial (purportedly on original plates from
the archives of the Massachusetts Historical Society). It was first owned by
Charlie Gibson’s uncle, Dr. John Collins Warren; Warren gave it to Charlie in
1904. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a name='more'></a></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Charlie Gibson was incredibly proud of his Revolutionary-era
ancestors. His great-great-uncle, William Dawes, joined Paul Revere on his
famous midnight ride. His other great-great-uncle, General Joseph Warren, was “martyred”
at the Battle of Bunker Hill. General Warren gave a famous and stirring speech
on the fifth anniversary of the Boston Massacre in 1775, linking the event to
the cause of revolution. Indeed, this print hangs in the middle of two others
related to General Warren—a shrine, of sorts, to a famous and important
ancestor. For a man as obsessed with history and legacy as Charlie Gibson,
being able to link your family’s story to one of Boston’s most important and
well-known moments on the world stage would have been very gratifying.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">- Meghan Gelardi Holmes, Curator<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">To learn more:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">“Commemorating the 250<sup>th</sup> Anniversary of the
Boston Massacre,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Massachusetts
Historical Society</i> <a href="https://www.masshist.org/features/massacre1770-2020"><span style="color: blue; font-size: 10pt;">https://www.masshist.org/features/massacre1770-2020</span></a><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">“Episode 228: Eric Hinderaker, The Boston Massacre,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ben Franklin’s World</i> <a href="https://benfranklinsworld.com/episode-228-eric-hinderaker-the-boston-massacre/"><span style="color: blue; font-size: 10pt;">https://benfranklinsworld.com/episode-228-eric-hinderaker-the-boston-massacre/</span></a><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">“Paul Revere’s engraving of the Boston Massacre 1770,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History</i>
<a href="https://ap.gilderlehrman.org/resource/paul-revere%27s-engraving-boston-massacre-1770"><span style="color: blue; font-size: 10pt;">https://ap.gilderlehrman.org/resource/paul-revere%27s-engraving-boston-massacre-1770</span></a><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br />Gibson House Museumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00685472634101571238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4364251652830013188.post-51502364782369588022019-08-14T12:34:00.002-04:002020-08-10T14:09:59.621-04:00Faking the Family Tree<div class="separator"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9h5Y_UTFeKIJroKe3-nYgRm10oXHRvpCzCh6UGgjPnbQaRXB_Rfxb4WzkjquRcb4Z5yQ-ramsO8i_cfqTF5HI0LYBVyWUcKfvYBrxztC8Sljapk2M-w2JPba0cDmGK16hPKKDnQs/s1600/IMG_3663.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9h5Y_UTFeKIJroKe3-nYgRm10oXHRvpCzCh6UGgjPnbQaRXB_Rfxb4WzkjquRcb4Z5yQ-ramsO8i_cfqTF5HI0LYBVyWUcKfvYBrxztC8Sljapk2M-w2JPba0cDmGK16hPKKDnQs/w188-h250/IMG_3663.jpg" width="188" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: xx-small;">Dining room at the Gibson House.</span></td></tr>
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<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">A family crest hangs over the dining room fireplace at the
Gibson House. The vivid red and gold shield on a bright black background is
eye-catching. Dinner guests would be unlikely to miss its not-so-subtle
implications about the importance of the family lineage. In a scroll along the
bottom, the motto reads “In the name of Gibson.”
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span face="">The tradition of coats of arms (of which the crest is the top part) dates to the medieval period
in Europe, where knights would carry shields with specific designs. The design
elements were intended to convey the achievements of the person who </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">carried the coat of arms. Later, families wo</span><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">uld take a coat of arms as the family logo.</span><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">Typically, only noble families were permitted to do this and so the coat of arms came to be associated with the aristocracy.</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span> </span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1540" data-original-width="1600" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrQEwCRYFJr4cKfg_1kkQWx4EuiaMnpB4OQWqdJGkEKkeVGhoswdX7m8gBlqXATk644E7Yni3oURGuH_XM62mvAMfgKx26fuRVfVFLmfRqJBxsE12zMGivh7eEvJc9a14KSiKhJw4/s200/IMG_3665.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: justify;" width="200" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: xx-small; text-align: center;"> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>Gibson family crest, c. 1896</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i style="font-family: georgia; font-size: xx-small; text-align: center;"> Gibson House Museum 1992.123</i></div></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: xx-small; text-align: center;"><span> </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">A coat of arms, however, is not given to a surname forever.
Official heraldic rules (laid out, with slight variations, by governments
across Europe) state that a coat of arms belongs to an individual and his
direct descendants in the male line. A true coat of arms was acknowledged and allowed
by the king. </span></div><div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr-7rcikR4-9mOrNRNSS__vKuoaMLLy8ti3yjGQckPxAQZmBakIYOsWzDrJDQN0mCU_OlDA9KDdq5WZuXcB-DPPzwNL3TxdNfaGFHbJDNa2723_D1SYTYfL8yqGy-_SiizWpxg-BE/s1600/IMG-9182.JPG" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr-7rcikR4-9mOrNRNSS__vKuoaMLLy8ti3yjGQckPxAQZmBakIYOsWzDrJDQN0mCU_OlDA9KDdq5WZuXcB-DPPzwNL3TxdNfaGFHbJDNa2723_D1SYTYfL8yqGy-_SiizWpxg-BE/s200/IMG-9182.JPG" width="150" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: xx-small;">Sketches of coat of arms, 1896.<br /><i>Gibson House Museum Archives.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: georgia;"><span face="">The Gibson crest reflects an invented
tradition, a family logo created in the moment rather than one being handed
down through the generations with the official seal of approval. Rosamond
Warren Gibson had this Gibson coat of arms designed in Paris. Original sketches of the design, preserved in the Museum's archives, include some notes about the Gibson ancestor who might lay a claim to nobility. It appears to be John Gibson of York, who petitioned the King in 1655. The notes do not include a source for this bit of family history.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN0pw-iPM4AqYkwxr_t2GSc_kUyoMj2hhZihH4K0PWWiOvhoovtnkRDMnC-auHN35xqbLBJzlcLeO9Uy62JuApGYZ_kOtnxjxaFLAWNuWy6HMp6YEdhY_ATUfVCOUC_Oq1WUYrvJs/s1600/IMG_4413.JPG" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN0pw-iPM4AqYkwxr_t2GSc_kUyoMj2hhZihH4K0PWWiOvhoovtnkRDMnC-auHN35xqbLBJzlcLeO9Uy62JuApGYZ_kOtnxjxaFLAWNuWy6HMp6YEdhY_ATUfVCOUC_Oq1WUYrvJs/s200/IMG_4413.JPG" width="150" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: xx-small;">Mary Hammond Family Crest.<br /><i>Private collection.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: georgia;"><span face="">Rosamond's sister, Mary
Warren Hammond, did the same for her family. Both sisters included water birds
(a stork for the Gibsons) on their crest, possibly to represent
their shared Warren lineage. (Mary Hammond's crest also includes an elephant, which is a reference to her great-uncle Jacob Crowninshield; he brought the <a href="http://naturalhistorymag.com/editors_pick/1928_05-06_pick.html" target="_blank">first-ever elephant to America</a> in 1796.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
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<span face="">In a related example of burnishing the family history, the Warrens paid for genealogical research to create a family tree—a copy hangs in the front hall of the Gibson House. (So, if you're keeping score, that means that by the time guests sat down for dinner, they were subject to demonstrations of Warren AND Gibson family lineage.) It was later discovered that the research was incorrect; the family tree is simply another example of the eagerness of many wealthy 19th century Bostonians to link themselves to English nobility.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: georgia;"><span face="">For Anglophiles like the Gibsons and
Warrens, displaying a family coat of arms, or a family tree, was a way to connect to a
medieval English past. In the Victorian era, coats of arms were wildly popular (even if most of them were bunk).
It’s not hard to imagine Rosamond and Mary traveling together in Europe and
deciding to purchase a coat of arms to bring home, as a souvenir, as a pretty
decorative item, and maybe most significantly, as a conversation starter about the family history.</span><br />
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<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">- Meghan Gelardi Holmes, Curator</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: georgia;">The coat of arms was recently restored thanks to a generous gift from Robert Severy.</span></i></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;"><i>To learn more:</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">A Complete Guide to Heraldry, Arthur Charles Fox-Davies
(1909). Via the Gutenberg Project <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/41617/41617-h/41617-h.htm#page233">https://www.gutenberg.org/files/41617/41617-h/41617-h.htm#page233</a>
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">Unzipping Your Coat of Arms <a href="https://www.familytreemagazine.com/premium/unzipping-your-coat-of-arms/">https://www.familytreemagazine.com/premium/unzipping-your-coat-of-arms/</a>
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<br /></div>Gibson House Museumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00685472634101571238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4364251652830013188.post-42373007664688377772019-04-26T11:12:00.004-04:002020-08-10T14:11:22.768-04:00Finding Old-School Fashion in the Fast-Paced World<div class="MsoNormal">
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">Getting dressed in the 1860s and 1870s was a complicated
process. Women’s fashion included many layers and separate articles that
combined to form the perfectly assembled outfit, or “costume,” as we refer to
it in museums. The Gibson family women had access to designer clothing and custom-tailored
dresses and gowns, which they wore to showcase their social status and fit into
society. Each piece of clothing had a specific purpose or occasion to be worn.
Opera gowns, morning gowns, day dresses, and tea gowns were all popular styles
in the 1860s and 1870s. Much of the clothing in the Gibson House Museum’s
collection dates from the 1870s and 1880s, when the matriarch, Catherine
Hammond Gibson, and her daughter-in-law, Rosamond Warren Gibson, lived in the
house together. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifwq4Q5-OyNpq8BqUVjAcvTV_yUI8YmySYsdEtYEfJmCL0ACZLMDR1xNH9vFAn-fda56gEkfmwKhbZqUjBPjnLo6rOcJtC92QC9qngOEdHpmi7UBINSuw1yheq-ipGrWS7dBARUt4/s1600/2019.3.JPG" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifwq4Q5-OyNpq8BqUVjAcvTV_yUI8YmySYsdEtYEfJmCL0ACZLMDR1xNH9vFAn-fda56gEkfmwKhbZqUjBPjnLo6rOcJtC92QC9qngOEdHpmi7UBINSuw1yheq-ipGrWS7dBARUt4/s200/2019.3.JPG" width="200" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span face="" style="font-size: small;">Turquoise bodice, c.1870s</span><br />
<i><span face="" style="font-size: small;">Gibson House Museum (2019.3)</span></i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">When I first began cataloging the clothing from the Gibson
House Museum’s collection, I was overwhelmed with how to begin. I soon found
that it was not as complicated as I’d thought; cataloging artifacts is as
simple as assigning an accession number and recording details about the object.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">One of the first articles of clothing I cataloged was a
beautifully detailed turquoise dress that has aged rather poorly. There are
some tears and discolorations in the fabric, which make it more difficult to
picture how it would have been worn in the 1870s or 1880s. Like many of the
dresses from the Gibson House Museum’s collection, it was taken apart, either
to be washed or because alterations needed to be made. Although some of the
fabric is in poor condition, as a whole, the dress is exquisite; its delicate
silk fringe and vivid color caught my eye.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><a name='more'></a></span><span face=""><div><br /></div><div>This dress is from the late 1870s or early 1880s. It was
likely a dinner gown, or worn for other formal evening events, because its
material was expensive and it lacks signs of everyday wear and tear, such as perspiration
stains or dirt at the hem. It is possible to date this dress because of two
distinctive elements. First, it appears the dress was fitted for a bustle,
since there is extra fabric at the back that is typical of the style. Bustles
were popular from 1870 to 1880, although their appeal diminished over time as
women’s dress reform movements advocated for less restrictive clothing. Second,
the dress is bright turquoise, made from synthetic dye. Following the
Industrial Revolution, synthetic dyes became the preferred medium to color clothing,
as opposed to natural dyes, which provided a limited palette. </div></span>
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCqiFEn4IXEoe2J_EN0OkfkpcyBesaxuKVyS_8qEVOrGU3Ik19f_c52XA9LFUR1EYAz9QGLlShav-Hqa9fR-ske1kY0nzJ4ETb0AhsqrSFPZBStjsZm8gd6lty2eTaK29gT5U1XWY/s1600/IMG_1469.JPG" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCqiFEn4IXEoe2J_EN0OkfkpcyBesaxuKVyS_8qEVOrGU3Ik19f_c52XA9LFUR1EYAz9QGLlShav-Hqa9fR-ske1kY0nzJ4ETb0AhsqrSFPZBStjsZm8gd6lty2eTaK29gT5U1XWY/s200/IMG_1469.JPG" width="150" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span face="" style="font-size: small;">Turquoise skirt, c.1870s</span><br />
<i><span face="" style="font-size: small;">Gibson House Museum (2019.3)</span></i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">The dress has machine-made silk fringe, which adorns the
neckline, sleeves, skirt hem, and the additional triangular pieces of fabric. (This
fabric was likely added onto the waist of the skirt for added volume, or to
cover an expansion.) The dress also has a satin ribbon, which creates flounces
on the front of the skirt and trims the bodice and sleeves. Although it does
not carry a maker’s tag, the dress was most likely purchased from a designer in
the Greater Boston area. Many of the other dresses from the Gibson House collection
were designed by J. E. Chapman, a Roxbury-based dressmaker that created custom
designs. The Gibson family women would have traveled to this dressmaker’s shop to
be measured and attend a design consultation before having a dress custom-made.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><span face="">In an era of fast fashion, it is really hard for
us to understand the deep connection women of the period had to their clothing.
In many ways, this is because the creation of a single dress took more time,
money, and resources than it does today in an era of cheaply-made,
mass-produced clothing. Although the fashions of the 1870s and 1880s are very
different from what we wear today, clothing continues to provide access points
for social acceptance. </span><br />
<span face=""><span face=""><br /></span>
</span><br />
</span><div style="text-align: right;">
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">- Nicole Gauthier, Simmons University (Curatorial Intern, Spring 2019)</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;"><i><b><br /></b></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;"><i><b>You can view the gown, and many other rarely-seen pieces from our collection of historic dress, at "Sketch the Story," our special interactive <a href="https://calendar.artweekma.org/Detail/509" target="_blank">ArtWeek Open House</a> on Sunday, April 28, 2019.</b></i> </span></div>
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><span face=""><span face=""><br /></span>
<span face="">To learn more:</span></span><br />
<span face=""><br /></span>
<br />
</span><ul>
<li><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">Lydia Edwards, <i>How to Read a Dress: A Guide to Changing Fashion From the 16th to the 20th Century</i> (New York: Bloomsbury, 2017).</span></li>
<li><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;"><span face="">McCord Museum, "Taffeta Dress, c.1868" </span><a href="http://collections.musee-mccord.qc.ca/en/collection/artifacts/M969.1.11.1-4">http://collections.musee-mccord.qc.ca/en/collection/artifacts/M969.1.11.1-4</a> </span></li>
<li><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">Metropolitan Museum of New York, "Dress, c.1867" </span></li>
<li><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/84001?searchField=All&amp;sortBy=Relevance&amp;deptids=8&amp;when=A.D.+1800-1900&amp;what=Dresses&amp;ft=*&amp;offset=560&amp;rpp=80&amp;pos=564">https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/84001?searchField=All&amp;sortBy=Relevance&amp;deptids=8&amp;when=A.D.+1800-1900&amp;what=Dresses&amp;ft=*&amp;offset=560&amp;rpp=80&amp;pos=564</a> </span></li>
</ul>
Gibson House Museumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00685472634101571238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4364251652830013188.post-45294262371839973292019-02-06T11:51:00.004-05:002020-08-10T14:22:16.871-04:00The Sound of Music: The Importance of Music in Victorian Homes<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><span face=""><span lang="">Listening to music within the home was something that was deeply cherished
among Victorians of all social classes. In a world that was limited to objects
such as music boxes to reproduce sounds in the home, live music was especially </span>appealing<span lang="">. <span style="color: black;">Many forms of outside entertainment were sought after, but attending these events could </span></span><span lang="">prove inconvenient</span>
given New England's challenging weather and limited transportation options<span lang="" style="color: black;">. </span><span lang="">Naturally, it made
sense to bring the entertainment into one's home, thereby giving rise to</span> the presence<span lang=""> of </span>a <span lang="" style="color: black;">“</span><span lang="">music room<span style="color: black;">”</span> within many </span>upper-class <span lang="">Victorian
ho</span>us<span lang="">es.</span> At the Gibson House, the music room is the
most lavish room and was a place where the Gibson family regularly entertained
guests and friends.</span><span face=""> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">
<br />
</span><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEXkwJyNEa4A6vrXjOU29e6QhjzmQxlep_wRVFHcjEM1sRpiQ6EXhxx8VSMfWYdDG2UAvvZ9iTKzhB1yu6E5KC88twSSaBnxXck98mXHhgUXv-WmSLbRB6Olzs3cGIvwhTMt7I1yY/s1600/2006.008+keyboard.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1125" data-original-width="1600" height="140" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEXkwJyNEa4A6vrXjOU29e6QhjzmQxlep_wRVFHcjEM1sRpiQ6EXhxx8VSMfWYdDG2UAvvZ9iTKzhB1yu6E5KC88twSSaBnxXck98mXHhgUXv-WmSLbRB6Olzs3cGIvwhTMt7I1yY/s200/2006.008+keyboard.jpg" width="200" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span face="" style="font-size: x-small;">Mason & Hamlin Symmetrigrand Piano, 1908</span><br />
<i><span face="" style="font-size: x-small;">Gibson House Museum (2006.08)</span></i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;"><span face=""><span lang="">The piano </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">became</span><span lang=""> a</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">n especially</span> <span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">fashionable</span>
<span lang="">musical instrument </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">to
possess, </span><span lang="">either an upright or </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">a </span><span lang="">baby grand, depending
on the wealth of the family. </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Since at the time m</span><span lang="">any popular songs</span><span lang="" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span><span lang="">were made available in sheet music form, amateur
musicians </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">could</span><span lang=""> play to their guests and family. There is quite an extensive
collection of sheet music at the Gibson House Museum, </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">collected over the years</span><span lang=""> by the family. Along with individual pieces, there are </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">bound </span><span lang="">albums</span><span lang="" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span><span lang="">contain</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">ing</span><span lang=""> a number of
miscellaneous works</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">, such as polka
music and waltzes</span><span lang="">.</span><span lang="" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span><span lang="">The majority of the
music is from the late </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">nineteenth</span>
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">through the</span><span lang=""> early</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> twentieth</span><span lang=""> centur</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">ies</span><span lang=""> (1879</span><span lang="">–</span><span lang="">1934),
and was largely published in Boston. </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">(The name </span><span lang="">Oliver Ditson & Co. appears often,
</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">indicating it was, perhaps,</span><span lang=""> the family’s company of choice when purchasing new music.</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">)</span><span lang=""> The Gibson family’s
music collection contains many pieces by well-known classical composers</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">,</span> <span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">including
</span><span lang="">works</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> like</span>
<i><span lang="">Fugue in G Minor (The Little)</span></i><span lang=""> by J.</span><span lang="" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span><span lang="">S. Bach and <i>Danse Polonaise </i>by Xaver Schwarwenka, which
you can listen to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddbxFi3-UO4"><span lang="" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">here</span></a></span></span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span face=""> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfbursJ3H28">here</a>. </span><span face=""><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;"><span lang="">The</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> Gibson House sheet music collection includes </span><span lang="">one
song </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">that</span><span lang="">
Charlie </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Gibson </span><span lang="">composed himself, </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">entitled
</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="">Dreams</span></i><span lang="">. He wrote the words and music in 1922 for the well-known baritone <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emilio_de_Gogorza">Emilio <span lang="" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">d</span>e Gogo<span lang="" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">r</span>za</a>. According to </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">some notes</span><span lang=""> that Charlie
wrote </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">about</span> <span lang="">the </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Gibson House m</span><span lang="">usic </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">r</span><span lang="">oom in 1938, </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">d</span><span lang="">e Gogo</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">r</span><span lang="">za came to the house while <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dreams</i>
was being written and sang it, offering his suggestions for edits. Charlie also
note</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">d</span><span lang=""> that
his piece ha</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">d</span><span lang=""> been sung at concerts in Boston and broadcast on a New England </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">radio </span><span lang="">network. We have
records of his attempts to get the piece published by Oliver Ditson & Co.</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">, which </span><span lang="">unfortunately w</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">ere</span><span lang=""> not successful. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;"><span lang=""><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;"><span face=""><span lang="">During the period 1800–1914, it became </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">common</span><span lang=""> to hold chamber
music recitals in upper-class homes. It was </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">typical </span><span lang="">for both children and adults to play
musical instruments, and most families considered music part of a well-rounded
education</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">. (This was particularly
true fo</span><span lang="">r young women, who were expected to be </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">capable of demonstrating their skills </span><span lang="">when potential suitors and other guests visited the home.</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">)</span> <span lang="">In the case of the
Gibson family, Charles Sr. played the flute, Rosamond and </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">each</span><span lang=""> of the </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">couple</span><span lang="" style="color: black;">’</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">s three </span><span lang="">children played the piano, </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">and</span><span lang=""> Charlie</span><span lang="" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span><span lang="">also played the
violin. </span></span><span face=""><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAzMp6hr_zC7SSQrWlMX_XihgBw41O-vQk_F6CeKl0wynoZts7s4XINdUre5HPJ0L0cQkGLUDeO2uG4OLOq_SOJi2KrXmvAJMUrm3nusoi2LAu7QBXNFs_Bdu2w8S0TmaM-UuOXtw/s1600/MusicRoom-JDWoolf.jpeg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1068" data-original-width="1600" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAzMp6hr_zC7SSQrWlMX_XihgBw41O-vQk_F6CeKl0wynoZts7s4XINdUre5HPJ0L0cQkGLUDeO2uG4OLOq_SOJi2KrXmvAJMUrm3nusoi2LAu7QBXNFs_Bdu2w8S0TmaM-UuOXtw/s320/MusicRoom-JDWoolf.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span face="" style="font-size: x-small;">Music Room, Gibson House Museum</span><br />
<i><span face="" style="font-size: x-small;">Photo courtesy John D. Woolf</span></i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;"><span lang="">As the music room was a</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">n</span><span lang=""> important part of the
home, great care was taken to decorate it to enhance the enjoyment of the
listeners. Chairs were usually very comfortable, and decorations such as
plaster casts of musical composers and pictures and books related to the arts
added to the ambiance. In the Victorian home</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">,</span><span lang=""> where typical wall colors were reds, greens,
or blues, subtler hues were considered more suitable for this artistic room.</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> W</span><span lang="">alls would often be </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">covered</span><span lang=""> in fabrics such
as grass cloth, Japanese cottons, velvet, linens, and sometimes tapestries. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;"><span lang="">The Gibson family put extensive thought and
effort into the decoration of their music room</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">, which </span><span lang="">is filled with cultural delights,
ranging from an English replica scale model of the royal carriage commemorating
King George VI to a Japanese lacquer apothecary cabinet. Chinese palace vases
and cane chairs </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">sit </span><span lang="">by the fireplace, </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">and</span><span lang=""> Chinese rugs </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">are
scattered</span><span lang=""> across the floor. Having </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">such a </span><span lang="">room in </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">their</span> <span lang="">home was
important to </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">the Gibson family, as
a way to </span><span lang="">show their guests exactly how worldly and
cultured they could afford to be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-align: right; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span face=""><span face=""><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span face="">Olivia Spratt, Curatorial Intern (Spring 2018)</span><span face=""><o:p></o:p></span></span></i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang=""><span face="" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><i>To
Learn More:</i><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div>
<ul style="margin-top: 0in;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333333; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1;"><span face="" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><span lang="" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">Arnstein, Walter L., Christina Bashford,
and Nicholas Temperley. </span><span lang="" style="color: black;">“</span><span lang="" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"><a href="https://www.library.illinois.edu/rbx/exhibitions/Victorian%20Entertainments/home/home.html#musicessay">Victorian
Entertainments: <span lang="" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">‘</span>We
Are Amused<span lang="" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">.</span></a></span><span lang="" style="color: black;">’”</span></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333333; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1;"><span face="" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><span lang="" style="color: black;">Dobney, Jayson Kerr. “<a href="http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/amcm/hd_amcm.htm">Nineteenth-Century
Classical Music</a>.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. (October 2004)</span><span style="color: black;">.</span></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1;"><span face="" lang="" style="font-family: georgia;">Hogstad,
Emily. <span style="color: black;">“</span><a href="http://www.violinist.com/blog/Mle/20106/11325/">Madame Norman-Neruda
and a Short History of Women Violinists</a>, Part I.<span style="color: black;">”</span> Violinist.com. June 01, 2010.</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;"><span lang="" style="color: black;">“</span><span lang="" style="color: #0563c1;"><a href="http://www.victoriana.com/VictorianHouses/musicroom.htm">Victorian
Music Room</a>.</span><span lang="" style="color: black;">”</span><span color="" lang="" style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: #0400;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Victoriana</i>
Magazine.</span></span></li>
</ul>
Gibson House Museumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00685472634101571238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4364251652830013188.post-1876693644581639842019-01-04T12:25:00.001-05:002020-08-10T14:24:44.705-04:00Matching Sailor Suits for the Gibson Cousins<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLVQZOajSMGlzGG99bIKUtuiqVfBVPIaCNqt-WVI3Dky-2gUS1RBwjxwR6mCPu27TOmExilua9HNKuKcOwF5EUUEG7o3SAvozZjzl-KTVUfQdWARj1HV0Tig8UnpLhjOX1AFAYKKc/s1600/2006.18.20+smaller+size.BMP" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1084" data-original-width="759" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLVQZOajSMGlzGG99bIKUtuiqVfBVPIaCNqt-WVI3Dky-2gUS1RBwjxwR6mCPu27TOmExilua9HNKuKcOwF5EUUEG7o3SAvozZjzl-KTVUfQdWARj1HV0Tig8UnpLhjOX1AFAYKKc/s200/2006.18.20+smaller+size.BMP" width="140" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Henry Freeman Allen, c.1918<br /><i>Gibson House Museum (2006.18.20)</i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">Until
the end of the nineteenth century, most American children were dressed like
miniature adults. Prior to age three, <a href="http://thegibsonhousemuseum.blogspot.com/2017/05/boys-in-white-dresses-childhood-gender.html">boys
and girls alike wore “dresses,”</a> or long shifts that were simple to get on
and off and easy to launder. At about three or four, girls began wearing more
elaborate dresses, like their mothers, and boys were “breeched,” or put into
pants, like their fathers. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />
<o:p></o:p><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><span face="">Beginning
in the 1860s and 1870s, however, specific clothing for children became popular.
And one of the most popular, and enduring, outfits for young boys was the
sailor suit. Queen Victoria dressed the Prince of Wales, Edward VII, in a
custom-made sailor suit in 1846, modeled on a real Royal Navy uniform. The
prince’s portrait was painted in this outfit and it set off a craze for sailor
suits that would last into the twentieth century.</span><span face=""> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span><a name='more'></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqVRxPU2-3pgYk0RruwpBJ3moPSFXiBWqMdUHvALs9-uhyphenhyphenKUXo2vjCFXfQ1aaq8Bon1j-w-yqPeTDneqzSyIdRtGlsvNgZZwDibwvGiIyP9-OZ3hivZBBFkHPCdj19NFu2rCfyng8/s1600/2006.18.32+Henry+F.+Allen.BMP" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1488" data-original-width="942" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqVRxPU2-3pgYk0RruwpBJ3moPSFXiBWqMdUHvALs9-uhyphenhyphenKUXo2vjCFXfQ1aaq8Bon1j-w-yqPeTDneqzSyIdRtGlsvNgZZwDibwvGiIyP9-OZ3hivZBBFkHPCdj19NFu2rCfyng8/s200/2006.18.32+Henry+F.+Allen.BMP" width="126" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: xx-small;">Henry Freeman Allen, 1923<br /><i>Gibson House Museum (2006.18.32)</i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">The
Gibsons were not immune to this popular style of dress. The Museum owns two
sailor suits, one navy and one white, which belonged to cousins Henry Allen,
the son of Mary Ethel Gibson Allen, and Warren Winslow, the son of Rosamond
Gibson Winslow. The cousins were quite close, and it’s easy to imagine them
scampering through the house in their matching outfits while sisters Rosamond
and Mary Ethel came by to visit with their mother.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">The
sailor suit may have been a popular choice because the central pieces—a middy
blouse and long pants—were easy to wear and relatively comfortable for
children’s play. That’s in contrast to some of the other popular clothing for
young boys at this time period. Fauntleroy suits, inspired by the 1885 novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Little Lord Fauntleroy</i> by Frances
Hodgson Burnett, included matching velvet suit jacket and pants and a shirt
with an elaborate ruffled collar. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrUhslJ-EMyIfQwVjRvn67ZXgVcjpRpQtuM9ft4rsKYqi_mxiWaYBqd9lGu_C0eJKbR2HZL4fzQncFjY5KvxaxkDf_DQvE_6mzvONT5k16suPtDkYJcXfFdztbHCrw9EnMWnaf-PA/s1600/SamHammondIV.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="975" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrUhslJ-EMyIfQwVjRvn67ZXgVcjpRpQtuM9ft4rsKYqi_mxiWaYBqd9lGu_C0eJKbR2HZL4fzQncFjY5KvxaxkDf_DQvE_6mzvONT5k16suPtDkYJcXfFdztbHCrw9EnMWnaf-PA/s200/SamHammondIV.jpg" width="121" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: xx-small;">Samuel Hammond IV, 1904<br /><i>Image courtesy Sam Duncan</i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">Scottish
Highland costumes, again popularized by Queen Victoria and her children, were
modeled on traditional Scottish dress and included a kilt, waistcoat, jacket,
plaid, and cap (and often matching socks and capes, as well). The Scottish suit on display at the Museum was loaned by Sam Duncan, Gibson House Museum Board President, and was worn by many generations of the Hammond and Duncan families.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">Both Fauntleroy
suits and Scottish costumes would have been worn in more formal settings. The
sailor suit, a more casual look and easier to reproduce, remained popular well
into the twentieth century, for both girls and boys of all social classes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span face="">The sailor suits
and Scottish costume will be on display at the Gibson House Museum through
February 25, 2019. Visit the Gibson House Museum </span></i><span face=""><a href="http://www.thegibsonhouse.org/"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">website</i></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> to plan your visit!<o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">- Meghan Gelardi
Holmes, Curator<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span face="" style="font-family: georgia;">To learn more:<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span face=""><a href="http://www.narrativethreads.ca/explorer-explore/costume_marin_pour_petit_garcon-boys_sailor_suit.html">Boy's
Sailor Suit</a>, Narrative Threads, The Textile Museum of Canada<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />Gibson House Museumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00685472634101571238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4364251652830013188.post-8767740058255153932018-11-07T12:38:00.001-05:002020-08-10T14:26:33.542-04:00A Century of Easton Living<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">This blog post is part of an occasional series about Gibson family
relatives. Family trees are rife with personalities: the mysterious aunt, the
curmudgeonly great-uncle, the adventurous second cousin. Join us as we explore
some of these colorful characters and learn more about the </i><a href="http://thegibsonhousemuseum.blogspot.com/2017/09/boston-interconnected-then-and-now.html"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">interconnected nature of Boston high society</i></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> in the process.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">
On September 2, 2018, Elizabeth Motley Ames died at the age
of 99. She had lived just shy of an entire century in Boston and Easton, Massachusetts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A great-niece of Rosamond Warren Gibson’s, she
was a passionate preservationist and a longtime supporter of community causes
in Easton. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4R_uMdvGnGrvJaQiotGBKZJ9roCaiGGgSAxLPjgKiKK-H1rbbo0VzZUpmKNUgx47dFZKrSl01GWH837o1EszEI9Jg9iayXQr7D54v-jips9R-0ot4BvnlOIGa11Ov7bTJDEtLXAQ/s1600/1992.406.1+Rosamond+and+Eleanor+Warren.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1146" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4R_uMdvGnGrvJaQiotGBKZJ9roCaiGGgSAxLPjgKiKK-H1rbbo0VzZUpmKNUgx47dFZKrSl01GWH837o1EszEI9Jg9iayXQr7D54v-jips9R-0ot4BvnlOIGa11Ov7bTJDEtLXAQ/s320/1992.406.1+Rosamond+and+Eleanor+Warren.jpg" width="229" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: xx-small;">Eleanor Warren (left) and Rosamond Warren (right), <br />circa 1870.<br /><i>Gibson House Museum (1992.406.1).</i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">
The Motley family lived nearby to the Gibsons in Back Bay.
Sisters Rosamond and Eleanor Warren were quite close growing up, born only a
year apart; they remained so after they were married. Family lore has it that
when the Motley kids walked past 137 Beacon Street, on their way to or from the
Public Garden, they’d better not be misbehaving or great-aunt Rosamond would be
sure to tell grandmother Eleanor about it straight away. Boston’s Back Bay was
a tight-knit community into the early twentieth century.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">
As a young woman, Elizabeth Motley married into a prominent Easton
family. Oliver Ames (1779–1863) founded a shovel factory in Easton, Mass. which
would go on to become a world-class operation, involved in many key
construction events in American history. The Ames family also included several
politicians over the years, most notably Oliver Ames (1831–1895) who served as governor
of Massachusetts in the late nineteenth century.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span><a name='more'></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">
Elizabeth Motley and David Ames, Sr. were married in
December of 1940. The next December, while David was decoding military tapes
about the attack on Pearl Harbor, Elizabeth was waiting at home to give birth
to their first child, born just twelve days later. After David’s service, the
couple returned to Massachusetts and went on to have three more children.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">
Mrs. Ames was a supporter of the Easton Free Library and she
and her husband were charter members of the Easton Historical Society. In 2012,
they sold their family homestead to <a href="http://www.thetrustees.org/">The
Trustees of Reservations</a>; the Governor Oliver Ames Estate is now a public
park open to be enjoyed by all. Mrs. Ames was also a friend to the Gibson House
Museum and will be missed by all who knew her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>- Meghan Gelardi Holmes, Curator</i> </span></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">To Learn More:<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">
David Ames, Sr. Papers: <a href="https://www.stonehill.edu/offices-services/archives/industrial-collections/david-ames-papers/">https://www.stonehill.edu/offices-services/archives/industrial-collections/david-ames-papers/</a>
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">
Governor Oliver Ames Estate: <a href="http://www.thetrustees.org/places-to-visit/greater-boston/governor-ames-community-park.html">http://www.thetrustees.org/places-to-visit/greater-boston/governor-ames-community-park.html</a>
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">
Obituary for Elizabeth Ames: <a href="http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/southofboston-enterprise/obituary.aspx?n=elizabeth-ames&pid=190172162&fhid=25356">http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/southofboston-enterprise/obituary.aspx?n=elizabeth-ames&pid=190172162&fhid=25356</a>
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />Gibson House Museumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00685472634101571238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4364251652830013188.post-44152432551594529452018-09-14T13:07:00.001-04:002020-08-10T14:28:22.087-04:00A New Wilton Carpet for the Gibsons<br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">
In about 1890, Rosamond Gibson redecorated the front hall of
her home at 137 Beacon Street. Her mother-in-law, with whom she had shared the
house for nearly seventeen years, had recently passed away. And in the thirty
years since the house was built, styles had changed. Rosamond selected an
embossed, gold-leaf wallpaper, called “<a href="https://thegibsonhousemuseum.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-japanese-leather-wallpaper.html" target="_blank">Japanese Leather</a>.” She also chose a luxe
red-on-red patterned Wilton carpet.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhic81t6l_6OHpWhU1SK4_gSvWnIZgRM9YWxHvmHzECOF5T1eIHCby649hwChFNInnusTm5Wkirf4XnuYJkM_uJR0LlFuWranXJhEJnFAye9cvGrTYxoKjk8SBuBdU5Yge6kE-c6vs/s1600/Photo+Aug+22%252C+9+00+21+AM.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="900" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhic81t6l_6OHpWhU1SK4_gSvWnIZgRM9YWxHvmHzECOF5T1eIHCby649hwChFNInnusTm5Wkirf4XnuYJkM_uJR0LlFuWranXJhEJnFAye9cvGrTYxoKjk8SBuBdU5Yge6kE-c6vs/s200/Photo+Aug+22%252C+9+00+21+AM.jpg" width="111" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Wilton red-on-red pattern</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">
The carpet was manufactured by the Bigelow Carpet Company in
Clinton, Mass. Bigelow was a prominent name in carpets; the company’s founder,
Erastus Bigelow, developed the first power loom in America. His inventiveness
ultimately revolutionized the carpet industry, making quality carpets cheaper
and quicker to produce. By the late nineteenth century, Bigelow carpets were a
household name. Bigelow’s classic advertising campaign encouraged people to
consider purchasing a carpet for their home and business, “A Title on the Door
Rates a Bigelow on the Floor.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">
The Wilton style of carpet that Rosamond selected was top of
the line. Traditional Wilton-weave carpets have a thick, cut pile that
resembles velvet. They were the most expensive to produce and served as a
status marker in many wealthy homes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Rosamond’s carpet held up well, but after almost 130 years
of use, it became worn and faded. In 2016, the Museum’s Board of Directors,
with the help of several generous donors, undertook a project to reproduce a
new carpet for the Gibson House. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span><a name='more'></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Museum worked with the J. R. Burrows Company here in
Massachusetts and the Grosvenor Wilton Company Ltd., located just outside
Birmingham, England, to design a replica of the original carpet. This involved
taking samples of the old carpet to the mill, so that the pattern and dye could
be matched exactly. The historic Stourvale Mill, where the new carpet was
woven, is the site of the first steam-powered carpet mill in Britain. It is a
fitting place to reproduce a Bigelow carpet.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN-o_ft-wFXiJeEmkbZ1zBp_0IaM-Un1tfRwA5hEZUBNU_fjSbBsDNgZC-ksnXhuLo9Hoe368Ey0W6sW5oklnG3d-_c_epRyD1VNodrUy7frXCwS6QucE2rJ3xlHyuYMw1_eG-wf4/s1600/gibsonhs2.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN-o_ft-wFXiJeEmkbZ1zBp_0IaM-Un1tfRwA5hEZUBNU_fjSbBsDNgZC-ksnXhuLo9Hoe368Ey0W6sW5oklnG3d-_c_epRyD1VNodrUy7frXCwS6QucE2rJ3xlHyuYMw1_eG-wf4/s200/gibsonhs2.jpg" width="150" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Sewing carpet strips by hand </span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfkgRPQfS5Y18lHyq3rmohyphenhyphenBzklZ400lVPjz0c6BqriE_DlEmZ1I9qG942PoMC8OqZVbrSPcnooaLNnKVYkvRrg-pQ4y1nDzsaEYeelyS-RqT4RCXUemeO-zHeVrrb7Awv_W9eszc/s1600/IMG-6996.JPG" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfkgRPQfS5Y18lHyq3rmohyphenhyphenBzklZ400lVPjz0c6BqriE_DlEmZ1I9qG942PoMC8OqZVbrSPcnooaLNnKVYkvRrg-pQ4y1nDzsaEYeelyS-RqT4RCXUemeO-zHeVrrb7Awv_W9eszc/s200/IMG-6996.JPG" width="150" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Installing carpet on the staircase</span></td></tr>
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In August, Pulsifer-Kingston, a carpet installation company
in Quincy, Mass., received the carpet bales in the traditional twenty-seven-inch
strips and hand-sewed them together in their workshop. Installation took three
days.</span></div>
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We were proud to unveil the new carpet at the beginning of
September. It is vibrant and plush, and complements the wallpaper beautifully.
It is now easy to imagine how impressive the house's front hall would have
been in 1890.<i style="text-align: center;"><o:p> </o:p></i></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA-pB_frQe9sLIXgHUwZ5rCqI3tt2EI1VojdeAlJFXNnW8iGXvr8OjwTQBhbu-a_pkgtZHaASJi91Yx88lA-Ihx1CPjPDCF83Icqt5RbBwxM-S8Y25ax4AVWU8sxHpsABx9JdXw7M/s1600/IMG-7006.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA-pB_frQe9sLIXgHUwZ5rCqI3tt2EI1VojdeAlJFXNnW8iGXvr8OjwTQBhbu-a_pkgtZHaASJi91Yx88lA-Ihx1CPjPDCF83Icqt5RbBwxM-S8Y25ax4AVWU8sxHpsABx9JdXw7M/s320/IMG-7006.JPG" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Visit the Gibson House and see the new carpet!</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: georgia;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Information about guided tours can be found on our <a href="http://www.thegibsonhouse.org/" target="_blank">website</a>.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: georgia;">-Meghan Gelardi Holmes, Curator</span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">To learn more:<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
</div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">Bigelow-Sanford Carpet Company, </span><i style="text-indent: -0.25in;">A Century of
Carpet and Rug Making in America</i><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"> (1925).</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">Patton, Randall L. "</span><a href="https://eh.net/encyclopedia/a-history-of-the-u-s-carpet-industry/" style="text-indent: -0.25in;">A History
of the U.S. Carpet Industry</a><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">," Economic History Association (no date).</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><a href="http://www.burrows.com/index.html" style="text-indent: -0.25in;">J. R.
Burrows & Company</a><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">, Historical Design Merchants</span></span></li>
</ul>
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<br />Gibson House Museumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00685472634101571238noreply@blogger.com0