Monthly Archives: August 2021

Mushroom Summer

The combination of my absence and the tropical weather has turned my garden into a wild jungle: I tried to tame it the other day but succeeded merely in clearing out all the mushrooms. I’ve never seen so many in my small patch, and pretty much everywhere I go. Mushrooms are endlessly fascinating, whether approached through a scientific, artistic, culinary, psychotic, folkloric, or toxic focus, or all of the above. Like many natural phenomena, mushrooms can dwell at the intersection of science and art, along with their greener companions in the forest and garden. And as is the case with other botanical categories, mycology is a field where women were able to make their mark before they could ever be considered proper and professional scientists. The most celebrated example of a female mycologist is Beatrix Potter, who illustrated over 350 species of fungi in the 1890s, before she turned to Peter Rabbit. Potter included cross-sections and even experimented with germination, and presented a paper (through a gentleman proxy) to the Linnean Society of London a decade before women scientists were admitted into membership.

Beatrix Potter’s drawings of Hygrophorus puniceus and Hygrocybe coccinea, Armitt Museum and Library.

I wonder if Miss Potter was influenced by the mysterious Miss M.F. Lewis, who produced three beautiful volumes of mushroom illustrations entitled Fungi collected in Shropshire and other neighborhoods beginning in the 1870s? You can check them all out at the Biodiversity Heritage Library, along with the bestselling Mushroom Book. A Popular Guide to the Identification and Study of our Commoner Fungi, with Special Emphasis on the Edible Varieties by the American mycologist, or mycological compiler, Nina Lovering Marshall.

Just across the Hudson River from Kingston, the birthplace of Miss Marshall, is the beautiful Montgomery Place, which is visited last week. In the first few decades of the twentieth century, Violetta White Delafield lived in the mansion and utilized its beautiful river-front grounds (supplemented by foraging trips throughout the Northeast)  to study mushrooms, producing several scholarly works and a portfolio of lovely annotated drawings.

Delafield, Violetta White (botanist, mycologist, and garden designer, 1875-1949), “Boletus spectabilis [?],” and “Clitocybe virens,” Stevenson Library Digital Collections, accessed August 30, 2021, https://omekalib.bard.edu/items/show/2483, 2346. Bard College, which now owns Montgomery Place, digitized a selection of Delafield’s mushroom renderings for the exhibit “Fruiting Bodies: the Mycological Passions of John Cage (1912-1992) and Violetta White Delafield (1875-1949).”

There seem to have been so many women enchanted by mushrooms in the early part of the twentieth century, I thought: there MUST be a Salem woman mycologist! And indeed I found one, at the very least a mushroom enthusiast and a long-time member of the Mycological Club of America, Eliza Philbrick. Miss Philbrick lived with her sister on Orne Street in North Salem, and she was extremely active in several organizations, including the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, the Samaritan Society, and the Daughters of the American Revolution. She even exhibited a painting at the Essex Institute, so I know there must be one of her mushroom illustrations out there somewhere, but I can’t find one. She is memorialized by the homemade period dress she made for a DAR anniversary dinner, which was bequeathed to the Peabody Essex Museum and featured in Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s Age of Homespun, rather than her mushrooms. So in lieu of a Salem mycologist, I’ll just offer up some of my own mushrooms, found or assembled rather than discovered and drawn: material mushrooms, of the seasonless variety.

Mushrooms in the dining room and kitchen: I just bought this cutting board at my very favorite Rhinebeck shop, Paper Trail.

 


Hudson River Valley Highlights

I’m just back from almost two weeks staying at my brother’s house in Rhinebeck, New York, right in the middle of the Hudson River Valley. I’ve seen a lot, and have many beautiful photographs to upload here, but I’m not quite sure how to curate them: no theme is emerging other than wow, there’s so much here. I’ve been to this region quite a bit over the past few decades, and I thought I knew it, but this longer stay has convinced me that I do not, really. You know I’m not really interested in nature (apart from its harnessing) so it’s not about the River for me, it’s about the houses and the towns, the built environment. Do I organize my hundreds of photos of structures and streetscapes by family (the Livingstons are everywhere), by chronology, by origin (Dutch vs. English), by size (the two cities of Kingston and Hudson on the west and eastern sides, surrounded by smaller towns and “hamlets” and the larger cities of Poughkeepsie and Tarrytown to the south), or by style? Mansions or private residences? Shops, or more particularly, shop windows (which seem to be curated here to a level we haven’t seen in Salem since the 1950s)? One theme which might work is that of stewardship, which I always think about when I’m in the midst of a region as architecturally and institutionally rich as this valley, but that will take some work and as I have officially entered the last week before classes that means I have SYLLABI looming: better stick to highlights!

Mansions and Cottages:

The stunning Lyndhurst Mansion in Tarrytown, designed by Alexander Jackson Davis for the Paulding and Merritt families over several decades beginning in 1838 and later acquired by Jay Gould, whose daughter left it to the National Trust for Historic Preservation; neighboring Sunnyside, the home of Washington Irving; Wilderstein in Rhinebeck and a detail from its stables; Montgomery Place and its stables, now the property of Bard College.

 

A Decayed Mansion with much potential: The Point, or Hoyt House, at the Mills Mansion/Staatsburg State Historic Site, Hyde Park.

There are several impressive structures on the vast riverfront acreage of the Staatsburg State Historic Site, including the Classically columned Mills Mansion, but I only had eyes for the Hoyt House on my hike. Designed by Calvert Vaux before his Central Park partnership with Olmsted, it just looks perfect, despite its decay (or maybe because of it?) The Calvert Vaux Preservation Alliance, of which my brother-in-law Brian is a director, is raising funds for the Hoyt House’s restoration and potential repurposing as a center of traditional craftsmanship training—talk about stewardship! I’m wondering if this cottage on the main road outside of the park is tied to the estate, as well as this adjacent entrance?

 

Alexander Jackson Davis’s furniture: almost everything is arched.

Chairs, beds, mirrors, even tables, so there is no “head” of the table: all at Lyndhurst.

 

Private residences: both vernacular and very high style—-all sorts of styles.

A Foxhollow Farm cottage, more contemporary board and batten, and two houses in Claverack to the north (I spent a lovely hour or so inside the white brick Hillstead, at the gracious invitation of Bruch Shostok and Craig Fitt); all sorts of restorations going on in Hudson; the lighthouse at the entrance to Kingston’s harbor.

 

And shopping! Mostly at Hudson, a bit at Kingston (Grounded) lured in by creative shop windows (which we need more of in Salem). History was in the windows too.


Summer Sunday Stroll in Salem

Sometimes I try to look at Salem as a tourist, a casual tourist taking a stroll, rather than with my historian/resident intensity. It doesn’t work for long, but I can pull it off for a few hours. I haven’t been home for very many weekends this summer, and I’m about to depart for two weeks in the Hudson River Valley, so I decided to take a long walk around Salem on a humid August afternoon, taking only pretty pictures (no new buildings). Two happenings inspired me: the annual antique car meet on Chestnut Street sponsored by Historic New England’s Phillips House (which did not happen last year and so I was REALLY looking forward to it) and the bountiful gardens around town, the products of our very rainy July.

I just love the juxtaposition of old cars and old houses at this car meet, which gets bigger and better every year.

More natural color: the Ropes Mansion and Derby House gardens are bursting with blooms at this time of year; the former is a formal annual garden, the latter a Colonial Revival garden of traditional plants: they are actually quite complementary. The Ropes is maintained by the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) and the Derby garden by the Salem Maritime National Historic site: I appreciate these perpetual gifts to the community by both organizations.

Ropes and Derby Gardens.

It was definitely phlox time in both gardens, and Derby was abuzz with bees and butterflies. While I am grateful to the PEM for the Ropes Garden (as well as the open Ropes Mansion), even the casual tourist is going to notice their other properties around town and wonder what’s going on there? Can I get in? The grounds of Peirce-Nichols have always been wide open, now they are closed (but not locked) and I can’t remember the last time I was in there or Crowninshield-Bentley. Ok, stepping outside of my casual tourist mode (I told you it doesn’t work for long): every time I walk by the newly-restored Daland and Plummer buildings on Essex, right next to the Visitors Center, I can’t help but think: why can’t the Salem Museum go here? The buildings are so beautiful, so convenient, and apparently empty. Why can’t the PEM install their recent Witch Trial exhibit in there, along with the wonderful “Salem Stories” still on display across the way, and the Bowyer sundial, the Pickman codfish, James Emerton’s Paracelsus apothecary sign, various Derby items, the rooster weathervane from the former East Church, maps, photographs and paintings by Salem artists, among many other things and create a contextual introduction to Salem history for the those tourists who do not come dressed in Halloween costumes in the middle of August? And residents too! A girl can dream.

The PEM’s Peirce-Nichols, Crowninshield-Bentley, and Daland houses + Plummer Hall, the previous location of the Phillips Library.

Back on the tourist trail. I must say: Essex Street east and west on either side of the pedestrian mall is looking pretty good these days: some nice restorations, street gardens, and window boxes. One thing that the casual tourist might not notice, but I sure have, are some improvements in the hardscape downtown: there are several islands which have been neglected for years which are newly-planted and newly-mulched, like those across from the old Custom House, below. Central Street is further embellished by two beautiful shops, Emporium 32 and Diehl Marcus & Co. Back up on Essex and further down, I checked out the newly-restored First Period Daniels House, apparently the “Oldest Bed and Breakfast in the US,” and then walked down to Derby Street.

Shop window installation by Salem artist Meg Nichols of Mink Studio, reflecting the PEM’s summer exhibition, In American Waters: the Sea in American Painting. Central Street shops, Essex Street wreaths, and the Daniels House.

Derby Street feels like the realm of the House of the Seven Gables and the Salem Maritime National Historic Site, both of which I’ve written about many times, but in the midst of the latter is my favorite little street, Palfrey Court, lined by the Derby Garden, several Georgian buildings, and St. Joseph’s Hall as well as the former “Rum Shop” (another building that needs a purpose!). I just love this little street: when I stand in the middle of it looking down towards Derby and the water, I get a better sense of Salem’s maritime-mandated streetscape than anywhere else. It’s the mix of buildings, the narrowness of the street, the absence of cars. Up ahead is the (relatively) new location of the Salem Arts Association, a perfect spot with lots to see inside.

Palfrey Court and the Salem Arts Association.

And returning home for the golden/cocktail hour!

 


Revolutionary Jersey

I turned my return trip from a mid-Atlantic family/research weekend into a day trip focused on New Jersey’s Revolutionary history which is, of course, plentiful. I had been to the battle sites of Princeton, Trenton, and Monmouth before, but never to Morristown, so that was my focus. And I snapped a few photos at Monmouth as well, just because I was driving by and everything was so green. But mostly I was in Morristown, where General Washington located two winter encampments during the Revolution, in 1777 and 1780. The town’s location was strategic then, and convenient now, not too far from either New York City or Philadelphia. It has a lot to offer the tourist seeking historical places, but its vibrant downtown is evidence that it is not altogether focused on the past: destinations that deliver for both visitors and residents are always the best. There are blue and red markers near the sites of Revolutionary structures that are no longer there, and the sprawling Morristown National Historic Park encompasses those that survive. So while we don’t get to see Arnold’s Tavern, Washington’s headquarters during the first encampment, we do get to see the beautiful Ford Mansion, where he spent the second, during the coldest winter on record, in comparative luxury (though with a lot of other people). We also get to see the Wick farmhouse and land at Jockey Hollow, which was transformed into one of the country-in-formation’s largest settlements with the encampment of some 13,000 soldiers. Actually I was going to spend more time and get a true Revolutionary perspective by returning to Princeton and Trenton, but I got sidetracked by a pretty little town in the center of the state, Cranbury. It served as the encampment for Washington and his troops prior to the Battle of Monmouth in late June of 1778, and so set the theme for my little daytrip: encampments rather than battlefields. I must admit though: Cranbury’s houses were so great I would have spent time there regardless of any Revolutionary connection, and so you have to too!

The Monmouth Battlefield and nearby Cranbury; the last cute house is home to the Cranbury Historical & Preservation Society–everywhere I go there are city historical museums or societies and Salem is very conspicuous in its lack of one!

The encampment focus is one which highlights civilian as well as combatant experiences and sacrifices. At the Georgian Ford Mansion in Morristown, you cannot help but think about Theodosia Ford, who offered her gracious home to General Washington to serve as his headquarters in 1779, two years after her husband died during another winter quartering, with 35 soldiers in the house. During Washington’s occupancy, which included his wife Martha, five aides-de-camp, 18 servants (the NPS is not forthcoming on how many were enslaved), assorted guides and occasional dignitaries also in residence, Mrs. Ford and her four children were restricted to two rooms. At Jockey Hollow several miles away, the surviving Wick house, a very New Englandish structure built about 1750, would have been surrounded by small soldiers’ cabins built from 600 acres of the farm’s timber, while Major Arthur St. Clair of the Pennsylvania brigade quartered in the family home. They all endured through the “Hard Winter” together. Numerous monuments and plaques testify to the sacrifices of the Revolutionary soldiers who occupied Morristown at one time or another; I think the contributions of the Revolutionary citizens of Morristown should be marked as well. But perhaps they already are, by the witness houses still standing almost 250 years later.

The National Historic Park at Morristown, encompassing the Ford Mansion and Washington’s Headquarters Museum (one of the first NPS museums, designed by John Russell Pope and completed in 1937), as well as Jockey Hollow. Some exhibits inside the Museum, including an altar-esque presentation of an Edward Savage portrait of George Washington. The park does not include the Jabez Campfield House, c. 1760, but it’s just down the road from the Ford Mansion: this is the scene of the courtship of Alexander Hamilton and Betsy Schuyler in 1780, so it’s now referred to as the Hamilon-Schuyler house! The Wick house and its grounds, which are beautiful, including reproduction soldiers’ cabins and a wonderful herb garden maintained by the Herb Society of America. Like New England, New Jersey is very green this summer.


%d bloggers like this: