A Summer with Birds, Bees and Blossoms - Part I

In May of 1903, Frances Glessner was asked to prepare a paper about her summer estate in New Hampshire, known as The Rocks. The request came from The Fortnightly of Chicago, a private women’s club founded in 1873 to enrich the intellectual and social lives of its members; Frances Glessner had been a member since 1879. Entitled “A Summer with Birds, Bees and Blossoms” (with a subtitle of “A Summer Idyll of a busy woman and an idle man"), the paper was delivered on November 12, 1903. Beautifully written, it focuses mostly on her close observation of birds and her devotion to beekeeping. As it is rather lengthy, and we wish to quote extensively from its pages, we will present this topic in two articles, with Part I devoted to birds and Part II dealing with bees and the paper’s reception as recorded in letters from her friends.

The idea for a summer estate had its origins in son George’s severe hay fever. When he was about seven years old, his doctor suggested that he be sent to the White Mountains of New Hampshire for relief, as were other sufferers from around the country. Accompanied by his mother’s sister, Helen Macbeth, George’s symptoms disappeared upon arrival, and the family soon made the decision to summer in the healthful environment of New Hampshire’s North Country. In 1882, after spending several summers at the Twin Mountain House in Carroll, the Glessners purchased their first tract of 100 acres nestled between the towns of Littleton and Bethlehem. They completed their home, known simply as the Big House, in August of the following year. It was significantly remodeled and enlarged by Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge in 1899, as seen below.

The Glessners would continue to spend summers at The Rocks until their deaths in the 1930s, and both George and his sister, Frances Glessner Lee, eventually made the estate their permanent home. In 1978, most of the property, which had grown over time to more than 1,500 acres, was donated to the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests by Frances Glessner Lee’s two surviving children. One portion of the estate is still owned and occupied by a great-granddaughter of George and Alice Glessner.

(The remainder of this article is entirely in Frances Glessner’s own words.) 

Let me say in passing that this paper of mine is not a literary effort, but simply a little group of stories and happenings within my own experience – “all of which I saw, part of which I was.”

After much consideration and a deal of search, we bought a farm – a rough and almost barren hilltop, - thin soil covered with stones, somewhat forbidding in itself, but with a genial summer atmosphere; an old red farm house, and the most magnificent panorama spread out in every direction. The glorious White Hills of Starr King*  - white till the late springtime, and with streaks of snow far into the summer, and verdure and gray rocks everywhere marking the sky line, and the picture filled in by valleys with green meadows divided by silver streamlets, the railroad track of civilization on the far away edge, where we watch the train crawling along, three sleeping villages, and the bluest sky and fleeciest clouds, with play of sunshine chasing fleeing shadows over the whole, and the approach, the passing, and retreat of sudden storms in the distance – all visible from our sunlight.

(*Note: Starr King, 1824-1864, was an American Universalist and Unitarian minister who, in 1859, published The White Hills: their Legends, Landscapes, and Poetry.)

It is a trite saying that the spring air is vocal with bird music, “caressed with song,” but it is a true one throughout the White Hills. Why were these ever degraded to mountains? Save, perhaps, for that monarch of all, Washington, and his lesser mate, Lafayette. And it is true also that these hills are bright with one color following another, each in its own season, as the summer progresses.

My own little eminence is white with winter’s snows, tender green with early spring, blue with violets and star grass, white again with clouds of blossoms on old apple trees, pink in June with cinnamon and wild roses, later gay with masses of yellow roses and scarlet poppies blooming together, and always and everywhere soft warm gray with huge weather-beaten, lichen-covered boulders.

The big window and its view. Note two sets of field glasses on the table.
(Photo by George Glessner)

In front of the big window of the big house, grows a goodly clump of stout young birch trees which in midsummer is completely covered and bowed over with the weight of a wild grapevine that has been encouraged to ramble thus over these little trees; indeed the vine is given full possession, truthfully having its own sweet will, for when in bloom the whole hillside is odorant with its fragrance.

Early in the season and before the leaves are grown, there are many branches of this vine sticking out in every direction, tough as wire, and most inviting to the birds as perches. Here they sit and sing and swing, and swing and sing, and there is no danger of the stiff fiber breaking or giving way. One morning in early June the little lisp of an old friend announced the arrival of the cedar bird, and after watching a while here was a pair of them lilting on the grape vine in the very ecstasy of love, one of the pair with a bunch of twigs in her mouth.

Frances Glessner's contributions of yarn can be seen in this nest
(Photo by George Glessner)

A bunch of coarse blue yarn cut in lengths of about six inches was then hung out on the family tree. Another pair of birds appeared. Blue wool went streaming by in another direction. This second pair we watched, and with field glasses traced them to a spruce tree on the opposite side of the house. From one window we watched them gather the wool; from the other we could see them putting it in place in the nest.

A pair of robins raised an early brood in a spruce tree. Grievous to tell, the young did not leave the nest alive, but furnished breakfast for some ravenous crows.

This disaster sent the birds nearer the house for the second family. Mrs. Robin searched about the vine on the porch. She would nestle down in a thicket of leaves and branches, evidently trying if it were well supported, secure from interruption, and well hidden. A pair of these friendly little creatures built a nest one spring in the cornice of the bee house. They were quite an interruption to the work among the bees, for although tame and unafraid, still I had to pop inside the closet when the mother came home with her mouth full. Then, after she had fed her young, I would come out and go on with my work.

Some days before her babies were ready to fly, I found in the walk a young robin, far too callow to take care of himself; and, to make matters worse, he had swallowed a little, stiff, prickly spear of growing grass. This stuck in his throat and pinioned him to the ground. He was in anything else than a happy condition. It was but the work of a moment to relieve him of the blade of grass, - but what next? Well, I carefully tucked him in the nest in the bee house with the four birds already there. When the old mother came home with her mouth full, she looked the situation over carefully and thoughtfully, hesitated a bit, then adopted the foundling, fed him, and was in a few days rewarded by his being the first nestling to fly from home; he a big, strong, healthy robin, for which he had his foster mother to thank.

Frances Glessner painted this china bowl. It no doubt depicts a nest she was observing at The Rocks.

For many years, some human member (not humane member) – some human member of my family has been in the habit of putting hemp seed on an old rock by the door, but usually not until late in the season. This year, the rock has been strewn with seed all summer and spring, and we have been rewarded by gay scenes; indigo birds, purple finches, goldfinches, white-throated and striped sparrows, and other seed-eating birds come there constantly and are growing quite tame.

And with them comes the chipmunk, or “hackey,” familiar, friendly, bold, confident in his quickness, ever alert and ready to fly from the first intimation of danger. But he is a glutton, a miser, and a wasteful spendthrift. He fills the pouches of his jaws with seed, a teaspoonful at a time, carries it off, buries it for future use, and promptly forgets where he buried it. Presently, I find little tufts of hemp growing up all over the plantations.

The fly-catching warbler’s dart through the porch and almost under my chair, the chimney swift’s beautiful flight and its sudden drop straight down into the chimney, which is the only place he ever alights, the red-headed woodpecker’s cling to a mullein stalk while I walk slowly up – confiding acts like these make the birds a part of my family.

Chimney swift nests preserved by Frances Glessner
(Photo by George Glessner)

These same chimney swifts are a great anxiety as well as pleasure. At the first whirr of wings in the chimney out goes the fire in that room, comfort indoors or discomfort. They persist in raising two or more broods in the same nest, and likely on account of the nest becoming weak from age and use, one brood is sure to tumble down into the sitting-room fireplace to the parents’ sorrow and mine. It is said that the young birds can clamber up the chimney sides unaided, but ours have not done so. 

To tell you about all of these feathered friends would be like repeating the check list of birds of Northern New Hampshire, as this region is a great and favorite breeding ground for many birds. Dr. Prime, Mrs. Slosson, Bradford Torrey, and Mr. Faxon have found and checked one hundred and twenty distinct varieties in the neighboring town of Franconia, and we have checked about ninety-six on our own hill.

These White Hills are teeming with memories of Starr King, Henry Ward Beecher, Phillips Brooks, Dr. Prime, Charles Dudley Warner, and other literary folk. Mrs. Slosson’s Fishin’ Jimmy whipped the streams about Franconia. The scene of Jacob Abbott’s Franconia stories of Beechnut and Malleville is said to be here. Hopkinson Smith’s Jonathan Gordon lived but a few miles away. Artists and scientists, men of letters and of affairs, soldiers and statesmen, and financiers and ministers of Christ, travelers and home-keepers, have broken bread in my dining-room, poets have sung under my shingles, invalids have wooed and regained health, tired men and women have sloughed off weary cares here, and never a one of them all but has succumbed to the witchery of the place. Oh, the luxury of loafing, the delight in the absence of responsibility, the comfort of sitting still in sun or shade, or yet in rain.

(Part II will be posted in September)

The Monday Morning Reading Class, Part II

The Monday Morning Reading Class, May 5, 1902
(Photo by George Glessner)

In our previous article, we looked at the formation of the Monday Morning Reading Class in November 1894, how it operated, and its activities during its first season.  In this second article, we will explore the class over its next several years, showing how its activities also sometimes extended beyond the basic structure of reading.

The second season of the class commenced on November 4, 1895.  Thirty-seven ladies gathered and commenced to read Renaissance in Italy, a seven-volume history written by John Addington Symonds between 1875 and 1886.  Portions of the extensive history were read throughout the season, with Michelangelo being a focus by February.  Other works read that season included a lecture by the artist John LaFarge, an appropriate topic given that Frances Glessner owned an original LaFarge watercolor, which she displayed in her parlor. 

The Glessners’ daughter Fanny was invited to join the class in season three, having turned eighteen earlier that year.  Although she was one of the very few single ladies ever invited to join the class, she missed the entire season as she was on her Grand Tour of Europe, accompanied by her aunt, Helen Macbeth.  The invitation sent to her provides information on the focus that year – a series of essays on art by Van Dyck, Moore, Brownell, and others occupied the first hour.  For the second hour of “lighter reading,” the class continued its study of Fyffe’s Modern Europe, followed by the three volume American Commonwealth by James Bryce, 1^st Viscount Bryce. 

On December 14, 1896, a new occasional feature was introduced to the class, namely having an author come and read from their own work.  The Glessners were long-time friends of F. Hopkinson Smith, a well-known author and artist.  He frequently sketched in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, that is possibly where they were introduced.  He was also an engineer of note and designed the foundation for the Statue of Liberty.  Smith would always spend time with the Glessners while visiting Chicago on his never-ending circuits of readings across the U.S.  Frances Glessner noted in her journal:

“Monday Mr. Smith came into the reading class and read more than an hour to the ladies.  He read some stories that have not been published in book form.  The ladies were perfectly delighted.  He made them laugh and cry both.  He read until the carriage came to take him to the station.  There was quite a full meeting.  I introduced him while he stood outside the door.”

As the third season grew to a close, the Glessners headed off to their summer estate, The Rocks, and soon after a Friday Night Reading Class was started for the farm workers and their family members.

With the Monday Morning Reading Class well established, John Glessner and the husbands of several of the class members came up with the idea of hosting a tea for the ladies to show their support for the undertaking.  Frances Glessner recalled the event on Wednesday November 10, 1897 in her journal:

“Wednesday afternoon John had his tea given to the reading class ladies and their husbands.  Dr. Hyde, Prof. Judson and Mr. Hutchinson presided at the tea table.  Mr. Herrick, Mr. Moore, Mr. Ryerson and Chauncey Blair assisted – coming ‘without their hats.’  The ladies all sent John boutonnieres.  One of my chrysanthemums was sent to him.”

(Note:  A new variety of chrysanthemum had recently been developed and named the “Mrs. J. J. Glessner” in her honor.)

John Glessner conveyed his thanks to the ladies to be read at the class the following Monday, which read, in part:

“Only that hard taskmaster, business, prevents me from being with you this morning, by your leave or without it, to tell you how my doubts about the existence of the Class have all been dissipated, how much I enjoyed meeting you last Wednesday, and how greatly I appreciated your flowers and the sentiments they conveyed. . . And so, though in body 500 miles away, I speak to you through the telephone of my wife’s lips to give you greeting and thanks.  Words are but empty thanks anyhow.  Inadequate as they are, they are the only vehicle I have.  May your numbers never grow less, and your charms ever increase.”

Selected excerpts from Frances Glessner’s journal provide additional insight to the happenings of the class.

December 4, 1899:

“Monday, we had a large meeting of the reading class.  After an hours reading of the book on Russia, Mrs. Winterbotham read us her Fortnightly paper on ‘Character through Effort.’  Then Miss Ensinger, a very talented young violinist, played a half hour.  She is a young German girl of eighteen years, a pupil of Mr. Lewis.  She plays remarkably well.”

November 19, 1900:

“We had the usual pleasant Monday reading class.  Miss Trimingham read Emerson’s Essay on Behavior.  It was very fine, and showed that he had set a new standard to which many of us have been trying to live up to.”

December 3, 1900:

“(Today) was our reading class luncheon day.  At the request of the class I gave an explanation of the bees.  I had a complete hive sent up from New York to show – and had the observatory hive placed in the middle of the library table.  This was surrounded by old brocade and embroidery and plants and flowers.  The ladies were most enthusiastic over the talk.  There were forty-eight ladies here.”

December 26, 1900:

“Mrs. Frank Johnson gave her gift party to the reading class.  Each member sent a gift with a rhyme to some other member designated by Mrs. Johnson.  Miss Trimingham read them all and passed the gifts out.  The gifts were hung on the tree.  The tree was lighted by little electric lights.  After the presents were distributed, Miss T. came up to me and presented me from the class a lovely lamp – a Grueby vase with a Tiffany shade.  I had to respond and was scared into insensibility.”  (The Grueby Faience Company, founded in 1894, was a ceramics company that produced distinctive and important vases and tiles throughout during the American Arts & Crafts Movement.)

The eighth season of the class ended on May 5, 1902.  It was an important meeting of the class for two reasons, as noted in the journal:

“Monday was the last meeting of the Reading Class.  I had engaged Dr. Slonaker of the University to come and give a lecture on birds and their nests.  He came bringing a stereopticon and Dr. Week of the Field Museum who operated the lantern.  The lecture was most delightful.  The pictures were nearly all from life and had been colored by Mrs. Slonaker.  The ladies sent and brought great quantities of beautiful flowers.  I had two men come from Samuelson’s to help arrange them.  We had the sideboard massed with them, all the windows filled and a great mass on the table.  The rest were in the parlor . . . Mrs. Goldsmith read a little history of the class.  Miss Trimingham says she will not be able to read to us anymore.  After luncheon, George came up and took our photographs in a group in the yard.”

The iconic photo of the Class assembled on the curved porch in the courtyard (shown at the top of the article) was taken that day, to commemorate the final class at which Miss Ann Trimingham would serve as reader.  It is the only time the class was photographed in its 36-year history.

Mrs. Nathalie Sieboth Kennedy

When the class resumed that fall, the new reader was Mrs. Nathalie Kennedy, who would continue in that role until the class disbanded in 1930, and came with excellent credentials.  Mrs. Kennedy was the daughter of Joseph Sieboth, who had been a pupil of Felix Mendelssohn.  She was also the niece of Frederick William Gookin, a good friend of the Glessners and the long-time curator of Japanese prints at the Art Institute of Chicago.  Mrs. Kennedy would later serve as president of The Fortnightly from 1910 to 1912.  Her first reading went well as noted in the journal:

“Monday morning, we had the first meeting of the year of the Reading Class with Mrs. Kennedy as reader.  There were fifty-four ladies here – four of them were guests.  The ladies lunched with me.  I asked Mrs. Kennedy to stand by the fireplace facing the audience.  She read an essay on the Victorian novelists by Paul, and a short story.  The reading was most delightful, and everyone seemed more than pleased.”

There was always a close connection between the Reading Class and The Fortnightly, as there were quite a few women who were members of both.  When the class decided to honor Frances Glessner with a special reception, the rooms of The Fortnightly in the Fine Arts Building were the obvious choice.  Frances Glessner recorded the event, held on April 25, 1904:

“Monday, April 25^th was a red-letter day for me.  The Reading Class gave me a most beautiful reception in The Fortnightly rooms at quarter of three in the afternoon.  The invitation was very beautiful and I have had it framed. . . There were sixty 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. . . 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 but never enjoyed a more beautiful afternoon in my life.  The flowers were all sent here to me.  I sent part of them to Alice and part to Frances.

“I felt that I must make some little remembrance to the musicians who were asked to play professionally but said no they were only too glad to play for Mrs. Glessner and came in that spirit for the afternoon.  I had made for them each a scarf pin – a good Baroque pearl mounted on a gold stick at Spauldings, and got a silver key ring for McNichol and sent them all in on Friday afternoon before the concert with a note.”

Invitation to reception held April 25, 1904

In the next article, we will examine an even more extraordinary expression of affection given to Frances Glessner by the Reading Class – her 1906 calendar.

Remembering Bryan Lathrop

This month marks the 100^th anniversary of the death of Bryan Lathrop.  Amassing a fortune in real estate and the insurance business, he became an extraordinary philanthropist in Chicago, supporting numerous organizations.  It was through his long-time service to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra that he and his wife Helen became close friends with the Glessners.

Bryan Lathrop was born in Alexandria, Virginia in 1844.  His family moved to Chicago at the outbreak of the Civil War, Chicago being the home of his uncle Thomas Barbour Bryan.  Lathrop was sent to Europe to study and did not return to Chicago until 1865.  It was during his years in Europe that he developed a deep appreciation for art, culture and landscape design, which would guide his future endeavors.  He later noted:

“In Europe (the intelligent traveler) sees almost everywhere evidences of a sense of beauty . . . In America, almost everywhere he is struck by the want of it. . . In this new country of ours the struggle for existence has been intense, and the practical side of life has been developed while the aesthetic side has lain dormant.”

Upon his return to Chicago, Lathrop joined his uncle’s real estate investment practice.  The two men shared a great deal in common, including their appreciation for landscape gardening.  As such, it is not surprising that Bryan involved his nephew in the development of Graceland Cemetery, with Lathrop joining the board of managers in 1867.  When his uncle moved to Washington in 1877, Lathrop became the president of the board, guiding the development of the cemetery until his death nearly forty years later.  

Almost immediately, Lathrop engaged the services of a civil engineer by the name of Ossian C. Simonds, who would go on to become one of Chicago’s most important landscape architects.  Together they shared an understanding and appreciation for naturalistic landscapes, and their work at Graceland had a profound effect on not only the cemetery, but the development of landscape architecture in the United States. 

Lathrop became an early advocate for the development of parks in Chicago, and as vice president of the Lincoln Park board, led an effort to extend that park along the shore of Lake Michigan supporting the concept of naturalism in its design. 

In 1891, Lathrop and his wife Helen Aldis, whom he had married in 1875, commissioned Charles Follen McKim, of the firm McKim, Mead and White, to design their home at 120 East Bellevue Place.  Completed in time for the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, the house was described by architect Alfred Hoyt Granger as “the most perfect piece of Georgian architecture in Chicago.”  McKim came to Chicago in early 1891 regarding his design for the Agricultural Building at the Fair, and it was at that time that he and Lathrop were brought together.  One of the few buildings in Chicago designed by the firm, the design brought Georgian Revival to the Gold Coast, and in less than a decade, it was the predominant style.  (The house has been owned and occupied by The Fortnightly since 1922, and was designated a Chicago landmark in 1973).

Vauxhall Bridge, 1861; James Abbott McNeill Whistler
(Collection of the Art Institute of Chicago)

Lathrop was a sophisticated and well-respected art collector, and the home was filled with his treasures.  Of particular significance was his collection of the works of James Abbott McNeill Whistler, the largest in the country. 

Bryan Lathrop became a trustee of the Orchestral Association in 1894 and four years later was named vice president.  In 1903, he was elected president and served in that capacity until his death.  It was under his leadership that the orchestra moved into its new home, Orchestra Hall, and that the current name, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, was adopted in early 1913. 

First program using the Chicago Symphony Orchestra name, February 1913

Lathrop was a co-founder of the Chicago Real Estate Board, and developed an excellent reputation for handling large estates both in Chicago and in the East.  His other philanthropic activities included the Chicago Relief and Aid Society and the Newberry Library.

Lathrop died from heart disease at his Bellevue Place home in 1916.  As noted in Illinois, the Heart of the Nation by Edward Fitzsimmons Dunne:

“Bryan Lathrop, who died May 13, 1916, was a wealthy, generous, and public spirited citizen to whom the people of the city were indebted during his life time and since for his constructive work in behalf of several of Chicago’s cultural and philanthropic institutions.”

The funeral service was held in the chapel of Graceland Cemetery.  Frederick Stock, conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, cancelled their concert in Buffalo, New York and returned to Chicago in time for the funeral.  Edgar Lee Masters wrote a commemorative poem about Lathrop specifically noting his support of music in Chicago, which was published in Poetry magazine.

Lathrop’s bequests were numerous including $700,000 to the Orchestra for the establishment of the Civic Music Student Orchestra, the predecessor of the current Civic Orchestra.  It was the largest gift ever made to the Orchestra up to that time.  (The orchestra also established the Bryan Lathrop Memorial Scholarship Fund in his memory, using a large gift from his sister Florence, the wife of Thomas Nelson Page, author and U.S. ambassador to Italy.)  His large collection of Whistler artworks was given to the Art Institute of Chicago and his library went to the Newberry.  Additional bequests were made to United Charities and Children’s Memorial Hospital.

Bryan Lathrop was buried in a large landscaped plot at Graceland Cemetery, with only a small unobtrusive headstone marking his grave.   Helen Lathrop died in 1935 at her summer home in Bar Harbor, Maine, and was interred beside her husband. 

A TRIBUTE TO FRANCES GLESSNER

In 1905, Bryan Lathrop was asked to submit a page to the calendar being prepared by the Monday Morning Reading Class as a surprise for Frances Glessner.  It was presented to her on her birthday, January 1, 1906.  For his page, Lathrop selected an excerpt from “Arcades,” a masque written by John Milton in 1634 to honor Alice Spencer, the Countess Dowager of Darby, on her 75^th birthday.  The selection of this excerpt says a great deal about Lathrop’s respect for Frances Glessner, as the piece extols the subject as being far superior to other noble women.  The excerpt reads:

“Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie,

To lull the daughters of Necessity,

And keep unsteady Nature to her law,

and the low world in measured motion draw

After the heavenly tune, which none can hear

Of human mold with gross unpurged ear.”