A Summer with Birds, Bees and Blossoms - Part II

INTRODUCTION 

Last month, we introduced a delightful paper, A Summer with Birds, Bees and Blossoms, which Frances Glessner prepared for a presentation at The Fortnightly of Chicago in November 1903. Recording the idyllic summers spent at her beloved summer estate, The Rocks, in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, she focused on her keen observations of the endless varieties of birds which called the estate home (the topic of Part I), and her many years of caring for her bee colonies (the topic of this article).

Frances Glessner began keeping bees at The Rocks in May 1895 as noted by this entry in her journal:
“Friday, Mr. Goodrich brought out my bees – two colonies. They were set up in the summer house in front of the house. We watched him open the hives. He showed us all through the hives and clipped the queen’s wings.” 

The record of her endless labors caring for the hives fill many pages of the journal over the next fifteen years. Also tucked into the journal are countless letters from friends and family who were the grateful recipients of the treasured jars of honey. By the summer of 1909, it was determined that the physical exertion in maintaining the hives was becoming too much for her to handle. Dr. James B. Paige from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, upon her invitation, came to inspect the hives and accepted them for the school. (Beekeeping is still taught there).

A SUMMER WITH BIRDS, BEES AND BLOSSOMS

The following excerpts are taken directly from Frances Glessner’s paper.

Many, many hours of daylight are spent in the little bee house on the gentle slope of our home hill near where the rainbow rested. This bee house was built for me by a dear friend, a friend who had a poet’s soul if not a poet’s song. Carved on the beams by his own hands are sentiments which belong with the place and its uses.

“As bees fly hame wi’ lades of treasure,
The minutes wing their way wi’ pleasure.”
(Robert Burns) 

“Tis sweet to be awakened by the lark, or lulled by falling waters,
Sweet the hum of bees, the voice of girls, the song of birds,
The lisp of children, and their earliest words.”
(Lord Byron) 

And again towards the east –

“But, look! The morning sun in russet mantle clad
Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastern hill.”
(Shakespeare, Hamlet) 

And last –

“To business that we love we rise betimes and go to it with delight.”
(Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra) 

Many, many times have I been asked whatever put the honeybee in my bonnet.

One of my very earliest recollections is of Aunt Betsy’s garden. Dear old Aunt Betsy and her dear old garden, with paths to get about in, and all of the rest of it roses, and tulips and daffodils, and altheas, and gooseberry and currant bushes, and a long grape arbor, and peach trees and lilac bushes . . . There were no weeds, but there was a glorious tangle.

Off in one corner was a row of white beehives. Under the grape arbor stood a huge bee palace. The bees were the greatest fascination to me, and when Aunt Betsy* took me into the inner cupboard of a closet in one corner of the sitting-room, where was kept not only the best white and gold china, but also her whole precious store of white and gold honey, and allowed me to cut off all I wanted for my supper, I then and there inwardly vowed “when I grow up I will keep bees.”

My opportunity for cultivating the science of apiculture did not come until nine years ago. I had no notion of how to go about it, but consulted the book-store – the place one generally goes for information. There I found there were bee journals published, and books about bees to be had, and incidentally learned that there were beekeepers’ conventions, and dealers in beekeepers’ supplies, and other sources from which one could get more or less correct information. I subscribed for four bee journals, bought two big bee books, and during that first winter read everything on the subject I could lay my hands on. Later on I joined an association of beekeepers.

I bought two fine colonies from a beekeeper in Vermont, who came over with them himself, shipping the bees by express, the hives carefully closed up so the bees could not escape, the bee man traveling on the same train with them in order to look after them at stations where they were they were transferred. When the old man said good-bye and left me the real owner of two colonies of Italian bees, I felt quite overwhelmed with doubt and responsibility; for reading a theoretical book by the cosy fire in one’s library is a very different proposition from the practical manipulation of a seething, boiling mass of bees.

Was it Pliny the elder who said long ages ago before it became a Dutch proverb, “He who would gather honey must brave the sting of bees.” Am I often stung? Many, many, many times, but there is this comfort – the sting is acutely painful, but one gets inoculated with the poison, so after frequent stinging, beyond the first hour’s pain, there is no swelling nor irritation, and then bee stings are said to be a cure for rheumatism.

Nectar has a raw, rank taste, generally of the flavor and odor of the blossom from which it is gathered. Formic acid is added to this raw product by the bees before it is stored in the cells; it is then evaporated by the fanning of the wings of that portion of the colony whose duty it is to ventilate the hive. After the honey is evaporated and the cells filled to the brim, they are then sealed up or capped over with wax. Wax is a secretion from the bee itself, a little tallow-like flake which exudes from the segments of the abdomen.

Bees do not make honey, they simply carry it in from the blossoms. Not all plants are honey plants. Many of the best and richest blossoms are small and insignificant. In the region of the White Hills, there are about forty varieties of plants which produce honey. Each kind of honey has its own distinct flavor if the plant producing it is in sufficient quantity for the bees to work upon that plant alone, such as raspberry, clover, linden, buckwheat. When no great honey yielder is in bloom, the bees will carry nectar from all available blossoms, giving a very agreeable mixture. We grow a large bed of borage and another of mignonette for the exclusive use of the bees, the mignonette giving a most marked flavor of the flower from which it is gathered. Goldenrod honey is as yellow as the flower itself, and very strong in flavor and sweetness.

Bees fly in a radius of about two miles from their own home. Many times have I jumped from the buckboard when driving and examined the bees on the blossoms by the roadside to find they were members of my own family. My bees are the only Italians in the neighborhood, so we know them by their color, and I think know them by their hum.

A worker bee in its whole life will carry in one-thirtieth of an ounce of honey – that is, it is the life work of thirty bees to carry in one ounce of honey – that of all the foods in the world this is the most poetic, delicious, and natural, a pound of honey has never realized its value in money. The gathering of a one-pound section would wear out the lives of five hundred bees. Bradford Torrey asked me last season if I had any commercial return from my honey. I told him that I gave it to my friends. “Oh, then you have!”

Working with and manipulating bees has been made possible by the invention and use of a smoker. Smoke from old dry wood burning in this is puffed in at the entrance of the hive, alarming and subduing the bees, so that they may be handled with comparative comfort. A veil of black net is worn over the hat and face to protect one from stings.

I said in my haste all men are cowards about working among bees, but that isn’t quite so. They are by no means brave. It is the duty of some special workman to keep an eye on my bees during June and July to watch for swarms while I am forced to be away. Let any commotion arise among the hives, the man usually rushes to the house, with his eyes fairly bulging out of his head, tells me as quickly as possible that the bees are swarming, and then he seems to melt into the earth. While I rarely need the services of a man in doing any of the work, it is amusing to a degree to see them take to their heels and run like kill deer if any of my bees so much as makes a tour of investigation about their heads. A man who faces a bear with delight will turn pale with terror at the thought of a bee sting.

There is very much labor connected with an apiary, and constant confinement in daylight. My best honey record for one season was a fraction over one thousand pounds from six colonies. Seven hundred and seven of these were sections of comb honey; the balance was extracted honey. By this, I mean that honey which had been stored in brood frames was uncapped on both sides with a sharp knife, the frames then placed in a large barrel-shaped extractor, which held three frames at one time, the wire baskets containing the frames were turned rapidly, and the honey thrown from the cells by centrifugal force, and then drawn off below into glass jars.

In September, each one of my little families is carefully weighed. Those which do not tip the beam at fifty pounds or more, are fed with sugar-syrup or honey until the weight is sufficient to ensure them abundant food during the long winter. When settled for the winter they cluster in an oval mass, one bee over-lapping another, the food being passed from one to the other. They are not dormant in the winter but are quiescent.

Tell me when you taste your tea biscuit this afternoon, spread with nectar stored by my New Hampshire pets, and which has in it a touch of wild rose, flowering grape, red raspberry, a dash of mignonette, and all the rest gathered from luscious heads of white clover, did not these patient little workers find for you and me the pots of gold which were hidden where the rainbow rested on the hillside one smiling and tearful day in June twenty years ago.

PRESENTATION AND RECEPTION

Frances Glessner completed her paper by the time she returned to Chicago from The Rocks in October. Postcards were sent out to members of The Fortnightly announcing the program. Soon after, she became seriously ill, so much so that she was unable to deliver her paper.

Nathalie Sieboth Kennedy (above), the reader for the Monday Morning Reading Class (and later president of The Fortnightly), was asked to deliver the paper, and the program proceeded as planned in The Fortnightly rooms at the Fine Arts Building (below).

The paper was well received by the members, as recorded in the numerous letters Frances Glessner received afterwards. From these we learn that she also provided an observation hive, enclosed in a glass case. Her cook, Mattie Williamson, prepared her award-winning biscuits which were enjoyed with honey from The Rocks. Members of the Reading Class provided yellow chrysanthemums which were arranged around the observation hive; following the talk they were sent to Frances Glessner along with sincere wishes for a speedy recovery.

A few quotes from the letters speak not only to the quality of the paper prepared, but also of the high esteem in which Frances Glessner was held by her many friends.

“I must tell you, though I am sure you know it without words of mine, how the rare, delicate beauty of your paper satisfied and charmed me. It was so unusual, so simple and natural, so exquisite, that I can not express the joy it gave me. It gave everyone the same pleasure. I never saw the Fortnightly so full of a sweet genuine delight. Every word rang so true, called up such pure beauty, revealed such lore of nature, and brought us all to the natural world, as a ramble in the very haunts that you described might bring us.”
(Kate P. Merrill)

“How did you write of your own experience and out of your own full heart and still keep yourself in the background so completely and throw into the foreground the little creatures you so dearly love so that we who listened felt that we were partakers with you in their joys and sorrows?”
(Louise T. Goldsmith) 

“I feel very humble for not having known all the things you could do. I knew you were angel-good, as the Germans say, to all your world (as well as that of the other half) about you and that there are many, many of us to whom you make life much pleasanter and happier by your thoughtfulness. But I didn’t know that you could put words together to make really true literature as much as Olive Thomas Miller or John Burroughs or any of the rest of them.”
(Emma G. Shorey) 

CONCLUSION

During her ongoing illness, Frances Glessner reworked the paper into a book which she presented to her five grandchildren. The dedication reads:

“To my five grandchildren, whose prattling tongues and toddling feet are now bringing the same joy and sunshine into my summer home as did their mother and father, my own girl and boy, at their age a generation ago, this little book is lovingly dedicated.”

The original paper was delivered again many years later, at some point after World War I, as indicated by an addendum to the paper:

“You know about the ‘proof of the pudding.’ Well, we did not have many puddings in war times, but there never was any restrictions on the use of honey. My work in the apiary taught me that honey is a delicious and practical sweet for making puddings and ice creams, and in any kind of cooking.”

The bee house returned to its original use as a “summer house” after the hives were taken away in 1909. In 1937, the year after John Glessner died, his daughter-in-law Alice had a large in-ground pool constructed next to the bee house, which was converted into a pool house. In 2003, several Glessner descendants funded the restoration of the bee house, and it remains today as one of the most beautiful structures at The Rocks.

The bee house, and the manuscripts for both the Fortnightly paper and the book version prepared for the Glessner grandchildren. serve as tangible links to this important chapter in Frances Glessner’s life.

Wouldn’t she be pleased to learn how popular beekeeping is today?

The Monday Morning Reading Class

Monday Morning Reading Class, May 1902 (Photo by George Glessner)

I began my summer project on Frances Glessner’s Monday Morning Reading Class with little idea of what I would uncover. As I looked more and more into the class, I was struck by the similarities between this group of women and my college sorority. As a sorority girl who loves everything about sorority life from the sisterhood to rituals to formals, I think of the organization that brought me and my sisters together quite often. As such, while reading about the Monday Morning Reading Class through my collections project, I was struck by the similarities between this class and my sorority.

Mrs. Glessner had the first meeting of her Monday Morning Reading Classes in November of 1894 with the goal of gathering young married women from the South Side of Chicago together, including the wives of the professors of the newly opened University of Chicago. Mrs. Glessner hosted a meeting every week while she was in town, typically November through May. The class ran for two hours and involved a reading from a book (provided by a paid professional reader) or a lecture, followed by a performance from a visiting musician and lunch the first Monday of each month. It was a popular social event that was by invitation only; Mrs. Glessner created a roster of members every season that included around 90 names. The Monday Morning Reading Classes continued until Mrs. Glessner’s declining health required that the class be disbanded 1930.

Chi Omega - Tau Mu Pledge Class, 2016

It’s plain to see the similarities between the class and my sorority at first. Sororities are women-only groups, just like the Reading Class. There’s a special sacredness to women-only spaces where we don’t have to worry about the impression we make and can form bonds with those around us. Women who wouldn’t otherwise meet become close friends. It’s also a relief to have a gathering where men may be invited but are not allowed to invite themselves. In a sorority, a male visitor is permitted to speak and must leave directly afterwards. In the Reading Class, a male visitor was held strictly to their role as lecturer or musician, leaving swiftly after completing his task.

There are other small details of the Monday Morning Reading Class that match closely to sorority life. The members paid dues and went to weekly meetings, at which attendees were expected to dress a certain way, much like a sorority chapter. The class operated during the Glessners’ yearly Chicago stay, November through May, and sororities operate throughout the school year, from September to April with a break for the winter holidays. There were select people in charge of the class: the hostess, Mrs. Glessner; the reader, Miss Trimingham and later Mrs. Kennedy; and the treasurer, Mrs. Philo Otis. Similarly, sororities have their own set of directors.

The roster of Monday Morning Reading Class members changes slightly from season to season, as some members leave and others are selected. While there isn’t any record of how Mrs. Glessner selected the new members, one can assume that the names were given to her by members and friends of the class, just like sorority recommendations for recruitment. Although in this aspect, I must say that the class seems to be more exclusive than my sorority was during our recruitment process.

The small details that I found to be the most intriguing were descriptions of rituals. The Reading Class went out with a bang at the end of every season. Much like a sorority ends with a formal, the class concluded with a luncheon for all members complete with gifts and more flowers than Mrs. Glessner could handle. However, there were several journal entries by Mrs. Glessner describing elaborate rituals.

On January 13, 1901, Mrs. Glessner described a peculiar scene from the Reading Class in her journal:

I gave some tapers to some of the ladies who lighted them at the library fire—they were passed from one to the other until every one had touched them. Then they were carried out in procession to the dining room where the new lamp was lighted. The lamp stood in the centre of the dining table with a wreath of green ferns and red carnations around it. We all applauded the lighting.

There were also extra parties that hinted at some ritual aspects, such as the one described in Mrs. Glessner’s journal, held on April 25, 1904:

The day was rainy but there were sixty of the ladies at the party. Mrs. Stein stood in the hall watching for us and as soon as we stepped out of the elevator disappeared telling the ladies we had arrived. We left our cloaks in the dressing room and went in to the Fortnightly assembly room where the ladies stood in a circle at the door, Mrs. Kennedy and Miss Trimingham being without hats. The rooms were most beautifully decorated with flowers which had been sent by the ladies. The mantel was trimmed with pink snapdragons. The rest of the room seemed done with yellow and white flowers and green palms. Two large baskets of daisies, violets, hydrangeas and white lilacs stood on the rostrum and came from the University ladies. A large box of yellow jonquils came from the Hibbard sisters. The dining room had tulips all around the wainscoting and the table decoration was made in a pyramid of all sorts of spring flowers and was very beautiful. After the greetings were over twelve members of the orchestra came and played a beautiful program. Mrs. Thomas read her paper on the musician’s life and temperament. Then Kramer played, the musicians played again and after that a very pleasant tea was served. It was all most beautiful, the spirit of affection and whole tone was especially charming. I came home quite tired and headachy but never enjoyed a more beautiful afternoon in my life.

On November 20, 1904, Mrs. Glessner described a memorial service at the class for one member who committed suicide: “Monday we had a good sized meeting of the Reading Class and had a little memorial to Mrs. Donaldson, a written word to the class from me and a very pretty tribute from Miss Trimingham.” Descriptions became briefer after that; Mrs. Glessner described a couple more parties given for the Reading Class in 1907 and a memorial service for Miss Trimingham and Mrs. Smith on November 16, 1913.

Rooms were decorated in an elaborate and specific way; the description of greetings was vague and may be more ceremonial than a casual hello. This is all conjecture of course, but the combination of several parties with specific details about actions and decorations leads me to believe that these were more like ceremonies. The repeated ceremonies, such as the memorial services and the end-of-year celebrations, could be considered rituals.

Given its many sorority-like characteristics, Mrs. Glessner’s Monday Morning Reading Class was a proto-sorority. If the Glessners had not purposefully disbanded the group due to Mrs. Glessner’s illness, I believe that the class would have gone on for much longer. Maybe they would have eventually picked out a couple of Greek letters in order to abbreviate such a long title.

--

Our guest author is Genevieve Leach, an Art History and Archaeology major at Washington University in St. Louis. During her summer internship at Glessner House Museum, she organized the collection of documents related to Mrs. Glessner’s Monday Morning Reading Class.

The Death of May Allport

Inserted into Frances Glessner’s journal following the weekly entry dated May 18, 1913 is a memorial to Miss May Allport, prepared by the Fortnightly of Chicago.  May Allport was a long-time friend of Frances Glessner, a fellow club member, and a kindred spirit who shared her love of the piano and music.  She was a frequent guest in the Glessner home and her name appears frequently in the journal.

The following article, which appeared in the Chicago Tribune on May 20, 1913, provides the details of Miss Allport’s untimely passing:

LURE OF DESERT KILLS PIANISTE

May Allport of Chicago Stricken as She Ventures Too Far Into Sahara

TAKEN FAR ON A LITTER

English Missionaries Minister to Dying American When French Deny Aid.

A dramatic account of the death of May Allport, the Chicago pianiste, in a lonely, sun-baked town on the edge of the Sahara desert, is told in mails which have just been received by her friends in Chicago.  Brief mention was made of Miss Allport’s death in the Chicago newspapers of April 20.  She had expired in Sfax, Tunisia, on April 18, and had been buried the following day.

Miss Allport left Chicago two years ago to travel in Italy.  She spent a large part of her time at the little town of Taormina, under the shadow of Mount Aetna and close to the exquisite classical remains which draw many strangers to Sicily.  In March of the present year Miss Allport went alone across the Mediterranean from Palermo to Africa.

From Tunis she went along the coast to Susa, thence inland to Kairawan, Gafsa, and Tozeur (Tozer); thence to Sfax on the gulf of Gabes, and thence she ventured, in company with a casually met Englishwoman – too far into the desert – to Gabes at the lower end of the gulf, called by the ancients Syrtis Minor. 

Here, among the Arabs and Italian sailors and merchants, she was taken too sick to return unaided, and here her companion left her.  Fortunately an English doctor – his name is Thomas G. Churcher – journeying with his wife through Gabes from Sfax to the oasis of Medenine, heard of the American woman sick at the little French Hotel des Colonies and came to her rescue.

In Automobile 100 Miles.

Recognizing the serious character of her illness, he called in the post surgeon as a consultant and endeavored to secure her admission to the French army hospital.  Failing in his effort, rather than desert a woman in distress, he secured a covered automobile, fitted it with a comfortable mattress, and carried her back with him to his own home in Sfax – a distance of nearly 100 miles.

On reaching the home of this Englishman – he and his wife are medical missionaries – she seemed brighter for the change and full of gratitude, but the long journey over the desert proved too much for her, and she died while her missionary friends prayed by her bedside.

She was buried in Sfax, in the French cemetery, until such a time as the French colonial department will issue a permit for the removal of her body to her own country.

Founder of Musical Club.

Since 1875 Miss Allport’s figure and influence were well known in the Chicago musical world.  She was one of the founders of the Amateur Musical club, and until 1911 was one of the most popular contributors to its programs.

For many years she was also the moving spirit in the musical programs of the Fortnightly and the Little Room.  Her musical education was commenced under the best European masters and in 1871 she enjoyed the privilege of listening to Franz Liszt at his own home in Weimar.

The greatest musical inspiration, however, came through the technical and artistic instruction of Mrs. Regina Watson of Chicago.  She enjoyed a wide acquaintance among professional musicians, counting among her warm friends Joseffy, Wilhelmj, Teresa Carreno, W. H. Sherwood, Theodore Thomas, Edouard Heimendahl, and Gaston Gattschalk.

The memorial to May Allport which Frances Glessner inserted in her journal includes, in part, this tribute to her artistic talent and a poem composed by an anonymous friend:

We shall never listen to her fiery yet delicate touch upon our instrument again, nor thrill to her rare comprehending musical interpretations of great compositions, yet the influence of this will remain with us.  During the fifteen years of her membership, she has given us memorable musical afternoons that only the true artist with a flame of genius flashing in her soul could give.  She was an artist in temperament, taste, training, accomplishment.  Her charming personality, high ideals and warm generous heart won and retained a devoted circle of friends.

Requiem

M.A., Sfax, Tunisia, April 18, 1913

Light desert sands, drift soft, drift low;

Sweet Arab flute, pipe sad, pipe low;

Dry desert airs, blow gently by;

Tall desert palms, wave lullaby.

Waves on the gulf, roll far, roll free;

Northwind, blow fresh from Sicily;

Warm desert sun, shine on, shine on;

Chill desert night, draw swiftly down.

Winds, waft the desert across to me;

Spread, desert skies, her canopy;

New desert grave, lie safe, lie deep;

Dear wandering soul, God give thee sleep.

-A Friend

May Allport’s body arrived in Chicago in early July and she was laid to rest in the family plot at Graceland Cemetery on Tuesday July 7, 1913.

NOTE:  May Allport was the daughter of Dr. Walter W. Allport, one of the most prominent dentists in Chicago and the country in the late 19^th century.  Dr. Allport arrived in Chicago in 1854 and practiced dentistry here for nearly 40 years.  He was credited with being the first dentist in the world to take advantage of the cohesive properties of gold in restoring the front teeth to their original form in 1856.  In 1858 he was elected President of the Western Dental Society and two years later was elected the first Chairman of the American Dental Association.  Rush Medical College conferred an honorary degree upon him in 1881, and in 1886 he was elected President of the American Dental Association.  He organized the World’s Columbian Dental Congress and would have served as its president during the Exposition, but died in March 1893, two months before the opening of the Fair.