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?

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)

Fire destroys two buildings at The Rocks

Tool Building (courtesy Littleton Fire Rescue)

The same view in June 2010

A devastating fire at The Rocks on the evening of Wednesday February 13, 2019, destroyed two century-old historic structures on the property, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.  No one was injured in the fire, and the nearby home of long-time property manager Nigel Manley, escaped damage.  The Rocks, located in Bethlehem, New Hampshire, was the summer estate and working farm of the Glessner family for several generations and since 1978 has been owned and operated by The Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests (SPNHF).

Electric Plant in foreground, Tool Building behind to the left
(courtesy Littleton Fire Rescue)

The same view in June 2010

The two structures destroyed were historically known as the Tool Building and the Electric Plant.  The Tool Building served as the North Country Conservation and Education Center for SPNHF, and housed staff offices and a large multi-purpose room used for programs and events.  The Electric Plant functioned as a gift shop.

TOOL BUILDING

Tool Building, front, circa 1904

Tool Building, rear, circa 1910

The Tool Building was built to house a variety of power-driven machines used in the production and repair of equipment for the estate.  The large, gable-roofed structure was two stories high on the west front, and three stories on the rear.  It was clad in wood shingles which were stained a dark red, like other buildings on the estate.   An L-shaped wing on the north side of the building functioned primarily as an ice house.  

Ice house, June 2010

On September 12, 1903, Frances Glessner noted in her journal, “we commenced work on the new tool building.”  Work proceeded rapidly, as she noted on October 3^rd, “we gave the annual dinner to the men on the place.  The table was set in the new tool building.”  Later that week the exterior was shingled. 

Tool Building, 1905 (Togo the mule in foreground)

The building was the site of numerous social events, one of which was recorded in some detail in a journal entry dated September 18, 1906:

“Friday evening, we gave a party to the working people in the Tool building.  We took everything out and made a little stage.  We hung branches of evergreen in among the iron strips and put two large vases of sun flowers and asparagus fern on each side of the stage.  We took lamps down and put one on each side of the stage and put hanging chimes around from the ceiling.  We asked our people and their wives – and many who have been connected with the place, and many of the neighbors.

“We hired omnibuses to bring them out from town.  There were one hundred and sixty-five here.  Mr. Tramonti (harpist with the Chicago Orchestra) was very nervous but pleased the audience very much.  John introduced him very nicely and the audience was very appreciative and attentive.  After the concert ice cream and cake was served.”

Tool Building in 1978, showing the bay added in 1907 at right

In June 1907, Frances Glessner noted “we commenced to build the addition to the tool building.”   That addition, consisting of one additional bay located at the south end of the building, was constructed to provide a blacksmith shop (used in recent years by a Glessner descendant).  

The upper floor contained a fully equipped woodworking shop with a variety of early equipment, originally belt-driven from a central power source.  A gas pump was installed outside to provide fuel for farm vehicles.

ELECTRIC PLANT

The Electric Building, circa 1910

The Electric Plant stood immediately to the east of the Tool Building and was constructed to house the original power plant for the estate.    Laid out on a T-plan, the plant was a low hip-roofed frame structure with a clerestory at the central roof ridge.  It was clad in the same dark red-stained wood shingles.  

The foundation for the building was set in place in July 1910 as work was underway to electrify the various buildings as noted in this journal entry dated July 16, 1910:

“Some progress has been made on the Cottage improvements, and the electric light work has been started.  The foundations are in for the power building.  Wynne the Chicago electrician began on Wednesday or Thursday and has a good deal of the tool building piped for wiring.”

By August 21^st, “the electric and power building is completed except the chimney and the “help” in our different houses have asked for a dance there next Thursday” (which did take place).  Electric was apparently fully functional by September 18^th when the first electric lamp was lighted at the Big House (the Glessners’ residence) as an experiment. 

Electric Plant, June 2010

LATER HISTORY

After John Glessner’s death in January 1936, the estate, which had grown to 1,500 acres, was divided equally between his daughter, Frances Glessner Lee, and his daughter-in-law, Alice Hamlin Glessner.  Following Alice’s death, Lee reassembled the estate and continued to operate it as a farm until her death in January 1962.  (Her tax returns each year listed her occupation as “farmer.”).  Lee’s children, John Glessner Lee and Martha Lee Batchelder continued operations of the farm until 1978 when the property was donated to the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, of which their grandfather, John J. Glessner, was an early member.  

A stipulation of the gift was that there always be a crop in the field.  The Forest Society noted, “for more than three decades, that crop has been Christmas trees, and people come to The Rocks from near and far each year to find their perfect tree.”  (Continuing a tradition begun by the Glessners in the 1880s, Glessner House acquires its Christmas tree each year from The Rocks).

The famous Budweiser Clydesdales in front of the Tool Building,
January 2010 (Courtesy of The Rocks Estate)

Glessner House docents in front of the Tool Building, August 2017

Maud Howe Elliott

Maud Howe Elliott was an American author and the daughter of Julia Ward Howe.  A close friend of Frances Glessner, she was frequently a guest in her homes both in Chicago and in New Hampshire.  In this article, we will reflect back upon a series of lectures given by Elliott in Chicago exactly 125 years ago.

In November 1890, Frances Glessner pasted the following card into her journal:

SIX INFORMAL TALKS

-----------

Mrs. Maud Howe Elliott,

Wednesday Afternoons at Four O’Clock

Wednesday, Nov. 19 – “The Growth of Art.”

At Mrs. Charles Schwartz’s, 1919 Prairie Avenue

Wednesday, Nov. 26 – “Foreign Art in America.”

At Mrs. Charles Schwartz’s, 1919 Prairie Avenue

Wednesday, Dec. 3 – “Our American Artists.”

At Mrs. O. R. Keith’s, 1808 Prairie Avenue

Wednesday, Dec. 10 – “Late American Literature.”

At Mrs. O. R. Keith’s, 1808 Prairie Avenue

Wednesday, Dec. 17 – “A Glance at Belles Letters in England.”

At Mrs. Charles P. Kellogg’s, 1923 Prairie Avenue

Wednesday, Dec. 24 – “The Ethics of Art.”

At Mrs. Charles P. Kellogg’s, 1923 Prairie Avenue

Course Tickets, $6.00

Mrs. Charles Schwartz                             Mrs. O. R. Keith

Mrs. Charles P. Kellogg                      Mrs. Clinton Locke

Mrs. John J. Glessner

Have the pleasure of sending you a ticket for

MRS. MAUD HOWE ELLIOTT’S

course of Informal talks.

Will you kindly return the ticket or its equivalent,

at your earliest convenience, to

Mrs. John J. Glessner

1800 Prairie Avenue

Maud Howe was born on November 9, 1854 in Boston, Massachusetts.  Her father, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, was the founder and director of the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston.  

Her mother, Julia Ward Howe, was an abolitionist, suffragist, and poet, best remembered today as the author of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”  She was privately educated by her mother in the United States in Europe; her mentors included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  In 1887, Maud Howe married the English artist John Elliott. 

On November 10, 1890, the Elliotts arrived in Chicago and settled into the guestroom at the Glessners’ Prairie Avenue home.  During the week that followed Frances Glessner and Maud Howe Elliott attended numerous concerts, lectures, teas, and dinners.  Within a couple of days of the Elliotts’ departure, Frances Glessner received a letter stating in part:

“A home sicker pair than John Elliott and his wife, rarely sat down to a boarding house dinner!  And we were homesick not for Boston but for Prairie Avenue! . . . I shall see you tomorrow.  Goodbye, blessed saint of hospitality.  Your good offices to us, are written in the record book of our hearts and will not be forgotten, while our memories are intact.

                                                                        Your attached

                                                                        M.H.E.”

Prairie Avenue, circa 1890 (photo by George Glessner);

the Schwartz (1919) and Kellogg (1923) homes are at far right.

Elliott returned to Chicago to give her first talk at the home of Mrs. Charles Schwartz on Wednesday November 19^th.  (Within a few years the house was sold to Marshall Field Jr.; it still stands today).  Frances Glessner noted:

“Last Wednesday I paid some neighborhood calls after luncheon – and then went to Mrs. Schwartz’s to hear Mrs. Elliott’s first South Side reading.  There were nearly a hundred ladies there – it was very pleasant.  I have given Mrs. Elliott $710.00 for this course.”

Following the second reading at Mrs. Schwartz’s, Frances Glessner noted that “Mrs. Elliott said that I inspired her paper by some questions which I asked her at The Rocks.”

The Elliotts had visited The Rocks during the summer of 1890.  Maud Howe Elliott used the opportunity to write; her husband, to sketch.  John Elliott also provided some evening entertainment as noted, “Tonight Mr. Elliott did the polar bear, the monkey, the old lady, and danced.”

Frances Glessner also noted an interesting incident that took place when their piano was tuned:

“This afternoon our blind piano tuner came out and tuned the piano – he proved to be John Denny who was educated at the Perkins Institute for the Blind which was founded by Dr. Howe.  This man had played with Mrs. Elliott when she was a child.  They were very glad to meet – to see her as the blind man expressed it.”

When the Elliotts left The Rocks on August 4^th, Maud Howe Elliott made the following entry in the guest book:

“These days passed at The Rocks (days as full of pleasure as the comb of honey) are strong upon our memory as pearls upon the rosary of Time.”

A few days later, Elliott wrote from Newport where she gave a detailed account of a party at the Vanderbilt “cottage.”  She noted, in part:

“My dear Mrs. Glessner,

It has been very hard for me to ‘wait until after the Vanderbilt party,’ as was agreed between us!  I have wanted continually to write you to let my words follow my thoughts back to the beloved Rocks, and the encircling hills blue and mysterious, they haunt my memory, they and the song of the hermit thrush, the genius of the place.

Wednesday night we came down to Newport on the Fall River boat, bringing Miss Gardner with us.  We found my dear mother well.  When Thursday came I felt rather indifferent about the garden party, but my promise was given!  Mama and I went together.  The Vanderbilt’s home is on the cliffs, with wonderful lawn leading down to the cliffs which overhang the ocean.  We passed in . . . across the house and out to the lawn where the hostess stood under a group of tall palms.  She is a prettyish little lady, and looked well in her simple frock of white woolen stuff embroidered with gold thread.  She wore no jewels, and a simple, pretty hat.  There were two bands, one a mandolin band, the other (well out of earshot) a full stringed and brass band.  The refreshments were served in a large red Marquee.  The table was superb.  Two immense silver punch bowls of beautiful repoussé work.  The centerpiece was very lovely, all manner of water lilies.  I never saw some of the variety before.  These were great white lilies shaped like poppies big as a large peony, pink ones of the same color, beautiful tropical looking things besides water lilies of the ordinary shape in every shade of blue and pink, the deepest being claret color.  The food was fine, I believe, I only remember a figure of George Washington in ice cream.  There was a menu upon the table and most wonderful looking dishes savory and sweet, all made by the chefs of the houses Vanderbilt.”

Portraits of Maud and John Elliott by Jose Villegas y Cordero

The Elliotts lived in Chicago for a time and then in Italy for a number of years before permanently settling in Newport in 1910.  In 1918, the Elliotts purchased a mansion at 150 Rhode Island Avenue in Newport which she called “Lilliput.”  She continued her writing here, eventually publishing twenty books.  The best known of her works, The Life of Julia Ward Howe, co-authored by her sisters Laura Richards and Florence Hall, earned them the first Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1917.    

Maud Howe Elliott was a patron of the arts, and was the founder of the Newport Art Association organized in 1912 for “the cultivation of artistic endeavor and interest amongst the citizens of Newport.”  The organization purchased the John N. A. Griswold House on Bellevue Avenue in 1915 (a National Historic Landmark designed by Richard Morris Hunt and completed in 1864); it continues to serve as the home of the Newport Art Museum.  Maud Howe Elliott’s portrait (shown at the top of this article) hangs over the fireplace in the library.  She served as secretary of the Association for thirty years.

John Elliott died in 1925.  Maud Howe Elliott continued writing, publishing her final book, This Was My Newport, in 1944, when she was ninety years old.  She died on March 19, 1948 and was interred at Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts alongside her husband and parents.  Her papers were given to Brown University, which had awarded her an honorary doctorate in 1940.

For more information on the Newport Art Museum, visit newportartmuseum.org.