Margaret Russell's Diary, April 1916

Today, we return to the line-a-day diary of Margaret Russell. You can read previous installments here:

January.

February.

March.

April of 1916 continues to be cold, with Margaret Russell reporting snow and cold temperatures throughout the month -- although on an April 25th drive to Swampscott she notes “things coming up well.” Indeed, the messy spring weather does not seem to curtail Margaret’s mobility as she drives to Swampscott, Rowley, and Fairview, walks in the Arnold Arboretum, and takes a short trip to New York City by train.

April is also marked by more domestic matters. Margaret notes attendance every Sunday at the Episcopal Cathedral Church of St. Paul, on Tremont Street overlooking the Boston Common; during the week leading up to Easter Sunday she attends additional services every evening at five. Margaret’s April also sees a sobering number of deaths: “Mary Russell died at three,” “To see Annie whose brother Egerton W- died yesterday,” “Mrs. Wentworth’s funeral at 10.” Perhaps because of this steady stream of passings, Margaret also takes care to note more happy life events: “Went to see Perry to hear about wedding yesterday,” “Minnie Ames engaged to L. Frothingham.”

In the midst of these briefly recorded yet significant transitions in others’ lives, Margaret also continues her intense social schedule of club activities, musical performances, botany lessons, and lectures on unidentified topics. Shortly after Patriot’s Day (“holiday”) she attends a performance of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, “splendidly given” by a cast that included soprano Johanna Gadski (1870-1932) and Johannes Sembach (1881-1944), both on tour from Germany.

With a view across the first four months of the year, as readers of Margaret Russell’s diary it is becoming steadily clearer exactly how deeply embedded in the upper crust of Boston’s elite society Margaret was.

 

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April 1916

1 April. Saturday - Walked for errands. Lunched early & went out to see Mrs. Haddes. Lovely warm day.

2 April. Sunday - Early service. Miss A- & I walked through Arboretum & back to Brookline. Lunched at H.G.C’s. Mary Russell died at three. Family to dine.

3 April. Monday - Hospital meeting - [illegible] lunched at Marian’s. Went to see Aunt Emma & Mary Amory.

4 April.Tuesday - Drove Miss Lamb out to funeral which was at the farm. Not many people & all arranged like Harry’s.

5 April. Wednesday - Mrs. Ward’s lecture.

6 April. Thursday - Meeting of M.G.H. Comm. Went for errands. Lunch club at Annie’s. To Dr. Crockett. Out to see Ellen at R[illegible].

7 April. Friday - Went to Swampscott in A.M. Concert - [illegible] - To see Annie whose brother Egerton W- died yesterday.

8 April. Saturday - Went to N. Y.  at 10. Morning did errands - Kate is at Colony Club & we dined together.

9 April. Sunday - Snowing. Went to hear Dr. Parkes. After lunch tried to see Annie Lew. Dined at Mrs. West Roosevelt ^also [illegible]. Went to Mahler symphony. Very nice.

10 April. Monday - Mrs. Wentworth’s funeral at 10 [illegible] chapel. Walked back to club. Home on 10 o’clock. Found Mama very well.

11 April. Tuesday - Walked downtown. Interesting talk at Chilton by Miss Burke. Lunched at Marians. Went to Cambridge & saw Mary Amory.

12 April. Wednesday - Went to see Annie. Took 12.25 for Rowley in time for lunch.

13 April. Thursday - Lovely spring day with lots of birds. Elizabeth & I met to walk. After lunch drove to Fairview & bought a lot of things.

14 April. Friday - E & I met to walk & see the chickens. Raining & then heavy snow. Home after lunch. Still snowing.

15 April. Mrs. Tysen’s reading - drove to Swampscott.

16 April. Sunday - Church at Cathedral with Miss. A- lunch at H.G.C’s - Went to see Perry to hear about wedding yesterday. Edith & E. Ballantine.

17 April. Monday - Dressmaker - Mary  - Lunch with Marian. Botany lesson & a drive. Church at five.

18 April. Tuesday - To see Dr. Haskell. Church at five. The Rev. George Douglas is preaching this week.

19 April. Holiday - Went to see Mrs. Bell & S. Bradley. Botany lesson & to see Aunt Emma. Church at five.

20 April. Thursday - Dentist. Miss Harman to play. Lunch club at Rosamund’s. Lecture on Jap. gardens. Church.

21 April. Friday - Church. Concert.

 22 April. Saturday - Took flowers to Mt. Auburn & Forest Hills. Mrs. Tysen’s. Went to hear Meistersinger with Edith. Splendidly given. Gadski & Sembach.

Johanna Gadski (1872 - 1932), German opera singer, soprano

23 April. Easter - Raining and cold. Church & to see Parkmans. Lunched at H.G.C’s. Family to dine.

24 April. Monday - Meeting of the CD’s [Colonial Dames] going to Wash. Mary. Lunch with Marian. Botany lesson at Cambridge. Still raining.

25 April. Tuesday - Went to Swampscott, things coming up well. Mr. Gibson’s funeral at Mt. Auburn. Back to Tuesday Club. Minnie Ames engaged to L. Frothingham.

26 April. Wednesday - Mrs. Ward’s lecture & then Botany lesson. Mayflower [illegible]. meeting. Musical at Emily Morison’s. Mary Parkman’s reception.

27 April. Thursday - Eye & Ear to see Eliz. Murray & then Errands. Took a drive & went to concert at H. Bigelow’s new house. Nice day but cold wind.

28 April. Friday - Snowing hard.

29 April. Saturday.

30 April. Sunday.

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If you are interested in viewing the diary in person in our library or have other questions about the collection, please visit the library or contact a member of the library staff for further assistance.

*Please note that the diary transcription is a rough-and-ready version, not an authoritative transcript. Researchers wishing to use the diary in the course of their own work should verify the version found here with the manuscript original.

 

"Thomas Jefferson Survives": The Last Letters of Jefferson and Adams

As we celebrate Thomas Jefferson’s 273rd birthday today, we also celebrate his renowned friendship with John Adams. Revolutionary partners turned bitter political enemies, they reconciled in their retirement, and their final words to each other, written just months before their coincident deaths on July 4, 1826, serve as a fitting capstone to a correspondence that has so justly become famous.

Writing to “Ex-President Adams” on March 25, Jefferson introduced his grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, who would deliver the letter when he visited Boston, noting that Randolph “would think he had seen nothing were he to leave it without having seen you.”

In this final letter, Jefferson poetically contrasted the present age with the one he and Adams had lived through:

“Like other young people, he wishes to be able, in the winter nights of old age, to recount to those around him what he has heard and learnt of the Heroic age preceding his birth, and which of the Argonauts particularly he was in time to have seen. it was the lot of our early years to witness nothing but the dull monotony of Colonial subservience, and of our riper ones to breast the labors and perils of working out of it. theirs are the Halcyon calms succeeding the storm which our Argosy had so stoutly weathered.”

 

 

Replying on April 17, Adams opened with his characteristic good-natured humor:

“Your letter of March 25th. has been a cordial to me, and the more consoling as it was brought by your Grandsons Mr. Randolph and Mr. Coolidge. every body connected with you is snatched up, so that I cannot get any of them to dine with me, they are always engaged— how happens it that you Virginians are all sons of Anak, we New Englanders, are but Pygmies by the side of Mr. Randolph.... Your letter is one of the most beautiful and delightful I have ever received.”

Adams, however, was never quite as optimistic as Jefferson was and did not entirely concur with the characterization of the present age as “Halcyon calms.” Seeing the attacks levelled on his son John Quincy’s presidency, Adams viewed the political landscape cynically: “Public affairs go on pretty much as usual, perpetual chicanery and rather more personal abuse than there used to be.... Our American Chivalry is the worst in the World. it has no Laws, no bounds, no definitions, it seems to be all a Caprice.”

 

 

 

Adams could only be so pessimistic, however. In spite of the wide differences between the men, the friendship between Adams and Jefferson had endured, as had the independence they fought for. And on that Jubilee when both Adams and Jefferson passed, John Quincy Adams recorded in his diary that his father’s last words were “Thomas Jefferson survives.”

Adams was without a doubt correct that Jefferson would survive as a monumental figure for the nation. If you want to learn more about the Jefferson that survived beyond the statesman, there’s still time to experience The Private Jefferson here at the MHS.

 

Correcting the Record

When searching for MHS material about Cuba to coincide with President Obama’s recent trip, I ended up on the trail of another mystery, this time related to the identification of a photograph. In the Winthrop Murray Crane photographs, I found an image identified as Theodore Roosevelt in Havana, Cuba, 2 March 1904. But there was a problem: Roosevelt was serving as president in 1904. News outlets had been consistently reporting that Obama was only the second sitting U.S. president to visit Cuba, Calvin Coolidge being the first. It seemed unlikely that I’d uncovered a previously unknown trip to the island by Theodore Roosevelt!

Here’s the photograph in question. The subject, whoever he is, strolls pensively through the tobacco fields.

 

 

In the interests of full disclosure, I’ll admit that I was the one who processed this collection as an MHS intern over ten years ago. I don’t remember what I based my identification on, but it wasn’t far-fetched; Crane was a Republican politician and close friend of Roosevelt’s. In fact, the very same collection includes three photographs of Crane and Roosevelt in Framingham, Mass. in 1902, during Crane’s tenure as governor of Massachusetts.

 

 

 

The puzzling 1904 photograph was apparently sent to Crane by a man named Arthur Plumb, who wrote on the back: “Compliments of Arthur W. Plumb, Havana Cuba March 2d 1904.” No mention of Roosevelt, and the photograph may have been taken at any time and only given to Crane that year. So both subject and date were questionable. (Probably the absence of Roosevelt’s characteristic pince-nez spectacles should have been a clue.)

Thankfully we have some great resources here at the MHS library. One of them is our resident walking encyclopedia, Peter Drummey (otherwise known as the Stephen T. Riley Librarian). He immediately identified the subject of the photograph as Charles Francis Adams (1835-1915), great-grandson of John Adams and former president of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Adams was in Cuba in 1890, which may have been when the photograph was taken. I compared it to others in our holdings. Here’s Adams as he appears in our collection of portraits of MHS members, sporting his trademark bushy white mustache. His jacket is even buttoned the same way!

 

 

I’ll close with an interesting, though unrelated, anecdote about Governor Winthrop Murray Crane documented in his papers and photographs. On 3 September 1902, Crane and Roosevelt were in a dramatic traffic accident in Pittsfield, Mass., when their horse-drawn carriage was hit by a streetcar. Unfortunately a man named William Craig died in the accident, becoming the first Secret Service agent killed in the line of duty. Here is a photograph of the damaged carriage.

 

 

April Fools’ Day, 1864: The Cartoon Antics of Thomas Nast

Happy New Year!

…April Fool! Though, according to the Julian calendar developed by Julius Caesar, April 1 was designated the first day of the year. When Pope Gregory XIII instituted a new calendar in 1564 with January 1 as the start of the new year, adherents of the Gregorian calendar ridiculed the old-timers who continued to celebrate April 1 as New Year’s Day, labelling them “fools” and heaping pranks upon them. This tradition of practical jokes and pranks continues today, though in harmless fun and enjoyment for all (hopefully).

 

 

Printed in the April 2, 1864 issue of Harper’s Weekly, Thomas Nast’s depiction of “The First of April, 1864” incorporates political commentary, Civil War satire, and general foolery. In the top insets, we see the antics of Union soldiers fooling their fellow men regarding the Confederate Army’s nearby whereabouts (top left), and Union sailors likewise blocking their comrades’ view of the enemy (top right). The bottom left inset depicts a husband and wife who have switched appearances, the wife sporting a coat, top hat, and mustache while her husband wears a dress and bonnet. In the center images, people have attached signs and strings with objects to others behind their backs. Nast gives the viewer a sense of his feelings for the Peace Democrats of the North, who were proponents of a cease-fire and negotiated settlement with the Confederacy, by depicting them as geese and donkeys in the top center image.

 

 

Thomas Nast, known as the “Father of the American Cartoon,” was a German-born American whose politically-charged cartoons wielded considerable influence over public opinion. His cartoons, many published in Harper’s Weekly, helped bring down the infamous “Boss” Tweed of Tammany Hall and influenced the elections of Abraham Lincoln in 1864 and Ulysses S. Grant in 1868 and 1872. Nast is also noted for creating the Republican Party symbol of the elephant and the modern depiction of Santa Claus.

To view this woodcut print in greater detail, visit the library in person and see if you can decipher more April Fools’ Day trickery in these scenes!