Monthly Archives: August 2024

August 26, 2024

The Best Historical Series, Period.

By daseger

A newish friend of mine was going in for knee surgery a few weeks ago, to be followed by a period of still convalescence. She was preparing by assembling a stack of bedside books and a playlist of videos to stream, and so we were discussing her choices. They were all titles that I would have chosen for myself, but something was missing, so I piped up: what about North and South? I braced myself for the typical reaction whenever I mention this series, which is the 1980s miniseries about the Civil War with Patrick Swayze? YOU like that, Donna? But my friend smiled broadly and said she loved that series too and proceeded to talk about THE North and South, the 2004 BBC series based on Elizabeth Gaskill’s popular novel. And then we were off: she was pleased that she had someone to talk about this amazing four-part series, as was I. While North and South has an enthusiastic following in the the UK even 20 years after its broadcast, I rarely run into someone who has even seen it here in the US. We ran through our favorite scenes and our mutual admiration for leading actor Richard Armitrage joyfully. North and South is THE best period miniseries, even better than than that universal favorite, the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice (Colin Firth emerging from the lake!) in my humble opinion.

Actually, North and South is often compared to Pride and Prejudice in terms of their storylines and characters: both are romances between two people from different places and backgrounds who form first impressions which serve as an obstacle to their seemingly-inevitable union. But North and South is set decades later in Great Britain, in the midst of the Industrial Revolution and the early days of unionization, so its leading characters Margaret Hale (Daniela Denby-Ashe) and John Thornton (Armitrage) are much more engaged in the world around them than Elizabeth and Darcy. Margaret is a displaced young woman who is always reaching out: she has spent her entire life in the beautiful village of Helstone in the south of England, the only child of the local vicar and his more retiring wife. Her father loses his comfortable position because of his spiritual differences with the Church of England (he seems to have become a Unitarian) and so the entire family is forced to move north to the stark and colorless industrial city of Milton, a stand-in for Gaskill’s Manchester. They have the perfect Tudor vicarage in the South, and are reduced to a somewhat shabby townhouse in the North, with the Revolution right outside their door. There is no escape.

Everything in the South is filtered sunlight, golden green and fuzzy; everything in the North is gray yet still vivid. But, Margaret is not one to pout: she walks around her new city in her flat brown frisbee hat every day. That hat, it’s like the symbol of the series! (actually there are several–brown, black, and another of some indeterminate drab color) She meets new people, and Milton seems to aquire more color the longer she is there (that’s another thing—the cinematography in North and South is amazing; it doesn’t look dated at all; whereas Pride and Prejudice definitely wears its age). Margaret’s mother (played by the great Lesley Manville) is “delicate” and miserable; her father (Tim Piggott-Smith) is quite naive, so their daughter has to step up and be practical in securing them a home and this is how she encounters both a cotton factory and its owner, John Thornton, at the same time. Her first view (and ours) of Thornton is not positive: he is beating one of his workers who is smoking amidst all that cotton, which is literally floating around in the air. I can’t imagine anything more dangerous than smoking in a Victorian cotton mill so I immediately excused him, but Margaret does not. There are other factors that keep them apart throughout the four episodes: her class and his awareness of it, her ignorance of “northern” manners, her increasing interest and intervention in the working conditions of the mill workers after she befriends the Higgins family (Brendan Coyle of Downton Abbey and Anna Maxwell-Martin of Death at Pemberley) and his role as the BOSS. But all will give way, eventually.

There are a lot of losses: Margaret loses both of her parents and her good friend Bessy Higgins; John loses the mill. In between all these setbacks, the plot becomes more focused on their relationship but we’re still very aware that they live in a world of dynamic change. A scene at the Great Exhibition of 1851 is a good reminder of this change, but I also took it as as a bit of foreshadowing for national, regional, and personal unity. It takes a while to gauge Margaret’s feelings because she’s not sure of her feelings, but increasingly, John wears his heart on his sleeve: he proposes, is rebuffed, is convinced that his lack of gentility is the reason, yet still pines for her. Armitrage is just a cauldron: you can feel his energy, agitation, desire and disappointment. Even his walk is magnetic. To my American ear, he’s got the perfect Northern British accent, and his fiercely-proud mother (played by Sinéad Cusack) an even better one. When Margaret returns to the South, he stares at her departing carriage and wills her to look back, and then goes South himself, to her former home in Helstone where he snips a flower and puts it in his pocket (Zuzu’s petals!) He is not looking for her, he believes it is over but wants to wallow in his feelings in a very forthright way for a bit longer. Eventually Margaret finds her way North again (after rebuffing yet another marriage proposal and inheriting a fortune from her father’s friend), while John is on his southern indulgence tour. Their trains meet at the same stop, and we are treated to a glorious, very romantic, ending in the perfect Victorian setting: a train platform. It’s so perfect.

Off with her hat and northward!

I envy all first-time watchers!

4 Comments | tags: Literature, Period Drama, Popular Culture, Television, Victorians | posted in Culture

August 19, 2024

Quick About Their Business

By daseger

So I’m going back to the revolutionary summer of 1774, when Salem served as provincial capital and (with Marblehead) port of entry, Boston’s punishment for its Tea Party. Salem had a strong Tory contingent, but I think the Whigs were stronger: they prevented the new royal governor, General Thomas Gage, from even residing in the new capital. He was compelled to find housing in nearby Danvers, from where he issued a succession of proclamations, including one which prohibited “illegal combinations”. Once the Massachusetts Government Act came into effect on August 1, his power was increased dramatically: councillors previously chosen by election were now appointed by him, and town meetings could only occur with his call. Bristling under this royal representative, the most illegal of combinations, the various committees of correspondence across Massachusetts, called for county conventions to be held in September, and (illegal) town meetings to elect representatives to said conventions. This is the background to an incredible meeting that was held in Salem on August 24, right under General Gage’s watch. This notice from the Essex Gazette of August 16 represents the tensions in town: the 59th regiment were camped out at Salem Neck ready to defend Gage and royal prerogatives, and Salem’s Patriots were referring to those men who accepted appointments to the new Royal Council as “Sworn Enemies to the Sacred Rights of the good People of this Province.”

As you see, the view of the Patriots was that Lord North’s new assemblies were “unconstitutional,” and thus they went about forming their own. Shortly after the “Sacred Rights” piece was published, handbills appeared in public places in Salem, published under the auspices of the town’s Committee of Correspondence, asking the “merchants, freemen, and other inhabitants of Salem” to meet at the Town House Chamber on August 24 for the purpose of appointing deputies to the upcoming Ipswich Convention “to consider of and determine on such as the late Acts of Parliament and our grievances render necessary.” Governor Gage issued a responsive proclamation on August 23. Thereby forbidden to meet, Salem’s Patriots met anyway, and were clearly ready to meet with any “ill consequences.”

On the next day, members of the Committee of Correspondence were summoned to a meeting with Governor Gage at 9:00 in the morning, but the town meeting had already assembled an hour before. Gage (whose office seems to have been literally two doors down from the Town House) ordered them to call it off, but it had already begun, and was essentially concluding while the conversation next door continued (despite Gage’s assertion that he was “not going to enter into a Conversation on the matter; I came to execute the Laws not dispute them”). The town meeting elected Richard Derby Jr., John Pickering, Jonathan Ropes, Timothy Pickering, Jonathan Gardner, and Richard Manning Jr. to represent the town at the Ipswich Convention in September and promptly adjourned. And thus a well-run meeting—and time management–had prevented a potential conflict, as two companies of the 59th Regiment of Foot encamped at Salem Neck were marching towards downtown Salem that very morning.

Gage ordered the 59th to return to camp, but on the following day the Governor had apparently resolved that this resistance required a response and so ordered Peter Frye, a well-known Loyalist and county Judge, to arrest the leaders of the Committee of Correspondence on charges of “unlawfully and seditiously causing the People to assemble without leave from the Governor, etc..” Two men posted bail upon their arrest, but the remaining five refused to recognize the legality of their arrests and threatened Gage with consequences of their own. This was no longer a local matter; given the rationale for the unprecedented town meeting, it really never was, but these particular proceedings brought forth “upwards of three thousand men” who converged on Salem from surrounding Essex County, “with full determination to rescue the Committee if they should be sent to prison, even if they were oblig’d to repel force with force, being sufficiently provided for such a purpose.” Both the Judge and the Governor backed down: “His Excellency has suspended the matter at Salem by dropping the prosecution. Seeing them resolute and the people so determinate, he was willing to give up a point rather than push matters to extremities” wrote Boston Merchant John Andrews to his brother-in-law in Philadelphia. The Governor could abandon rebellious Salem, and he did by the end of the month, but Peter Frye could not: his property and family were fully vested in a town that seemed to resent him fiercely. Despite his public apology and expressed “hope to be restored to that Friendship and Regard with my Fellow-Citizens and Countrymen which I heretofore enjoyed,” Andrews reported that “Colonel Frye, of Salem … has resigned all his posts of honor and profit. Indeed necessity obliged him to, as he and his family were in danger of starving; for the country people would not sell him any provisions, and the inhabitants……. dare not procure him any” in early September. And a month later, when another “illegal” assembly was convening in Salem, Frye’s Essex Street properties were torched, igniting the Great Salem Fire of 1774. Salem was a tinderbox, to be sure.

Peter Frye, one of Salem’s most conspicuous Tories (Portraits in the Essex Institute) and the consequences he suffered.

2 Comments | tags: American Revolution, Big Events, Colonial Newspapers, Revolution 250, Revolutionary Salem, Tories | posted in History, Salem

August 12, 2024

Nancy Drew & the Peabody Sisters of Salem

By daseger

What do a fictional detective and three very real women of mid-nineteenth century Salem have in common? Well, books have been written about them, and in certain editions of these books there are silhouette endpapers. That’s it, that’s the post. Well not really, there’s a bit more I want to say but mostly I want to show. When I was a girl my very favorite books after my Black Beauty and Little House on the Prairie phases were Nancy Drew mysteries. I had a whole bunch and always wanted more. Most of my Nancy Drews were later editions—1960s and 1970s I think—and they weren’t great- looking books to tell you the truth. Nancy was on the cover, in whatever setting she was dealing with in that volume, and inside were some boring oval portraits. So I didn’t really think about the books at all, just Nancy. Then someone gave me an older book, it must have been one of the first editions of the series, and inside were these amazing endpapers of orange silhouettes! I remember distinctly thinking at the time, wow, older is better, older is (more vivid, more creative, more rare, more CRAFTED) better. So then I wanted more older Nancy Drews, of course, Nancy Drew BOOKS, not just Nancy Drews. I had also become more concious of what a book was as an object, or I should say simply conscious. So I sought out the orange silhouette endpapers (and found some more red than orange), then black ones, which came a bit later, and then finally “the diggger” depictions which are not quite silhouettes but still cool.

My Nancy Drew endpaper obsession continued on for quite some time, but I progressed to other books, including Louise Hall Tharp’s Peabody Sisters of Salem, about Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia Peabody of Salem, who had interesting Salem childhoods with their teacher parents and led quite engaging adult lives.. Elizabeth was an early childhood education pioneer and Transcendentalist, Mary was also very focused on educational reform, and wrote several books, though she is perhaps best known as the second wife of the “father of public education” Horace Mann. Sophia was an artist before her marriage to her fellow Salemite Nathaniel Hawthorne. (Sophia always seemed like the least interesting of the three sisters to me, but as she was married to Hawthorne she gets more attention). A more scholarly book on the Peabody sisters was published by Megan Marshall in 2005, but my heart belongs to the Tharp book, which I read and reread as a teenager. I was captivated by her ability to capture the sisters’ world (s), and I’ve always had a rather undistinguished copy in my bedside bookshelf. But last month, I came across a special sleeved 1980 Book of the Month Club/The American Past edition online, and promptly purchased it (books in sleeves are always a treat). When it arrived, I was thrilled to see its beautiful Salem-silhouette cover, but inside, a big surprise: endpaper silhouettes of the entire Peabody family! Apparently these are from a selection of “Dr. Nathaniel Peabody & Family. Profiles drawn from life Nov. 8, 1835” in the collection of the former Essex Institute/current Peabody Essex Museum. I just love them: a special summer surprise.

3 Comments | tags: Book Arts, books, Collecting, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Reading, Reading Salem, Salem Scenes, Salem Stories, SIlhouettes | posted in books, Culture, Salem

August 5, 2024

The Bowman House

By daseger

We were vacationing in midcoast Maine last week so I took the opportunity to visit Historic New England’s newest property, the Bowman House, with a few friends. We also saw the nearby Pownalborough Court House, which is one of the most extraordinary Colonial buildings I have ever encountered. The Bowman House is in Dresden, right on what was a very busy Kennebec River short at the time of its construction in the mid-eighteenth century. Now it sits amongst tranquil rolling lawn: this photograph is of the rear, of course; the front entrance looks upon the River.

The house is a very high-style Georgian construction, the type you see built in shipbuilding centers. It has a very charming air about it, partially provided by the architecture, but also by the restoration and decoration, which was the work of Bill Waters, who worked and lived in the house for decades. He died in 2016, after having donated the house to Historic New England with the qualification of lifetime tenure. So even though this house was built in 1762 for Joshua Bowman, a judge with Hancock connections, it really felt like Bill Water’s 21st century Georgian house: his personality shined through both his preservation efforts and his possessions. Since I’ve been working for Historic New England myself this summer, I’ve been thinking about the differences between the work of a tour guide and a professor, and one major one is that the work of the former is a lot more personal: you’re talking to and with smaller groups about more intimate stories rather than trends, causes and consequences. Historic New England’s interpretion focuses on the people who lived in its houses as much as their architectural history, and “Bill’s house” is a great example. (Although our guide did introduce us to local master builder Gershom Flagg, who built both the Bowman House and the Pownalborough Courthouses, and now I am obsessed!) Bill Waters came to the house through the Burrage sisters, Mildred and Madeleine, notable artists and world travelers who moved to Wiscasset in 1962 and became interested in the region’s historic architecture. In 1961 they purchased the Bowman House, and sold it to Waters several years later, and he and his life partner Cyrus Pinkham began their life’s (house) work.

Bill Waters with Bowman descendant Florence Bixby and the Burrage Sisters in 1968 (Maine Historical Society), and more recently.

So let’s go into the house, shall we? You enter through a single-story sun room which was likely a nineteenth-century addition (the house served as the office for an ice-supply business in the later 19th century) and then into the kitchen and a series of first-floor parlors and dining room adjoining a spacious central hallway—wonderful reproduction wallpapers throughout, including the pillar-and-arch paper that I think is also in Hamilton House? Throughout his tenure, Waters worked to bring as many period-appropriate and/or Bowen furnishings into the house, and everything seems perfect and very colorful, but also very, very livable.

There are several spaces in which he seems like he just stepped away…….like the bar (above) and lots of whimsy, like the feathers on his canopy bed (below). Artful assembly throughout, and very special mirrors!

We exited through the sunroom, a very comfortable space which reveals Waters’ appreciation of trade signs (as well as his southern roots, represented by a small image of General Robert E. Lee) and then drove down the road to the Courthouse: wow! Photographs don’t quite represent the scale of this 1761 building.