Tag Archives: Culture

October 9, 2011

Columbus Day

By daseger

A century ago, Columbus Day was not just an excuse for a three-day weekend; it was a serious national holiday demanding intense preparations on the part of local officials all over the country. I found two little descriptive articles about the Columbus Day celebration here in Salem in the digital archives of the Essex Institute Historical Collections, a long-running (1853-1993) journal of local and regional history that ceased publication after the merger of the Essex Institute and the Peabody Essex Museum. Both articles are from 1892, a particularly intense Columbian year due to the 400th anniversary of the voyage and the upcoming Columbian Exposition of 1893.

The first article is a virtually a minute-by-minute account of the Columbus Day celebration in Salem, including all the performances given by schoolchildren in every Salem school as well as the speeches (word for word) given by their various principals. These speeches all stress bravery (the “flat earth myth” established earlier in the century by Washington Irving is certainly reinforced), patriotism, and in an odd sort of way, diversity: Columbus was the first immigrant! After a day full of activities around town, the celebration of Columbus in Salem ended with a huge parade, in which every civic institution and group in the city marched. How interesting that the big October parade in Salem now is in recognition of Halloween rather than Columbus.

The other article is all about preparations for the Columbian Exposition on the part of officials of the city and the Essex Institute. Each state at the Exposition was to have its own representative house full of exhibits, and though a reproduction of the eighteenth-century Thomas Hancock house by the Boston architects Peabody & Stearns was going to be the Massachusetts House (rather than a distinctive “Salem House” in the seventeenth-century or McIntire style), the city of Salem was to be responsible for assembling an exhibition for the main reception room, so there was much discussion of what to send and how to send it. A selection of “portraits, paintings of old houses, Salem views suitably bound in albums, and historical relics” was chosen, put on display at W.H. Gardener’s Store on Essex Street for public approval, and then sent off to Chicago. Another difference in emphasis in the past as compared to the present: the focus was clearly on representing colonial Salem rather than global Salem.

The Massachusetts State Building at the Columbian Exposition of 1893, Winterthur Library

Addendum: Apparently Christopher Columbus was embraced by all immigrant groups, not just Italian-Americans–a song sheet from 1893.

4 Comments | tags: Culture, holidays | posted in History, Salem

October 6, 2011

Haunted Happenings

By daseger

And so it begins. Haunted Happenings, the city’s month-long celebration of Halloween, officially begins tonight with the Grand Parade from the harbor to the Common. If you scroll down the schedule of events, you will see that the celebration consists primarily of offerings by local businesses: Halloween in Salem is a commercial happening more than anything else. Rather than join in the festivities, I tend to hide out in my house during this long month; I never really accepted the connection between the Witch Trials and Halloween or understood the compulsion to profit on the persecution and death of innocent people. That said, Salem is far more than Witch City, and maybe more than a few people among the crowds who descend upon the city in October will come to realize that.

October in Salem: A commercial awning invades the sacred space of the Witch Trial Tercentenary Memorial and the Old Burying Point beyond.

Actually, Halloween has become increasingly bearable over the past few years as the focus of activities has shifted to family fare and the logistical problems associated with thousands of people descending on a compact city have been addressed: the police have become far more efficient in dealing with crowd control, and the city tries to clean up after everyone. A decade ago, it seemed as if no one was in control and that was scary. And everything is relative: more and more real businesses have been established in the city, to balance out the pop-up tee-shirt shops, sausage vendors, psychic parlors, and haunted houses. This particular year, I am also cheered by the fact that visitors who really care about what went on in 1692 have, for the first time really, several places to go for substantive information, orientation, and context: the new Salem Museum, on the first floor of the Old Town Hall, and the National Park Service Visitors’ Center down the street, where the new film Salem Witch Hunt. Examine the Evidence, featuring some of the most eminent historians in the field, will be on view four times a day during Haunted Happenings.

So if you’re coming to Salem, my advice (instructions): take the train (or the ferry), get oriented, look at some architecture besides the Witch House, go to a real museum like the Peabody Essex, have a meal at a great restaurant before your fried dough, and bring home more than a tee-shirt: the ensembles of witch hats and aprons at Pamplemousse are actually pretty cute.

4 Comments | tags: Culture, holidays, Local Events, Witch Trials | posted in Salem

September 30, 2011

A Secretive Salem House

By daseger

There is an old abandoned house in Salem situated alongside the Old Burying Point on Charter Street which almost seems like it is part of the graveyard. This is the so-called “Grimshawe House”, named for a posthumously-published story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Dr. Grimshawe’s Secret. The Hawthorne connection to the house began in the 1830s, as it was then presumably a lively place as the residence of Dr. Peabody and his three daughters, Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia–Nathaniel’s future wife. And so it also became known, in the words of several popular early twentieth-century postcards, as “Hawthorne’s Courting House”. Given its abandonment and present state of disrepair (as well as its site), I think that the romantic associations of the house are now largely forgotten; every time I pass by I see tourists having their pictures taken in front of what they perceive as a ghostly, perhaps haunted house.

And who can blame them? This is the characterization that Hawthorne gives the house in both Dr. Grimshawe’s Secret, and another unfinished work which was also published after his death (against his stated wishes, apparently), The Dolliver Romance. Both stories feature old eccentric doctors rattling around in their gloomy house by the graveyard. The narrator of Dr. Grimshawe observes that “….the old house itself, covering ground which else had been sown thickly with buried bodies, partook of [the graveyard’s] dreariness, because it seemed hardly possible that the dead people should not get up out of their graves and steal in to warm themselves at this convenient fireside.” Of course, the dead people to which Hawthorne is referring to are his own Hathorne relatives, resting out there while he courted his future wife in the front parlor. What a small world he lived in; no wonder he often seemed desperate to get out of Salem.

The House today (or yesterday):

The House a century ago: a 1906 photograph published by the Detroit Publishing Company, and a pair of postcards from 1911 and 1923:

A Frank Cousins photograph of the doorway of the Grimshawe House, circa 1891, and the present doorway.

This house has been in this state for as long as I’ve lived in Salem, and I have no idea what the future holds for it, although (apart from the graveyard) its general neighborhood has improved quite a bit in the last decade or so, with the transformation of the old Police Station across the street into condominiums and the addition of the Peabody Essex Museum‘s eighteenth-century house, Yin Yu Tang.

Addendum: SPIDERS play a big role in Dr. Grimshawe’s Secret, as evidenced by this title page illustration from the 1883 edition, below. I really like the image, and I couldn’t help comparing it to the Halloween decorations (already! It is Salem, after all) on a house several streets over from the Grimshawe House.

15 Comments | tags: Architecture, Culture, ephemera, Frank Cousins, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Photography | posted in History, Salem

September 19, 2011

Giles Corey

By daseger

The long life of Giles Cory, the only victim of the Salem Witch Trials to die as a result of torture, ended on September 19, 1692. Cory suffered from a rare colonial application of the medieval peine forte et dure (“strong and hard punishment”), in which accused persons who “stood mute”, or refused to enter a plea, were pressed to do so literally: increasingly-heavy weights or stones were placed on the body until the victim complied (or died). Cory, whose wife Martha would hang three days later, was generally cantankerous, over eighty years old, and a wealthy landowner who had deeded his property to his sons-in-law weeks before. He had nothing left to lose and therefore refused to cooperate with his torturers and is even said to have asked for “more weight”. (The few times I’ve been FORCED to attend the show at the Salem Witch “Museum”, which basically consists of a diorama plus audio thrown together around 1972, I’ve been horrified to hear laughter by the crowd at these words).

The Howard Street Cemetery, near the site of Corey’s torture/death.

Even though Cory’s death by pressing is unique in the American experience, there were several English precedents of the previous century. The most notorious case involved a Catholic woman from northern England, Margaret Clitherow, who was accused of harboring priests in her household during one of the most fevered moments of the English Reformation. Clitherow refused to participate in the proceedings against her as she did not want to implicate members of her family, consequently she was subjected to a particularly harrowing process of peine forte et dure that brought about her death (and martyrdom) on Good Friday, 1586 and canonization shortly thereafter.

The Torture/execution of Margaret Clitherow, 1586

There was definitely a judicial reaction to the Clitherow case, and in the seventeenth century pressing was used sparingly and only as a death sentence for convicted murderers like George Strangwayes (1658) and Henry Jones (1672). So the Corey case is conspicuous in the relatively late use of peine forte et dure as judicial torture. But then again, everything about the Salem Witch Trials is late from the European perspective.

To me, it seems rather obvious that Cory’s passive resistance to the proceedings of 1692 was motivated by disgust rather than fear of forfeiture of his considerable estate upon conviction: in July of that year he had already deeded his lands in Salem Farms (now West Peabody) to his sons-in-law William Cleaves and Jonathan Moulton, “being under great troubles and affliction…and knowing not how soon I may depart this life”.

Because of his defiance, Corey has been among the most revered of Salem victims in both literary and historical interpretations of the trials after 1800, including two nineteenth-century plays, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Giles Corey of the Salem Farms (1868) and Mary Wilkins’ Giles Corey, Yeoman (1893). In Arthur Miller’s Crucible, the Giles character is irascible and independent, a characterization that is somewhat supported by the historical evidence. Like the death of Margaret Clitherow over a century before, Corey’s horrible death went a long way towards ending the circumstances that produced it.

The Giles Cory Marker on Crystal Lake in West Peabody, Massachusetts, in the midst of what was previously Corey’s 150-acre property.

8 Comments | tags: Culture, England, Witch Trials | posted in History, Salem

September 4, 2011

Women in White Dresses

By daseger

Labor Day, a federal holiday since 1894, used to represent lots of things: first and foremost, it was a day to celebrate labor, and consequently parades were held in cities large and small. I don’t see this kind of commemoration occurring anymore, but maybe it still does, somewhere in America. With Memorial Day, Labor Day created a nice bookmark to frame/end summer, and this is still a role it plays today. It also came to symbolize back to school, back to regular schedules, back to structure, which is also a role that it has retained. And on a more frivolous note, Labor Day meant the end of white: women (and men) were supposed to put away their summer whites and bring out their darker, more serious clothes. I don’t think that this is still a fashion rule (hence winter whites), but the Labor Day holiday provides an opportunity to look back at the wearing of white.

Women in their white dresses, circa 1795-1970:

James Northcote, Lady Wearing a White Dress, 1795.Victoria & Albert Museum

Photograph by Thomas Eakins of a “Woman in White laced-bodice Dress” in his studio, 1880s. Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Two images from the Smithsonian Art Inventories: William Merritt Chase, Woman in White, 1886 (Munson-Williams-Proctor Museum of Art) and Cecilia Beaux, New England Woman (Mrs. Jedidiah H. Richards), 1895 (Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art).

Turn-of-the-century women in white: a photograph from the Bieber Studio in New York City, an advertisement from the Ladies’ Home Journal, poster by Charles Cox and magazine cover by Ruth Eastman, all New York Public Library Digital Gallery.

Les Grandes Modeles, 1934

Two editions (1947 & 2010) of The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, first published in 1860.

Leon Levinstein, Beach Scene: Woman in White Dress Asleep in Sand, Coney Island, 1970s. Metropolitan Museum of Art

This photograph looks much earlier to me (look at the shoes) but portrays a nice end of summer image. The party’s over!

5 Comments | tags: Art, Culture, holidays, Photography | posted in History

August 31, 2011

Street Art in Salem

By daseger

At the beginning of the Summer, four large metal sculptures were installed on the streets of downtown Salem, the first pieces of a “full public art program” to follow. I wasn’t sure about these sculptures at first (both as works and in situ), but I’ve been watching people, especially children, interact with them for several months, and now I like their presence on the street. The sculptures, by Massachusetts artist Rob Lorenson, will be on Essex and Washington streets until early November.

Unfortunately there is one sculpture downtown that will not be leaving the streets of Salem in November: the Bewitched statue of Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha, which was inflicted on the city by the executives of TV Land (with the full cooperation of the city government) in 2005. Not only is it a terrible piece of “art” (just look at the “cloud” pedestal! ) but it demeans Salem’s history and the prominence of its site, Town House Square, which has long been the city’s political and commercial center.

Town House Square in 1906. The Samantha statue is located near the street opening at center left.

In stark contrast to the Samantha statue in terms of taste, historical relevance, and artistic merit is the Witch Trials Memorial installation adjacent to the Charter Street cemetery in downtown Salem, dedicated in August of 1992 by Elie Wiesel in a ceremony that marked the culmination of the year-long commemoration of the Trials’ tercentenary. Designed by artists Maggie Smith and James Cutler, the Memorial features a solemn courtyard enclosed by a stone wall incorporating 20 cantilevered steps, inscribed with the name and date of execution of each victim of 1692. It is always a poignant place to visit, and was all the more so on an absolutely beautiful afternoon with the remnants of Irene strewn about.

2 Comments | tags: Art, Culture, design, Witch Trials | posted in Salem

August 1, 2011

Tiny Street People

By daseger

I’ve received quite a few emails about a photograph of an installation of bronze bathers in the Hartley Mason Park in my hometown of York Harbor in a post from about a month ago, and I’ve been thinking (and looking) at those figures quite a bit myself. Here are a few more images as a reminder.

One of the reasons I’ve been thinking about these little figures is that I neglected to mention the artist, Sumner Weinbaum, who has been active in the Seacoast arts scene for some time. Another reason is that they remind me of a photograph I purchased about a decade ago of another little bronze figure, placed on a McIntire fence here in Salem. The artist (who was local and whose name I cannot remember! It is nowhere to be found on the photograph; if anyone knows please tell me) cast the figure, took the photograph, and (of course) made the placement. Here’s an image, not very good, because it is a photograph of a photograph.

There’s something about really small human figures placed in real-sized settings that is quite captivating. I like the York Harbor bathers both because they are small and active, engaged in familiar human activities, but the little Salem figure (not quite as detailed) also look alive even though he’s not doing anything. This piece is also interesting because it’s kind of the reverse of the Renaissance man-is-the-measure-of-all-things ideal.

Two London-based artists have really run with the little-people-in-a-big-world theme. An anonymous artist who goes by the name of Slinkachu creates images of sequenced street scenarios with the miniature figures used in architectural models, and Isaac Cordal places his cement street figures on streets all over Europe. Here is a sample of Slinkachu’s work entitled Boys Own Adventures; you can find lots more at The Little People Project (Abandoning little people on the streets since 2006).

Cordal’s work has a strong environmental theme, as illustrated by these images (Remembrances from Nature) from his recent book, Cement Eclipses: Small Interventions in the Big City.

8 Comments | tags: Art, Culture, England, Maine, Photography, Salem | posted in Design, Home

July 28, 2011

Favorite Garden Books

By daseger

While rearranging my bookcases the other day, it became increasingly clear that I have too many books on gardens and gardening. They’re all lovely and probably useful too, but I consult very few of them. There are maybe 20 books on herbs, testaments to the time when I was trying desperately to cultivate a garden of medieval herbs (primarily plague cures) in a plot that wasn’t particularly suitable. I made a pile of garden design books, whose advice I have completely ignored. And then there are the lavish “gardens of the rich and famous” books, most of which I received as gifts. These are beautiful but not really inspirational (rather the reverse). My favorite garden books were not even in a bookcase; they were piled by (or under) my bed, or on my desk, places where I can frequently access them. And here they are, in no particular order, with brief descriptions of why I like them so much. Please send recommendations! It looks like I’m going to purge my bookcases so I’ll have more space.

Penelope Hobhouse, Plants in Garden History. I have several of Penelope Hobhouse’s books but I like this one the best. The operative words in the title are “plants” and “history”, two things I like very much. As you can see from the subtitle, the thesis of the book is the influence of plants on garden design through the ages, and the illustrations are really amazing. A perfect book to leaf through casually, or with purpose.

Betsy G. Fryberger, The Changing Garden. Four Centuries of European and American Art. This book is more art history than garden history, but it’s still really beautiful, and instructive in its own (not practical) way.

Charles Quest-Ritson, The English Garden. A Social History. Like Fryberger’s book, this book uses plants and gardens as means to engage in a broader cultural history. This is an illustrated social history of English gardeners from 1500 to the present.

Alice Morse Earle, Old Time Gardens, Newly Set Forth. A big leap from the academic to the romantic. Massachusetts-born Alice Morse Earle was one of the major purveyors of “colonial” culture at the turn of the last century. She published books on ye olde everything: houses, clothing, pastimes, punishments, and gardens. First published in 1901, Old Time Gardens seems to have been continually in print in the first half of the twentieth century. My copy is a first edition, with a beautiful Arts & Crafts cover and several illustrations of “old Salem” gardens. I read it more for its charm than its accuracy.

Karan Davis Cutler, The New England Gardener’s Book of Lists. Another big leap, towards the purely practical. As the title informs, this book is nothing but lists, of plants for shade, sun, different soil conditions, etc…made by professional and amateur gardeners and nursery people. This book is New England-focused, but I’m sure there must be equivalents for other regions. I find this book so useful that, rather than leaving it by my bed or on my desk, I leave it in my car.

The Salem Garden Club, Old Salem Gardens, first published in 1946. This pamphlet was written by Mrs. Mable C.H. Pollack, who was no dilettante. She did a lot of research (more than Earle, I think) and the end result is a pretty substantive little book, better than your standard-issue garden club guide (although I have to admit that I’m a bit biased). Sometimes I carry it with me on walks around town, looking for forgotten gardens.

2 Comments | tags: books, Culture, gardening | posted in Home

July 12, 2011

After the Duel

By daseger

I’m a day late to commemorate the infamous duel which took place on July 11, 1804 between sitting Vice President Aaron Burr and the first Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, resulting in the latter’s death. Better late than never, however, as this was a shocking and momentous moment in the new nation’s history. If you just run a cursory search in a digital database such as Early American Imprints, you can easily uncover a litany of literary tributes to the martyred Hamilton, in the form of eulogies, sermons, letters, poems and accounts of the dreadful event and its aftermath published in newspapers all over the country in the summer of 1804.

With time came more deliberative reactions to the Duel and attempts to memorialize it, in the form of historical accounts, prints of the scene (Weehawken, New Jersey) and even souvenir plates and historical romances (after all, what is more romantic than a duel?). The first marble statue to be produced in the United States, sculptor Ball Hughes’ Statue of Hamilton, was erected in the Grand Rotunda of the New York Merchants Exchange in 1835, only to be destroyed six months later in the Great Fire that swept the city later that year.

Print illustration of the Hughes Hamilton Statue, NYPL

1830 Print of Caleb Wheeler Etching, NYPL

Booth's History of New York, 1886

Duel Souvenir Plate, Collection of the New York Historical Society

Cover of Blennerhassett, or the Decrees of Fate. A Romance founded upon Events in American History by Charles Felton Pidgin, 1901

Salem was no exception in the expressed immediate outpouring of anger and grief at the killing of Hamilton, but the most lasting tribute the Federalist icon was built of bricks, not words: the soon-to-be completed “new” Assembly House on Chestnut Street, designed by Samuel McIntire, was named Hamilton Hall in his honor. For me, this building is quite literally the monument next door. I enjoy seeing the aged russet bricks and McIntire’s spectacular carved eagle and swags every day, but I must admit that I don’t immediately think about Hamilton when I do so.

Hamilton Hall in 1940, HABS, Library of Congress

2 Comments | tags: Architecture, Chestnut Street, Culture, Samuel McIntire | posted in History, Salem

July 1, 2011

Combustible Cards

By daseger

At the turn of the last century Fourth of July postcards were extremely popular, purchased in six-packs to send out to family and friends. There are patriotic cards, featuring eagles and flags, George Washington, Lady Liberty and Uncle Sam, warm-and-fuzzy cards with lots of children and pets running around, and humorous cards, but all of these cards generally feature the prominent placement of firecrackers: as symbols, as motifs, and as active devices that are blowing up people and animals.

It is a paradoxical coincidence that just as these postcards were being published, several thousand people were sustaining injuries every year from firecracker-related incidents, prompting a “Safe and Sane July Fourth” movement in the first decade of the twentieth century. Still, even the most sacred American symbolic figures–Lady Liberty, George Washington, Uncle Sam, and the Patriot–are still pictured going literally going up in the flames of firecracker fire.

There are several Independence Day postcards illustrating a darkly humorous acknowledgement of the dangers of firecrackers like the one below: this particular holiday’s version of “Vinegar Valentines”.

It is always mischievous boys causing trouble, to themselves and some poor animal, even rather illogical ones. Girls are generally more decorative than active, but they always have firecrackers in their midst, even if they’re not setting them off.

Two competing cards: one that actually asks you to light it up (it’s a piece of paper, I can’t discern any special effects other than burning) and another that encourages you to have a safe and sane holiday. A pretty boring passive image; I can see why firecrackers were more in demand.

Probably the most effective postcards in terms of their stylistic simplicity are those that don’t picture people (or animals) at all: merely firecrackers.