Research Trip, Post #4: History Repeats Itself

While I was in Providence doing research, I took a day trip to Newport to tour the Victorian mansions there. When I was younger, I always felt in awe of opulent historic mansions. It felt as if such splendor was a relic of an excessive past.

The reality, though, is that these megamansions are still being built today by the super rich. Mansions that, in a contemporary context, are appalling in their over-the-top expenditures and are objects more of curiosity than of admiration. These mansions, like their Gilded Age predecessors, are monuments to conspicuous consumption. They are structures that force you to wonder whether anybody should ever be able to amass that much money. Who really needs 24-karat gold fixtures in the bathrooms? (Donald Trump, apparently).

Somehow, we seem more apt to remember the less-than-savory ways some of today's megarich have acquired the money to build such houses. Lavish home expenditures are often raised in corruption trials; newspapers reported that Enron exec Ken Lay's mansion cost $7 million, and today's charges against Senator Ted Stevens allege that he took bribes in the form $250,000 of work on his house.

When I toured the Vanderbilts' mansion, The Breakers, I heard all about the marble imported from Italy, the family portraits, the size (65,000 sq. ft. and 70 rooms), and the decorating choices. But I didn't hear much about how the money--$150 million in today's dollars--came into the family. I didn't see the servants quarters or hear about how (poorly) they lived. Because let's be honest: the hard truth takes away from the romance of the house.

Good history is not romantic. It's irresponsible to leave out the realities of these mansions in the tours given to throngs of admiring and uncritical tourists. I don't think tourists would enjoy the houses any less for getting a fuller story; if anything, the realities will sound awfully familiar.

Research Trip, Post #3: Boston's Urban Wilderness

When I mapped the course I'd need to walk to get between two of the places where I was doing research one day--the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Museum of Fine Arts--I saw that my route was going to run along a mysterious patch of green labeled as the "Back Bay Fens." I knew that a fen was a swamp, so I wasn't sure what to expect on my mile-long walk. I was pleasantly surprised by a curving drive along the edge of a slightly-marshy wilderness.


The area wasn't always naturally beautiful. The park was created in 1879 to solve the problem of putrid waters in the area. Frederick Law Olmsted, the famous landscape designer, came up with a plan that flushed out the waters and restore the tidal marsh. The area was still connected to the sea at that time, but that changed in later decades and the fens are now freshwater. Little of Olmsted's original design remains, replaced by sports fields and formal gardens.

Olmsted's vision for the "Emerald Necklace" of parks he developed in Boston was to create

a ground to which people may easily go when the day’s work is done, and where they may stroll for an hour, seeing hearing and feeling nothing of the bustle and jar of the streets, where they shall, in effect, find the city put far away from them...

The appearance of the fens may have changed in the past century, but it remains a retreat. I certainly found it to be a calming walk after a morning of hurried scavaging in the archives.

Research Trip, Post #2: Cornish

My favorite American artist, Thomas Dewing, painted "Spring" on the left with Mt. Ascutney in the background. On the right, you can see the mountain from the loggia of Saint Gaudens's studio. It's possible that Dewing set up his models (who were usually friends in Cornish) in the field here.

On the first weekend of my research trip, I had a chance to do some sightseeing in New Hampshire. I've been wanting to visit Cornish, N.H. for years now. I first discovered that there had once been an artist colony there when I did a research paper in 2004 on Maxfield Parrish. Parrish was an illustrator and painter who studied here in Philadelphia and later spent his summers with a group of artists in Cornish. That group was led by a sculptor named Augustus Saint Gaudens and also included a group of artists whose work I got to know well when I worked at the Smithsonian--Thomas Dewing, Frank Benson, Kenyon Cox, Paul Manship, Willard Metcalf, and Daniel Chester French, to name just some of the artists. There work was part of the "American Renaissance" and incorporated classical influences.

The artists living in Cornish often gathered at Saint Gaudens' house and gardens. That's where a friend and I visited--it's the only one of the artists' houses open to the public--on the first weekend of my research trip to New England. These artists put on a masque, a performance similar to a play, in a field behind Saint Gaudens house in June 1905. I discovered that the classical structure that served as the setting for the masque is still there.




More pics are up at my Flickr stream.

Research Trip, Post #1: A business trip?

Wandering into an archive you've never been to is kind of like starting a new job. You don't know your way around, how things are done, or what the institutional culture is like. And you have about 20 minutes to figure that all out so that you can get started calling up objects you need to look at. Sometimes, finding out exactly what it is you want to see is the hardest part. With the millions of papers, books, diaries, journals, sketchbooks, and more that are stored in archives, finding the useful pieces can be a tiring search.

Fortunately, between doing Internet searches in advance and getting advice from librarians, I was able to get what I needed quickly. And while I was working 9 to 5 at my computer in a quiet room, it was much more satisfying than going to a conventional workplace. My favorite parts of working were always the times when I got to do research, so this exactly what I went back to school to do. I was touching paper people in the nineteenth century had touched, reading what they had written, discovering nuggets that were useful for my project.

My second day doing research, a single piece of paper stopped me cold and reminded me that while I might be enjoying myself, I was looking at real people and sometimes harsh truths. Sandwiched between some personal letters, I found the bill of sale for a slave. I'm sure there are thousands of these, but I had never held one in my hands before. What I found most chilling was the line that said that this man would be the buyer's property "forever." That's not something you'd normally need to emphasize when you sell something, but this was the sale of a person.

I felt vaguely queasy the rest of the day after that find. No matter how much you read about history, holding a tiny piece of it in your own hands will always bring it home. Was going to the archives a business or a pleasure trip? A bit of both--plus a reality check.

A simple pleasure

The past several weeks, I've been enjoying one of those little childhood pleasures I'd almost forgotten about: stepping with a loud "crunch" on sycamore bark scattered on the streets. There was only one sycamore tree in my neighborhood growing up, but I always loved walking passed it and crunching over the latest bark that the tree had shed. The sound and feel are satisfying in the same way popping bubblewrap is. I'd look down as I walked, changing the cadence of my step and carefully placing my foot over the bark with a slow heel to toe movement for a crinkling crunch or else a giant stomp for a quick pop of sound.

My neighborhood here in Philly actually has quite a few sycamore trees, so I've found myself occasionally swerving from my path to step on a piece of crunchy bark. It occurred to me today that I had no idea 1) what kinds of trees these were, and 2) why they shed bark at all. Through the wonders of the Internet I discovered that sycamores are common in Philadelphia and New York. Apparently their bark is very thin and peels off to allow the tree to grow, but beyond that, the "exfoliating bark" is a mystery.

In a way, that's satisfying. Childhood pleasures, even enjoyed as adults, are always more fun when they have some mystery in them.