Christmas Dinner at the Glessner house - 1895

Glessner House Museum is once again decked out for the Christmas holidays.  Among the rooms to be interpreted in a special way at this time of year is the dining room, where visitors can learn about the elaborate Christmas feast of 1895.  The table, sideboard, and side table are set with some of the offerings of this eight course meal, which was served at 7:00pm on Christmas night to the Glessner family and five guests.  The dining room table is set with pieces from four different china services used by the family, and the silver flatware, a wedding gift to Frances Glessner and Blewett Lee in 1898, is identical to the flatware used by the Glessners.

Special Christmas Candlelight Tours of both the Clarke and Glessner house museums focusing on Christmas traditions will be offered the weekend of December 8^th and 9^th, with tours at 5:30, 6:00, and 6:30pm each evening.   For more information, click here.  Pre-paid reservations are required and may be made by calling 312-326-1480.

In her journal, Frances Glessner records the following information about Christmas Day 1895:

“Wednesday morning we had our Christmas pie – exchanging small gifts – and having a very merry time together.  The Ream girls were over after breakfast.  John gave me money – George gave me a stylographic pen – Frances a silver tape needle – John a silver tape needle – Mr. and Mrs. Moore a book. 

“Miss Allport, Miss Cooley, Mrs. Herrick, Mr. Armour, Mrs. Moore sent me flowers.

“In the evening, Mr. Hendricks, Mr. Badger, Mr. Marsick came to dinner (joining the four Glessners and Mr. and Mrs. Moore, who had been staying at the house since Tuesday).  Prof. Hendrickson of the University at Madison was here most of the day.  He is a very attractive man.  He lost his wife in the spring – and is coming next year to be in the Latin Department in our University (the University of Chicago).  Mr. Marsick heard Frances play and said her teacher was not a good one – he advised her to change.  He seemed to enjoy his dinner extremely – praised every thing.  The salad he pronounced a poem – superb.  He sang and played for us.  He told Frances about Saint-Saens animal symphony and sang The Swan.  He asked if he might come back and bring his violins to show Frances.  Mr. Badger, Mr. and Mrs. Moore staid over night.”

Frances Glessner recorded the menu in her dinner book.  The meal consisted of eight courses as follows:

1^st course – oysters on the half shell, brown bread, and butter

2^nd course – clear soup, sherry

3^rd course – mold of fish, potatoes, cucumbers, champagne, and cider

4^th course – chicken timbale (a custard like dish of cheese and chicken baked in a drum-shaped pastry mold)

5^th course – turkey, sweet potatoes, chestnuts, celery, jelly, cranberries, and pickles

6^th course – salad

7^th course – plum pudding and mince pie

8^th course – fruits, nuts, raisins, figs, cake and coffee

Of particular interest is one of the guests at the Christmas dinner, Martin Pierre Marsick.  The Glessners first met Marsick on Sunday December 21, when their friend Miss Millar telephoned to know if she might bring Mr. Marsick up to call.  The Glessners immediately said yes.  At that initial meeting, Frances Glessner wrote that “Mr. Marsick was extremely pleasant, played and sang, and talked.”

Martin Pierre Marsick (1847-1924) was a Belgian violin player, composer, and teacher.  His violin, made by Antonio Stradivari in 1705, has since become known as the Ex Marsick Stradivarius.  (It was later used by violinist David Oistrakh in the 1960s and 1970s). 

Marsick graduated with a gold medal from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Liège in 1865.  In 1871, he joined the newly established Société Nationale de Musique in Paris and founded a string quartet.  He concertized extensively throughout Europe and the United States and played with Joseph Joachim.  By the time of his visit to the Glessner house, he had been appointed a professor at the Paris Conservatory. 

Schoolroom preserves Christmas traditions

On Saturday December 10 and Sunday December 11, the Glessner and Clarke House Museums will hold their annual Candlelight Tours.  These tours, held at 5:30, 6:00, and 6:30pm, focus on Christmas traditions and decorations of the mid- to late-nineteenth centuries.  A popular event for many years, the tours allow visitors the opportunity to experience the museums from a different perspective and explore how 19^th century families celebrated the holiday.  The Clarke House interpretation is based on extensive research of the period, whereas the Glessner House focuses heavily on the documentation left behind by Frances Glessner in her journal.  Reservations are required for the tours, call 312-326-1480.

A highlight of the Glessner tour is the schoolroom, a space designed specifically for the Glessners’ two children, George and Fanny, who were 16 and 9 respectively when they moved into their home in December 1887.  Since the celebration of Christmas in the family revolved around the children, it is not surprising that the decorations were largely confined to this space in the early years. 

The room is decorated with a small table-top tree, very similar to a tree the Glessner children decorated in 1888.  Such trees were common at the time, and preceded the larger trees which stand on the floor and became popular by the early 1900s.  Homemade ornaments including a tin foil wrapped bird and gold painted walnuts were typical decorations.

A somewhat unique part of the Christmas celebration undertaken by the Glessners was the “Christmas pie,” illustrated above.  Each year, Frances Glessner prepared the pie, which contained small toys buried in rice with rhymes written on paper labels attached.  Her journal entry in 1888 describes the tradition, “We had a lovely Christmas pie covered with holly and smilax.  The presents were buried in the tin pan in rice.  We had a great deal of sport pulling them out, the labels hung out.  There were rhymes on each one.”

Sitting near the pie is a plate with two gingerbread cookies waiting for Santa.  On the plate is a handwritten note composed about 1909 by Frances Lee, one of the Glessners’ grandchildren.  The note reads, “Dear Santa Clause – This year I want surprises.  Thank you very much for the lovely presents you gave me last year.  I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year, and please give my love to all the other children.  Frances Lee.”

Surrounding the tree are gifts typical of what George and Fanny received through the years – a toy stove, a train, metal soldiers and Indians, books, a scarf and mittens, oranges (a luxury food item at the time) and a set of dominoes, the latter of which were made for John Glessner’s company, Warder Bushnell & Glessner, and distributed as a promotional item.

The Glessner parlor abuzz with Christmas activity

Christmas is a special time at the museum.  We are fortunate to have extensive documentation on Christmas customs in Frances Glessner’s journal, which allows us to recreate quite accurately how the family would have celebrated the holiday. 

The museum will be decorated for Christmas from Wednesday November 23 through Saturday December 31.  However, the Glessners would be shocked by that!  Unlike today, where the sights and sounds of Christmas appear earlier and earlier each year, in the Glessners’ day, the celebration was confined to just Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  In Frances Glessner’s journal, she discusses the decorating of the house on Christmas Eve, and quite often the tree and other decorations are taken down the evening of Christmas Day.  The tree was usually lit briefly (10-15 minutes) on each day. 

Our newly restored parlor features a number of activities that the family would have undertaken preparing for the decorating and gift-giving parts of the holiday.  The game table is opened in front of the banquet, and several activities are underway.  To the left, popcorn and cranberries are being strung to decorate the tree, and this garland may be found on both the small tree in the schoolroom and the larger tree in the main hall.  After the tree was taken down, the strings of garland would be hung outside on tree branches, so that birds could take advantage of the tasty treats.

At the right side of the table, pomander balls are being prepared using oranges, cloves, and cinnamon.  The balls were meant to be decorative as well as fragrant and they were usually placed in a closet, piled in a bowl, or at Christmas, hung on the tree.  They were decorated with ribbons and often small artificial birds or flowers.  The dried fruits would last for an extended period of time. 

Hand crafted items were popular Christmas gifts and several pieces are represented.  The black wool muffler represents a similar piece Fanny once knit and presented to her father as a Christmas gift.  The small red velvet pillow is in the process of having a vintage lace panel reading “Merry Christmas, Happy New Year” attached.

An interesting item, seen in the foreground of the photo, is the Glessners’ “literary salad.”  This parlor game was a popular activity for Victorian-era teenagers.  The host or hostess prepared the “salad” ahead of time by writing a selection of literary quotations on paper and then gluing them to green tissue paper “lettuce leaves.”  Each guest, on being served “salad,” read the quotation aloud and guessed at the author’s name.

Frances Glessner, her two sisters Helen and Anna, and her daughter Fanny, were all extremely talented needle workers, and hand-embroidered items would have been popular gifts from the women.  On the banquette, an embroidered panel of flowers is underway, sitting next to a red work bag.  Frances Glessner had many of these bags, used to hold fabric, needles, thread and other items for her embroidery work.  She also frequently made the bags and gave them as gifts.

To the left in the above photo is the Christmas 1890 issue of Ladies Home Journal.  Periodicals such as this were widely read by women who relied on them to provide useful information on the latest trends in gift giving and decorating. 

Special Christmas-themed tours of both Glessner and Clarke House Museum will be offered on Saturday December 10 and Sunday December 11, with tours at 5:30, 6:00, and 6:30pm.   Learn more about these and other Christmas customs, and conclude the tour with refreshments at the nearby landmark Wheeler Mansion.  Call 312.326.1480 for more information or to make reservations.

The Rocks Estate

In August 1883, John and Frances Glessner and their children George and Fanny moved into their new summer home, which they called the “Big House” at their estate “The Rocks” in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, mid-way between Littleton and Bethlehem.  The Glessners had first considered the White Mountains for their summer home at the suggestion of George’s doctor, who indicated that George might experience significant relief from his severe hayfever by leaving Chicago and traveling to this part of the country.  When George first visited the White Mountains in 1878, the relief was dramatic and immediate, so the Glessners opted to make the locale their annual destination.  The Glessners continued to make The Rocks their home every summer until their deaths in the 1930s, and both George and Fanny later made the estate their permanent home.  A portion of the estate at the western end of the property is still in the possession of two descendants of George Glessner, making six generations of the family to call The Rocks home. 

In 1977, two of the Glessners grandchildren, John Glessner Lee and Martha Lee Batchelder, made the decision to donate the majority of the property (1333 of the approximate 2000 acres assembled by their grandparents) to the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests.  The Society had been formed in 1901 to acquire and protect forested lands throughout the state in response to widespread clear-cutting being undertaken by farmers.  John Glessner was a strong supporter of the Society and joined in 1903, just two years after it was founded, so it was a very appropriate choice for the grandchildren to present the organization with The Rocks property.  The estate includes numerous original buildings constructed by the Glessners from the 1880s through the 1910s designed by Isaac Scott, Hermann V. von Holst and others, as well as more than 500 species of trees and other plants. 

The Rocks Estate is supported in large part today by its use as a Christmas tree farm, which satisfies one of the stipulations of the gift requiring the Society to keep an active crop growing on the estate at all times.   Open to the public year round, the estate also offers a number of hiking trails and other activities which help visitors to explore the vast beauty of the property.  Visit http://www.therocks.org/ for more information.

At the museum, we carry on a Glessner family tradition begun more than a century ago by shipping a Christmas tree from The Rocks every year.  The Glessners originally used small table-top trees (their 1888 tree is pictured above), but by the early 1900s adopted the custom of a larger tree which they displayed in the main hall, where the museum places the tree each year.   Click on the link below to see the tree selected for this year’s celebration:

http://www.youtube.com/user/TheRocksEstate#p/u/0/UC180Aapox0

Glessner and Clarke House Museums will be decorated for Christmas from Wednesday November 23^rd through Saturday December 31^st.  A special part of the holiday tradition at the museums is our annual Candlelight Tours, scheduled this year for Saturday December 10 and Sunday December 11.  During these special tours, attendees will learn about Christmas traditions of the mid- to late-19^th century and see both houses decorated in historically appropriate fashion.  Afterwards, participants are invited to the nearby Wheeler Mansion for refreshments.  For more information, visit http://www.glessnerhouse.org/Events.htm , or call 312-326-1480 to make reservations.