This past weekend I drove out west to the lovely little town of Cummington, Massachusetts to see the summer home of journalist and poet William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878). A Federal farmhouse transformed into a Victorian “cottage” at the close of the Civil War, it possesses an impressive profile and situation and I’ve wanted to see the interior for quite a while. As a Trustees of Reservations property in a rather remote area of our state, it’s only open to the public a few times a year and I’ve never been able to make one of these dates, but I was free on July 11 so I hopped into the car. It was a beautiful, breezy, old-fashioned New England summer day, free of the humidity that seems to characterize our new climate, so PERFECT.
While I will drive miles to see any old house at any time, this is one of the few times when I was motivated by more than architectural curiosity. True to my post from a few months ago, I have indeed been reading poetry as a way to wean myself off Salem as it assumes its new role as headquarters of the Warren “Museum” and Bryant was, of course, first and foremost a poet. I can’t really say his poetry drew me to his house though; it was more his prose—and one particular observation in particular. In his Letters to a Traveler, he recounts an 1843 visit he made to his aunt, Charity Bryant in Vermont, where she lived with her long-time partner, Sylvia Drake, in a relationship that everybody, including William, seems to have recognized as a marriage:
“I passed a few days in the valley of one of those streams of northern Vermont, which find their way into Champlain. If I were permitted to draw aside the veil of private life, I would briefly give you the singular, and to me most interesting history of two maiden ladies who dwell in this valley. I would tell you how, in their youthful days, they took each other as companions for life, and how this union, no less sacred to them than the tie of marriage, has subsisted, in uninterrupted harmony, for forty years, during which they have shared each other’s occupations and pleasures and works of charity while in health, and watched over each other tenderly in sickness; for sickness has made long and frequent visits to their dwelling. I could tell you how they slept on the same pillow and had a common purse, and adopted each other’s relations, and how one of them, more enterprising and spirited in her temper than the other, might be said to represent the male head of the family, and took upon herself their transactions with the world without, until at length her health failed, and she was tended by her gentle companion, as a fond wife attends her invalid husband. I could tell you of their dwelling, encircled with roses, which now in the days of their broken health, bloom wild without their tendance, and I would speak of the friendly attentions which their neighbors, people of kind hearts and simple manners, seem to take pleasure in bestowing upon them, but I have already said more than I fear they will forgive me for, if this should ever meet their eyes, and I must leave the subject.”
These lines are so endearing, so out of their time, at least as I understand the mid-nineteenth century. I found them particularly so as I was reading about a current controversy which has arisen because the first historian of this relationship, Rachel Hope Cleves, is accusing cartoonist Tillie Walden of taking liberties with her research and archival reconstruction in a new graphic novel issued under the very same title, Charity and Sylvia. You can read more about this dispute here if you like; I’m still grappling with it but once I read Bryant’s view of this now storied relationship I preferred to stick with him. And so off to his house I went, where I found another impactful same-sex relationship! But first the house, which was a much smaller and more humble dwelling when Bryant purchased it in 1865. It was his family’s homestead but, but the Bryant farmers had gone west decades before so he was returning to his roots. He raised it up, added a floor and on and on, and created a pastoral summer retreat from his beloved New York City where he spent the last ten summers of his life.
This house has the simplicity of a summer residence, emphasized by all the old wicker and spindle furniture, cotton runners and curtains, and pumpkin painted floors. And it’s not “done”: only the dining room and Bryant’s first-floor study could be called “decorated” and only with family possessions. Everything else looks casually placed—and the bedrooms look like someone just hastily made their bed and stepped out! It’s a hand-me down house with two notable transactions in its history: Bryant’s (re-) purchase in 1865 and his grandaugher Minna Godwin Goddard’s (re-) purchase of the estate from her aunt’s companion in 1917. Bryant died in 1875 and left the property to his two daughters, Frances Bryant Godwin and Julia Sands Bryant. After her sister’s death, Julia was sole owner and left the homestead to her cousin, companion and “chum,” (the word used in Julia’s obituary in the New York Times) Anna R. Fairchild, from whom Minna purchased it, donating it to the Trustees a decade later.
I loved the wallpapers: several looked original, complete with water stains. And that general air of they just stepped away, evident throughout the house but particularly so in the upper rooms. Cool closets! The Trustees guide let us go everywhere, even into the room (and there always is one) with all the chairs lined up (alas, too dark for a photo). I had other places to see in the area, but you could certainly make a day of the Bryant Homestead, as the grounds are lovely and extensive: there are two more dates for house tours, in August and September.
