Etchings in the Window, July 22nd, 1837

On July 22nd in the Porter-Phelps-Huntington House, 186 years ago, Harriet Blake Mills and Mary Dwight Huntington etched into the window of an upstairs bedroom "H.B.M. 22nd July 1837,” and faintly, "Mary Dwight Huntington, July 22nd."

*The faint etchings outlined in red for visibility*

Etching one’s name into a window, likely with a diamond ring, was not uncommon during the 19th-century. Many other instances of names etched into windows can be found in residences, museums, and university buildings across the country. In 1843, Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne would use Sophia’s diamond ring to etch messages into the windowpane at The Old Manse in Concord, MA.

*Etchings in the window of The Old Manse in Concord, MA.*

Mary Dwight Huntington (1815-1839) was the daughter of Dan Huntington and Elizabeth Whiting Phelps Huntington. H.B.M. is likely Harriet Blake Mills (1818-1892), the sister-in-law to Charles Phelps Huntington (1802-1868), who was the eldest child of Dan and Elizabeth. Harriet, born in Northampton in 1818, would have been just 3 years younger than Mary. Two days after the etching, on July 24th, Elizabeth Huntington wrote to Edward Huntington, “Charles and his family dined with us one day last week. They brought over Harriette and left her with us till Saturday.” It was a Saturday on July 22nd in 1837 when the two women etched their names into the window at the Porter-Phelps-Huntington house.

*“Charles and his family dined with us one day last week. They brought over Harriette and left her with us till Saturday.” July 24th, 1837*

Mary Dwight Huntington, 22 years old in 1837, would only live to 24. In 1839, she fell ill with fever. She was not alone, as many other family members became ill with presumably the same sickness. Mary’s brother Theodore, Mary’s cousin Sarah Phelps and her sister Marianne, and Caroline Judkins of Hadley all suffered from “fevers” during the month of October. Theodore, Sarah, and Marianne survived their sickness. Caroline died October 8th, and Mary D. Huntington died October 14th, 1839.

“Sarah Phelps and Marianne both very sick yet, the friends were considerably encouraged last week about them, but then seems to have come on a secondary fever with Marianne, which is rather alarming.” October 24, 1839

“Caroline Judkins, who was taken sick at the same time with Theodore, has finished her labours and sufferings, as we hope, and as your aunt said, had probably found Whiting and Catherine, in the great company of the redeemed.” October 9th, 1839. Caroline Judkins died October 8th.

*“My dear Edward, Our dear Mary has been sinking rapidly since Thursday night; & will not probably live out this day.” October 12th, 1839*

“Dear Edward, We still live, and are all gaining strength, thro’ the mercy of our God upon us. There is a breach in our number, and we miss at every step our dear Mary, who was so much the life of our family circle.” October 24th, 1839, ten days after the death of Mary.

It is likely that Mary and her family experienced an outbreak of typhus or typhoid. Two years prior, in 1837, a typhus epidemic swept through Philadelphia, and throughout the 19th-century both typhus and typhoid were common; typhus was also a significant disease during the Civil War. Typhus and typhoid have similar symptoms, often described as “a sudden onset of fever and other flu-like symptoms about one to two weeks after being infected.”¹ This would conform with the numerous mentions of “fever” throughout the family letters during this period referring to the sick.

Until recently, the identities of those who had etched their names into the window at the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum have been shrouded in mystery. With this new research, we know that Mary D. Huntington was the one to leave her mark just a few years before her untimely death. We’re now able to look at the moment in 1837 as perhaps a happy shared moment of bonding between Mary and Harriet that created a memorial to Mary’s short life.

Sources:

¹ Mullen, Gary R., Lance A. Durden, and Jonas King. Medical and Veterinary Entomology. London: Academic Press, an imprint of Elsevier, 2019.

“Nooks and Crannies: Uncovering the Secrets of the Old Manse.” LivingConcord. Accessed August 7, 2023. https://www.livingconcord.com/event/nooks-and-crannies-uncovering-the-secrets-of-the-old-manse/.

“Porter-Phelps-Huntington Family Papers.” Porter-Phelps-Huntington Family Papers, Global Valley. Accessed August 7, 2023. https://www.ats.amherst.edu/globalvalley/exhibits/show/pph-papers.

“What an 1836 Typhus Outbreak Taught the Medical World about Epidemics.” Smithsonian.com, April 21, 2020. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-1836-typhus-outbreak-taught-medical-world-about-epidemics-180974707/.

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In the Archives with Catharine Sargent Huntington

Last month, the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum interns and staff made a visit to the Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) at the W. E. B. Du Bois Library of UMass Amherst to take a look at the PPH Family Papers. We turned the pages of Elizabeth Porter Phelps’ memorandum book, the scrapbooks and journals of museum founder James Lincoln Huntington, and the recent acquisition of Charles Porter Phelps' "adventures" and shipping receipts from his time as a merchant in Boston from 1799-1816. The finding aid can be viewed on their website, here.

Our discussion with Aaron Rubinstein, Head of the Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, and Danielle Kovacs, Curator of Collections, related the donation of the PPH Family Papers from the Porter Phelps Huntington Foundation Inc. to SCUA, in 2021. A large number of boxes contained the papers of Catharine Sargent Huntington, which had previously been placed on deposit and processed by archivists and staff at Amherst College. Over the course of 2022, Cheryl McNeill Schwab at UMass assessed the work that had already been done and, realizing there were still boxes that had not yet been sorted, described and processed, saw the need to create a more comprehensive finding aid to better integrate them and ensure that interested visitors might have easy access.

Two PPH interns were invited behind-the-scenes to assist in the sorting of these boxes. The discoveries we made in the archiving process – though not all revolutionary – were at once amusing and insightful, and did much to flesh out the rich stories we have already collected about this incredible woman.

As was written in a 2016 PPH blog post linked here, “Catharine Sargent Huntington was a prominent actress, activist, and Boston society member. The only daughter of George Putnam Huntington and Lilly St. Agnam Barrett Huntington to survive past infancy, Catharine was born on December 29, 1887 in Ashfield, Massachusetts and grew up in Hanover, New Hampshire.” Over the course of her 100 years of life, she “influenced and inspired those interested in theater and justice in the Boston area and beyond”, traveled around the world, aided in local war reconstruction efforts, fostered important relationships with family and fellow creatives, and in the process amassed a significant collection of papers and other artifacts that have proved to be invaluable in our family research efforts.

According to the SCUA webpage, Catharine’s papers span “almost a century from the late 1800s to the late 1900s'' and include “more than 2,300 pieces of correspondence; photographs; scripts; original manuscripts of her poems, speeches, newspaper clippings; estate and will information; personal financial documents; and much other printed material and items of ephemera.” They have been organized into 5 series: Correspondence; Personal; Professional; Porter-Phelps-Huntington Foundation, Inc; and Photographs and negatives. As interns working to assess what were sometimes antiquated, complex, and stuck-together documents, sorting items into definitive categories became a challenge early on – some papers were nearly illegible, and others were clearly related to multiple series. These challenges sparked fascinating conversations with other archivists in the office, and gave us unique insight into the ethics of the very human decisions being made when documenting history.

As we lifted item after item out of old cardboard boxes and into labeled folders, much of what we found were bills, a surprising number of blank decorative cards, and letters from family and friends updating her on their travels. One such note was a postcard sent by still-living British-based artist Kaffe Fassett in 1963. His short message wishes Catharine a Happy New Year from California and features a lyrical pen drawing of what appears to be a dove, as well as a photograph of a young Fassett in front of a wall of paintings.

We discovered another group of postcards both sent and received by Catharine from various cities in France, written in a mix of English and French, with vibrant touristy pictures on the fronts. Paired with a stack of 2-inch wide contact prints of French architecture and countryside, there was much material evidence in these boxes of the time she spent working as a nurse’s aid with the YMCA and helping the war reconstruction effort in France between the years of 1914 to 1920.

On a personal note, it was Catharine’s writing and poetry, perhaps never intended to be seen by others, that proved the most emotionally impactful, and effectively endeared me to her as a character in history. “First Snow” was one of a handful of short poems found amongst her papers, all of which describe natural scenes, daily activities, and allude to the melancholic passage of time.

My ultimate favorite find, however, was a single yellow paper with three curious lines of type. Whether this paper was used to test a new typewriter, air out frustrations, or communicate some secret code, the humor of its incoherent message took me aback – it felt surprisingly relatable. Though Catharine lived well into the 1980s, her carefully labeled black and white portraits and handwritten correspondence sometimes felt like artifacts from a very distant era. It was through the seemingly innocuous loose papers floating around archival boxes that I began to feel a stronger connection to who she was outside of her known relationships and accolades. These few intimate snippets of daily life cemented for me that there is so much still to learn about her. So many gaps and mysteries and stories that may have left no record. The sentiment of Catharine’s “I wonder” pervaded our time in the archives.

Since Catharine’s death in 1987, her papers and collections have continued to filter into the Museum, with each new letter, certificate, and piece of furniture enhancing the patchwork history of her life. The process itself of regularly receiving, processing, and sharing these artifacts reminds us that our understanding of this whole family, and the museum that tells its stories, is ever-evolving.

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Leverett Center School Watercolor by Georgiana Sargent

Hanging above the door in the “bishop’s study” at Forty Acres is a watercolor painting of the Leverett Central School, a one-room schoolhouse in Leverett, Massachusetts where Bishop Frederic Dan Huntington preached some of his first sermons in 1841. The painting dates to 1895. On the original catalog card for the painting, museum founder James Lincoln Huntington writes “Miss Sargent was cousin of George P. H. She made this watercolor of the schoolhouse...” The painting features a red schoolhouse atop a grassy hill, bright green from the sunlight shining on it. The hill slopes to the left of the frame, and behind it are visible the mountains in the distance, and the blue sky and clouds above them. Towering trees cast a shadow over the schoolhouse. In the bottom corner of the painting is written “Leverett, Aug ‘95, G.W.S.”

Leverett’s Central School at 94 Depot Road was one of many one-room schoolhouses that serviced the Leverett area. Throughout the summer of 1841, Bishop Frederic Dan Huntington preached inside the schoolhouse. “Mr. Huntington seems to have given his first sermon at the House of Correction in East Cambridge, March 22nd, 1841,” wrote Arria Huntington in her 1906 book Memoir and Letters of Frederic Dan Huntington: First Bishop of Central New York. “During the following summer he ministered to a little flock of ‘Liberal Christians’ who gathered in a lonely schoolhouse on the hills above the Connecticut Valley.’”

Leverett’s Central School, built in 1800, served as a schoolhouse in Leverett for 150 years until it was replaced in 1950. The schoolhouse was often referred to as the “Little Red Schoolhouse,” which explains why the building appears red in the painting. Interestingly, though, the schoolhouse is said to have been clad in white-painted clapboards “sometime after 1850”, as is shown in the photograph. Would Georgiana Sargent have known it to be red in her lifetime? Perhaps she was painting the building as it once was. A flagpole in the photo above is also not present on the painting by Georgiana. In 1950, the town of Leverett replaced the still active one-room schoolhouses in the area with Leverett Elementary School. The building presumably still stands on privately owned land and is a part of the Leverett Center Historic District.

*Leverett Center School in 1990 from the Massachusetts Cultural Resource Information System*

Miss Sargent AKA G.W.S. is Georgiana Welles Sargent (1858-1946). Georgiana’s father was John Osborn Sargent, whose half-sister was married to Frederic Dan Huntington. Her family lived on 35th Avenue in New York City and had a summer home in Lenox, Massachusetts. Later she would live in Europe with her family and eventually move back to New England. “Cousin Georgie” was close with the PPH family, often writing letters to the family from various residences.

Georgiana was an avid gardener, painter, and art collector; in 1924 she donated hundreds of prints to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in honor of her father, John Osborn Sargent. Evidence of her painting practice beyond this watercolor include a sketchbook of floral and landscape paintings among the museum’s collections. The schoolhouse was likely one of many landscape paintings she made in her lifetime. Any connection Georgiana had to the schoolhouse outside of her relation to Frederic Dan Huntington is unknown.

Among the Porter-Phelps-Huntington family papers at UMass Amherst is a photograph of her and some correspondence, and the museum contains numerous artifacts once belonging to her (mostly clothing and everyday objects). Georgiana was said to have been single all her life, though her frequent correspondence and closeness with the family tells us that she never was alone. Georgiana died in 1949, the year that the Porter-Phelps-Huntington house became a museum. She was 91.

Sources:

“Porter-Phelps-Huntington Family Papers.” findingaids.library.umass.edu, http://findingaids.library.umass.edu/ead/mums1148#odd-gws.

Gibavic, Annette. Leverett’s One Room Schools, 2000.

“Historic Building Detail: LEV.19.” MHC. Accessed August 2, 2023. https://mhc-macris.net/details?mhcid=LEV.19.

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A Sibling's Brushstrokes

Loose brushstrokes dappled in hues of earthy tones capture these small moments of adolescence depicted through Constant Huntington’s watercolor portraits of his brother and sister. The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum collection recently acquired these two watercolor paintings by Constant Huntington. Born in 1876 to the parents of George Putnam Huntington and Lily St. Agnam Barrett Huntington, Constant grew up in Boston, MA. In 1916 he married Gladys Theodora Putnam. Together they lived in Sussex, England where they raised their daughter Alfreda Huntington before moving to Westminster, London where he resided until his death in 1962. The first of Constant’s watercolors is of his sister, Catharine (b.1887). She is situated against an unidentifiable background of blues and reds that bleed into one another. She sits waist up with her body turned in a ¾ profile towards the viewer. Her skin is pale but rendered with subtle hues of warmth that garner the complexion of a child. Constant captures his sister's features with swift strokes of the brush as seen with the simple outlines of her eyes that turn down and her quiet smile. Her hair falls loosely into her eyes which further removes the viewer from her gaze, yet she remains quite accessible given that she is positioned so close to the forefront of the image. Whether Constant was aware of this dichotomy is unlikely, but in doing so the viewer can gain insight into a tender moment between siblings, yet her lack of detail and head turn provides a sense of ambiguity that allows the viewer to see a child from their own life and further connect to this tender moment.

From Catharine’s grip stems three vermillion blossoms, each upright and sturdy as if they are reaching up to greet Catharine who returns a glance down at them. While these flowers also lack some detail, Constant seems to have attempted some shading by going in with darker hues of the base colors. The green stem bleeds into the green of Catharine’s right sleeve making it somewhat difficult to distinguish between plant and girl.

The subject of the next watercolor by Constant could be one of his brothers, either Barrett or James. The boy too sits in profile to the viewer, this time turned completely to the side. His darker hair is pushed behind his ear yet still manages to fall in his face as he peers down. He is seated at a desk where he is painting with watercolors. His work mimics the flowers in Constant’s portrait of his sister, with the familiar shades of green and vermillion. Perhaps Constant was particularly intrigued with these flowers, or he had leftover colors he wanted to use. Or maybe they were all painting together and Catharine and/or the flowers were the subject. Constant’s understanding of human anatomy here is a bit underdeveloped. For example, he depicts the boy wearing a loose and boxy jacket which makes it hard to imagine the body of a child occupying such a large garment underneath. Additionally, his hands that secure the paper and paintbrush are quite large and awkward in their positioning. If you take a closer look at his right hand that commands the brush, his thumb seems to be just as long as his pointer finger.

With this piece Constant appears to have avoided the bottom half of his brother; even though he is seated at a desk, his legs are all but a large shape of light green. Constant pays particular attention to the jacket where he adds darker colors for the shading and creases. I find the line work quite lovely on the edge of the hood and undershirt. I imagine Constant switching to a smaller brush or lightly using the tip to capture these fine details. He also seems to experiment more with details in the face, as seen with the nostril and added pupil that is otherwise absent in his work of Catharine.

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Shays' Rebellion and Forty Acres

As this house was one of the more prominent estates in western Massachusetts from before the birth of this country until almost the 20th century, one would imagine it had some influence or connection to the significant historical events in the region, including revolts and revolutions. Shays’ Rebellion, which is considered the most significant military intervention in western Massachusetts, had multiple connections to Forty Acres, including two men with two very different perspectives on the altercation.

America's massive war debt, accumulated during the Revolution, proved an important factor leading to Shays’ Rebellion. The cost of financing the war, including monetary incentives for soldiers who fought in the revolution and loans from the federal treasury, left Massachusetts with a staggering amount of debt-- $41,500,000 to be exact (with a current day worth of over one billion dollars) . To make matters worse, a trade embargo imposed by Great Britain barred the newly formed nation from the important British West Indies trade route. Consequently, merchants could not form vital trade partnerships that were necessary to finance a new country. This exacerbated the ongoing recession, while state and federal debts likewise resisted mitigation.

As a result, the federal government raised the taxes to a crippling level-- the tax rate ballooned by over 1000% between 1774 and 1786 . To combat this, most states printed and issued more paper money to get the economy flowing again and allow farmers to pay off their debts, or excuse them all together. Massachusetts, however, decided to follow through with these taxes , and furthermore wanted all debts to be repaid in the same currency as they were borrowed-- strictly gold and silver . Prior to the war, the economy of western Massachusetts depended on an extensive bartering system, and thus many people lacked universal material currency. When taxes grew astronomically following the Revolution, the populations in western Massachusetts who had relied on a bartering economy found themselves with little gold or silver to pay them .

In Western Massachusetts, the courts were flooded with foreclosures from farmers, many of whom fought in the war, and immediately people gathered to storm the courts. Their goal was to stop or hinder these court proceedings by intimidating the judges. Daniel Shays, a farmer from Pelham, Massachusetts and former soldier in the American Revolution, emerged as the leader of this revolution . Along with Shays and local militias, many community supporters also gathered at these courts, including former owner and operator of Forty Acres, Charles Phelps. However, he was in support of the courts and militia as opposed to Shays. Elizabeth Porter Phelps noted multiple times in her diary how her husband “set out for Springfield” to “uphold the court” in both 1782 and in 1786 . Charles' presence would be expected at these rebellions as he was very tightly connected with the local government; he had been reelected twenty times as a local selectman and also served as the deputy to the General Court in Boston in 1780. Charles’ frequent trips to Boston to trade cattle equipped him well with gold, silver, and paper money. This set him apart from his neighbors as his government ties and financial security allowed him not to feel the effects of these taxes and recession as much as others .

Charles Phelps was also present in 1786 at a very significant court closing in Springfield- the last one until the final meeting of the two sides in January. This is unsurprising given the large audience this exchange, which affected almost everyone in the area, attracted. Either they supported the rebellion, or, like Phelps, supported the government. On this day, September 26, 1786, Daniel Shays reportedly led a large group of nearly 600 to the Springfield courthouse where they attempted to interrupt another court hearing, something they had done succesfully in five other Massachusetts towns that summer. Aiming to protest peacefully, Daniel Shays attempted to make a deal with General William Shepard to allow the protestors into the courthouse and to have many foreclosures thrown out; however, Shays’ requests were far outside of Shepard’s control, and no deal was made. However, the two men agreed to let the “Shaysites” protest outside the courthouse, if they agreed not to attack the militia or the judges residing inside . This bittersweet end failed to satisfy either side, and soon enough they would meet again in a bloody exchange.

The protest at the Springfield courthouse on September 27th, 1786

By late January 1787, the Massachusetts government sensed that an attack on the arsenal in Springfield by Shays' forces was imminent. To combat this, Governor James Bowdoin asked General Benjamin Lincoln to aid General Shepard and the militia in Springfield, where he would arrive on January 20th. Lincoln was a recently retired revolutionary war hero who was handicapped in battle with a gunshot to the knee, but still led many armies into battle and was even present with George Washington when Cornwallis officially surrendered to America. After the war, he served as the first Secretary of War under the Articles of Confederation; however, he retired soon after and resided in Hingham . Benjamin Lincoln also brings the second link between Shays’ Rebellion and Forty Acres: his great granddaughter, Hannah Dane Sargent, would marry Frederic Dan Huntington . Even though Phelps and Lincoln were strangers then and never met each other, they each supported the same cause. This presents a fascinating example of how the connections of Forty Acres stretch incredibly far.

Generals Lincoln and Shepard were well prepared on the day of January 25, 1787 as they had been guarding the Springfield arsenal for days in anticipation of the Shaysites’ attack. Again, Charles Phelps assisted their forces, predominantly by providing supplies and food on multiple occasions. Elizabeth recounts in her diary how on January 14th, he brought the meat of two slaughtered oxen to the militia men at Springfield . Despite superior numbers, Shays' forces of over 1400 were easily defeated by the 1200 men guarding the arsenal. As the militia were posted up in front of the building and waiting for the advancement, it allowed them to easily fire upon the approaching forces. Additionally, as this was in mid January in Massachusetts, Shays and his men faced nearly four feet of snow as they attempted to “storm” the arsenal. A cannon was fired, followed by muskets from many of the militia, which as a result scattered Shays and his army . In the following days, Lincoln and the militia continued to push Shays and rebel forces back until January 30th, where Lincoln and the militia had moved northward to Hadley. Here, he attempted one last time to convince Shays to stand down, and yet again Shays refused and pulled his men back to their headquarters in Petersham. Just days later on February 3rd and 4th, Lincoln and the militia struck at the headquarters, dissolving Shays’ revolutionary forces once and for all .

The scene of January 25th, 1787 at the Springfield arsenal

Even though this rebellion was defeated quite anticlimactically, it still left an incredibly lasting effect on the United States as a whole. Shays’ Rebellion successfully got the attention of the federal government and pushed them to centralize legislative power in hopes to prevent similar rebellions through restricting such excessive taxes, offering more support to local militias and easing the rules set upon the state governments that limited their power to shut down these uprisings. Subsequently, this pushed the US to move past the Articles of Confederation which lacked the ability to have a strong central government, and move onto the Constitution which strengthened the federal powers and allowed states more power over their citizens. Additionally, the state government of Massachusetts also lessened taxes and forgave many people's debts. Even though Charles Phelps and Benjamin Lincoln were fighting for the opposite side of these results, they most likely would still be in favor of how things turned out. As Benjamin Lincoln was a prominent member of the revolutionary army and Charles Phelps was linked to the revolution in many ways, they were both sympathetic towards the movement led by Daniel Shays. Benjamin Lincoln was a fan of liberty, and he was most certainly not against men like Daniel Shays who were fighting in its name, just as he had less than ten years prior. He too agreed with always questioning authority, and if these taxes were to affect him, there's a good chance he too would have participated in the Rebellion. However, Lincoln was a well-paid retired war general living in Hingham, Massachusetts, where the bartering system was not as universal; he had sufficient gold and silver to pay off the problematic taxes. Yet again, Forty Acres and those who passed through it serve as a wonderful perspective for American history, in this instance giving two views of one of the most prominent military encounters in Massachusetts’ history.

Work Cited

“Benjamin Lincoln Papers.” Massachusetts Historical Society. Accessed August 9, 2021. https://www.masshist.org/collection-guides/view/fa0254.

Shays' Rebellion - Historic Scenes. Springfield Technical Community College. Accessed August 9, 2021. http://shaysrebellion.stcc.edu/shaysapp/scenes/home.do.

Carlisle, Elizabeth Pendergast. Earthbound and Heavenbent: Elizabeth Porter Phelps and Life at Forty Acres (1747-1817). New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.

Ladenberg, Thomas. “Paper Money and Shays’ Rebellion.”Chapter in Critical Issues and Simulations Units in American History. Accessed August 9, 2021. http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/teachers/lesson_plans/lesson_plan_ladenburg.cfm.

Weir, Robert E., ed.Benjamin Lincoln at 40 Acres: An Exhibit to Commemorate the Bicentennial of the Shays Rebellion.

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The Making of a Manuscript: A Look at Gladys Huntington's Editing Process From Turgeniev to The Borrowed Life

“TURGENIEV: A Play in Two Acts” proclaims the cover of a typewritten manuscript in the the Gladys and Constant Huntington collection. It’s an unassuming document, the pages of which are beige and slightly worn with age. Undated and unsigned, the only hints at its provenance are the name and professional address of “C. Huntington” in London and a sheet of Putnam & Co Ltd stationery noting that the manuscript had been sent- to and from whom as of yet unknown- “with compliments.” The initials S.H. are marked in the top-left corner of the first page. In all of my research into their life in London, reading of their correspondence, and work with their notebooks, no such play has been mentioned.

Another manuscript in the collection, printed on the same material by the same typewriting, shorthand, and duplicate company (Ethel Christian, advertised as “The Smartest in London”), is clearly identifiable as Gladys’ play “The Ladies’ Mile”, which she had written early in her life (dated 20/12/1944) and planned to adapt into a novel following the success of Madame Solario. The manuscript notes “Mrs. Huntington” at Amberley House in Sussex as the return address. This only compounds the mystery of “Turgeniev”- did Gladys write it? Did Constant, whose name is printed inside the cover? If it was sent from the Putnam offices, presumably to be reviewed by a reader, how did it end up in Constant’s or Gladys’ hands? An off hand quotation from Willa Cather’s 1918 novel My Ántonia by one of the characters suggests that the play must have been written following its publication, and the “Putnam and Co Ltd” stationery indicates the manuscript was sent at some point after 1930, when Constant secured a controlling interest in the London branch of Putnam and changed the name from G. P. Putnam’s Sons. By this time, Constant had led the London offices for over two decades (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Archives).

“Turgeniev'' is the fictionalized drama of the life of Russian literary giant Ivan Turgenev (the commonly accepted Western spelling of his name, curiously shunned by the author of this play). The play takes place in the early 1860’s, in the French villa of Madame Pauline Viardot, a renowned opera singer of Spanish descent. She lived there with her husband Louis, and for a time, with Turgenev, who had fallen madly in love with her after watching her perform in Russia when he was a young man (Battersby). He followed her to Europe and became a permanent fixture in the Viardot household, passionately in love with Pauline and a close companion to her husband and children. The unusual arrangement presumably worked well for the three, though it caused much dismay to the Russian public, who resented the fact that such a luminary Russian author would live beyond their national borders (Battersby).

Dostoevsky (who would later come to regard him with disdain) wrote of Turgenev upon meeting him, “A poet, a talent, an aristocrat, superbly handsome, rich, clever, educated, twenty-five years old- I can’t think what nature has denied him” (Schapiro 50). Unfortunately, their political differences would later prove an insuperable barrier between the two men, and any hope of an amicable relationship faltered. Likewise, his relationship with Tolstoy was marred by tension and political differences; at one point, Turgenev’s public dislike of Tolstoy became so extreme that it prompted a challenge to duel (an event which ultimately went unrealized) (Schapiro 172). The names of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy resonate throughout the modern day, marking their enduring literary achievements, while Turgenev’s name has faded somewhat from all but those with an express interest in Russian literature. Of course, his enormous impact on the literary and political landscape of Russia is still remembered well by his country. Turgenev’s A Sportsman’s Sketches is widely credited for bringing about the abolition of serfdom in Russia, and the Turgeniev play picks up the public’s confusion over his next novel, Fathers and Sons, which takes a more ambivalent attitude towards the future of Russia. Coupled with his relocation from Russia to France at Viardot’s behest, Turgenev’s political alliances were publicly called into question.

The front page to the Bantam Classic edition of “Fathers and Sons”, which speaks to Turgenev’s impact as a writer.

The play’s text is rife with consideration of the same questions that preoccupied the literature and life of Turgenev- whether art should strive for political or aesthetic ambitions, the literary imagination, and the destructive force of passion and love. While the play is grounded in the history of Turgenev and Viardot, the next generation of characters come from the author’s imagination. The ethereal Delphine Viardot, fictional daughter of the nonfictional Pauline, is one such character. In Countess Alexandra Tolstoy’s introduction to Turgenev’s seminal work Fathers and Sons, she quotes a remark he made to a friend: “I could never invent my characters...I could not create an imaginary type. I had to choose a living person and combine in this person many characteristics in conformity with the type of my hero” (Tolstoy viii). The author of Turgeniev seems to have picked up on his technique; Delphine is often referred to as almost a creature sprung from Turgenev’s mind:

TURGENIEV: It may be only a fancy, but sometimes I am afraid...that you enter too much into what I have imagined...My child, Delphine, it mustn’t become a spell that we will have to break. You mustn’t have your life in my imagination. (77.3.I)

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TURGENIEV: To tell the truth, [Bazarov] has taken on a life of his own, and now he alarms me a little- and he himself is laughing at me! That is what sometimes happens- a creature of the imagination goes forth and lives, independent of its creator!

DELPHINE, who has been sitting in an intense stillness and inner concentration, puts down her work, and gazes at him. (13.1.II)

The Frankenstein-esque undertones of this scene are unmistakable- both in the sense of Delphine and of Yevgeny Bazarov, protagonist of Fathers and Sons. Indeed, Turgenev told the same aforementioned friend, “The character of Bazarov tormented me to such an extent, that sometimes when I sat at the dinner table, there he was sticking out in front of me. I was speaking to someone and at the same time I was asking myself: what would my Bazarov say to that?” He reportedly kept notes of imaginary conversations with Bazarov (Tolstoy ix). In the second quotation, Turgeniev’s description of his relentlessly animate character is paired with Delphine’s curious reaction to it, aligning her with his literary imagination that brings characters to life.

Excerpt from "Turgeniev"

Pauline Viardot and Ivan Turgeniev argue over the nature of artistic inspiration.

II.

Seemingly at a crossroads with identification of this manuscript, I reached out to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library, where they hold a G. P. Putnam’s Sons Records collection. With so little information to go off, the archivists there were equally as stumped, but promised to look further in their records of reader’s reports and contracts to find if it had ever been published. The issue resolved itself upon the recent visit of the Urquhart-Ohno family, bearing gifts of more archival material to add to the Constant and Gladys Huntington collection. Among this new material was a playbill for The Borrowed Life: A Play in Three Acts by Gladys Parrish, produced by the Three Hundred Club. A glance through the cast list shows characters Dmitri Alexeitch Arkov, Comte De Laumont, Baron Korff, and Madame Thomar- familiar names from the character list of Turgeniev. However, the play’s namesake is missing, replaced with Ivan Petrovitch Stanin; Pauline and her husband Louis have become Pauline and Edouard Maligé; even Pavel Alexandrovitch Iretzky (who hadn’t appeared to have a real-life counterpart that I could find) was transformed to Pavel Alexandrovitch Islenyev. The addition of a third act is likewise a fascinating change. According to the playbill, Act III reportedly contains “Scene I- Late afternoon in the following November” and “Scene II- Early evening, a month later.” These are new scenes, added on to the revised Turgeniev as it transformed through the editing process to become The Borrowed Life. We don’t presently have a copy of the text of the final play or access to any of its reviews in contemporary newspapers, so the amount of change the manuscript underwent is unclear. Does Turgenev borrow the life of Delphine, using her as if a character in one of his books? Does Pauline borrow the life of Turgenev as it would have been in Russia by compelling him to move from Russia to France?

Page 1 of the Playbill for "The Borrowed Life"

Page 2 of the Playbill for "The Borrowed Life"

Page 3 of the Playbill for "The Borrowed Life"

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Evidently, critics and audience members still recognized the mark of Turgenev on Gladys’ play, despite her attempts to distance it from his life and history by changing the title and character names. Perhaps this is why the Sheffield Daily Telegraph in the above image notes it as being of “unusual interest.” Writing about writers and their works was and is not uncommon, and the tumultuous story of Turgenev’s life presents a particularly potent topic for a play like this one. Perhaps Gladys decided she aligned with Pauline Viardot’s idea of art as a transcendental, individual experience rather than Turgenev’s more grounded, politicized approach. In moving away from Turgeniev as a semi-fictional history of a life, she creates The Borrowed Life as a more universal exploration of the intersections between politics and art, and collective and individual loyalties, a work inspired by but not restricted by its ties to a historical reality.

Thanks to these new acquisitions from the Urquhart-Ohnos, we’re able to bear witness to Gladys’ writing process- in this case as she edits Turgeniev into The Borrowed Life. Not only does this play speak to Gladys’ development as a writer as she hones her craft through numerous drafts and changes, but it also demonstrates her growing literary sensibilities. It opens (at least in the Turgeniev version) with representatives of liberal and conservative Russian politics sent to convince Turgenev to return to Russia and interpret his work for their people; much of the play concerns itself with various interpretations of Turgenev’s work as it applies to the political landscape of Russia. As Turgeniev the character and Turgenev the man both remark, his characters and plotlines seem to come alive and require tending to. The climactic debate between Pauline and Turgenev, in which these political consequences come up against purely literary ambitions, has occupied literary critics for many centuries. In Turgeniev, or The Borrowed Life, Gladys gives it form in the words and affairs of two prominent 19th century musical and literary artists.

Bibliography

https://archives.library.illinois.edu/rbml/?p=collections/findingaid&id=943&q=&rootcontentid=90949

“Giant Actor as Turgeniev.” Sheffield Daily Telegraph [Yorkshire, England], 28 November 1930.

Schapiro, Leonard. Turgenev, His Life and Times. 1st American ed., Random House, 1978.

Tolstoy, Alexandra. Introduction. Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev, Bantam Classics, pp. i-xiii.

Waddington, Patrick. “A Catalogue of Letters by I. S. Turgenev to Pauline and Louis Viardot.” New Zealand Slavonic Journal, 1983, p. 249.

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Educational Endeavors

One of the many things that links the disparate branches of the Porter-Phelps-Huntington family was their deep commitment to education, both for themselves and for others. Across generations and geography members of the family founded, worked at, and donated to schools all over the country, some of which still stand today. From gendered boarding schools to vocational schools for Black and Native Americans to the local day school, the family exhibited a real investment (in every sense of the word) in education.

The family’s involvement in education can be traced back to some of the very first settlers of Hadley. Elizabeth Pitkin Porter was remarkably well educated for the mid-eighteenth century and passed such qualities down on to her daughter, Elizabeth Porter Phelps, whose ability to read and write permitted her meticulous diaries which have, in turn, been integral in shaping the Museum and the stories it tells. There are several accounts, too, of Elizabeth Porter Phelps doing as her mother did and educating the next generation of women, or, as Elizabeth Pendergast Carlisle puts it, “teaching the skills necessary to become the industrious wives of farmers, educated women, and God-fearing members of the pious community that she strove to perpetuate.”

The man whom Elizabeth Porter Phelps married, Charles Phelps, was perhaps the first to formally engage with institutional education, serving as one of the Trustees of local Hopkins Academy for over thirty years. Charles’s younger brother Timothy also married the younger sister of Emma Willard, the beginning of a fruitful relationship between the Emma Willard School, then called the Troy Female Seminary, and the family.

Elizabeth Huntington Fisher, the daughter of Elizabeth Whiting and Dan Huntington, was among the first students to attend the now-prestigious school in Troy, New York. Her sisters soon followed in her footsteps, and Huntington Fisher even returned to the school after she graduated to teach.

Like his father in-law, Dan Huntington dedicated his time to the local school, Hopkins Academy. He was its principal for three years (1817-1820) but a Trustee for much longer, serving in the role until he died in 1864.

Portrait of Reverend Frederic Dan Huntington

Elizabeth and Dan Huntington’s youngest son, the Reverend Frederic Dan Huntington, was active in the educational world as well. Founder of the St. John’s School in Syracuse, New York in 1869, he endeavored “To rear men well-built and vital, full of wisdom… full of energy… full of faith.” Even though the school still exists today, Frederic Dan Huntington might have been found lacking in the execution of his goal, as even the school’s own website conceded that “dwindling enrollment left the school on the verge of closing” less than twenty years after it opened. Under new management, the school rebranded itself into a military academy and thrived well into the twentieth century.

Frederic Dan’s daughter, Arria Sargent Huntington, was also prominent in Syracuse for her contributions to education as well as the advancement of various other social causes. As well as founding hospitals, shelters, and working associations for women, Arria served as the School Commissioner for the Syracuse Department of Education; a great achievement, but one especially remarkable given the number of women in leading administrative positions at the time. During her six-year tenure from 1897 to 1903, Arria also headed and participated in a number of School Committees that kept the educational system well-serviced and functioning.

Frederic Dan’s son, James Otis Sargent Huntington, was perhaps foremost among the family in the creation of schools. Founder of the Order of the Holy Cross, which describes itself as “An Anglican Benedictine Community of Men,” his religious work coincided with his commitment to education. Under the direction and with the help of James O.S. Huntington, the Order founded two schools which are still educating students to this day, though the Mission in Liberia and a “Home for Wayward Girls” in Tarrytown, New York cease to operate. One of the schools founded by James O.S. Huntington can be found (albeit under a slightly altered name) in Sewanee, Tennessee. Originally called the St. Andrew’s School, it was created in 1905 to serve “deserving mountain boys” and interrupt the “cycle of poverty” in a historically underserved part of the country. Though the school has undergone many alterations, including a stint as a military academy, it has remained true to its religious roots. The Kent School, also founded by Huntington several hundred miles away in Connecticut, shares many characteristics with that of Sewanee. Founded with the help of James O.S. Huntington in 1906, it too retains its affiliation with the Episcopal Church and upholds its founders’ emphasis on spiritual education. Shared by the two schools, too, is a costly price of attendance: upwards of $50,000 for boarding students in 2021.

Roger Fenn, courtesy of https://www.fenn.org/page.cfm?p=516

These two were not the only private schools founded by the family. In 1929, Roger Fenn, descendant of Elizabeth Porter Huntington Fisher, founded the private, all-boys elementary institution called the Fenn School. Located in Concord, MA, its goal was to give “each boy…guidance and support in accepting a continuing and growing responsibility to himself, to his fellow students, to his school, and to the larger community.” In reading the educational missions of the various schools founded by the family, the common goal of creating better citizens can be easily traced. However, though they might have been noble in their goals, the demographics of contemporary and current students likely skew towards white and wealthy, a fact that should be noted in a discussion about the family’s educational philanthropy.

These were not the only members of the family to have worked at a private elementary school. At the Derby Academy, the oldest coeducational educational institution, you could find Mary Otis Lincoln Sargent teaching and her father as headmaster. It was there where Mary met the sea captain Epes Sargent V, the father of one of her students and her soon-to-be husband.

On the outer branches of the family tree lies Collis Potter Huntington, second cousin once-removed of Dan Huntington and founder of the Central Pacific Railroad. A tycoon of transportation and one of America’s “Big Four,” C.P. Huntington was instrumental in the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad and left a visible imprint on the nation in the form of railways and spikes. Lesser known, though, is the impact he made through his educational philanthropy. Collis P. Huntington has been described as “an ardent abolitionist and a supporter of African American education,” and his donations to the Virginia-based Hampton Normal and Industrial School for Negroes and Indians and the Tuskegee Institute reflect that. The Hampton School, now called Hampton University and an HBCU, was where Booker T. Washington got his start and was created with the goal of giving Black and Native Americans “Practical experience in trades and industrial schools.” Both of the schools which C.P. Huntington patronized are credited with training “’an army of black educators’” that spread out across the country.

The particular brand of education that Collis was endorsing, however, should be analyzed. As one account notes, “Booker T. Washington’s projects, and schools that followed his principles were funded by wealthy, white, northern donors… They approved of his approach of not directly confronting racial inequality but ‘uplifting the people’ through education.” Though Washington was undeniably undertaking important and influential work, it emphasized uplifting oneself and almost tacitly absolved the systems and people that created the hurdles to self-support in the first place. Furthermore, while the scholar Paulette Fairbanks Molin notes the “pioneering model in academic instruction and manual-technical training” of the Hampton Institute, she also highlights how “The Hampton plan included now-familiar components of off-reservation boarding schools” that isolated students from their families and attempted to erase their traditions and cultures.

As mentioned above, while many of the educational endeavors of various members of the family might have been noble, they often reflect the period and their socioeconomic position: these were religious, white, and wealthy members of American society and even when they supported a cause like Black education it was only under specific terms and conditions. Less formal methods of education should also be mentioned – while historical records are forgiving for men who founded and patronized schools, there exists alongside this narrative a long history of women tutors and learners in the household that merits further exploration and discovery. Ultimately, though, it is remarkable that there existed such a strong connection between this family and the world of education, their propensity to start, fund, or work at schools spanning well over a century and across the United States.

Works Cited:

“The Art of Wealth: The Huntingtons in the Gilded Age.” Pasadena Now. January 31, 2013. https://www.pasadenanow.com/main/a-gilded-age-family-saga-new-book-provides-fresh-insights-on-huntington-familys-wealth-art-collecting-and-philanthropy/.

Baratta, Catherine. “Arria Sargent Huntington’s Curriculum Vitae.” https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53cd26f2e4b03157ad2850da/t/596fb01317bffc637c5c23c0/1500491811546/Baratta_Arria_Sargent_Huntington.pdf.

Binnicker, Margaret. “St. Andrew’s-Sewanee School.” Tennessee Encyclopedia. March 1, 2018. https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/st-andrews-sewanee-school/.

Carlisle, Elizabeth. Earthbound and Heavenbent: Elizabeth Porter Phelps and Life at Forty Acres. New York: Scribner, 2004.

“Dan Huntington.” Finding Aid, Porter-Phelps-Huntington Family Papers. Amherst College Archives and Special Collections. http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/amherst/ma30_odd.html#odd-dh.

“School History.” The Fenn School. https://www.fenn.org/page.cfm?p=516.

Morgan, Tina. “The Making of Manlius Pebble Hill: A Tale of Two Schools.” Manlius Pebble Hill School. http://www.mphschool.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Tale-of-Two-Schools.pdf.

“Hampton Institute and Booker T. Washington.” Viriginia Museum of History & Culture. https://virginiahistory.org/learn/historical-book/chapter/hampton-institute-and-booker-t-washington.

“History.” Hampton University. https://www.hamptonu.edu/about/history.cfm.

Molin, Paulette. “Training the hand, the head, and the heart: Indian Education at Hampton Institute.” Minnesota History: Fall 1988. http://collections.mnhs.org/MNHistoryMagazine/articles/51/v51i03p082-098.pdf.

“Our History.” St. Andrew’s-Sewanee. https://www.sasweb.org/about/history.

“Our History & Traditions.” The Kent School. https://www.kent-school.edu/about/our-history-traditions.

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The Contentious History of Midwifery in Massachusetts

The invasive, “modern” approach of the male midwife on the left versus the homeopathic remedies of the traditional female midwife on the right

In a speech given at the Obstetrical Society of Boston in December 1910, Dr. James Lincoln Huntington railed against midwifery-- a practice he viewed as a relic of a more primitive past. Denigrating the midwife as an “evil,” “ignorant,” and dangerous woman governed by superstition as opposed to science, Dr. Huntington advocated for new regulations and laws to curtail midwifery in Massachusetts. Huntington's vitriol against midwifery is representative of a larger movement in late 19th- and early 20th-century medicine to replace independent female caretakers with male “professionals,” but sorely downplays the essential roles midwives held for centuries, particularly in New England. One of the earliest European settlers to arrive on the Mayflower in 1620 was a midwife, and Huntington’s ancestors in western Massachusetts greatly depended on midwives.

Elizabeth Porter Phelps’ diary is peppered with accounts of midwife-assisted deliveries. In early August of 1772, Elizabeth detailed her own experience. After Elizabeth “perceived some alteration,” Charles sent for Mrs. Elizabeth Parsons Allen, a midwife in Northampton who throughout her career oversaw more than 3,000 births across Hampshire county, and “just six minutes before six in the morning,” little Charles was born. In August of 1803, Elizabeth wrote to her daughter describing the delivery of her daughter-in-law, Sally, “One more birth has been in this house… I feel as if my head was turned.” When Sally began to feel contractions, Charles Phelps fetched Elizabeth’s friends, Penelope Gaylord and Dorothy Warner, and the midwife Mrs. Eunice Allen Breck, Elizabeth Allen’s daughter. Unless a doctor was called in for an emergency operation, birth remained a strictly female affair; with the women attending often astutely aware of the laboring woman’s pain. Betsey’s difficult delivery of her son, Theodore, in February 1813, for instance, required multiple healers, and thus a male physician, Dr. Osborn, was present. Dr. Osborn arrived with “instruments of dissection,” and collaborated with the midwife to ensure the safe delivery of the child.

Midwifery also held an important societal role as midwives were often expected to uncover the identity of the father-- an answer obtained during the height of labor pains to ensure honesty. This information was vital to determine the child’s future source of financial support, and midwives often testified in court cases. A midwife’s testimony won Hadley resident Mirian Pierce alimony from the alleged father of her child, Samuel Cooke II, despite his vehement denials. Cooke was ordered to provide “35 pounds, 13 shillings, and 6 pence for maintenance of the child to date” and to pay for Mirian’s legal fees. Cooke was also mandated to pay a weekly forty shillings and continued to do so for seven years.

Most towns, especially rural communities, had at least one midwife. Midwifery afforded a woman a stable income and a decent amount of status in her community and was a tradition typically passed down through generations. In Hampshire County, Elizabeth Allen gave her medical textbooks, sidesaddle, and personal knowledge to her daughter, Eunice. The intergenerational nature of the position partially accounts for the dominance of midwives as opposed to doctors in the field of childbirth, as these women simply had more experience. Prominent Maine midwife Martha Moore Ballard, living in Augusta from 1778-1812, delivered around 1,000 babies and was much esteemed in her community. Ballard did not deliver her first child in Maine until the age of forty-three, but in her hometown of Oxford, Massachusetts Ballard witnessed many births conducted by older women and thus gained vital experience. Ballard also came from a family with a strong medical background-- an uncle was a doctor, and both of her sisters married doctors. In Ballard’s meticulous records she only called for a doctor twice in her career. Male doctors were not necessarily more competent in obstetrics than female midwives. In fact, Ballard noted numerous errors of the celebrated Dr. Benjamin Page, who arrived in Hallowell in 1791-- a testament to her greater knowledge. Ballard described one such incident when an elite family insisted on having a doctor present during their daughter Hannah Sewall’s delivery.

They were intimidated & Calld Dr. Page who gave my patient 20 drops of Laudanum which put her into such a stupor her pains (which were regular & promising) in a manner stopt till near night when she pukt & they returned & shee delivered at 7 hour Evening of a son her first Born.

Ballard also wrote of another time when one woman giving birth “was delivered of a dead daughter on the morning of the 9th instant, the operation performed by Ben Page. The infants limbs were much dislocated as I am informed." And later described Dr. Page as a “Poor unfortunate man in the practice. Whether male or female, experience was the determining factor in a midwife’s success; even so, Martha Moore Ballard remains largely unknown in the local history books while Dr. Benjamin Page received much acclaim, particularly for his contributions to the field of obstetrics.

Societal obstacles for male midwifery were also present. Male practitioners of midwifery were met with fierce opposition and suspicion. After attempting to practice midwifery as a man in 1646, Francis Rayus of Massachusetts received a fine of fifty shillings and scorn from his community. The delivery room was not a welcoming realm for men; during the colonial period, midwives were often mandated to swear an oath to keep men out of the “lying-in chamber” unless necessitated by an emergency. Part of this opposition rested in the conservative desire to preserve female purity, “delicacy,” and moral standards. By the late eighteenth century, affluent women were far more likely to employ male doctors, believing modern medical science would lessen the excruciating pain of childbirth, although midwifery still maintained its primacy. These doctors opted towards privatizing the experience of childbirth: conducting deliveries in dark rooms, covering the patient in cloth, and prohibiting female friends and relatives from assisting with the pregnancy.

“The Man-Midwife, or Female Delicacy after Marriage…  Addressed to Husbands”A jealous husband looks with disdain at the male midwife tending to his pregnant wife. — “The Man-Midwife, or Female Delicacy after Marriage…  Addressed to Husbands”
A jealous husband looks with disdain at the male midwife tending to his pregnant wife.

Male domination of obstetrics, coming to fruition in the twentieth century, was a gradual and hard-fought outcome. The growing influence of European medicine in the late eighteenth century, a result of more Americans studying abroad, resulted in a new interest in male midwifery (to be renamed obstetrics in 1828). William Shippen, an American doctor who studied abroad, returned to America mind-brimming with scientific techniques and modern technologies to aid in childbirth-- including forceps to move the fetus, laudanum to ease pain, and ergot to induce a hasty delivery. Shippen became the first man to teach midwifery in American medical schools in 1762 and thus began his lifelong crusade to legitimize obstetrics. Male obstetricians attempted to recast childbirth as a process requiring highly skilled medical intervention-- care only trained male doctors could provide. The timing coincided with the Victorian era belief that women were incapable of learning complex medical and scientific treatments. In 1848, one doctor and professor of medicine, Charles Meigsm wrote: a woman “has a head almost too small for intellect but just big enough for love.” Unsurprisingly, female midwives were excluded from advanced medical training or could not afford the same expensive new technology male obstetricians owned. In time, the chosen attendant at childbirth became inextricably linked to class. Lower-class women typically employed the cheaper expertise of the midwife, whereas upper- and middle-class women increasingly opted for a more interventionist male physician who provided painkillers as well as a certain amount of social cachet.

An unflattering portrayal of the midwife

From the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, male obstetricians worked tirelessly to further legitimize their position and turn public favor against midwives, exploiting women’s fears of childbirth and midwives’ often foreign backgrounds. The presence of midwives in medicine posed a problem for male obstetricians: non-traditionally educated immigrants and black women successfully performed many of the same tasks as male obstetricians, suggesting that childbirth did not require some occult medical knowledge to be safe and successful. Prominent obstetrician Joseph B. De Lee even accused midwives of delaying the advance of obstetrics, insisting, “as long as the medical profession tolerates that brand of infamy, the midwife, the public will not be brought to realize that there is high art in obstetrics and that it must pay as well for it as for surgery.” Clearly, De Lee was partially motivated by financial incentives and the boost to his field’s prestige at the fall of midwives.

Obstetrician James Lincoln Huntington

Dr. James Lincoln Huntington, the founder of the Porter-Phelps-Huntington House, was among the most vocal of these male obstetricians. In an essay and speech Huntington co-authored with Dr. Arthur Brester Emmons at the Boston Obstetrical Society meeting in December 1910, “A Review of the Midwife Situation,” the two men condemned midwifery. The doctors suggested policy changes to prosecute midwives more easily in Massachusetts and to strip them of their right to practice. Huntington and Emmons both reiterated De Lee’s assertion of the strictly scientific nature of obstetrics, “Bacteriology, antiseptic and aseptic surgery have put obstetrics on an entirely different basis, raising it to the position, sociologically at least, of the most important branch of surgery.” The men did not veil their contempt for independent female medical care that midwifery entailed, promoting instead “the efficient trained nurse of to-day, acting in harmony with the doctor, who carries the responsibility.” When discussing midwives in Germany, male obstetricians also suggested their hesitancy about trusting women’s ability to safely treat patients:

In the first place, one observing the work of the midwife in the confinement wards is struck by her lack of what is known as the aseptic conscience; that is, the knowledge that she is or is not surgically clean. After faithfully scrubbing her hands for the allotted fifteen minutes she will unconsciously touch something outside of the sterile field and continue as if surgically clean… But if the midwife makes these breaks in the hospital under the eyes of her instructor, and in ideal surroundings for surgical cleanliness, how much more likely will she be to fall into careless ways when out alone in a peasant’s house?

The men instead hailed Ireland’s system of midwifery, where midwives acted under the close supervision of “medical men,” as a paradigm to be emulated in Massachusetts. The men quoted an anonymous Massachusetts physician who wrote in 1802 as another authority on the matter:

As medical science has im[proved], it seems at last to have been settled that physicians regularly educated could alone be adequate to the exigencies of obstetric practice… Among ourselves, it is scarcely more than half a century since females were almost the only accoucheurs. It was one of the first and happiest fruits of improved medical education in America that they were excluded from the practice.

Xenophobia was perhaps another source of these men’s anxiety towards midwifery, as they specifically blamed the “midwife-habit” on “the mighty river of emigration which has swept into this country within the last half-century.” The two doctors were especially concerned about the lack of collective public disapproval of the practice of midwifery, “What we must first do is to arouse public sentiment, and first of all, we must have the enthusiastic support and united action of the medical fraternity.” In the conclusion of this speech the men verbally attacked the midwife once more, describing her as “ignorant, half-trained, often malicious,” and insisting that, “women and infants pay for this “freedom” in deaths, unnecessary invalidism, and blindness. This reference to deaths is another critical factor in the attack on midwives by male obstetricians. At a time when high infant mortality rates in the United States were being questioned, obstetricians were eager to shift the blame from their still relatively new branch of medicine to midwives who lacked the same ability to defend themselves.

Sources:

Huntington, James Lincoln, and Arthur Brewster Emmons. “A Review of the Midwife Situation.” Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 164, no. 81 (1911).

Miller, Marla R. Entangled Lives: Labor, Livelihood, and Landscapes of Change in Rural Massachusetts. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019. =

Schrom Dye, Nancy. “History of Childbirth in America.” Women, Sex, and Sexuality, Autumn, 6, no. 1 (1980): 97–108.

Sullivan, Deborah A. “The Decline of Traditional Midwifery in America.” Essay. In Labor Pains: Modern Midwives and Home Birth, edited by Rose Weitz, 1–22. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988.

Thatcher Ulrich, Laurel. “‘The Living Mother of a Living Child: Midwifery and Mortality in Post-Revolutionary New England.” The William and Mary Quarterly 46, no. 1 (January 1989): 27–48.

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Gladys Huntington's Literary Circle

Although Gladys Huntington’s name wasn’t truly known to the public as that of a writer until after her death,[1] she maintained friendships with other authors, some rather well-known, throughout her life. They would often exchange their writing along with their correspondence, encouraging each other and editing their work. Her husband's vocation at Putnam's publishing also granted her a certain increased access to literary circles. This is an overview of some of Gladys’ literary connections and their correspondence, as found in the collection generously donated by Katherine Urquhart Ohno. Gladys certainly had even more friends and acquaintances in the writing world, but these are ones whose correspondence with her survives to this day.

Click on each letter to be redirected to a larger view with a complete transcription.

Content warning for mentions of suicide.

Lady Cynthia Asquith

Lady Cynthia Mary Evelyn Asquith by Bassano Ltd., 1912. National Portrait Gallery, NPG X32899.

The real reason of this letter is to tell you how immensely impressed I have been by “Carfrae’s Comedy” which I have just read for the first time. I was enthralled. I think it has so much quality, and throughout that sense of something momentous impending that Conrad has to so great an extent. I think Blanche is a very real creation, and there is so much good writing in the book.

Lady Cynthia Mary Evelyn Asquith (1887-1960) was a versatile writer, horror/ghost fiction pioneer, and diarist. Lady Cynthia Mary Evelyn Asquith (1887-1960) was a versatile writer, horror/ghost fiction pioneer, and diarist. Much of her work was not known until after her death in 1968, after which her children published their mother’s work.[2]

In 1941, Lady Cynthia wrote Gladys complimenting Carfrae’s Comedy, Glady’s debut novel released in 1915 to mixed reviews. Cynthia was impressed and encouraged Gladys to write more.

Why ever-ever-ever don’t you write another??? Wouldn't it be a good opportunity - this long convalescence?

Learn more about Lady Asquith here!

Fleming, Colin. “Remembering the Forgotten First Lady of Horror, Cynthia Asquith.” Vice, November 1, 2016.

Fowler, Christopher. “Forgotten Authors: No 4 - Lady Cynthia Asquith.” Independent, October 22, 2011.

Clifford Bax

The letter is undated and without its envelope, but references “the ‘tough’ and democratic audiences of 1945” so we can assume it was written around then. It references The Ladies’ Mile, a play Gladys wrote but never appears to have published, which she was working on turning into a novel at the time of her death in 1959. This is the only letter between the two that we are aware of, which makes the phrase “you are a strange person with hypersensitive antennae” all the more odd, as it implies a close, jovial relationship between the two, yet Bax opens the letter with “Dear Mrs. Huntington” rather than “Dear Gladys”.

Clifford Bax (1886-1962) was a prolific English writer who explored many mediums (including playwriting, journalism, criticism, editing, translation). He is best known for his plays, such as The Rose without a Thorn (1933) and The Venetian (1931).[3]

In this letter to Gladys, Bax writes:

“What a strange play you have written in “The Ladies’ Mile” (not a good title: not dignified enough): but then you are a strange person with hypersensitive antennae.”

original_368155de-8f54-4428-bd19-86ff4f52c5b1_PXL_20210726_173404612.jpg

Learn more about Clifford Bax here!

Clifford Bax Papers. University of Rochester, River Campus Libraries: Rare Books, Special Collections and Preservation.

Lady Gregory

Lady Isabella Augusta Gregory (1852-1932) was a writer and playwright who was influential in the Irish Literary Revival of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She founded Abbey Theatre, the national theatre of Ireland, along with William Butler Yeats and Edward Martyn.[4] Lady Gregory was sympathetic to Irish nationalism and focused on Irish traditions and legends in her writing.[5]

Augusta, Lady Gregory by George Beresford, 1911. Hulton Archive, Getty Images.

In her letter, Lady Gregory refers to Gladys as “Mrs. Huntington”—an indication that the two were not particularly close—but it also references some mutual friends, the Shaws. Her letter thanks the Huntingtons for hosting her. It is unlikely that the two exchanged writing samples and had a more surface, social level relationship.

Learn more about Lady Gregory here!

“All This Mine Alone: Lady Gregory and the Irish Literary Revival.” New York Public Library.

Remport, Eglantina. “A reappraisal of Lady Gregory.” The Irish Times, January 18, 2019.

Viola Meynell

There appears to be a pattern of Viola’s criticisms being somewhat backhanded emerging, saying she’s certain Gladys will fix the first part and that she thought Gladys would struggle to stay on topic. She appeared to greatly enjoy it, however, as in another letter, she wrote:

“There’s something about your writing which in a little casual-sounding phrase gets a whole volume of truth - I can hardly express what an utter sense of satisfaction it gives me. I literally don’t know any writing that brings me in more direct touch with life.”

Viola Meynell (1885-1956) was an English writer, best known for her poetry and short stories. She was the daughter of prominent British Catholic writers and publishers, Wilfrid and Alice Meynell.[6] She corresponded with Gladys from at least 1938-1945, discussing life, health, and writing.

In a letter from 1938, Viola compliments Gladys’ writing:

“It is a more wonderful thing even than I expected - at least more wonderful within, that it is at all times accessible, as it were, and does not disappear down labyrinths, as I had thought it might conceivably do here and there.

[…]

I had mostly succeeded in my effort to read it as by someone unknown to me, that I might get the suspense and thrill of half-revealed circumstances and events. (It is so good not to know sometimes, and to be only half-told). But the gradually accumulated weight of agony had to be fastened on to you, and I had the dismay of knowing that it was far worse than I thought.”

Seven years later, the pair was still corresponding about Gladys’ writing:

“I also am thrilled with your beginning, + I am more glad than I can say that you have embarked on this, for I know it will be a wonderful book. I felt, perhaps even more than the other two, the necessity of telescoping this first part, but it is hardly necessary to mention that, because I have enough experience to know that one always goes back, later, + tightens up the beginning.”

Learn more about Viola Meynell here!

Viola Meynell Letters. Boston College, John J. Burns Library: Archives and Manuscript Department.

Leo Myers

Leopold Hamilton Myers (1881-1944) was a British novelist, best known for his book series The Root and the Flower. He supported anarchism and Russian communism, as is evident in both his work and his correspondence with Gladys. He chafed against the expectations of society his entire life and explored spirituality in his work.[7]

Leopold Hamilton Myers by Howard Coster, 1934. National Portrait Gallery, NPG Ax136088.

In a letter to Gladys from October 13, 1940, he mentions working on a book about “…the beautiful world of Anarchism which will eventually come.”

Leo and Gladys corresponded consistently from 1939 (or earlier) to 1941. Their correspondence covered many topics: war, politics, writing, daily life, physical and mental health, and more. Leo was depressed for the duration of their correspondence and became emotionally volatile, which led to the dissolution of many of his friendships toward the end of his life.[8]

Leo was very encouraging of Gladys’ writing. On July 26, 1939 he wrote:

“The description of happiness is exceedingly good. I liked to get away from the love interest for a bit - into happiness. I liked the delicate candour + truth […] of your treatment of P’s nerves + health, I liked the house with its people, & I liked enormously the Uncle John + family part at the end. ”

Beyond compliments, Myers also criticized her work, clearly preferring her less ‘literary’ writing. In the same letter, he says:

“I think this lump is better - more un-literary (Proustian) than the rest. I felt the opening […] to be just a touch Proustian in their attitude […] + the almost too exact narration of details of feeling + sensation.”

Packet holding Gladys and Leo’s last correspondence, on which Gladys wrote.

He and Gladys had a sudden fight about his treatment of a mutual friend, fellow writer Desmond MacCarthy, in March/April 1941, ending their friendship for good—his last letter to her was so insulting she destroyed it. Unfortunately, Myers committed suicide in April 1944, a path Gladys would also take 15 years later.

In 1959, Gladys wrote in her diary on January 18:

“Mr John Morris (Leo Myers’ friend) will come for a drink.”

Somewhat romantically and fancifully, I interpret this entry as Gladys’ having realized that although what Leo said to her was unacceptable, it was motivated by mental illness and fit into a larger pattern, so she connected with some of his friends.

I also find it interesting that Gladys and Desmond MacCarthy came to be friends. Such good friends, in fact, that her defense of his treatment could end a friendship. In 1924, MacCarthy wrote a less-than-flattering review of Gladys’ play Bartons Folly, saying:

“Miss Gladys Parrish’s Barton’s Folly, acted at the Court Theatre last Sunday, had that “something,” though it was a bad play.”

He concludes his review:

“Though inexpert, confused, and full of bugbears, Barton’s Folly is the work of an imagination.”

It is fascinating to imagine how the potential he sensed in her in this review gave start to a valued friendship.

It is important to note that all of these literary connections all hail from the upper echelons of society, including some with titles. Although Leo Myers purported to support communism and anarchism, he did not, to our knowledge, redistribute his own significant wealth. He also indicates that Gladys is also sympathetic to those causes in her correspondence, yet her social circle seems confined to her own class. This speaks to who could afford time spent writing and who could not in society around the ‘30s and ‘40s.

[1] Gladys' journey to recognition as a writer, and as the author of Madame Solario, was not straightforward. To learn more about it, check out this blog post!
[2] Fowler, Christopher. "Forgotten Authors: No 4 - Lady Cynthia Asquith." Independent, October 22, 2011.
[3] "Clifford Bax papers." University of Rochester, River Campus Libraries, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, D.254.
[4] Van Riper, Tyler. "Alas! a woman may not love!" by Lady Gregory. Washington & Lee University: Shenandoah.
[5] "Augusta, Lady Gregory. Encyclopedia Britannica, May 18, 2021.
[6] "Viola Meynell Letters." Boston College, John J. Burns Library, Archives and Manuscripts Department, MS.1986.035.
[7] Hope, Joan. "L.H. Myers." Salem Press Biographical Encyclopedia, 2021.
[8] Creswell, Sophia. "Myers, Leopold Hamilton (1881-1944), novelist." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, September 23, 2004.

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Schoolgirl Art Needlework Samplers

From the mid 18th to the mid 19th century, one of the most distinctive milestones in a girl’s education was the creation of a needlework sampler. A sampler - defined as a piece of needlework with various stitches- was part of the learning process for young girls to attain skills in sewing. A young girl would usually begin to sew around the age of six, often taught by her mother or another woman in the family. By the age of eight or nine girls would complete a first sampler; a piece usually composed of the alphabet, numbers, a Bible verse, or a quote about morality. The sampler piece above was created in 1814 by Bethia Huntington at just eight years old and serves as an excellent example to these preliminary works completed at a young age. The bottom line of Bethia’s work reads “Middletown,” a nod to when her father, Dan Huntington, moved the family from Litchfield to Middletown in 1809 for seven years while he was a minister at the First Congregational Church in Middletown. In 1816 they returned to Hadley after the death of the children’s grandfather, Charles Phelps.

Another wonderful sampler in the Porter-Phelps-Huntington collection was wrought by Eliza Fitch Lyon at eight years old. Born in 1817, Eliza was the daughter of Maria Warner and Samuel Huntington Lyon. In 1827 she married Theophilus Parsons Huntington in Hadley, where they settled down to raise their three children. Eliza’s piece offers more insight into these initial samplers and is comprised of an alphabet with a supplemental Bible quote and botanical detailing. She takes her work to the next level with the inclusion of intricate floral patterns weaving throughout the piece. If you look closely under the cursive N through X, she experiments with fading blue thread into yellow. The detailing of this piece is quite remarkable regardless of age. Eliza includes numerous fonts and colors and has a keen eye for the details of the flora she includes at the bottom of the piece.

As skills in sewing progressed, plants, animals, or other objects copied from a pattern would sometimes supplement the writing. The execution of writing on samplers with increasingly more intricate designs and motifs provided practice for detailed stitching, along with the hope that producing works with such sentiments would foster virtue by publicly exhibiting morality and accomplishment. In the 19th century, the Pioneer Valley was known in the embroidery world for its “White Dove Style.” This style of sewing white doves emerged in the 1790’s and its popularity continued into the following few decades. Although there are no White Dove pieces at the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum, the collection contains several sewing samplers; one created by Bethia Huntington in 1814 (shown above) and another by Mary Huntington in 1826 when she was eleven. These works were displayed in homes with pride and as visual representations of their young daughter’s accomplishments.

By the time a young woman reached the age of fourteen it could be expected that she would have created several sewing samplers. Next would come a mixed media figurative scene, interchangeably referred to as either a pictorial scene or a silk embroidery. More than not these works incorporated other mediums such as watercolors into the needlework craft. For example, the piece above beautifully incorporates silk, watercolor, and satin. The plethora of mediums not only adds richness in texture but helps guide the eye through the depth of the harbor. Works as such tended to be very expensive to produce because they required several different skilled craftspeople to assist in creating the final product. Pieces as such not only showcased a young woman’s talent, but the aptitude to learn such craft implied the wealthy economic status of someone who could afford that kind of education.

When the Porter family crest was embroidered by Elizabeth Porter Phelps (circa 1760 - 1817), it was compiled from a painting on wood panel acquired by her mother, Elizabeth Pitkin Porter. The crest depicts five wings central to a plethora of vines and beautifully detailed birds of paradise. A coat of arms was a significant symbol for elite families in the Connecticut River Valley. Embroidering such was the height of needlework arts, as it created the “perfect form for displaying needlework, education, leisure, status, and family allegiance.” In this case Elizabeth may have been taught by her mother or other family members. Typically, such wonderfully elaborate embroidery would have been displayed in the parlor of the home for visitors to see. Although we know from the archives of her grandchildren that she likely commenced the project as part of her schooling at a young age, left it unfinished and returned to it in the final years of her life.

This article is based off previous research done by Mount Holyoke College alum, Ann Hewitt. Her work on needlework is a part of her larger research paper Becoming Accomplished: The Porter Phelps Huntington Daughters. Her preliminary research on needlework was further edited and continued by Museum Assistant Evelyn Foster.

Sources

Alice M. Earl, Childlife in Colonial Days (Norwood, MA: Norwood Press, 1899), 17.

https://www.pphmuseum.org/epp-needlework.

“Object of the Month Archive About.” Massachusetts Historical Society. Accessed July 26, 2021. https://www.masshist.org/object-of-the-month/objects/schoolgirl-needlework-2002-08-01.

Porter-Phelps-Huntington Family Papers, 1698 - 1968 (Bulk: 1800 - 1950).

“The ABCs of Schoolgirl SAMPLERS: Girls' Education and Needlework from a Bygone Era.” Milwaukee Public Museum. Accessed July 26, 2021. https://www.mpm.edu/research-collections/history/online-collections-research/schoolgirl-samplers.

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“Faintheartedness whenever I undertake anything new”: Anxiety in the 19th Century

While accessioning recent donations from Phelps Farm, finding bundles of letters divided by year and tied up with string was like opening a gift sent directly from the past - 180 years ago, to be exact.

**1841 bundle**

Moses ‘Charles’ Porter Phelps (1772-1857) and Sarah Davenport Parsons Phelps (1775-1817) had nine children between the years of 1801 and 1817, when Sarah’s life was cut short from typhus fever. Three years after Sarah’s death, Charles married Charlotte Parsons (1793-1830), Sarah’s cousin, and the couple had four more children. Their son Theophilus was born in the early 1820s. Letters from five of the adult children, Francis, Elizabeth, Marianne, Arthur and Theophilus, were sent to their father Charles throughout 1841.

**Charles Porter Phelps, asleep in chair. Unknown year.**

A letter from Francis in Boston to his father in Hadley on October 26 stands out because of its length and contents. Francis begins the letter: “Dear Father, my principal object in writing is to make a few remarks upon Theophilus’ state of mind as well as his state of body… He is really sick or he is not.” The tone of the start of the letter comes across as pitiless and critical of his younger brother; the more he conversed with Theophilus, “the more I am satisfied the principal seat of the disease is in the mind…” Francis traced Theophilus’ reclusive tendencies back to his childhood: “When a very little boy, I remember, he used to go off for a whole day a fishing, entirely alone, & I hardly remember an instance when he urged anyone to accompany him… I think he often preferred to be alone, which is certainly uncommon in a boy. That disposition has grown upon him very rapidly since he entered college.”

It was Francis’ opinion that Theophilus “has nothing to do but retrace his steps - to begin by going into such company as comes in his way, & force himself to take a part in what is going on. If he will do that for one month, & then say there is no change for the better, I will hereafter hold my tongue.” Francis believed that Theophilus’ stay in Boston would be a potential solution to his mental health struggles. “I want him to do something - I don’t care much what it is - I wish he would come to Boston, if it were only to gain a victory over that ruinous feebleness of purpose, which is eating away the very foundations of all that is manly in him.” As well-intentioned as Francis’ sentiments were, it’s difficult not to see the perilous dichotomy implied by his statement; that struggles with mental health are the antithesis to “manly” qualities and behavior.

Francis closed by imploring his father: “I hope you will persuade him, or compel him to come to Boston.” Francis believed that Theophilus had nothing to lose, but everything to “gain by conquering himself.” Francis claimed that he believed this to be true, because of his own “experience about this faintheartedness, for it has been one of my besetting sins this life, & I always have been, & still am obliged to contend with it, whenever I undertake anything new.” This final admission by Francis puts the entire letter in a remarkably clearer perspective; Francis’ primary motivations for addressing Theophilus’ reclusion and social hesitation were based upon his own experiences with anxiety, described as “faintheartedness… whenever I undertake anything new.” This sentiment from 180 years ago is still so relevant today for those who struggle with anxiety, even if Francis didn’t have the ‘terminology’ to describe it.

The last letter in the bundle of 1841 is a letter from Theophilus to his father Charles in Hadley. On December 15th, less than two months after Francis’ letter to Charles, Theophilus was now living in Boston. What, and who, inspired his relocation to Boston was not mentioned. Did Charles convince him after Francis was unable to? In his opening sentence, Theophilus says, “my health - I think I can say without a doubt - has improved.” His siblings Francis, Arthur and Caroline “are all desirous that [he] should attend to this study” of law. Theophilus had reasons to be optimistic: he had been offered to study law at the offices of Mr. Brown, and had obtained information from boarding houses about renting a room for $4.00 a week. Not so subtly hinting to his father that he requires funding, “it would be very difficult to live here with an expenditure of $250.00 a year, which was sufficient at Amherst.”

“If I receive no reply to this letter and you do not hear from me in the meantime, you may expect me home on Wednesday of next week, and I shall hope to find a carriage at Hockanum on that day. - Your affectionate son, Theophilus.”

In the post-script, Theophilus writes: “I have concluded not to go home in any case till next week Friday, two days later than I first said. I opened the letter to insert the above.” His closing comments raise more questions than they provide a conclusion: did he return home that next Friday for good, or was it just a short visit home?

According to the Anxiety & Depression Association of America, anxiety is one of the most prevalent mental health issues, “affecting 40 million adults in the United States age 18 and older, or 18.1% of the population every year.” At such high rates, most Americans have either had their own struggles with anxiety, or know someone who has - and this is not new, demonstrated by Francis and Theophilus’ letters of 1841. Anxiety manifests differently for each individual, and as such, effective treatments vary depending on the person. Some find that the best place to start is with a supportive base of family and friends, to voice their feelings among empathetic ears. We can only hope that Theophilus found the support and empathy for his anxiety, as well as finding treatments that receded his feelings of “faintheartedness.”

References:

Anxiety & Depression Association of America, “Facts & Statistics: Did You Know?” https://adaa.org/understanding-anxiety/facts-statistics

Charles Porter Phelps Papers, recent acquisition from Phelps Farm. Correspondence of 1841.

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Fisticuffs for a Good Cause

Found among the correspondence of Gladys Huntington was a brochure from the “Inter-Hospital Boxing Competitions” at The National Sporting Club on the 23rd of March, 1923. The National Sporting Club was the United Kingdom’s oldest boxing club and is credited with the creation of the original eight weight classes: Fly, Bantam, Feather, Light, Welter, Middle, Light Heavy, and Heavy.

After Gladys attended the Inter-Hospital Boxing Competitions, she likely sent the brochure to her mother, Kate Parrish.

Front of the brochure:

“It may amuse you to see the programme. X means a victory.. Pip won [twice] & only just lost on points. It lasted from 7:30 to 12 & we were riveted with interest to the very end!”

The brochure handed out to spectators listed the competitors for the evening by weight class. Gladys, and undoubtedly other spectators, kept their own tabulations on the winners of each bout: annotated by an “X” next to their name, along with crossing out the names of those who lost.

Content Warning: A quotation below from Gladys’ annotation on the boxers is racially insensitive and considered offensive.

Gladys was moved to remark on the race and ethnicity of two boxers in the Fly class: “Siamese! Negro!!”

The competition seems to have been a fundraiser for seven local London hospitals listed on the back of the brochure with spaces for spectators to tabulate scores.

According to Arthur Frederick Bettinson, former boxer and founder of the NSC, and author W. Outram Tristram, the sport of boxing in England has a long history. Starting in the seventeenth century, “the Piazza in Covent Garden… was a common meeting-ground for Sportsmen, prize-fighters, gamblers, and that ever-flourishing fraternity who find the delights of gaming fiercely beautiful.” Historically a favorite pastime of English noblemen, famous writers such as Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle also professed their love of the sport. The National Sporting Club opened on March 5, 1891 in Covent Garden, and included refined spaces such as a Coffee Room, a “fine Billiard Room,” and a grand staircase - all signifiers of the clientele’s socioeconomic status. The boxing ring was referred to as the “theatre,” an appropriate term for the spectacle of boxing.

The grand staircase

The National Sporting Club: Past & Present

The boxing theatre

The National Sporting Club: Past and Present

The National Sporting Club remained open in Covent Garden until 1929, so this seemingly small piece of ephemera offers a fascinating and tangible insight of early twentieth century sporting events in London - seen through the eyes of a wealthy American woman.

Memorial plaque of the National Sporting Club.

Resources

Thumbnail: https://www.sportspages.com/product/national-sporting-club-boxing-tournament-1961-programme

A.F. Bettinson & W. Outram Tristram, The National Sporting Club: Past and Present. Sands & Co., London, 1902.(7, 20) https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433082402078&view=1up&seq=11

Wallenfeldt, E.C. , Poliakoff, Michael , Hauser, Thomas , Olver, Ron , Sammons, Jeffrey Thomas , Collins, Nigel and Krystal, Arthur. "boxing". Encyclopedia Britannica, 17 Jun. 2021, https://www.britannica.com/sports/boxing

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Alfreda's Autograph Book

Also in a box donated by Katherine Urquhart Ohno, we found Alfreda Huntington’s autograph book, filled with drawings and notes for her from friends and acquaintances. The amount of effort and artistic ability on display within this autograph book is remarkable.

Check out the entire book here!

Art by Patrizia, 1934. Caption says “With love to my dearest friend Alfreda”

Autograph books were small books passed around to gather thoughts and sometimes artistic endeavors of those they encountered, mostly friends and classmates.[1] They are the predecessors of modern practices such as writing in yearbooks. Autograph books owned by older teens and adults would primarily feature poetry, advice, or proverbs from their acquaintances.[2]

February 1934

Let’s throw all study books in the fire!!!

Nicoletta Pucci

Caption in Italian - let us know if you know what it says.

Are these two friends?

With love from

Fioretta Mazzei

The final marked page of her autograph book.

The entries in Alfreda’s Autograph Book were all created in 1934 and 1935, mostly while she was in Italy, as evidenced by friends’ names and the occasional caption in Italian. Alfreda would have been around 12-13 at the time. The various entries show a wide range of artistic ability, ranging from crayon sketches to realistic watercolor. A few names show up more than once. The last page with any markings, following a crayon drawing of a horse, is a single, undecorated signature, reminiscent of a more traditional, adult guestbook or autograph book. Perhaps the signatory was in a rush, perhaps it marks something of the transition into adulthood.

References

[1] "Autograph Books."City of Red Deer.

[2] Allison, Lelah. “Traditional Verse from Autograph Books.” Hoosier Folklore 8, no. 4 (1949): 87–94.

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Alfreda the Artist

As a young girl, Alfreda Huntington demonstrated remarkable artistic ability. In one of the boxes generously donated by Katherine Urquhart Ohno, we found Alfreda’s Anthology of Passages from my Favourite Books, which started life as blank books and was filled over time with color and memories.

Look at all the filled pages of the book here:

Alfreda’s Anthology of Passages from my Favourite Books most follows in the tradition of commonplace books. Commonplace books were blank books that the owner would fill with quotes and passages from favorite works, creating a personal anthology. Traditionally, commonplace books didn’t contain illustrations of quotations, but melding genres of homemade books and documents was common.[1] The practice of collecting quotations from others’ works spans back to antiquity and into today, but commonplace books peaked in popularity during the Renaissance and 17th & 18th centuries.[2]

For each passage from one of her favorite books that she chose to highlight, Alfreda would draw, and often paint, an accompanying illustration.

Alfreda here rewrote a passage from R.H. Bruce Lockhart’s Return to Malaya (Putnam, 1936), which was published by the company Constant Huntington was head of, and tells the story of Lockhart's journey to British Malaya. Lockhart was best known for his book Memoirs of a British Agent (Putnam, 1932).[3]

Some of Alfreda’s favorite books, as listed in this book, were Return to Malaya (1936)—as mentioned above, Karen Blixen - Out of Africa (1937), Apsley Cherry-Garrard - The Worst Journey in the World (1922), Thomas Hardy - Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891), Dostoevsky - The Idiot (1868), and Thomas Hardy - The Return of the Native (1878).

A selection from Out of Africa is the first one in the book. As the entries in the book appear to have been done in order, although the book is not dated, we can assume Alfreda began it in 1937 or later—age 15 or so.

Toward the end of the book, both the quotes and drawings became less complex—we don’t know why, nor do we know for how long she kept the book.

References

[1] Biersdorfer, J. D. "Create a Digital Commonplace Book." The New York Times, February 10, 2021, sec. Technology.

[2] McKinney, Kelsey. "Social media: Nothing new? Commonplace books as predecessor to Pinterest UT Austin: Ransom Center Magazine, June 9, 2015.

[3] “Books: Sentimental Journey.” Time, December 7, 1936.

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Strange Unheard of Things: Catharine Huntington’s Writing and Correspondence with Gladys Huntington

Currently filling the corn barn at PPH are stacks, packages, and bundles of letters written to or by members of the Huntington family. The postdates attest that rarely a day went by without any given Huntington penning a letter to inquire after someone’s health, share an amusing anecdote, or simply catch up, a testament to the family’s proclivity for the written word. Their literary pursuits were not limited to these daily communications; however, many of the family members were published authors, poets, or playwrights. Arria Huntington (1848-1921) wrote plays and memoirs, Ruth Gregson Huntington (1849-1946) published a number of short stories and poems, and in the next generation, Constant Huntington (1876-1962) served as the chairman of the London branch of G. P. Putnam’s Sons Books from 1906 to 1953. He and his wife Gladys were heavily involved in the London literary scene, corresponding and dining with such litterateurs as James Joyce, Desmond McCarthy, and Harold Nicolson.

Of all the family members, Gladys Parrish Huntington (1887-1959) arguably found the most literary success, although she would only be recognized for it over three decades after she was revealed as the author of the bestselling 1956 novel Madame Solario. This revelation came quietly a few months after the anonymous novel’s publication; Life Magazine reported in its March 18, 1957 edition (which itself cites an earlier article in the London Express that had revealed Gladys’ identity) that “the author was an elderly literary gentlewoman...living in the backwater of Kensington.” Yet, speculation continued for decades. Acclaimed British author Mary Renault, in an interview with The American Scholar in 1970, claims Madame Solario to be “one of the finest novels of our century,” going on to say: “After many inquiries in the publishing world, I learned the author was called Constance Huntington.” Not quite. A 1992 French mystery novella entitled Qui a Écrit Madame Solario? made the bizarre claim that Winston Churchill was the author. Bernard Cohen’s extensive research, published in the French newspaper Libération in 2009, is widely credited for definitively solving the not-so-mysterious mystery, although the novel had been published with Glady’s name on the cover as early as the 1980s. The real mystery is why no one noticed.

Easily regarded as her magnum opus, Madame Solario drew high praise from writers and critics, including comparisons to the prose of Henry James, Edith Wharton, and E. M. Forster. Over half a century following its publication, the allure of the story persists, inspiring a 2012 French film adaption of the provocative tale of incest and social scandal, as well as translations into seven languages. The novel’s consideration of such taboo topics has often been speculated to be the reason for which Gladys chose to conceal her identity as the author upon the initial publication. She published under the name Gladys Parrish as early as 1915 with her novel Carfrae’s Comedy, published by Putnam while Constant was at its head. Her play Barton’s Folly was produced a decade later, receiving an overall unenthusiastic critical response. A packet of reviews of the play’s production we came across consistently categorized it as a disappointment, but recognized the sign of a talented new voice. “The play had that “something” which justified its performance by The Three Hundred. It lay in the dramatist’s sense of the interesting complexity of human relations. Though inexpert, confused, and full of bugbears, Barton’s Folly is the work of an imagination. I found it often absurd, but never dull,” wrote leading literary critic Desmond McCarthy, who would go on to become a close friend of Gladys. She did not publish or produce again for over 30 years, perhaps taking the time to hone her skill and voice as a writer. These efforts were well spent, for two of her stories were subsequently published in The New Yorker in 1952 and then again in 1954 under the name G.T. Huntington, a vague enough stylization of her married name to obfuscate both her gender and any connection to what she previously published. Whether or not this was her intention is unclear, for the runaway success of Madame Solario a few years later established Gladys, by this point in her 70’s, as a brilliant new literary voice.

Tucked away in a packet of correspondence between Gladys and her sister-in-law Catharine Huntington (1887-1987) was a letter from the latter to the former, enclosed in an envelope together with a short story and a photograph of herself. Catharine humbly cautions her sister-in-law about her writing, “It is only a fragment- it may amuse you for a moment- at all events it gives pleasure to send to you.” If Gladys was the literary icon of the family, Catharine was the theatrical. She was involved with the Peabody Playhouse, the Brattle Theatre, the Tributary Theatre, and the Poet's Theatre, juggling the many titles of actress, producer, director, and manager. Further, she helped to found the Boston Stage Society, the Provincetown Playhouse, and the New England Repertory Theatre. Her integral role in New England theatre lasted for over six decades and earned her a Rodgers and Hammerstein Award in 1965, as well as formal recognition from Governor Michael Dukakis and Massachusetts State Legislature in 1985 for her contributions. Before finding her niche in the world of theatre, it seems that Catharine dabbled in writing as so many Huntingtons had before her.

Photo of Catharine Huntington enclosed in her letter to Gladys Huntington

The letter in question is dated only as far as August 11th, although given its subject and contents, it can be dated to 1917, as World War I intensified in Europe. This would have been prior to Catharine’s serious involvement in New England theatre. The letter expresses the perspective of a 30-year-old schoolteacher trying to find her place in the world, seeking a sense of purpose in the war efforts and speaking longingly of lives vastly different from her own. “I long so much to go to France, to serve in the trial… Without any very definite prospect and still uncertain whether it would be right to leave home- I began to prepare,” Catharine writes. She goes on to tell Gladys of her concentrated efforts to this end: enrolling in a nursing course run by the Red Cross, motor driving lessons at the YWCA automobile school, a course in Ford machinery. She practiced her French with a kindly Miss Hough on a bench in the Boston Public Garden and took on nursing shifts at the Massachusetts Homeopathic Hospital, the building of which today houses Boston University’s School of Public Health. Evidently, her studies paid off, for within a year she had left her job teaching at the Westover School and travelled to France, where she would serve as a nurse’s aid until 1920 in the Wellesley Unit of the YMCA. Contemplating this next chapter in her life, she writes, “I don’t know whether I am in a great mess or gloriously on my way- somewhere.” Catharine concludes her letter by signing off with that same note of desperate ambiguity: “Dearest Gladys- do write more- your life seems so clear and lovely- mine so confused and full of strange unheard of things.”

“One Afternoon”, the short story Catharine sent along, reflects many of these same sentiments in its protagonist, Laurencina, an aristocratic young woman disillusioned by the allure of high society and feeling unmoored in her life. The piece takes place in the U.S Virgin Islands over nine pages, largely composed of dialogue between Laurencina and her rejected suitor, Charles Durrain. Her writing takes a Whartonian interest in the discontents of the upper class, balancing afternoon social calls, high tea, and literal high brow-edness (“The hair grew thick off his high forehead,” Laurencina observes of Durrain) against Laurencina’s consuming desire for something more that she can neither identify nor attain.

“Charles-” she broke out, in the midst of something that he was saying, “I am so dissatisfied with my life- You have known me a long time- Why is it that I seem to be accomplishing nothing? I feel that I could be so wonderful, do so much, and here I am day after day.” The thoughts that had crowded her mind for so long- now seemed to have left her. After all, she could not express them.

“Don’t be dissatisfied,” Durrain was saying. “Think of your influence in the family here- and then your father! There is a reason for being of use. What would he do without you?” He spoke in the voice of a teacher.

“Yes,” Laurencina answered in a low tone, “I must not be dissatisfied.” And then her passion broke out again. “You are a man, and cannot judge fairly. There is your work at the Embassy, and your visits here and there, moonlight rides-”

Catharine’s keen awareness of the different prospects available to men and women comes through in Laurencina’s reticence to accept Durrain’s dismissive response. Perhaps she is thinking of her own position, uncertain as to whether or not to leave her family behind in the States and travel to Europe in search of a life of more consequence. Catharine does strike out on her own, but the fictional Laurencina does not; further down the page, she takes up knitting, performing in the act an acceptance of Durrain’s ideas about the role of women. As the story concludes, Laurencina continues her performance of contentment at family dinner that night:

“Charles Durrain asked to be remembered, Papa,” Laurencina said.

“Oh, he was here- again. I should like to see him. You ought to marry him, Laurencina.”

Laurencina moved her plate a little. She felt very tired. Edith was speaking in her kind, high voice.

“Oh, Laurencina is so hard to please.”

Laurencina made an effort and smiled a little.

There the story ends, with Laurencina more desolate than before following her failure to find sympathy and understanding in Durrain. The manuscript bears marks of the editing process, presumably by the hand of Catharine herself, crossing out phrases and inserting others. Perhaps the piece is a work in progress, though it seems unlikely that Catharine had any intent to publish or further refine her work. Her writing style is rather unpolished, aiming for the Whartonian undertones her sister-in-law captures so evocatively, but not quite hitting the mark. She tends to tell rather than show, and it’s all just a bit cliché and melodramatic: “In the narrow mirrors as she passed- Laurencina saw her face- it seemed to her that a strange, beautiful woman looked at her sorrowfully.” Nonetheless, Catharine’s goal of momentary amusement for her audience was well met in the brief glimpse she provides into the drama of Laurencina’s personal life and psyche. Catharine crafts a compelling narrative of her protagonist’s complicated relationship with Durrain and struggle to assert herself within the societal constraints that would limit women to marriage and household duties. In the thousands of letters we’ve yet to read, perhaps we’ll come across Gladys’ response to Catharine, and discover her reactions, encouragements, criticisms, or praises of her sister-in-law’s work.

Sources

Bastek, Stephanie. “Neglected Books Revisited, Part 2.” The American Scholar, Phi Beta Kappa, 11 Aug. 2020, theamericanscholar.org/neglected-books-revisited-part-2/.

Cohen, Bernard. “Madame Solario Tout Un Roman.” Libération, Libération, 7 Nov. 2009, www.liberation.fr/culture/2009/11/07/madame-solario-tout-un-roman_592310/.

“G.P. Putnam's Sons Records, 1891-1937: Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.” G.P. Putnam's Sons Records, 1891-1937 | Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, archives.library.illinois.edu/rbml/?p=collections%2Ffindingaid&id=943&q=&rootcontentid=90949.

Joyce, James, Gilbert, Stuart, & Ellmann, Richard. (1966). Letters of James Joyce (New ed., with corrections..). Viking Press.

McCarthy, Desmond. “Drama Inexperienced and Expert.” The New Statesman. 20 December 1924.

“Sensation Gets an Author.” Life, 18 Mar. 1957, pp. 125.

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A Closer Look at the Life of Elizabeth Pitkin Porter

Elizabeth Pitkin Porter, hailing from a prominent family in Connecticut and married into the wealthy Porter family of Hadley, was a woman of high stature and importance in the community. Pious and deeply caring, she attended church regularly, taught her grandchildren to read and write, and often traveled across western Massachusetts to support ill relatives and friends. Elizabeth’s life, however, had a darker side-- an open secret amongst her friends and family. Elizabeth suffered from anxiety attacks, crippling episodes of depression, and, ultimately, an all-consuming addiction to opium. Contrary to popular belief, Elizabeth’s mental health struggles and exposure to opium were ongoing and long predated her husband’s tragic death in the Seven Years’ War. Feelings of isolation and loneliness plagued Elizabeth through early marriage, motherhood, and widowhood; finding a cure became an ongoing and often fruitless crusade.

In 1742 Elizabeth Pitkin left her childhood home in East Hartford for Hadley to marry Moses Porter, leaving behind many friends and family members. Over the next few years, Elizabeth experienced extreme anxiety-- perhaps a response to the dramatic change in her social environment. By February 1747, shortly before becoming pregnant with her daughter, Elizabeth received a prescription for an opium-based drug after a visit with the family doctor, Richard Crouch. The year 1752 brought another significant change in Elizabeth’s life. The couple moved away from their house in the Hadley town center, a site of socialization and camaraderie with neighbors, to the home Moses built, two miles away from any other property, which certainly contributed to Elizabeth’s feelings of isolation. By 1753 Elizabeth was diagnosed with “hysteria” -- a catch-all term for anxious, depressed, or supposedly amoral women-- and prescribed laudanum, an alcoholic solution containing opium.

At the time laudanum was lauded as a panacea-- a treatment for both physical and mental ailments. One English physician, Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689), celebrated the drug’s versatility, “Among the remedies to which it has pleased Almighty God to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal and efficacious as opium.” Towards the end of his life, Benjamin Franklin depended on laudanum to relieve the excruciating pain from his kidney stones. Abraham Lincoln was prescribed ointments containing laudanum to counter periods of depression. While some of the drug’s negative side effects were understood-- in 1818 the American Dispensatory even warned of the “tremors, paralysis, stupidity, and general emaciation” from excessive usage-- opium addiction was never publicly recognized until the release of Thomas De Quincey’s book in 1821, Confessions of an English Opium Eater. Quincey described the drug’s potency: “[H]appiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat pocket: portable ecstasies might be had corked up on a pint bottle and peace of mind could be sent down in gallons by the coach mail.” Long before Thomas Quincey’s forays with the drug, Elizabeth would succumb to opium’s intoxicating effects.

The Seven Years’ War, beginning in 1755, called Captain Moses Porter away from his home, wife, and daughter at Forty Acres. While Moses fought under Colonel Ephraim Williams at Crown Point in northern New York, Elizabeth toiled at home, raising their daughter and living in constant fear that Moses would soon die. During this time, the property’s distance from other homes became particularly unbearable for Elizabeth. One letter from Moses in July of that year reveals Elizabeth’s depressed mental state “I Received yours of the 14 of July [on] 19 of the same which was such a cordial to [me] as I had not had since I left you… You hinted something of being [alone] even in company I am very sensible of it my [self] but I believe you have a double portion of it.”

Elizabeth also experienced the stresses of war more immediately, writing to Moses about army deserters who “milk our cows devour our corn destroy our garden and are often about the house in the night.” In August, sensing depression and apathy in Elizabeth’s letters, Moses wrote: “I could have been glad to ha[ve] seen a Little more of the Hero in your letter.” Moses could not have fully understood the trials Elizabeth faced at home. Elizabeth simply dismissed his critique, insisting, “You must not expect masculine from feminine.” The couple’s correspondence, however, would soon cease. The Battle of Lake George in early September proved fatal for Moses; his sword would later be returned to a bereaved and traumatized Elizabeth.

Moses’ death inaugurated a new period in Elizabeth’s life: widowhood. Elizabeth did not remarry, continuing to raise her daughter and run the farm with the help of a distant relative, Caleb Bartlett. The diary of Elizabeth’s daughter provides insight into her life during this period, cataloging the multitude of doctor’s visits, her growing dependency on laudanum, and desperate attempts to battle depression and addiction.

A typical treatment for depression at the time included regimented exercise and outings. Elizabeth rode horses and visited watering holes supposedly blessed with healing properties throughout western Massachusetts and northeastern Connecticut. During one such trip Elizabeth wrote to her daughter: “How long I shall be upon my Jorney I cant tell, I shall endeaveur to follow the directions of Providence for the recovery of my health, I hope I aint worse then when I left you. I wish I may return in a Comfortable state of health.” Her mention of “Providence” reflects the important role religion held in her life. While Elizabeth saw her faith as a path to heal, and the church provided structure and neighborly support, oftentimes the church was not beneficial for women with chronic depression. Women who were unable to overcome prolonged periods of depression could be perceived as morally repugnant and, consequently, often masked symptoms of depression to avoid public scrutiny.

When non-pharmaceutical methods failed, doctors often opted for laudanum to treat depressed or “hysterical” women. During the 18th century, opium was especially popular in treating medical issues specific to women. In his Treatise on Opium written in 1753-- the same year Elizabeth received a prescription for laudanum-- Dr. George Young advocated the use of opium to curb nausea during pregnancy. The Married Woman’s Private Medical Companion, written by A.M. Mauriceau in 1847, suggested opium to relieve menstruation cramps:

Let the patient have near her a few pills, consisting of opium… She is to take one of these pills the moment the pain attending this discharge comes on. A pill may be taken every hour till the pain ceases: more than two will seldom be required; yet they must be taken in quantities sufficient to mitigate the pain.

Elizabeth also suffered from physical problems, including “Rhumatizm,” which were commonly treated with laudanum as well. The “cure” for many of Elizabeth’s physical ailments was in fact the source of her pain and, like many chronic opioid users, Elizabeth suffered from muscular weakness, impaired memory, apathy, and cessation of the menses. Attempts to quit were still made, especially with encouragement from family and friends, but, even so, Elizabeth remained in the depths of severe addiction. One diary entry from Elizabeth’s daughter in 1784 offers a glimpse into the continued presence of opium in her life— even at the age of sixty-five. Her daughter wrote: “Old Mrs. Alexander came here with view to persuade my mother to leave off taking opium but in vain-- she took it before night the next day.” Elizabeth died in 1798 at the age of seventy-nine; a victim of a medical practice that had yet to grasp the full effects of chronic opium use.

Sources:

“ATrain Education.” What Precipitated the Opioid Crisis? ATrain Education. Accessed July 20, 2021.

Crandall, Russell. Drugs and Thugs: The History and Future of America's War on Drugs. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021.

Mauriceau, A M. The Married Woman's Private Medical Companion. New York, 1847.

Mays, Dorothy A. Women in Early America: Struggle, Survival, and Freedom in a New World. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2004.

Pendergast Carlisle, Elizabeth. Earthbound and Heavenbent. New York, NY: Scribner, 2004.

Phelps, Elizabeth Porter. The Diary of Elizabeth (Porter) Phelps, edited by Thomas Eliot Andrews with an introduction by James Lincoln

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Botany and Watercolors

The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum has three watercolors noted as “Pictures (3), framed flower, watercolor. Made by Dan and Elizabeth Huntington's daughters at Miss Willard's School in Troy.”While it is uncertain which Huntington daughter can be ascribed as the artist, Elizabeth b. 1803, Bethia b. 1805, Mary b. 1815, and Catherine b. 1817 all attended the Emma Willard School where they had a rich exposure to the art of watercolors. The first watercolor in the collection is painted entirely in neutral hues. This process was typically used in the first quarter of the 19th century for “washing the shaded part of any colored flower or leaf” in shades of blue and black, later to be painted over in full color. These neutral colors served as a base for other pigments to be built on. Upon careful examination it appears that there may be two different plants flourishing from one stem: there are three large white flowers that emerge from extensions of the branch, as well as smaller blue bell-shaped blossoms below. The two flowers could represent two various stages of growth for one flower; however, they lack a similarity in appearance. There is also the question of whether the painting was finished. According to the 19th century guide, A Series of Progressive Lessons, Intended to Elucidate the Art of Flower Painting in Water Colours, the neutral wash was typically applied halfway as an undercoat for the actual color. For example, the next piece, a painting of blue flowers surrounded by lush green leaves, is fully colored, including the stem which is rendered in a dark greenish brown. If you look at the leaves on the left side of the painting, the inner halves are much darker than the outer. This is a perfect example of a student using a neutral tint to shade in the plant, and then painting over it with the intended color.

The two paintings mentioned above are likely to have been painted after Elizabeth and Dan Huntington’s daughters gained experience with watercolors. It is also quite clear that they had studied botany, based on the intricate study of veins, stems, and shading. The third watercolor in the collection is quite different: a bouquet of orange and pale purple flowers with thick green leaves. It is worth noting that it seems to have been painted by someone with less experience. The student attempted to capture the orange flowers from different viewpoints as some turn outwards to the viewer and others are seen from the back and profile. The central part of the composition is comprised of a large purple-white flower. It looks like the student tried to portray the flowers tubular center with a dark circle at the core. However, the lack of perspective and bold outlines imply that the student was unfamiliar with conveying depth as well as the anatomy of plants. The stems are shakily painted, and the shading of each petal is somewhat inconsistent with harsher outlines instead of soft shading. Rather than a bouquet employing depth and careful consideration of the plant’s anatomy, it is very two-dimensional.

The ability to paint was considered essential for an established young lady in the early 19th century. It signified that she was educated and refined and was often taught at institutions where middle- and upper-class families sent their daughters. Simultaneously, the 19th century reached a high level of achievement for botanical illustration. The sciences, which were encouraged through exhibitions around the world, utilized the art of botany, which worked in tandem to supplement scientific writing. Painting such an intricate and delicate subject took much practice, and these works showcase the culmination of progress.

Watercolors were considered an important part of education at the Emma Willard School. In 1823, Almira Phelps, the younger sister of Emma Willard, accepted her sister's invitation to teach at the school where she remained for eight years. While teaching at the Emma Willard School, Almira developed a keen interest in botany. In 1829 she wrote her first and most successful textbook, Familiar Lectures on Botany. Over the course of the next forty plus years, the textbook went through twenty-eight different printings - each illustrated with various woodcuts and engravings. Almira Phelps believed that watercolors were the most appropriate technique to learn, as the “kind of painting most convenient for ladies; it can be performed with neatness, and without the disagreeable smell which attends on oil painting.” Almira also taught a brief history of art that focused on the classical world, and gave summaries of the major schools of art. Her lecture on flower painting touches on how it can assist the study of botany in a similar vein to her introduction on watercolors: “the study of botany seems peculiarly adapted to females; the objects of its investigation are delicate; its pursuits, leading to exercise in the open air, are conductive to health and cheerfulness.” As an accomplished botanist herself, Almira stressed the importance to take time to observe and take note of the “very distinctive characteristics of particular species of plants might be disregarded in [the flowers] delineation” which makes one wonder whether the girls were looking at a real plant, or drawing upon memory, and, if these watercolors were intended as a form of scientific illustration.

As previously mentioned, these paintings have no exact provenance. It is unclear exactly which Huntington daughter created them. Despite being a family that was so well documented, with extensive letters and diaries, these watercolors may have been lost in translation. A good guess as to who the artist might be is Bethia Huntington. She attended the Emma Willard School (circa 1820). When she returned home, she wrote to her younger sisters Mary and Catherine in the 1830’s who were then at the Emma Willard School with updates about how the plants were doing with concise notes about their growth. In her letters, she writes about her passion for flowers, and cared deeply about the family garden.

This article is based off previous research done by Mount Holyoke College alum, Ann Hewitt. Her work on watercolors is a part of her larger research paper Becoming Accomplished: The Porter Phelps Huntington Daughters. Her preliminary research on watercolors was further edited and continued by Museum Assistant Evelyn Foster.

Sources

Anonymous. A Series of Progressive Lessons, Intended to Elucidate the Art of Flower

Painting in Water Colours (Classic Reprint). 30.

Barryte, Bernard. “Almira Phelps.” History of American Women, May 24, 2020.

https://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2013/08/almira-phelps.html.

Eiseman, Alberta. “EDUCATING 19th-CENTURY SCHOOLGIRLS.” The New York

Times. The New York Times, August 31, 1986.

https://www.nytimes.com/1986/08/31/nyregion/educating-19thcentury-schoolgirls.

html.

Huntington, Bethia or Mary. “Blue Flowers with Green Leaves.” Unknown. Watercolors.

Porter-Phelps-Huntington Foundation.

Huntington, Bethia or Mary. “Bouquet of White and Yellow Flowers.” Unknown.

Watercolors. Porter-Phelps-Huntington Foundation.

Huntington, Bethia or Mary. “Grey and Black Spray of Flowers.” Unknown. Watercolors.

Porter-Phelps-Huntington Foundation.

Huntington, Mary. Mary Huntington ‘to’ Bethia Huntington. Letters. Box 20. Amherst

College Archives & Special Collections. Porter Phelps Huntington Papers.

Phelps, Mrs. Lincoln. The Female Student. Leavitt, Lord & Company, 1836, 385, 371.

Rudolph, E. (1984). Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps (1793 - 1884) and the Spread of Botany

in Nineteenth Century America. American Journal of Botany, 71(8), 382, 1161 -

1167.

Schmidt M. Alesandra, Jacoby B. Trudy. “Herbs to Orchards: Botanical Illustration in the

Nineteenth Century.” Watkinson Publications. 3.

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"You would find a bombing a very disagreeable experience" - Correspondence from Early WWII

With COVID-19 and other tumultuous events, those of us living in 2021 are familiar with the feeling of living on the precipice of a momentous time in world history while ordinary life seems to continue on, unaffected. Through selections from correspondence included in the Constant Huntington Papers, generously donated by Katherine Urquhart Ohno in 2019, it is interesting to explore how Constant & Gladys Huntington’s friends and adolescent daughter experienced and discussed the run up to and beginning of World War II.

Constant, Gladys & Alfreda Huntington at a wedding, June 8, 1939.

The Huntingtons’ primary residence was in London when Britain declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939 after German forces invaded Poland. All of these letters were written in August or September 1939, and can provide insights into the beginning of the war for Britain, as portrayed by ordinary Britons, uninvolved in any decisions surrounding it.

You can click on each letter to read it larger or see a more complete transcript.

On August 3, 1939, Leo Myers, a friend and fellow author, wrote to Gladys expressing his thoughts on the “causes of the approaching war” and commenting on the weather.

It also illustrates for me a particular idea of mine: [viz?], that the world is governed more by pique, rancour, feelings of slight, the "inferiority complex", etc. much more than is realized. The future historian, certainly, will analyze the causes of the approaching war in [?tare/tone?] terms. Collectively, as well as in their representative ruling figures, Italy & Germany are going to war more out of wounded vanity, & rancour(e) rather out of any legitimate sense of injustices to be redressed or even avenged. The wrongs have been committed, the injustices have existed, but they are going to war largely in order to satisfy pettier spites.

[…]

I hope it hasn’t rained all the time, for that does make such a difference when one is living in Hotels. I am feeling so water-logged and heavy. It will be nice to see you again. I am working; & it has become a habit; and I’m not good for anything else now. I do hope this letter (dull as it is!) will reach you in Stockholm all right.

One imagines war as an all-consuming force in life, yet Leo here easily moves from discussing warfare to the weather, and calls his letter dull.

At the beginning of this otherwise ordinary letter about daily life to her father, Constant Huntington, written August 24, 1939, Alfreda Huntington (signing off under her nickname “Jane” - short for her first name, Georgiana) mentions that she “[thinks] there’s going to be a war”—a prescient assessment just 12 days before war was declared.

Dearest Father,

I think there’s going to be a war - so can’t take much interest in the races Everyone is reading about [Farm] in the papers, and no-one seems to notice the massed troops on the Polish Frontier.

I suppose my mother will be back very soon now.

On Wednesday Martyn Beckett is having a dance - which should be fun.

On Friday I go to Cumberland.

Best love -

Jane

Please give my mother my love

Two days later, Alfreda’s frustration with the people around her not caring about the tense state of politics boiled over, so she wrote to her mother, Gladys Huntington, saying “As there is no one here interested + as I have very definite views, I have to tell them to you, at the risk of boring you.” In her letter, Alfreda shows that she pays a great deal of attention to the world around her, referencing past events and the far-reaching implications of current events.

Dearest Mother,

If our present firm line can only prevent Hitler from attacking Poland this week, and next he might pause to take breath before trying again, as he did the first time over Czeckoslovakia[sic] the spring before last. In which ease the treaty with Russia may have been his first serious mistake - because it has frightened Japan, worried Italy, maybe hurry up our own pact with the Soviet, and perhaps even, carefully, hand [kel?], alienate his own people. ^[Without doing him any good, as it means nothing] But if he thinks, as he easily might, that by presenting England with a conquered Poland, he would once more avert war - I think he would be wrong, + we’d be at war by next week. What do you think?

The people here are taking comparatively little notice of the situation, though Auntie listens to the news, and Goodhart. Rendell (is he Mr. or Sir?) frightens us by saying that “Edward” (Lord Halifax with whom he’s been staying) thinks only a miracle can save us from war within the week, while the de Vesei’s are very worried.

Yesterday at the races we heard for the first time of the agreement, it wasn’t in our morning papers - we understood it to be far worse than it was, and [Pinkie], Martyn, + I sat thinking war would be declared today. I’ve never been so miserable. Now I think there is little hope.

As there is no one here interested + as I have very definite views, I have to tell them to you, at the risk of boring you -

How lovely to think that you’re back at last. Was it fun till the end? I do hope so -

Very best love

Alfreda

In this letter to her father, written the same day as the above letter to her mother, Alfreda’s life continues on, despite her mounting anxieties. She references General Asquith, referring to General Arthur Asquith, son of former Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith and distinguished World War I veteran, who died the next day.[1] Alfreda was 17 or 18 at the time and keenly aware of the world around her.

Arthur Melland Asquith by Walter Stoneman, 1918. National Portrait Gallery, NPG x66405.

Dearest Father -

The red ink is certainly not in honor of my winnings - as I have lost every single penny I’ve bet - which luckily was not very much, so I’ll have enough money to get to Cumberland!

Martyns dance was last night and great fun - His mother was the hostess, but as I had not got your letter, I didn’t give her your love - though I did speak to her.

How terrible about General Asquith. Is he literally dying?

I have written a complete exposé of the political situation to my mother, because as no one here is interested I must tell someone. Do you think there’s any hope?

[…]

As there’s going to be a railway strike, and probably a war, how + when I’ll get home, I can’t think. But Cumberland should be nice, so it doesn’t matter.

[…]

With love from

Alfreda

One can imagine that Constant was much less cavalier about the potential for Alfreda’s being stranded from home for the foreseeable future than she was. It probably mattered quite a bit to her parents.

Leo Myers discusses only the coming war in his letter to Gladys of August 27. He expresses concern for Gladys’ going to London, but the way he goes about it strikes an outside reader as amusing or odd: “I think you would find a bombing a very disagreeable experience…”

Aug. 27th

Dear Gladys, the news looks very black this morning. - I wish Constant would settle his affairs quickly, so that you don’t have to go to London. I think you would find a bombing a very disagreeable experience - especially the waiting - while they were evacuating the children. I shall have two refugees & two invalids in this little house, a [???], I suppose, I shall retire - for the next two years. My family is all settled at Erwarton with a fire dug-out. Goodbye to civilization & all that!

Yours,

Leo

A disagreeable experience is certainly one way to put it!

Viscountess Antoinette Heckscher Brett Esher was part of Gladys’ social circle, so her letter from September 28, 1939 gives us insight into the perspective of a host of the many evacuated children. Starting September 1, 1939, children were evacuated from London to the countryside out of fear of German bombing.[2] Despite hosting however many children in her home, Antoinette Heckscher’s class position somewhat insulated her from engaging with the realities of wartime and displacement. She still had household staff and leisure time, unlike many others whose lives would have been entirely consumed by childcare.

A Nursery School: Watlington Park Children in Wartime by Ethel Gabain, Lithograph, 1940. IWM ART LD 263. — *A Nursery School: Watlington Park Children in Wartime* by Ethel Gabain, Lithograph, 1940. IWM ART LD 263.

This letter also provides us some insight into the quotidian concerns of the English gentry—how to deal with young, restless daughters. Although better than a son who could be drafted, parents of young adult daughters also wanted to keep them out of danger while allowing them a certain level of independence.

Sept. 28, 1939

Dearest Gladys - I was so glad to have your letter - I hadn’t heard of you for such ages, except through Dorothy. How awful it all is - and will be worse of course. One dreads so those lists of casualties…

Fortunately I am + have been very busy settling all these children into the house. With the innumerable problems that arise - but with the aid of my perfect + absolutely indispensable Irish cook + the house-carpenter we are getting it wonderfully straightened out and settled down + I am getting used to the noise - it’s only the smell in the dining room that I find hard to bear!

The isolation is going to be very depressing + I shouldn’t wonder if we took a little flat in London later on. But like everyone else one is waiting for the first air-raid…. Meanwhile I have found both solace + amusement in reading. What a good book the Prince Imperial is! - do congratulate Constant from me, it should surely do well - too good for a best-seller, but the Book Society recommendation ought to do a lot for it + the intelligent reading public will love it - as I did.

[…]

The only problem that really worries me at present - and must also worry you - is what can we do with our young daughters? The bottom of their little world has dropped out - they are bored, unhappy + désoeuvrées - and yet I don’t think we can let them, at 18, go off alone to join one of these Womens’ Armies - Do you? Dorothy suggested P’s learning to type + shorthand + then she might get some voluntary office job - Quite a good idea, but of course like most war work it entails living in London, and how can we tell yet about that? Then, I am [longing?] myself to do something to help with the war - but it is different for me as I know I am being of use here. But I do find an idle restless unhappy daughter in the house a problem! What do you + Constant think we can do? If only the young weren’t so terribly secretive! Of course they tell each other everything. Perhaps we were the same.

[…]

All love, dear Gladdy

Antoinette

Photo from Gladys’ photo album, labelled “Evacuated children v Snowman at Parham”

From Gladys Huntington’s photo album that started in 1932, we discovered that the Huntingtons also took in evacuated children. A photo from 1940 has a caption reading “Evacuated children - A picnic on first anniversary of their coming to us - Sept 2nd - The Flooded Wildbrooks.”

Two photos from Gladys’ photo album of four women wearing gas masks.

Alfreda still goes to the dance and the races, Constant’s business continues on uninterrupted, and Leo goes on commenting on the weather, all while facing down an impending war. To be fair, none of them could know it would become a second World War and none were of the age or gender to be drafted or asked to fight. But generally, life doesn’t stop when a country goes to war or the world changes irrevocably. Ordinary people went to work after the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and the world hasn’t stopped for the almost 2 million people who’ve already died due to COVID-19 just in 2021 so far.

[1] "Brig. Gen. Asquith, War Premier's Son: Decorated Three Times for Brilliant Record in Army - Dies in London at 56." New York Times, August 28, 1939.

[2] Clouting, Laura. "The Evacuated Children of the Second World War." Imperial War Museums.

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Graphing the Gardens

The landscape at the Porter Phelps Huntington Museum is just as much an historical resource as its structure and interiors, with each of its many acres having its own ledger of alterations and varying usages. Though histories of the grounds can be harder to uncover than written ones, the above maps, detailing the grounds and in particular the North Garden, provide a partial record of the evolution of the grounds and exhibit the intricacy and diversity of the floral and plant life at the Museum.

The grounds themselves underline the privileged nature of the family: not only was it the second-largest property in the area with ~600 acres of land under the control of a single family, but it was unique in its creation and maintenance of gardens for largely aesthetic pleasure.

As the first map above exhibits, the grounds in the early years of the house were almost entirely functional, which is perhaps unsurprising. As the Pioneer Valley History Network’s website, The Revolution Happened Here, writes, “Prior to Morrison’s tenure at Forty Acres, Elizabeth had described gardening as sporadic and casual.” With the consolidation of land and wealth in the family and the stewardship of the aforementioned Morrison, a Scottish ornamental gardener, the garden became a focal point of the landscape.

During the Revolutionary War a Scottish prisoner of war by the name of John Morrison was captured and indentured to Charles Phelps and came to work at Forty Acres. Due to the strain put on local farms by conscription requirements, farmers were allowed to use captive soldiers for labor on their land, and the Phelps were no exception. Elizabeth’s diary mentions the arrival of “one of the Highlanders” who was quickly discovered to be a trained ornamental gardener and charged with the creation and maintenance of the gardens. This marked the beginning of the peak years of the garden: in Ruth Ann McNicholas’s thesis, she writes that “These years from 1770 to 1814 also represent the period when the grounds and gardens were in their prime.”

As the second and third maps show, the North Garden was replete with functional and aesthetic plantings alike, from apple trees to annuals to more practical plantings like squash, corn, asparagus (or ‘Hadley grass’), and various other vegetables. Its central focus was a circular bed of Scotch Roses, a celebrated rosa spinossima.

With the death of John Morrison in 1815 the gardens quickly deteriorated. In a letter to her daughter, Elizabeth Porter Phelps writes that “‘Our garden looks like a forsaken place…a great variety of pretty flowers which if there was anybody to dig the ground and arrange them properly would appear well… Beets, onions, here are very few, mustard small, through neglect.’”

Though the garden suffered after the death of John, it seems to have remained very much appreciated by the next generation of inhabitants, Elizabeth and her husband Dan Huntington. His elegant words paint a picture of the garden, pictured above, during his time and its scents and bounties. He writes:

“‘The roses, the seringas (sic) and the honeysuckle stand around the doors and windows, in all their fragrance, and the house at night is filled with the odour. The garden with its appropriate fruits and flowers, standing in regular order, shows us not only what we are by and by to expect, but begins already to afford us its choice delights, in the asparagus…pepper grass, lettuce and radish – not forgetting the green currants, hanging in luxuriant clusters.’“

Their iteration of the garden can be seen in the map above, which shows that half of the North Garden had been plowed for perhaps more utilitarian purposes than before. Even so, the Reverend mentions a “Mr. Woods” that had been doing the gardening, suggesting that the family retained their penchant for a private gardener and had the means to do so.

The penultimate map, which displays the grounds under Frederick Dan Huntington and Hannah Dane Sargent from 1865-1910, describes “overgrown planting beds” and seems to suggest the restoration of the North Garden to its former size.

The sixth and final map, wrought by Catherine Sargent Huntington, offers a more detailed account of the plantings in the North Garden. Though the flora is different from that which is listed in the prior map, the layout seems similar and there is agreement over the apple trees surrounding the garden.

Though there are no maps to reflect it, after this period it seems that planting at the house became more reserved. Ruth Ann McNicholas writes that “Plantings of lilacs and sweet mockorange around the house were controlled and sparse, framing and setting off the detail of the architecture, which, in many places, is quite intricate.” This is perhaps a reflection of the tastes of Dr. James Huntington, the founder of the Museum, who sought to highlight the history of prominent (male) inhabitants of the household rather than its long past as a productive farm, as can be seen in his transportation of the Corn Barn and removal of other functional out buildings.

With the grounds comprising an integral part of the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum, their future and maintenance has become a central question of the Foundation’s mission, particularly with a changing climate and the presence of invasive species. Thanks to an Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) grant, the Museum has begun work with Miguel Berrios, a Landscape Architect and Certified Arborist to create a Pollinator Conservation Activity Plan. The program, funded through the Natural Resources Conservation Service division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, will develop a plan to revitalize the local biodiversity and create a habitat for pollinators, like honeybees, that have been affected by the alteration and destruction of their environment. Mr. Berrios’s plan will mark a new chapter for the grounds at PPH, one that will hopefully recreate the environment that Elizabeth Porter Phelps, Dan Huntington, and other family members described with such affection.

Sources:

“John Morrison: Highlander, POW, Gardener, Tippler.” Revolution Happened Here. Accessed July 14, 2021, https://www.revolutionhappenedhere.org/items/show/33.

McNicholas, Ruth Ann. Porter-Phelps-Huntington House Museum: Restoration of Historic Ground s. UMASS Masters Thesis, 1985.

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Brotherly Conflict and Strong Wills

Amongst the collection of Constant and Gladys Huntington family papers, a folder entitled, “PPH Inc., Sale of Chaise House, Correspondence with Constant & James” was immensely beneficial for documenting the early history of the Porter Phelps Huntington House Museum. Although the folder’s title refers only to brothers James and Constant, correspondence between the two men is but a small piece of the complicated puzzle pertaining to the Museum’s early years.

**Historic American Buildings Survey. Arthur C. Haskell, Photographer. August 5, 1935.**

In the letters between brothers Constant and James, the conflict between them is made clear. Upon the death of their father, George Putnam Huntington and grandfather, Frederic Dan Huntington on the same day in July of 1904, the property of Forty Acres was passed to George’s wife, Lily St. Agnam Barrett Huntington. Upon her death in 1926, the property was split evenly amongst the six children. All six siblings, Henry Barrett, Constant, James, Michael Paul, Catharine and Frederic Dane were each given one-sixth ownership of Forty Acres. This equal division lasted until 1929, when James acquired a total of five-sixths of the property ownership by buying out his siblings, all except Constant. Shortly thereafter, James and his Northampton legal representation, William E. Dwyer Sr. drafted a Deed of Release to the property on June 27, 1929, of which Constant explained: “My share became his immediate property subject to my right of residence for life. I did not like this loss of ownership but I was far away and I wanted to be helpful so I consented. The deed is recorded in the Hampshire County Registry of Deeds, Book 857, page 388.” A Deed of Release is a legal document that removes a previous claim to an asset - in this case, Constant’s claim to the family property of Forty Acres. Years later, in April of 1955, Constant recalled that he “asked to execute papers at once giving my share to [James] and [his] heirs, on my death.”

PPH 1949 Brochure — **1949 Advertising Brochure**

Printed & distributed one year after the incorporation of the Porter-Phelps-Huntington House.

Constant’s correspondence with Prescott Huntington, a cousin of the brothers and a practicing lawyer in New York, began on July 15, 1954 with Constant requesting: “May I consult you about the Huntington House in Hadley? It is now in the possession of my brother, Jimmie. He is 74 years old, and if he were to die it would go to his second wife, who was a telephone operator in Amherst - an Irish Roman Catholic, much younger than himself.” Constant’s unsavory opinion of a younger, working-class Irish Roman Catholic woman could not change the fact that Genevieve Huntington would inherit Forty Acres upon James’ death.

It was Constant’s hope that James would “part with any of his ownership of the family place at Hadley.” Constant wanted to be “the absolute owner of one-third of the land and buildings, [James] would own the contents outright.” The goal of obtaining one-third ownership would prevent James from selling the property “without [his] consent.” Constant worried that the property would be sold to a non-family member, and the value (both nostalgic and historic) of the eighteenth-century homestead cherished by the family would be lost. Prescott advised Constant that his goal of obtaining one-third ownership of the family property would be complicated by many factors: Constant was not physically present in Hadley, the property ownership was originally split evenly between family members, the property was involved in the incorporation of the Porter Phelps Huntington House, and finally the property’s "$6,000 mortgage.”

Undeterred by the 1929 Deed of Release, Constant’s efforts to maintain influence over the family property continued. His efforts to obtain one-third ownership of the property eventually transformed into an effort to simply maintain enough of a claim to the property and contents in order to prevent a potential sale. James’ dire financial situation led him to place the $6,000 mortgage on the property, but James was unwilling to accept Constant’s offer of $5,000 in exchange for an increased ownership in the house and land. Another conflict between the brothers arose in May of 1955, when Constant was made aware of James’ plans to hold an auction of the contents of the Chaise House on June 4th. In strong opposition to selling any of the family’s private possessions, especially the furniture, Constant wrote to Prescott on June 6, 1955 and included documents in hopes “that it establishes my original ownership of one-sixth of the contents… I have not parted with any of my interest in contents, house or land.” His concern regarding the auction of the contents of the Chaise House was the “Regency Settee” and the “Empire Sideboard,” also referred to as the “Sargent Sideboard.” Constant claimed ownership of these furniture items and that they were simply “on loan” to James and the Museum. Once aware of his sister Catharine’s purchase of the sideboard, Constant writes, “it is perfectly satisfactory if Catharine has bought the Sargent sideboard. She and Alfreda and I only want to preserve house, contents and land for the benefit… of younger generations.”

As well as auctioning items from the Chaise House in June 1955, James’ fundraising efforts for the Museum materialized in other ways. Chairman Elsa P. Brown recorded the minutes of the Committee on Maintenance meeting led by James on November 3, 1956. “6,000 copies of the new picture brochure - “Forty Acres”, 100 posters, a new road sign and other items designed to inform the public of the historic house were financed. During the past summer there has been a 50% increase in visitors to the house. New memberships and contributions to the maintenance fund are enthusiastically received and urgently needed, as always.”

Minnie Ryan Dwight, co-publisher and editor of the Holyoke Transcript-Telegram with her husband William Dwight Sr., was a founding incorporator and life member of the Porter-Phelps-Huntington House until her death in 1957.

Possibly a catalyst for the increased traffic to the Museum occurred in May of 1956, when a “monastic pilgrimage” was held on Memorial Day weekend. The procession of clergy and community members from Grace Episcopal Church in Amherst to the Porter Phelps Huntington House was held in honor of Bishop Frederick Dan Huntington, founder of Grace Church, and his son Rev. James Otis Huntington, founder of the Order of the Holy Cross.

Fundraising efforts over the next few years became more creative and community-based. In 1958, Forty Acres hosted a “fashion show” of historic gowns from the collection donated by Catharine Huntington, and two musicals were put on in the shed by students from the Music Department at Smith College. Wider exposure assisted the Museum’s public relations in October of 1958 when Life Magazine’s coverage of the home and its notorious ghost stories was published shortly before Halloween. However, the income received by the Museum originated then, as it does now, from the generosity of the community, both in business contributions and personal donations.

Interested in supporting the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum today with a donation? Click here: https://www.pphmuseum.org/donate
Interested in Bishop Frederick Dan Huntington? Check out the Museum’s blog post on the fourth generation at Forty Acres: https://www.pphmuseum.org/leisure-and-image

Resources

Constant Huntington Family Papers: July 15, 1954; August 5, 1954; August 11, 1954; November 11, 1954; April 9, 1955; May 26, 1955; June 3, 1955; June 6, 1955; August 1, 1956; November 3, 1956; December 28, 1956.

The Berkshire Eagle. “Mrs. Dwight Dies at 84, Newswoman for 66 Years.” Pittsfield, MA. August 1, 1957.

Haskell, Arthur C., Historic American Buildings Survey. “Ext. - General View, Looking Northwest. Huntington House, State Route 47, Hadley, Hampshire County, MA.” August 5, 1935. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/hh/item/ma0732.photos.079652p/

Holyoke Transcript - Telegram. “A Saga of Free Faith in the New England Way.” Holyoke, MA. May 31, 1956.

Holyoke Transcript - Telegram. “Leaders of Nation at Historic House in Hadley, Founder of Episcopal Order Honored By Church.” Holyoke, MA. May 31, 1956.

Porter-Phelps-Huntington Foundation, Annual Reports 1949-1969.

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Etchings in the Window, July 22nd, 1837

In the Archives with Catharine Sargent Huntington

Leverett Center School Watercolor by Georgiana Sargent

A Sibling's Brushstrokes

Shays' Rebellion and Forty Acres

The Making of a Manuscript: A Look at Gladys Huntington's Editing Process From Turgeniev to The Borrowed Life

Excerpt from "Turgeniev"

Educational Endeavors

The Contentious History of Midwifery in Massachusetts

Gladys Huntington's Literary Circle

Lady Cynthia Asquith

Clifford Bax

Lady Gregory

Viola Meynell

Leo Myers

Schoolgirl Art Needlework Samplers

“Faintheartedness whenever I undertake anything new”: Anxiety in the 19th Century

Fisticuffs for a Good Cause

Alfreda's Autograph Book

Further Reading on Autograph Books

References

Alfreda the Artist

Further Reading on Commonplace Books

References

Strange Unheard of Things: Catharine Huntington’s Writing and Correspondence with Gladys Huntington

A Closer Look at the Life of Elizabeth Pitkin Porter

Botany and Watercolors

"You would find a bombing a very disagreeable experience" - Correspondence from Early WWII

Graphing the Gardens

Brotherly Conflict and Strong Wills

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