The Fix

Hemingway House and Museum

“It’s the best place I’ve ever been anytime, anywhere, flowers, tamarind trees, guava trees, coconut palms…Got tight last night on absinthe and did knife tricks.”—Ernest Hemingway

Key West in July. An explosion of tropical colors, pastel bungalows, red flame trees arching over streets and gardenias perfuming the air. Breezeless air hangs heavy; the rhythms of the island, slow and sweat-drenched. I came to join in the Hemingway Days Festival, an annual summer celebration of the author’s larger-than-life persona. This is the time when white-bearded Papa Look-Alikes stroll the streets in safari dress or khaki shorts.

Hemingway first came to Key West in 1928, accompanied by his second wife, Pauline, to pick up a Model A Ford roadster, a wedding gift from her Uncle Gus. Its delivery was delayed several weeks, so the dealership invited the Hemingways to stay in an apartment above the showroom. He worked on A Farewell to Arms there and fell in love with the sleepy fishing village.

They returned in 1931, bought the house on Whitehead Street, and raised two sons. The great thing about the Hemingway House guides is that they tell tales. Some may be apocryphal, but they certainly jazz up the tour.  Steve, our guide, blamed the stylish Pauline for our sweaty discomfort. She had all the ceiling fans removed and replaced with electric chandeliers crafted in Europe. With no central air and 20 tourists in our group, we relied on the sad upright fans in each room.      

The second-floor balcony gave us a burst of fresh air and a look at the nearby lighthouse. In the 1930s, it offered a beacon to Hemingway whenever he emerged from a bar – Sloppy Joe’s was a favorite – and sloshed his way home. Joe Russell, the bar’s owner and Hemingway’s buddy, became outraged when his landlord raised rent a dollar per month. He and patrons ripped out sinks, urinals, whatever, before they vacated. One of those urinals, flipped on its side, now adorns the Hemingway garden, although Hemingway claimed to have no recollection of how it got there. Today it provides a fresh water bowl for the cats, but when the lovely Pauline first saw it, she protested. Her husband prevailed, arguing, “I passed a fortune through this urinal.”

Forty-four cats – that day’s count – trace their origins to Hemingway’s Snowball, a six-toed (polydactyl) gift from a sea captain. Females are allowed one litter before spaying. Only a few toms roam the property; the remaining males are neutered and serve as “consultants.” Half of all the kittens are born with the genetic polydactyl trait. Steve explained Hemingway believed the polydactyls brought good luck and, since he was accident prone, he needed a larger share of luck.

Pablo Picasso, knowing Hemingway’s fondness for cats, gave him an abstract ceramic cat in Paris. A reproduction sits on a cabinet in the upstairs bedroom because the original, from the 1920s, was stolen in 2000. The thief smashed the cat before being apprehended. Steve snarled that Key West’s old hanging tree still exists, and suggested that lynching would have provided a more suitable resolution than the burglar’s short jail stint. If rope were available to our tour group, I think a mob could have formed.

Hemingway called Key West home from 1931 until 1939 and wrote 70% of his work here, including For Whom the Bell Tolls, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” To Have and Have Not, Green Hills of Africa, and “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.” The house’s interior reflects Pauline, but the second floor of the old carriage house, Hemingway’s writing study, pulls us into his world. Horned animal heads and fish hanging on the walls remind us of his passion for the outdoors. A small round table holding a typewriter anchors the room. The chair is the kind used by Cuban cigar makers. Visitors showed a greater solemnity in this room because miracles happened here.

Despite the heat, we regretted leaving the compound. The only thing to be done was cross the street to toast Papa, man and myth, with a cold mojito.

—Ann Marie Byrd

Celebrating Stephen Crane

None of them knew the color of the sky. Their eyes glanced level, and were fastened upon the waves that swept toward them. These waves were of the hue of slate, save for the tops, which were of foaming white, and all of the men knew the colors of the sea. The horizon narrowed and widened, and dipped and rose, and at all times its edge was jagged with waves that seemed thrust up in points like rocks. —Stephen Crane, “The Open Boat”

These lines open Stephen Crane’s (1871–1900) horrific short story, “The Open Boat.” Based on his own experience, the story reveals the brutality and randomness of nature as four exhausted men, imprisoned in the confines a ten-foot dingy, are battered by frigid winds and treacherous waves.

Captain Edward Murphy of the SS Commodore (pictured right) recounted his crew’s desperate struggle for survival. Actually, the delightful John Mann, a Ponce Inlet Lighthouse volunteer, assumed Murphy’s persona at Lilian House’s 2012 Stephen Crane Festival in March. Stephen Crane recuperated here after his harrowing experience at sea – although nightmares haunted him for the remainder of his short life.

Lilian Place, with its high ceilings, wood crown moldings and heart-of-pine floors, typifies Italianate High Victorian architecture. Laurence and Mary Eliza Thompson, among Daytona Beach’s first residents, built it on the Halifax River in 1884, salvaging their woodwork from shipwrecks. No bridges to the mainland existed, so residents and visitors rowed, sailed or took the ferry across the river (now the Intracoastal Waterway). The Thompson family lived here for 100 years, selling it in 1984. The Heritage Trust Preservation of Volusia County acquired the neglected property in 2009 and set about restoring it. Dr. Nancy Long heads the Trust and relies on an all-volunteer team to bring the house to life. Furnishings, on loan from Daytona Beach residents, create the feel of a luxurious 1884 dwelling. The volunteers deserve enormous credit for their efforts to date. They’ve repaired the roof, tented for termites, fixed water damage, restored the exterior, and repainted the historic building in original colors.

It’s no surprise that the house has attracted a supernatural spirit. Lucille, a ghost, is a long-time resident of Lilian Place. On the second floor, “Lucille’s Room” contains several dollhouses.  Lucille first appeared about 100 years ago, wearing a white, button-up high collar. In 1950 she appeared to a renter and said, “Don’t be afraid. My name is Lucille.” Those who grew up in the house have recalled Lucille’s pranks, such as turning on water in the bathroom, locking doors and switching on the vacuum cleaner. Dr. Long said the Lilian Place sensor alarm sounds in the middle of the night about once a week, so perhaps Lucille’s mischief continues.

Stephen Crane, a newspaper correspondent for the New York Press, came to Jacksonville, Florida, to write about gun running. He approached the SS Commodore’s Captain Edward Murphy in the dining room of the St. James Hotel (now City Hall). Crane, 24, already enjoyed a national reputation because of The Red Badge of Courage, a book remarkable for its time because the story’s told from a private’s point of view. Captain Murphy recognized Crane and invited the author and his companion, Cora, to join him for dinner. Crane had met the notorious Cora a few days earlier in a love-you-forever moment. At dinner, Crane broached the subject of signing on as an able bodied seaman, a convenient cover for his correspondent work.

The SS Commodore was the finest of the filibustering fleet. A century ago filibuster meant privately funded military campaigns against foreign nations. The Cuban Junta’s leadership in New York had acquired the Commodore, a former harbor tug, and assigned her to Jacksonville, Florida. She made several successful trips to Cuba at a time when it was illegal to supply guns to rebels hoping to overthrow Spanish loyalists.

The Commodore’s greatest fame, like the Titanic’s, came from her sinking. She went under on January 2, 1897, eleven miles off of Daytona Beach. Why she sank is open to speculation: perhaps the guns and money overloaded her; perhaps running aground – twice – on Jacksonville’s foggy St. John’s River caused damage; perhaps the heavy seas and unpredictable currents finally overwhelmed her.

The illicit nature of filibustering offered allure and excitement because capture by Loyalist Cubans could result in death by firing squad. There was precedent. A couple of weeks before the Commodore’s departure from Jacksonville on New Year’s Eve, 1896, however, filibustering was legalized. Without the worry of harassment, the crew hoped for an uneventful journey.

Crane and Captain Murphy conversed during their two days at sea. On January 2, 1897, while talking to Crane in the pilothouse, the engineer informed the captain that the Commodore was taking on water.

Three lifeboats and a dingy launched into rough, cold waters, the temperature estimated at 56 degrees. Separated from the other boats, the ten-foot dingy held Captain Murphy, Crane (pictured above), oiler Billy Higgins, and Montgomery, cook and steward. They were packed so tightly that any movement had to be coordinated with the others before making the attempt.

One of the lifeboats floundered and those crew members reboarded the Commodore and went into the water with her. A man swam toward the dingy. The captain ordered Montgomery to throw him a rope, and instructed the man to stay in the water so they could tow him. Panicked, the man started pulling hand-over-fist toward the dingy. Captain Murphy made a decision that would haunt him forever: he told Montgomery to release the rope.

They rowed and bailed for 31½ hours. The light from the Mosquito Inlet lighthouse (now Ponce Inlet Lighthouse) offered a beacon of hope. Crane wrote: “It was precisely like the point of a pin. It took an anxious eye to find a lighthouse so tiny.” As infinitesimal as the lighthouse looked to Crane, it is one of the tallest in the country. Its light, magnified by an oil-lamp Fresnel lens, stretched from St. Augustine to Cape Canaveral and 20 miles out to sea.

The dingy capsized as it hit the furious surf near shore. Crane had $700 in Spanish gold strapped to him and quickly shed his money belt. It’s still out there. They reached shore, but any joy at being alive was tempered by Billy Higgins’ drowned body lying on the beach. Crane recuperated that night at the Thompson’s home.

Six miles from Lilian Place stands the lighthouse. On the nights of January 2 and 3, 1897, lighthouse keeper Thomas Patrick O’Hagan and assistants carried the kerosene 203 steps up the tower, as they did each evening, in 40-pound containers. They gave Crane that glimmer of hope. The lighthouse property contains exhibits on the keepers and their families and a lens exhibit. Each night the lighthouse continues operating, although now a 1,000-watt lamp operated by volunteers provides private aid for navigation.

Crane died of tuberculosis 3½ years later in Badenweiler, Germany. With Cora’s arms encircling him he feverishly muttered about changing positions in the dinghy.

For more information:
http://www.heritagepreservationtrust.org/
http://www.ponceinlet.org/

To assist with renovation efforts of Lilian Place, contact Dr. Nancy Long: longnz1@gmail.com

—Ann Marie Byrd

Orchard House

“An old maid, that’s what I’m to be. A literary spinster, with a pen for a spouse, a family of stories for children, and twenty years hence a morsel of fame, perhaps…” —Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

Orchard House, home of Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888), is a 40 minute train ride from Boston’s North Station and – lace up your walking shoes – a 35 minute walk from the Concord (my conductor called it KHAN-kid) Station, through the town, and out Lexington Road. I felt so pleased about my hike that I later asked our tour guide if Louisa ever walked to town. Lord love a duck, she’d walk to Boston and back, a ten-hour round trip. Always athletic, Louisa once confided to her diary: “No boy could be my friend till I had beaten him in a race, and no girl if she refused to climb trees, leap fences, and be a tomboy.”

Little Women (1868), Louisa’s beloved classic, is set in Orchard House, so a visit is like paying a call on the March family. The Alcotts owned eighty percent of the furnishings on display. There’s the piano Marmee played in the parlor (pictured right), where guests sat as the girls performed Monday evening dramas, songs and dances in the adjacent dining room. Meg and John married in the parlor, where sunlight spills through the windows.

Tour Guide Christine Spinelli hastily differentiated reality from fiction. While Louisa based Little Women on her sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy were really Anna, Louisa, Lizzy, and May. That takes a bit of adjusting as our guide spoke of Anna (Meg) getting married in the parlor and May’s (Amy’s) drawing ability. Lizzy (Beth) never lived in Orchard House, having died three months before the move.

Bronson Alcott, unlike Mr. March, never served in the Civil War. He was a teacher and a leading transcendentalist who believed in the goodness of man, the power of intuition, and the spiritual strength of nature. His instruction of unorthodox ideas made the Alcotts itinerants; they moved twenty-two times in nearly thirty years. Bronson’s purchase of Orchard House in 1857, followed by a yearlong restoration, offered some stability. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, residents of Concord, embraced them and visited often.

Louisa keenly felt the burden of childhood poverty. At 15 she wrote: “I will do something by and by.  Don’t care what, teach, sew, act, write, anything to help the family; and I’ll be rich and famous and happy before I die, see if I won’t!” Writing became her vehicle for success from a young age.  Her poetry and short stories appeared in popular magazines, followed by book publications.

Bronson encouraged his daughters to keep daily journals and, if desired, share their thoughts around the dining room table. Family conversations tended to focus on abolitionism, social reform and women’s suffrage. Bronson wanted a household of vegetarians who ate fruit and vegetables from the property but Marmee insisted on meat occasionally.

For Louisa, a prolific writer, Bronson built a half-moon desk in her bedroom. May painted a panel of calla lilies on the wall facing the desk and a baby owl on the fireplace. Louisa wrote twelve to sixteen hours daily; she wrote so much that she trained herself to be ambidextrous.

(Above) Louisa’s Bedroom with Bronson’s half-moon desk on the left and May’s calla lilies running up the wall next to it. May’s painted baby owl perches above the fireplace.

She penned Little Women in 1868 at the request of her Boston publisher, Thomas Niles, who asked that she write “a book for girls.” She wasn’t enthusiastic about the assignment. Little Women appeared in two parts, but after the first part was printed, letters poured in, begging her to have Jo marry Laurie. Her publisher added to the pressure and Louisa, ever the women’s rights activist, bristled: “As if that was the only end and aim of a woman’s life.” She compromised by having Jo marry the stolid and scholarly Professor Bhaer. Laurie married Amy, the youngest March sister.

With the success of Little Women, Louisa bought a kitchen sink and furnace for the family home. Those who read my Cross Creek blog, may recall that Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s first literary earnings went toward indoor plumbing. A pattern may be emerging that suggests the practicality of female authors.

Louisa wasn’t the only breadwinner in the household. Her earnings allowed May (Amy) to study art in Paris. May’s sketches of mythological characters, especially women with their children, and biblical characters are visible on the walls of Orchard House, now preserved under plexiglass. Bronson encouraged her to draw, and if paper were unavailable, there were always walls. May’s bedroom, where most of the drawings appear, is a bright and airy addition, provided by Bronson especially for his artistic daughter. It’s a long, high room that was perfect for May, who stood 5’11”. May’s enduring legacy lies in the fact that she gave Daniel Chester French his first art and sculpture lessons. French went on to design the solemn Abraham Lincoln statue that sits in the Lincoln Memorial. To commemorate May, French used some of the first plastering tools she ever gave him on this piece.

Anna (Meg) married John Pratt (not Brooke) in the sunlit parlor. Family members rushed to deliver invitations one hour before the ceremony while Louisa decorated the room. Anna refused to wear a white dress, deciding that a gray one would be more practical for future housework. Emerson asked for and received permission to kiss the bride. Louisa, thunderstruck – for she had a mad crush on him – pondered whether a kiss from her idol might make marriage worthwhile. Anna and John remained married until John’s death ten years later. Louisa knew her widowed sister, now the mother of two, would have a difficult time financially. She wrote Little Men (1871), directing the royalties to Anna.

The Alcotts are buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. I walked through the graveyard to Authors Ridge, the resting place among the pines for the Alcott Family, Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. Previous visitors had left flowers and fountain pens at her grave. Behind it stands a white marble marker with her name on it, along with a circular sign indicating she was a veteran. Louisa served in Washington, D.C., as a Union nurse in the Civil War. Like many nurses, she came down with typhoid pneumonia. The treatment involved calomel (mercury chloride) and resulted in Louisa developing mercury poisoning. She returned home to recover and write her most famous work and more. Louisa died at the age of 55 on March 6, 1888, two days after her father’s death.

Our Tour Guide, Christine, noted that some women wait their whole lives to visit this simple structure. I understand that because I read Little Women the first time of many times the summer I turned nine, then I moved on to watch the sisters grow up in Little Men and Jo’s Boys. I’ve seen the different film versions of the Little Women (1933, 1949, 1994). Quite simply, the March sisters are among my oldest friends. My visit to Orchard House felt like a sacred pilgrimage and, in those rooms, I swear I heard echoes of the girls’ laughter.

Orchard House is celebrating its Centennial this year by offering events such as living history tours with the March Sisters, concerts, a play, and art competition. A blowout Centennial Celebration for families is scheduled for May 26-28, 2012. The Summer Conversational Series & Teacher Institute will hold “Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House Centennial: Legacy of a Powerful Voice” July 15-20, 2012.

For more information about Orchard House: http://www.louisamayalcott.org
Special Centennial Events: http://www.louisamayalcott.org/SpecialEvents2012.html

Use of interior photos authorized by Orchard House Executive Director Jan Turnquist

—Ann Marie Byrd

The House of the Seven Gables

Half-way down a by-street of one of our New England towns, stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst. —Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables

Boston, Massachusetts, hosts the Annual Conference of the AWP (American Writers & Writing Programs) next March 2013. It’s the premier gathering of authors, teachers, and publishers – over 10,000 attendees – in the country. Boston offers plenty to see and experience, and my next couple of blogs will focus on literary day trips from that hub.

The House of the Seven Gables, known as the Turner-Ingersoll House, is an easy 30-minute train ride from North Station. Debarkation at the Salem Station and a 20-minute walk brings you to this glorious harbor house that’s significant in American culture for architecture, literature, and social reform.

The property, designated a National Historic Landmark District, serves as a magnet for Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) enthusiasts. In close proximity to the Gables House, are the Nathaniel Hawthorne House, the Retire Beckett House (Gift Shop), the Hooper-Hathaway House, and the miniature Counting House, which offers kid-friendly activities.

Hawthorne’s cousin Susanna Ingersoll owned the house in the early 1800s, and Hawthorne visited often. Listening to Susanna’s stories about the residence’s history inspired him to write The House of the Seven Gables. Ironically, Hawthorne never saw its seven gables because, in modernizing the Postmedieval structure to the Federal style, earlier renovations had reduced the number to three.  With the addition of those missing four gables about one-hundred years ago, this house may be the only one in the country restored with the intent to recreate a fictional dwelling described by an important author.

Although the house in Hawthorne’s Gables loomed sinister and decaying, my visit occurred on a warm and sunny day; the nearby sea was calm, and seagulls swooped overhead. The only way to see the house is on a tour, so while you wait, visit the museum shop or enjoy a stroll through the seaside Colonial Revival gardens while you contemplate Hawthorne’s historical themes as presented in the novel: the historical past informs our actions.

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Cross Creek

“Cross Creek belongs to the wind and the rain, to the sun and the seasons, to the cosmic secrecy of seed, and beyond all, to time.” —Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Cross Creek, 1942

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and husband Charles left civilization in 1928 for a rambling farmhouse in backwoods northeast Florida. That decision changed her life. Marjorie found her literary voice in the stillness of Cross Creek, its natural richness and her lively neighbors.

A visitor to Cross Creek today pushes open the rusty, metal gate and enters 1930s Florida. Chickens and ducks waddle among overripe oranges in the yard, beneath citrus and palm trees dripping with Spanish moss.

Using her inheritance money, Marjorie and Charles bought Cross Creek sight unseen. The farmhouse, 3,000 citrus and pecan trees, pasture, barn, two mules, two cows, and 150 chickens cost $9,000. The Rawlings planned to support themselves with profits from the orange grove while they earned literary renown.

The barn houses bales of fresh hay, a wooden wagon that once hauled oranges, animal pelts on the wall, crates, baskets, mule yokes, and a surprised hen. Volunteer Dave showed off skin shed by a rat snake; he’d just found it in the loft. Tour guide Jeanne said Marjorie often encountered snakes in her house and the yard. Famed snake handler Ross Allen helped her deal with her fear of poisonous snakes by taking her rattlesnake hunting in the Everglades.

Born in 1896 in Washington, D.C., Marjorie developed a passion for nature on the family’s Maryland dairy farm. She earned writing awards as a youth and her father urged her to pursue English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She met Charles there. After graduation and marriage, they relocated to Rochester, NY, where they worked as newspaper reporters. They felt a greater destiny awaited them.

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