Sextant Volume XI, Fall 2000. by Sextant: The Journal of Salem State University

SEXTANT The Journal of Salem State College

Fall 2000

Volume XI, No. 1

editor’s

Note

President Nancy D. Harrington Vice President of Academic Affairs Albert J. Hamilton

Assistant Editor William Coyle, English Editorial Board Susan Case, Biology Richard Lewis, Art John Mack, Management Eileen Margerum, English Michael Prochilo, English Eleanor Reynolds, Library Ellen Rintell, Education Vera Sheppard, Theatre & Speech Donna Vinson, History John Volpacchio, Art Design & Production of Volume XI, No. 1 Susan McCarthy Photography Leon Jackson, Instructional Media Mark Keene, Art Department Publications Carol Morgan, Assistant Director Joyce Rossi-Demas, Graphic Artist Susan McCarthy, Graphic Artist

Sextant is published biannually by the faculty of Salem State College. Opinions expressed by writers are their own and do not necessarily reflect college policy. Copyright © 2000 Salem State College 352 Lafayette Street, Salem, MA 01970-5353 Telephone: 978-542-6253 Email: sextant@salemstate.edu www.salemstate.edu/sextant/

Other than this moment in time, we have the past. And it is only by reflecting on the past that we come to understand ourselves and the world in which we live. Rod Kessler, in his engaging review of The Hidden Writer, reminds us of the important role diaries and journals—records of the past—play in helping us to examine our private lives and the lives of others. Bill Thomson, writing in the spirit of Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation, reminisces about that generation of people who attended Salem Teachers College. Together with Susan Edwards, who compiled photos from the College’s archives, Bill provides us with a glimpse of the lives of people who lived through the calamities of the Great Depression and the Second World War. While the graveyard pictured on the cover of this issue of Sextant might remind us of our own mortality, it is an appropriate metaphor for the past as it often brings to mind people who are prologue to our present. Kim Underhill reviews the life and poetry of Hannah Flagg Gould, a nineteenth-century poet, whose insights into life and death are still compelling. In a similar vein, Julie Whitlow provides us a view of one life in the twentieth century by recording the words of Emma Batiste Phillips, a granddaughter of slaves who worked all of her life as a domestic servant in the rural South. Of course, when we speak of past we are speaking of history. Al Hamilton tackles an extensive history with his review of Gore Vidal’s major writings. While much of Vidal’s writings deal with world history, we also discover the degree to which Vidal’s personal history is reflected in those writings. And Mark Raudzens’s portfolio, though created on the computer, draws inspiration from the ancient art of pottery. It was George Santayana who wrote “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Unfortunately, even when we can remember the past, we are often unable to benefit from it. Marion Kilson, in her leadoff article on the Underground Railroad, reminds us of a disturbing past that continues to haunt us. How many people have sacrificed their lives in the name of freedom? Liberty, alas, is all too often a right that must be fought for. The gravestones on the cover are those of men and women who lived in Newbury, Massachusetts, many of whom experienced the violence of the American Revolution. —Margaret Vaughan

The Liberty Bell, a traditional symbol of U.S. freedom, was hung in the Philadelphia State House (later renamed Independence Hall) steeple in June 1753. It bears the motto, “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” The name “Liberty Bell” was first used in an 1839 Abolitionist pamphlet. It cracked, according to tradition, while tolling for the funeral of Chief Justice Marshall in 1835. It was rung for the last time for George Washington’s birthday in 1846, during which it cracked irreparably. © 1996 Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc.

Editor Margaret Vaughan, Psychology

What’s past is prologue. William Shakespeare, The Tempest [c. 1611]

SEXTANT

Fall 2000

Lithograph by Charles White, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, African American Odyssey

E S S A

Volume XI, No. 1

Y S

Running for Freedom Marion Kilson

Emma Batiste Phillips: A Life at the Turn of the Century Julie Whitlow

“Where All in Nothing Ends”: Reflections on the Poetry of Hannah Flagg Gould Kimberly Underhill

Frederick Douglass, born a slave c. 1817, became known as one of the most articulate free blacks during the antebellum years.

P O E T R Y

For Langston and Sorrow J.D. Scrimgeour

P O R

T F O

L I O

Virtual Pottery Mark Raudzens

19 Olla

R E T

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Reminiscences… Salem Teachers College During the 30s and 40s Excerpts from A Window of Our Memories by William O. Thomson Photo Compilation by Susan Edwards

O O

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Polymorphous Perversity Review of The Essential Gore Vidal edited by Fred Kaplan and The Smithsonian Institution by Gore Vidal Albert J. Hamilton

Unlocking the Diary Review of The Hidden Writer: Diaries and the Creative Life by Alexandra Johnson Rod Kessler

S O

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Acknowledgments & Errata

Back Inside Cover

On the Cover: A section of Old Hill Cemetery, Newburyport, Massachusetts where men and women of the American Revolution are buried.

Running for Freedom Marion Kilson

Courtesy of Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, African American Pamphlet Collection

Engravings of Ellen and William Craft from the book The Underground Railroad (1873) by William Still.

obody suspected that the pale young man with his right arm in a sling and bandaged face, traveling on trains and boats between Macon, Georgia and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with his dark skinned valet, was really Ellen Craft. Ellen and her husband William ran away from slavery to begin a life of freedom within the abolitionist community in Boston. During their perilous five-day journey of some one thousand miles, the Crafts narrowly eluded capture on several occasions. As they waited for the train to depart from Macon for Savannah, William’s master came looking for him, but the train pulled out of the station just before the man reached William’s car. On the train to Savannah, Ellen found herself sitting beside a man who had known her from childhood and dined at her master’s house the night before, but she feigned deafness and he failed to recognize her in her gentlemanly disguise. In Richmond, an elderly woman initially mistook William for her runaway slave Ned. In Baltimore, the last slave port on their journey, railway officers—wanting proof that William was his master’s slave—detained them until the train was ready to leave the station. And, finally, when passengers were being ferried across the Susquehanna River in the darkness of night, Ellen and William were separated and not reunited until their train was well on its way to Philadelphia. Although the Crafts’ successful escape from slavery in December 1848 was one of the most dramatic that has been recorded, it shared characteristics with many escapes: implementation of a courageous escape plan, use of disguise, and assistance from black and white abolitionists in free states bordering slave-holding states.

Running for Freedom he strategies that slaves used in their courageous— though rarely successful—runs for freedom sometimes involved the assistance of others, black and white, slave and free. Although the success of runaways’ escapes from slavery depended primarily on their own physical and psychological resources, many were assisted in their escape. After the advent of the railroads in the 1830s, the network of assistance for escaping slaves became known as the “Underground Railroad.” The escaping slaves were the passengers on this metaphorical railroad, its stations the safe houses along the runaways’ routes, and its conductors the people who regularly gave aid and succor

to men, women, and children running for freedom. As the legitimacy of slavery was increasingly challenged in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, abolitionists and slaveholders more frequently used the metaphor of the Underground Railroad to characterize the assistance that some slaves received as they ran for freedom. To assuage slaveholders’ fears of human property loss, Congress in 1850 enacted the Fugitive Slave Act, enabling owners, with the aid of federal agents, to recapture runaways throughout the nation. As a result, slaves’ attempts at escape became even more perilous than before, and many sought refuge beyond the borders of the United States. It is estimated 3

that between 1830 and the close of the Civil War, 30,000-100,000 slaves journeyed safely to freedom in free states or in Canada and Mexico via the Underground Railroad.

their identities. Runaway slaves frequently recounted how they had traveled at night by following the North Star and slept in some concealed place during the day—a barn, a cornfield, an attic While the exact chamber. Some runnumber of people aways even had themwho ran away to selves mailed in boxes begin lives as free to associates in free men and women states, while others will probably never were concealed in be known, there is Engraving from The Underground Railroad (1873) by William Still. the false bottoms of evidence that many wagons traveling from attempted to escape from slavery by trying to reach varione Underground Railroad station to another. Runaways ous destinations primarily in the South—a nearby city, a often changed their names, not only to deter discovery, but plantation where relatives lived, or a community of free to symbolize the beginning of a new life. For instance, Wilblacks. From Franklin and liam Still, the famous AfricanSchweninger’s recent study of Underground Rail…runaways displayed enormous courage American slave owners’ advertisements road conductor in Philadelphia, for their runaway slaves, it is in attempting to run hundreds—perhaps records that Pete Matthews clear that most runaways were became Samuel Sparrows and even thousands—of miles from home, young men in their teens or James Jones became Henry twenties and were described Rider. especially since most probably had never as intelligent, well spoken, Coded message systems and often of mixed race. The before traveled more than ten or twenty also facilitated the passage precipitating event for runmiles from the place where they were born. of runaway slaves. Frederick ning away included the death Douglass, the famous fugitive of a master, harsh treatment, slave, abolitionist, and later or simply the compelling desire to be free. Most runaways statesman, described how he and his friends planned their failed to achieve their goal of freedom. They eventually first unsuccessful escape from slavery: were captured, and then either brought back to their original owners or sold to new masters. Nevertheless, We were at times remarkably buoyant, runaways displayed enormous courage in atsinging hymns, and making joyous tempting to run hundreds—even thousands— exclamations, almost as triumphant in of miles from home, especially since most had their tone as if we had reached a land never before traveled more than ten or twenty of freedom and safety. A keen observer miles from the place where they were born. might have detected in our repeated singing of “O Canaan, sweet Canaan, I am bound for the land of Canaan,” Escape Strategies something more than a hope of reaching heaven. We meant to reach the n their attempts to achieve freedom with or North, and the North was our Canaan. without the assistance of the Underground Railroad, runaways used various strategies, Just as Frederick Douglass and his including concealment and coded mesco-conspirators revealed their plans sages, to maximize the success of their of escape in the coded messages of flights for freedom. Using disguises, songs, many other slaves communikeeping out of sight, and changing cated information about plans for names were some of the ways in escape, the nearness of an Underwhich they attempted to conceal ground Railroad conductor, the proxtheir identities. Like the Crafts, imity of slave catchers, or news of many runaways disguised themrunaways, through the double meanselves by wearing clothing of the ings of song lyrics. Harriet Tubman, Engraving from The Underground Railroad (1873) by William Still. opposite sex or clothing that hid the famed Underground Railroad

conductor who ran away from slavery in 1849 and returned to the South nineteen times to liberate more than 300 slaves, is said to have used the spirituals “Go Down Moses,” to recruit passengers, and “Wade in the Water,” to instruct passengers how to disguise their routes from pursuing dogs. In addition to the encoded communications of song lyrics, coded messages to Underground Railroad passengers and conductors were conveyed through other means, including passwords, quilts, and statues. One slave, for example, who ferried more than one hundred runaways across the Ohio River to freedom, recalled that Menare was the password that runaways had to give before he would agree to carry them across the Ohio. Other Underground Railroad conductors mention using certain patterns of knocking as passwords to indicate their trustworthy identities to other conductors and their passengers. Quilts also could convey coded messages to runaway slaves by creating visual maps of escape routes or by signaling a safe dwelling when hung outside a house. According to Charles Blockson, who probably has contributed more than anyone to the recent study of the Underground Railroad:

sages, as the following examples eloquently demonstrate. In 1859, a conductor in Iowa sent the following message to a nearby conductor: “By tomorrow evening’s mail, you will receive two volumes of the ‘Irrepressible Conflict’ bound in black. After perusal, please forward, and oblige.” Another Iowan wrote to another station master, “Uncle Tom says if the roads are not too bad you can look for those fleeces of wool by tomorrow. Send them on to test the market and price, no back charges.” According to Tobin and Dobard, Alexander Ross, a Canadian ornithologist and abolitionist, traveled throughout the South encouraging slaves to escape and developed an elaborate code. “He identified the number and the gender of fugitives by referring to them as ‘hardware’ for males or ‘dry goods’ for females. These were the ‘packages’ in the Ross system.... The entryways into Canada were designated by words of praise and thanksgiving to the Almighty: ‘Glory to God’ meant Windsor, Ontario, and ‘God be praised’ stood for Port Standley.”

The Underground Railroad s a means of assisting slaves to gain freedom, the Underground Railroad has long held a revered place in the popular American imagination. While undoubtedly most slaves …lawn jockeys or similar aspired to freedom and many statues were used by starisked their lives to achieve it, tion-keepers as symbols. the actual contribution of the Escaping slaves would William Still, author of The Underground Railroad (1873), and Underground Railroad to their famous African American Underground Railroad conductor in look for those lawn jockefforts was limited. Forty years Philadelphia.The entire book by Still can be found on the Library eys to find out if the house ago, Larry Gara challenged the of Congress – American Memory – African American Odyssey Website. significance of the Underground was safe to visit or not. On some occasions, a Railroad in liberating runaway Images above and previous page courtesy of Library of Congress, Rare Book green or red ribbon was slaves; more recently, Franklin and Special Collections Division, African American Pamphlet Collection. tied around the statue’s and Schweninger’s scholarship hands. Red represented danger in the area— has sustained his challenge. Gara argued that although the do not stop—and green represented safety. Underground Railroad was sometimes and in some places Sometimes an American flag was placed in a reality, its legend as a highly structured pervasive threat the statue’s hand to indicate safety. to the institution of chattel slavery depended primarily on the propaganda of northern abolitionists and southern At other times a lighted lantern in the jockey’s hand deslaveholders alike. Instead, Gara contended that most runnoted a welcoming haven for runaways. aways depended solely on their own resources and most ran towards southern rather than free states or international Underground Railroad conductors also communicated destinations. with one another about passengers through coded mes-

Texts of Songs Used on the Underground Railroad Chorus of “Wade in the Water” Wade in the water, Wade in the water, children, Wade in the water, God’s a go-ing to trouble the water. Warren, Gwendolin Sims. (1997). Ev’ry Time I Feel the Spirit. NY: Henry Holt and Company.

Chorus of “Go Down Moses” Go down, Moses ‘Way down in Egypt land, Tell ole Pharaoh, To let my people go. Johnson, James Weldon. (1925). The Book of American Negro Spirituals. NY: The Viking Press.

Text for “Follow the Drinking Gourd”* Chorus: Follow the drinking gourd! Follow the drinking gourd. For the old man is awaiting for to carry you to freedom If you follow the drinking gourd. Verse 1: When the sun comes back, and the first quail calls, Follow the drinking gourd. For the old man is awaiting for to carry you to freedom If you follow the drinking gourd. Winter, Jeanette (1988). Follow the Drinking Gourd. NY: Alfred A. Knopf. *The drinking gourd is the “Big Dipper” which points to the North Star at the end of the Little Dipper’s handle.

To maintain that the Underground Railroad was relatively limited in geographical scope and structure, however, does not mean that certain individuals did not play important, courageous, and sustained roles as Underground Railroad conductors. Living in such northern states as Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania and even in slave-holding states like Maryland and Delaware, these conductors— both white and black—risked their own lives and their families’ well-being in order to assist runaways to achieve freedom from the evils of chattel slavery. Levi Coffin, one of the most celebrated of Underground Railroad conductors, recalled how conductors worked together to convey passengers from station to station in Indiana: [We] had different routes for sending the fugitives to depots, ten, fifteen, or twenty miles distant, and when we heard of slave-hunters having passed on one road, we forwarded our passengers by another.... Depots were established on the different lines of the Underground Railroad, south and north of Newport, and a perfect understanding was maintained between those who kept them.... The roads were always in running order, the connections were good, the conductors active and zealous, and there was no lack of passengers.

Contemporary Interest in the Underground Railroad lthough the Underground Railroad may have been less formally structured and more geographically limited than popularly thought, it was a historical reality. Recently there has been a resurgence of public and private interest in the Underground Railroad. In 1990, Congress mandated the National Parks Service to study the Underground Railroad and appointed an Underground Railroad Advisory Committee. The committee has identified 42 of 380 potential Underground Railroad sites meeting the criteria for national historic landmarks and Congress has established the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom with funds for educational and preservation efforts. The National Parks Service sponsors Underground Railroad gatherings across the country, guided tours, and a Website. A National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, which already has a Website, is scheduled to open shortly. Anthony Cohen, a young African American historian, recently retraced a 1,500-mile Underground Railroad route from Sandy Spring, Maryland to Amherstburg, Ontario, speaking to school children and historical societies along the way. In addition to Websites, travel guides, tours, and recommended itineraries, current interest in the Underground Railroad has sparked several children’s picture books. Why have we seen such a revival of public interest in the Underground Railroad in the 1990s? Is it that we Americans find historical events easier to deal with than current

There is a kernel of truth to all these hypotheses. The United States has yet to fully address the legacy of slavery that persists in racial inequality and inequity within American society. One third of black America lives in poverty, almost half of all African American children exist in poverty, nearly half of African American families are headed by women, more than two-thirds of African American babies are born to unwed mothers. Violence, crime, drug dealing, and joblessness all too often characterize the urban neighborhoods in which the African American underclass lives. Lack of economic opportunity engendered by racism has created this appalling subsystem within the most affluent society in the world. Moreover, the situation is worsening, not only for the black urban underclass, but for other lowskilled Americans bypassed by the computer revolution, the globalization of the economy, and the suburbanization

Harriet Tubman on the Underground Railroad: A Contemporary Description She always came in the winter when the nights are long and dark, and people who have homes stay in them. She was never seen on the plantation herself; but appointed a rendezvous for her company eight or ten miles distant, so that if they were discovered at the first start she was not compromised. She started on Saturday night; the slaves at that time being allowed to go away from home to visit their friends—so that they would not be missed until Monday morning. Even then they were supposed to have loitered on the way, and it would often be late on Monday afternoon before the flight would be certainly known. If by any further delay the advertisement was not sent out before Tuesday morning, she felt secure of keeping ahead of it; but if it were, it required all her ingenuity to escape. Commonwealth (July 17, 1863); Freeman’s Record

of jobs. This is the legacy of slavery that only public policy, oriented towards changing the economic opportunities for low-skilled Americans and providing the requisite education to take advantage of those opportunities, can address. In contrast to the racist legacy of slavery, the current focus on the Underground Railroad romanticizes the partnership between African Americans and European Americans as opponents of slavery. Nevertheless, the metaphor of the Underground Railroad offers the vision that African Americans and other Americans can collaborate to address the yet to be resolved repercussions of slavery reflected not only in the social disorganization characterizing one-third of black America, but in the racism that African Americans continue to encounter. Just as the Underground Railroad in its historical context was less significant in facilitating

social realities? Is it that all Americans today can take pride in the humanistic collaboration of African Americans and European Americans to thwart the evils of chattel slavery? Is it that African Americans can identify with the personal resistance and courage of earlier gener-ations who dared to challenge the slavocracy—willing to begin new lives as free people or to die in the attempt? Or does this revival of interest in the Underground Railroad presage the willingness of Americans to address the unresolved consequences of slavery at the opening of a new millenium?

(March 1865).

Harriet Tubman, nicknamed the “Moses of her people” for leading them to freedom, made some nineteen trips on the Underground Railroad and freed more than three hundred slaves.

Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

“The Underground Railroad”—a painting by Charles T. Webber depicting African Americans, in wagon and on foot, escaping from slavery. Works Cited

the achievement of runaways’ freedom from slavery than their own efforts, so African Americans in our time must provide leadership in addressing the aftermath of slavery, while working in partnership with all Americans. In the escape-from-slavery tradition, the Underground Railroad was less important than the clev-erness and courage of the runaways themselves; in the drama to create an egalitarian pluralistic America in the twenty-first century, African Americans must assume leading roles in collaborating with other Americans to achieve this goal. Such a development would move the recent national interest in the Underground Railroad from historical romanticism to social reality. Marion Kilson is dean of the Graduate School at Salem State College. Over the years she has published numerous articles on African and African American topics in various journals, including Sextant. Her fifth book, Claiming Place: Biracial Young Adults of the Post-Civil Rights Era, will be published Leon Jackson

in December by Bergin and Garvey.

Blockson, Charles L. (1998). “Damn Rare”: The Memoirs of an African American Bibliophile. Tracy, CA: Quantum Leap Publishers. Coffin, Levi [1876] (1971). Reminiscences of Levi Coffin: The Reputed President of the Underground Railroad. NY: Arno Press. Douglass, Frederick (1882). The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass from 1817 to 1882. London: Christian Age Office. Franklin, John Hope and Loren Schweninger (1999). Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation. NY: Oxford University Press. Gara, Larry (1961). The Liberty Line: The Legend of the Underground Railroad. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky. Still, William [1873] (1968). The Underground Railroad. NY: Arno Press. Tobin, Jacqueline L. and Raymond G. Dobard (1999). Hidden in Plain View: The Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad. NY: Doubleday. Some Underground Railroad Websites Harriet Tubman <www.incwell.com/Biographies/Tubman.html> History and Geography of the Underground Railroad <www.afgen.com/underground_railroad.html> Library of Congress <http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/ aohome.html> National Park Service <www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/underground/> Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom, William and Ellen Crafts’ book <www.worldwideschool.org/library/>

Emma Batiste Phillips: Julie Whitlow 9

Julie Whitlow,1999

A Life at the Turn of the Century

rossing the Mississippi over the Sunshine Bridge to journey from New Orleans to Plaquemine was as much a part of my childhood as Mardi Gras and mosquitoes. We’d drive down a swath of road that cut through miles and miles of sugar cane to visit my father’s closest living relatives, the Hargroves. Emma Batiste Phillips was a memorable part of the Hargrove household, talking incessantly in a rapid-fire dialect peppered with exclamations about how “fine” we all were as she greeted us at the door in a starched white uniform. Salt and pepper braids neatly tucked around her head, she looked the same for the twenty-odd years that those visits lasted. Emma was the cook for “Tee,” my father’s first cousin Janet (pronounced JuhNET by the French side of the family) and her husband “Unk,” as she had been for Tee’s parents, John A. and Ruth Wilbert. Emma came to be affiliated with the Wilberts through her father who was employed at one of the Wilbert saw mills. Shortly after her father was hired by John A., probably around 1945, Emma began to work for Ruth, from whom Emma supposedly learned to cook by eyeballing quantity, and judging quality by color and texture. Emma didn’t like to taste. After the death of John A. and Ruth, Emma became the cook for Tee and Unk, and since Tee didn’t really know how to work a kitchen, Emma was responsible for getting the family fed. Tee’s infectious laugh, blue-green glass eye, elegant silver coif, and haute style were a few of her defining attributes, but she probably never cooked a meal in her life. According to Tee’s niece Claire, Tee thought that the kitchen was “a room you passed through to get to the back door” and that she never learned to cook because “the more you let a man know you can do, the more they expect you to do.” Thus, the kitchen became Emma’s domain. Her stuffed artichokes and craw10

fish etoufée were legendary and, supposedly, she learned to make the finest pralines in Iberville Parish from my grandmother, Tee’s aunt. And every morning around ten Tee would ring a little bell from her bed as the signal for Emma to bring in her egg and juice on a tray. By this time, Unk had probably been long gone for the day, and, since they lived in separate wings of the house, Emma had probably fed him hours before. It was Emma who found Unk slumped over the morning paper one day, dead. But she remained steadfast and called the authorities.

Janet “Tee” Wilbert as a young woman.

According to Tee’s niece Claire, Tee thought that the kitchen was “a room you passed through to get to the back door” and that she never learned to cook because “the more you let a man know you can do, the more they expect you to do.”

On a typical day, after responding to the breakfast bell, Emma would prepare the midday meal for Tee and perhaps some of the other Plaquemine ladies who would often gather to play cards or have lunch. On my visits to Plaquemine, however, Emma was never really cooking. She was mostly puttering, rummaging around the freezer for some “crab paws” or stuffed artichokes to defrost, or passing out ice cream sandwiches. When we were at Tee’s, so were a bunch of her grandchildren, so I assume that Emma was spared the chore of feeding a bunch of kids who wouldn’t appreciate her Shrimp Creole. Instead, we usually drove with Tee to Danny’s Fried Chicken in her latest model Lincoln Continental to get lunch. It was torture to get in that car with Tee chain smoking, the windows shut tight, and the air conditioner on so cold that I’d always be holding my breath and yearning for a sweater. At Danny’s, after the relief of that first breath of hot, humid air, we’d get the chicken, dirty rice, and hush puppies and drive on back to the house to eat. There was a little screened-in cottage in the back of the house where Emma would help lay everything out and clean up after us when we were done, mumbling and hovering and praising us all the while. Once my brother and I got to stay with Tee for a week, and we’d inevitably awaken

hours earlier than she would. But no matter the hour, chatter about whether I looked more like “Miss Cohneeya,” Emma would somehow already be there behind the kitchen my mother, or “Miss Mabel,” my paternal grandmother. counter, dressed in that stark white dress and apron, asking Settling down into a chair, assuming a regal bearing, she us what we wanted for breakfast. We’d tell her and some asked, “So, whaCHALLwannano?” I asked her to tell me kind of toaster pastry that we about her life, her family, and had requested would someher thoughts on the past cenWhen Emma was through for the day, how appear in front of us, but tury. And while her words are we wouldn’t ever say much to we’d sometimes go with Tee to drive her sometimes tangled and her Emma. To us she was kind of are often rambling, home.That big shiny Lincoln would cross thoughts mysterious with her funny her message is unwavering way of talking and six fingers a set of train tracks separating Emma’s and clear: work hard and trust on one hand. She seemed kind in the Lord. Emma’s colorful world from Tee’s, but no one ever talked character of bossy and persnickety, ramis still evidenced by bling on about some story or some lively intuitions about about what Emma’s life was like after another that included referglobal warming trends; she she got out of the car and, as a child, ences about people that we also reveals, however, some didn’t know in a dialect that perplexing views on the Civil it never really occurred to me to ask. we could hardly understand. Rights Movement. Emma is Somehow, though, we knew still a riddle but she allows that Emma cared about us as part of “Miss Janet’s” family. us here to garner what we can from her words about her When Emma was through for the day, we’d sometimes go life, the life of an illiterate 96-year-old granddaughter of with Tee to drive her home. That big shiny Lincoln would escaped slaves at the end of the twentieth century. cross a set of train tracks separating Emma’s world from Tee’s, but no one ever talked about what Emma’s life was like after she got out of the car and, as a child, it never Note: I have tried to remain consistent in presenting really occurred to me to ask. Emma’s dialect but without using phonetic symbols, the dialectal nuances cannot be completely accurate. I like to think that Emma somehow comforted Tee as Emma was also difficult to understand at this point in the years wore on. Emma must have been a constant of her life. I have transcribed and presented the portions Tee’s, a contemporary despite their tacit knowledge of all of our interview that I could decipher. To make for that prevented them from admitting what could be called easier reading, I have also grouped Emma’s comments friendship. A few years ago, when Tee got sick and they together based on their theme. were both too old to do much, Emma would still report to work faithfully. On one of my last visits to Tee’s house before she died, we were visiting in the living room when On her childhood: billows of smoke began pouring from the kitchen. Tee was I was born in Maringouin, just up the road [from unalarmed. It was just Emma, “burning the cookies.” Since Plaquemine] on July 28, 1903. My mother died when I Tee didn’t eat much by then, apparently Emma didn’t have was a baby. I was born in July and I woulda been a year old to cook. She’d just char a batch of sugar cookies each day in March so I wasn’t a year old. Then my daddy married before someone drove her back home around noon. I reagain. I lived there a while and then I went on back to my cently saw a video that Tee’s granddaughter, Nannette, grandmother. I had nine brothers and sisters and all of em took a few months before Tee died. Tee is in bed, breathing dead but two, me and my sister. My stepmother wouldn’t through an oxygen tube snaking from her nose, still laughsend me to school. My brothers and sisters they went cuz ing and joking, while Emma sits nearby in a rocking chair, see they was big in the house. They fight but I was too no longer wearing her white uniform. little, I couldn’t do nothing myself. I didn’t go to work As a child, Emma was just Emma, kind of strange and until I was about fourteen years old. distant. That was enough for me then. As an adult, though, I stay home but there was always somebody there… I began to wonder about Emma’s place in this bastion of …my grandmother she keep washin and ironin and then the Old South, and I talked about interviewing her for I start workin when I was thirteen. years before I actually went to her last summer. Since Tee’s children still provide for Emma, she wasn’t hard to find. She greeted us at the door of her freshly painted white On her father: frame house, using a walker, her hair neatly bundled under My daddy work in the field and he made a garden and a scarf that matched her housecoat, seemingly pleased by that’s what I tell the people. We never did starve because the visitors. Pictures of her nieces and nephews and the we didn’t have the best food but we had to eat. We had Hargrove grandchildren at the latest wedding graced the everthin. mantelpiece. As she always had, she began her still-familiar 11

On her grandmother: My grandmother was born ...she was back yonder in the Civil War in Norfolk, Virginia.

we got us clothes on and part of the house had water and part didn’t have no water so we got out someday. We had to leave that house in Livonia.

She was a slave. Her name was Susan Duncan. She On cooking and work: talked to us about the war. They had to run off from a place. See when the soldiers be comin they could hear So you became a good cook by watching your grandem on they horse. They had to work. They ride horses at mother? them time. They had no automobile, trucks. And they No ma’am, I just learned myself and Miss Alma. I went could hear em comin and the dusty roads—she say they to work for her—she said I was goin to take care of the got up on the bridge and stay there all night.Yes, they children and when I got there she had me cookin and heard em comin. Her husband was with her and she had washin the dishes and that’s how I learned some of the some sisters and brothers. She told me how they did withthings. out food and all of that. They run off from that place. She went down then she stopped So you learned to cook by but they hear em comin. They watching? She was a slave. Her name was Susan had nothin but them old Yes ma’am. lamps—I got my lamps up Duncan. She talked to us about the war. here—I saved them. She was And tasting it by yourself? They had to run off from a place. together with her family and No, ma’am. I didn’t like to some other people and they taste. I don’t like tastin my pot. …She was together with her family run off and she said they done and some other people and they run off But how did you know it was without food and everthin but you see that was her time, my and she said they done without food and good if you couldn’t taste it? grandma’s time—it wasn’t Put seasonin in. See, I cook any other time because we everthin but you see that was her time, one thing like I did the artinever did without food. Mr. John Wilbert told my grandma’s time—it wasn’t any other chokes. me they got a lady by the When your grandmother time because we never did without food. Catholic school—go and ask left Virginia she came to her she’ll show you how to Louisiana? stuff artichokes. And I went Yes ma’am, that was my mother’s mother. to that lady uptown and she showed me. And I come home and the first time I stuff em they wasn’t as good as the Do you remember your mother’s mother? next time. And the next time I stuff em better. And then Oh Lord yes, did I. I stayed there til 1920. you see I didn’t know about that little tip you cut that off so the next time I know—to make em pretty you cut that So she was kind of like a mother to you? little tip off. Oh, she was. We call her Mama. But she had a daughter and that daughter said Mama and we said Mama, too, and So you learned to cook all those things by watching my aunt, I call her sister like she call her. Like what she call people? her we call her. My older sister she got married. My next By watchin people. sister she got married. I stayed at my grandma til twentyone, until she died. And you started to work after you were fourteen? Oh yeah, I wash and iron. Everywhere I work at in my life I had done more than one job. I did everything. I took On the flood of 1912: care of the children, I wash they clothes and I iron they The first war... I didn’t know nothin about the first clothes. I was the one to wash and iron their clothes and war but the second war we had ...in 1912 we had a war... cookin too. See, that keeps you busy when you have.... I mean high water. It had a war, too, because the war that’s how I learned how to cook what I can cook. started right after the water went down in 1912. We had a white fellow neighbor lived next to us and they didn’t How long did you work for Miss Janet? want the water to catch em because they were all frightWell, Miss Mary Janet tells me it was fifty-two years but ened. I didn’t want daddy to go but he was so hard-headed I say it was sixty years. I knew I was there before she got he wouldn’t move out til the water hit us. His brother gave out of school. him a little pirogue and he tied it on the garret at the post. And the water was comin see he’d go over the wall. And You think time passes quickly? bless the Lord by fo thirty there be water in the house.... Oh yes.Ya’ll don’t notice it but I know. 12

On her marriage:

On religion and the devil:

Now, did you get married? Oh, yes’m I married; my husband died in ’47.

Every Sunday I go to church. I have a fellow pick me up—somebody in my church bring me back home. The colored people they have been good to me, too. On Mother’s Day at church they said I had no children or nothin and they gave me different things and I didn’t know nothin about it. I was just sittin there with my mouth open. The Lord is takin care of me.

How did you meet you husband? I met him when I come here to Plaquemine. My daddy was livin here and my sister and two other brothers and I came here to stay a little while and my daddy said stay here cuz he was still able to work and take care of all of us together. My grandmother used to take care of me but he said stay here and I stayed here and that’s where I found the man I married. I just met him. I talked to him a couple of times and then we got married and the people saw us goin and they knew we was goin get married. I just walked on to the preacher house and got married. Just the two of you? No, we had our witness. After he died I ain’t seen nobody else and I just continued workin. We lived in this house six years before he died. We had to buy a house to move. He workin at the sawmill then but houses weren’t high like they is now. They was cheap at that time.

Julie Whitlow,1999

You’ve lived here fifty years? It’s a beautiful house.Who helps you fix it up? Well I tell you, the govment fix it up. I always was humble I know that. Theys goin around fixin houses. I knew I was gonna get old some day and I ain’t gonna be able to paint. Now I can’t paint, I can’t climb no more.

Why do you think you’re living so long? Well, the Lord. The Lord take care of us. God will take care of you.Yes ma’am the Lord will take care, he will take care.You see, that’s what we know. I don’t let it worry me but I notice things. People tell me I don’t forget nothin. I started talkin about somethin that happened way back yonder and my sister say you don’t forget nothin. The devil is a person, the devil is a busy man, he never stops. I’ve been tempted but I get away from him. Sometime the devil see you—there’s more than one. The devil is a real person. On the century’s changes: You’ve seen a lot of changes in the world since you were a little girl, huh? Oh Lord, yes I have.

world, and you got to put that all together. Just watch. But I know it didn’t use to be hot as it is. Before when September come in, it begin to get a little cool air. September come in gonna get hotter. We had no cool days this year. Just one day it rained a little bit we had a little cool night. We didn’t have no windows—we had windows but we didn’t shut them at night.You could go anywhere and leave your house open Well, he say no man knows but they got too many people now in this world. It’s just too many, and they the hour and the time got their ways. A lot of things have but he tellin us every day changed I have noticed.

strange things happen here in the world, and you got to put that all together. Just watch.

What do you think are the biggest changes? Well, I tell you the truth. The world has changed too much. Children is not like they used to be, the young people, I call them all children. We had a lady die in church that night and there come old boys with their old red pocket handkerchief and old blue clothes on. They kept grinnin like we scared of em. I sat there and look right at em. And my sister, someone passed right by her and she said she took her pocketbook from her shoulder and twisted it around her hand. Some people got scared. But nobody say nothin. I just sat there and didn’t look at em. I said there’s gonna be some trouble Friday night. What do you think are some good changes that you’ve seen since the time that you’ve been alive? Well, the world don’t seem the same.Ya’ll can’t see that but I can. Ya’ll wasn’t in that time. The sun, the days have changed, the time. Everthin has changed. What do you mean “the time”? Well, you see now they have a new time on now. And the sun in gettin hotter, the sun is gettin low, gettin low yes ma’am. You never noticed that? It’s so hot now. It didn’t use to be this hot. We about to burn up here. He said this world is gonna be burn up. You think the world’s going to burn up? That’s what the Bible say. Ever since they been sendin those men into outer space, our weather just ain’t been the same. So you think we’re moving toward the end of time? Well, he say no man knows the hour and the time but he tellin us every day strange things happen here in the 14

Do you think people still work hard like you did? They work all right enough, but I didn’t work so hard but I worked young and I worked and I’m still livin.

So what did you do when you were a little girl before you went to work? Children wadn’t like they is now. They tell you to stay in the yard, you better stay in that yard. The children don’t listen at they parents.

On the Civil Rights movement: It was bad but I stayed right in my house. I didn’t leave my house but one evenin. They made a fire and burn them houses. Did you participate in any of that? No, I didn’t. I saw my neighbor tryin to make me a sign but she couldn’t holler from that side deck and I finally looked back and she was pointin this way—they was comin the back street and I had some clothes out there and I got dem clothes off that line and I lock that door and I lock the front door and they was comin that way. And these were white people? No, these were colored. And when they got to the street here they saw that the fire was burnin. Child, I left from here and I come right home and I heard my cousin talkin about me. He said I don’t know where cousin Emma is, she ain’t here yet, I don’t know where she is. I said I’m in the bed. I didn’t get scared, I just go on home. Did you vote after the Civil Rights? No indeed, I don’t participate in all that kind. So you stay out of politics? Yeah, we stay out of that. We stay out of that politics. That wasn’t right.You see, I will tell you the truth. I know I am colored and we raised up that way. And you white, but now why we gon come bother you. Now, that’s why I think it’s wrong.

Do you think people should be separate? No, could be separate, do like they been doin. Some time you look at your own color and you want to know what’s goin on. Everybody’s nice to me cuz I treat em nice. I know my limit. Don’t you think it was wrong that black people didn’t have the same rights as white people? Well I tell it like this. Some black people ain’t gonna have what other black people have cuz they too lazy to work. Do you understand that? They won’t work and some of us work and try to get what we need. But going to school and having an education and jobs? My grandmother said that, I’m sorry of it but there’s nothing I can do. I made it, though, thank God. Still, I’m not gonna clash with the other people cuz some things you do you wrong. If you tend to your business you don’t get in trouble. Do you think those changes were good or bad? Yeah, I think they were bad in a way. They did a lot of damage in this town, burn the people houses, burn em up. I stayed in my house lookin at the fire cross over there. I said I ain’t got nothin there so don’t be botherin me.

So did your church try to take a position on that, try to help those people? Yeah they tried to stop it but they couldn’t, and they was scared. What did your minister tell you to do during that time? He just told us to take care of ourself. If you had to give a lesson to young people today what would you tell them? Well, I’d tell em to suit themself but I wouldn’t do it. That’s all I can say because they ain’t worryin me. The white people ain’t worryin me. I’m not supposed to worry them. That’s what I think but I’m not gonna push myself on people. Did any white people every treat you bad? Oh no. I tell the lady that the other day. She say you work on that corner a long time. She say, look like you satisfied and I say, sure. I just work on. On work and life: So you feel satisfied with your work and your life? I feel satisfied with all I did. And I was satisfied with Miss Janet. I really was. I loved it there. Cuz they never said nothin pushy. Ever since I was a child I tried to do my work right. If I didn’t do it right you know you had to learn how to work... So you always did your best, huh? That’s right. If you doin good, do what you suppose to do, they don’t be hard.You make it hard yourself. But I didn’t. I didn’t make it hard. I was glad I learn how to do somethin. Well it sounds like you learned to do a lot of things. Yeah, I never did learn to taste. What were Miss Janet’s favorite things? Everything. What about my grandmother? She taught me how to make pecan pralines. Miss Mabel took her seat at the table and told me, get the sugar, get the wax paper, get you a cup, pour you two cup of sugar on that table, one cup in the pot. Lord, I was so tickled. I had Miss Janet there and I went on and I made that candy. That’s how I learned how to make pralines.

Janet “Tee” Wilbert Hargrove’s eightieth birthday party, 1995.

So what made you so healthy all these years? Well, The Lord had his hand in this. And I believe sometime you made you own self sick. I ain’t gonna do that. I ain’t gonna do that.You see you have this welfare. They never gave me nothin. They told me I don’t need it then. Told me I don’t need no welfare. 15

Julie Whitlow,1997

Emma Batiste Phillips visiting Tee in 1997.

But you took care of yourself your whole life? I worked, sure I was workin. See when you can do for yourself you do it. But when you get too lazy to do for yourself you cannot do it. But I know I can do somethin for myself and I ain’t never been hungry. I always had a piece of bread. I ain’t never been hungry. He took care of me. On the present: What do you like to do now? I’d rather be workin. I used to love TV until I went to the hospital. But somethin happened to me. I used to watch the stories and now there’s nothin but killin on TV. Did you ever travel? No, I didn’t like it. So you liked working for Miss Janet? Yeah, I did. Were you sad when she died? Oh, I won’t talk about that. Julie Whitlow is an assistant professor in the English Department at Salem State College. Her Ph.D. from Boston University is in applied linguistics and she primarily teaches courses in English as a second language and linguistics. A native of New Orleans, she has called Salem home for the past nine years. Leon Jackson

Postscript Emma died on February 23, 2000, six months after I visited her in Plaquemine. And even though I am glad that I was able to talk to Emma before her death, I don’t pretend that I came close to the heart of her story. I can tell myself that I waited too long, that she was just too old. But maybe I was the one who wanted her to be a bit more cynical about the niche that history had carved for her. Maybe I wanted her to be a bit more bitter about injustice, racism, and inequality. Instead, I met an old woman at peace, proud of her accomplishments, serene in her wisdom, secure in her skin, and ready to board the next train bound for the Promised Land. Her obituary reads that she was a “retired domestic servant.” I am sure that she was much more. It seems impossible that anyone who ever knew Emma could have forgotten her. Maybe it was the way she honored those that went before her by doing all that she could; maybe it was her steadfast loyalty; maybe it was her unique commentary on the world that made her seem an expert on most matters. I can only ponder the source of her serenity and contentment but I suspect that as she grew old, Emma was comforted by truths that I will never know and was nourished by secrets that she has taken with her. And I don’t doubt that she heard a voice whispering to her in the pre-dawn darkness of that February night… well done, Sister Emma… well done….

P O E T R Y

FOR LANGSTON —I, too, sing America Langston Hughes

America doesn’t sing. Not much. I love you this and that, and such, it croons along to the radio, but turn it off, there’s no melody, no voice, a silence that t.v. and lunch Pastel of poet Langston Hughes by Winold Reiss c. 1925. Courtesy of National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

—the crunch of potato chips— slip into. No dancing, no hips shaking and thumping the air, no splayed, unbuttoned hair. Langston, you had the better ear. I trust you when you say you hear America singing, but come today and listen, come now, today and bury your pen in our throats— those simple, sometimes angry notes that made your line almost true: America singing? That was you. J.D. Scrimgeour

SORROW Sorrow plays right field for the Red Sox. Number 73. He speaks only garbled English, a tough interview. His glove is huge. In the field, he’s often plucking sparrows from the webbing, feeding them sunflower seeds straight from his mouth. Some night games he skips his turn at bat, and the fans mark their scorecards with the special symbol developed just for him. His teammates say he’s just one of the guys, the glue that holds the team together. They are all moved by his singing in the shower, though none admit it. Each winter, management shops him around. Each spring he’s back, signing autographs in his illegible script long after practice, until every child is satisfied.

Leon Jackson

J.D. Scrimgeour is an assistant professor of English and coordinator of the creative writing program at Salem State College. His poetry has appeared in Poetry and Ploughshares and he recently published an essay on Langston Hughes in a/b: auto/biography studies. Pecan Grove Press will publish his most recent work, Spin Moves: A Basketball Memoir, this fall.

J.D. Scrimgeour

P O R T F O L I O

Virtual Pottery Mark Raudzens

1 -20 99

Pot

1-20

8 199 Iris

suppose I have always been interested in pots. I remember liking pottery when I was first introduced to it in junior high school – PS 158 in Queens, New York. During high school I took a course in wheel throwing at the Brooklyn Museum School. Some years beyond that, as a young faculty member at Eastern Michigan University, I remember making Raku in the backyard of one of my colleagues with no more than a fiery bed of straw inside a well ventilated garbage can. Occasionally I still venture to the ceramics studio and try my hand at throwing a pot or two on the wheel.

and exuded human personality. We speak of pots as being graceful or rugged, of having feminine or masculine characteristics. The pot has participated in all aspects of the human drama on both the profane and sacred planes. Because of this I have been fascinated by the shapes, forms, and patterns of pottery with all of its attendant meanings. This portfolio of computer prints is, in a sense, a homage to the pot and a testament to that fascination. Page 19 – Blue Chinese Pot

The pot has been a powerful force in the evolution of civilization. It is hard to imagine civilized life without it. It has stored our food and carried our water from the well. It is because of its seminal importance that the pot has taken on anthropomorphic qualities through which we define ourselves. Often the pot has echoed human form

Page 20 – Arts and Crafts Pot with Flower Page 21 – Iris Pot Page 22 – Chinese Pot with Flared Lid Page 23 – Anasazi Dream

Mark Keene

Mark Raudzens, professor of art at Salem State College, is a graduate from Brown (AB in art history) and Syracuse (MFA in painting) Universities. He came to Salem State in 1973 after having taught at Eastern Michigan University and Drury College. During his 27 years at Salem he has taught a variety of art courses and has been an active member of the college community. He has served on a multitude of college-wide committees as well as in the MSCA. Despite this heavy schedule, he finds time to pursue his interest in painting and computer-assisted design.

“Where All in Nothing Ends”: Reﬂections on the Poetry of Hannah Flagg Gould Kimberly Underhill And let them in idea raise Their monuments of state, Whose marble proud shall stand to say, ‘Beneath me rests the great!’ For what imports their empty show— Their grandeur frivolous; This idol of the ignorant And vulgar, worshipped thus? And what of their distinctive ranks (Of no true good the friends,) To me, who touch the hour and place Where all in nothing ends. —from an untitled poem by Hannah Gould

iterary success is notoriously fleeting. An author may receive popular acclaim and be critically lauded during his or her lifetime, only to be forgotten almost immediately thereafter. Others, who labor in obscurity— Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins—achieve renown only after their deaths. Still others inhabit a kind of middle ground. They enjoy modest success during their lives and are never completely forgotten. One such author is Newburyport’s own Hannah Flagg Gould, a poet with depths and qualities not always appreciated by her contemporaries, but who continues to be read almost 150 years after her death.

The Poet from Newburyport iss Hannah Flagg Gould was born in Lancaster, Massachusetts on September 3, 1789. She moved to Newbury, Massachusetts in 1808. Having lost her mother early in life, Gould became a devoted caretaker and companion to her father, a Revolutionary war veteran, about whom several of her poems are written. A tall, handsome woman, she led a fairly quiet, though social, life in Newburyport. She never married, but she had many friends and admirers. In her personal life she was known for her hospitality, kindness, and dedication to her father. Because the care of her ailing father was her primary concern, her career as a poet began late and started slowly.

In the beginning, her writings, crafted for the amusement of friends and neighbors, were restricted to local periodicals and newspapers. Her first publication, Poems, was submitted by her friends and received a good amount of public interest. From that point forward, she wrote frequently, publishing more than 10 volumes of poetry and prose in her life. Many of her poems are patriotic— including several about the Revolution and its heroes— and her hymns and poems were often included in town celebrations and observances. Typical of her patriotic verse is “The Scar of Lexington”: With cherub smile, the prattling boy, Who on the veteran’s breast reclines, Has thrown aside his favorite toy, And round his tender finger twines Those scattered locks, that with the flight Of four-score years are snowy white; And, as a scar arrests his view, He cries, “Grand-Pa,” what wounded you?

Her powers of imagination are great and she has a faculty of inestimable worth, when considered in relation to effect—the faculty of holding ordinary ideas in so novel, and sometimes in so fantastic a light, as to give them all the appearance, and much of the value, of originality. Not only does Poe fail to mention Gould’s writing on death and related subjects, but he demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of her as a poet. Gould in fact did just the opposite of what Poe claims: She took fantastic and gothic subject matter and placed it in an ordinary light. If Poe, preoccupied as he was with things morbid, failed to see Gould’s real contribution, it is not surprising that other critics would miss it as well. It is likely that Poe had in mind such poems as “The Pebble and the Acorn,” in which a pebble, initially scornful of the acorn that falls to earth beside it, learns a valuable lesson when it sees the young oak begin to grow:

The Pebble looked up and wondering said, Throughout her writing career Gould was considered a A modest Acorn! never to tell popular, though not exceptional, poet. She achieved some What was enclosed in its simple shell; success in the limited realm of female poets and was often That the pride of the forest was folded up compared to her better known contemporary, Mrs. Lydia In the narrow space of its little cup! Marie Sigourney. Gould continued writing until late in her It is easy to see why Poe, life, and was published postencountering a poem like this, humously. Hannah Flagg She took fantastic and gothic subject might have been led astray. Gould died on September 5, matter and placed it in an ordinary light. The above lines are charming 1865, two days after her in their way and technically 76th birthday. She was buried If Poe, preoccupied as he was with things competent, but they contain in the family plot in New Hill morbid, failed to see Gould’s real few of the elements that give Cemetery, now Highland Gould’s better poetry its appeal. Cemetery, in Newburyport. contribution, it is not surprising that According to The Boston TranOther nineteenth-century other critics would miss it as well. script she was the oldest criticisms written about Gould female poet in the country cover much the same ground. at the time of her death. There was consensus among the critics that Hannah Gould had a pleasing talent that incorporated light, charming, witty, and pious slants. The abundance of these works overshadowed the lesser known, but more compelling poetry Nineteenth Century Critical Responses to Gould and prose that Gould wrote relating to death. hile critics were not overly attentive to Gould during her lifetime, those who did look her way focused on her piety, her simplicity, and her wit. Against the Gothic Grain No one seems to have noticed that there were aspects of her poetry—her treatment of death in particular—that nterest in morbidity and death was not uncommon in set her apart from her contemporaries. Edgar Allen Poe, early to mid nineteenth-century America. This interest the writer who would have been most likely to explore expressed itself in many ways: there were pictures Gould’s use of such themes as burial and enclosure, chose taken of the dead, seances enacted to communicate with instead to focus on the more conventional aspects of her the deceased, poetry written that gave sentimental expreswriting. Although the volume of poetry Poe reviewed in sion to feelings of grief, and prose crafted with horror The Southern Examiner (1836) included several poems that and gothic overtones. Like many of her contemporaries, deal explicitly with death, he opted to highlight qualities a significant amount of Hannah Gould’s writings incorpopresent in her more popular poems: rated the subjects of death and dying. Interestingly, Gould’s writings did not echo the morbid, gossamer aspects found Previous Page: Gravestone of Hannah Flagg Gould, who is buried next in other writers’ works. She did not approach death as to her father, Benjamin Gould, and her mother, Grizzell Apthorp Gould, in an old section of Highland Cemetery, Newburyport, Massachusetts. taboo, and consequently fit it smoothly into her writings.

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The Child’s Address to the Kentucky Mummy And now, Mistress Mummy, since thus you’ve been found By the world that has long done without you, In your snug little hiding-place far under ground— Be pleased to speak out, as we gather around, And let us hear something about you!

Courtesy of Historical Society of Old Newbury, Cushing House Museum

By the style of your dress you are not Madam Eve— You of course had a father and mother; No more of your line have we power to conceive, As you furnish us nothing by which to believe You had husband, child, sister, or brother. We know you have lived, though we cannot tell when, And that too by eating and drinking, To judge by your teeth and the lips you had then; And we see you are one of the children of men, Though long from their looks you’ve been shrinking. Who was it that made you a cavern so deep, Refused your poor head a last pillow, And bade you sit still when you’d sunken to sleep, And they’d bound you and muffled you up in a heap Of clothes made of hempen and willow? Say, who was the ear that could hear with delight The musical trinket found nigh you? And who had the eye that was pleased with the sight Of this form (whose queer face might be brown, red, or white,) Trick’d out in the jewels kept by you?

As opposed to a delicate or fragile subject, death was handled simply and directly by Gould. She had an ability to include themes relating to and about death in many of her poems in a way that was different from her contemporaries. Her use of death as a topic was a spotlight into the cobwebbed corners of gothic; she made it tangible and embraceable.

This 1836 poem offers insight into Gould’s perception of death. Written from the perspective of a child, it is not meant to be sentimental, spooky, or scientific. Gould treats the petrified body as a marvel and an opportunity to contemplate life and death. Inspired by what was essentially a traveling freak show, the tone of the poem is ironically normal. But even within the matter-of-fact voice that Gould gives the speaker there are some slightly disturbing topic was a spotlight aspects to the poem.

One of Gould’s best poems Her use of death as a about death is “The Child’s into the cobwebbed corners of gothic; Address to the Kentucky It is perhaps odd that the Mummy.” The poem was pretense the poem is a child she made it tangible and embraceable. speaking ofto—and inspired by Gould’s viewing expecting of the mummified body of a an answer from—a dead body. native American woman, However, reality is often susFawn Hoof. Discovered deep in the Kentucky Mammoth pended by a child’s imagination, and it can be accepted Caves, the mummy was exhibited by a gentleman named that Gould would write such a poem, as she wrote several Nathum Ward in a number of locations, including Boston. imaginative children’s pieces. What becomes interesting is “For twenty-five cents the curious could enter her boudoir her phrasing and outlook on the whole scenario of a child and view a ‘thousand year old’ person…. The common addressing a mummy, and the position that she gives to the public loved the excitement of the exhibit, newspapers child. “In your snug little hiding-place far under ground” heralded its arrival, and the intelligentsia detested it.” is one such phrase. The implication is that a grave is snug, Gould, who was among the crowds that viewed this “time warm, comfortable. That is opposite from the realistic traveler,” treated the petrified body as poetic material and conditions of the grave, which was a cold underground an opportunity to contemplate life and death: cave. By most standards caves are not considered snug, 26

welcoming places—especially caves that hold dead bodies, yet this is the phrasing that Gould chose, and it remains consistent with her easy relationship with death and enclosure. Tranquility and peace are found within the mummy’s grave.

wisdom and insight that would not ordinarily be attributed to a child. Would a child, for example, necessarily pick up on the fact that the jewels buried with Fawn Hoof might have been worn to please a husband or lover?

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It is interesting to note that Gould, often described as The fourth stanza of the poem contains multiple traces a poet of piety, places very little emphasis in this poem on of a child’s innocence—the most prominent being the Christian concepts of the afterlife. There is, admittedly, a terms “pillow” and “sleep” as used in this phrase: “Refused brief reference to Eve, but she is introduced simply by your poor head a last pillow/And bade you sit still when way of contrast. To call the mummy “one of the children you’d sunken to sleep.” Sleep of men” is to establish her is a common euphemism oflink the rest of humanity, Gould wrote a fair amount on cemeteries, but itwith fered to children in lieu of is suggestively different both local and abroad, and there are death. If a child has been told from the standard phrase something “goes to sleep” “children of God.” numerous poems that involve graves, when it has actually died, it However shadowy some of tombstones, and burial grounds. makes sense that a pillow her topics may be, the poems would be considered importhemselves are not gothic or tant. Equating death with gloomy. Death and dying are spoken about as easily as sleep makes it sound appealing and acceptable—something butterflies or ocean scenes. Indeed, some of her writing to look forward to. This comfort level with death may be connections with death are very humorous. The mock somewhat disturbing to twentieth-century readers, espeepitaphs she penned for her friends and herself certainly cially given the child’s voice in which it is spoken. reflect her wit; they also demonstrate the comfort Gould The child narrator in this poem is vastly different from had with the subject matter. the typical role children play in poetry and prose. There are children in several of Gould’s poems, but none as Gould wrote a fair amount on cemeteries, both local empowered as this one. The child’s address is filled with and abroad, and there are numerous poems that involve

The oldest cemetery in Newburyport and resting place of residents who fought in the American Revolution.

Sextant staff photo

annah Gould’s poetry has never received the attention it deserves. Twentieth-century readers have taken the nineteenth-century criticism at face value, and have overlooked an interesting and vibrant poet because she was categorized as sprightly and dainty. There is more to Hannah Flagg Gould. Prolific and uninhibited by unusual themes, Hannah Gould broke against traditional nineteenth-century expressions of death as sentimental or gothic. She also attempted new inroads for the roles of women within her unusual writings. She may be grounded in children’s poems and patriotic hymns, but her more extreme creations (like the poem inspired by the viewing of Fawn Hoof) are the most interesting. The critics overlooked Gould’s distinct expressions of death and dying. Her counter-traditional attributes were overshadowed by her wit and piety, ignored perhaps because they were so different. However, they were a prominent part of her work, and should be recognized as an important aspect in her writings.

Gould family home during much of the nineteenth century— three story brick building on Charter Street in Newburyport.

graves, tombstones, and burial grounds. Gould was also very involved with the consecration ceremony of the Oak Hill cemetery in Newbury, and one of her original hymns was included on that day in 1842:

Now Hannah has done With her rhyming and fun; When her course from the world she was shaping, The bells would not toll For so little a soul, From so mighty a body escaping.

Man passeth soon: his earliest breath Is but the promise sure of death; From being’s dawn to darkening age, The grave his certain heritage.

—Gould’s self-penned epitaph

We sink like drops of summer showers; As grass we’re mown—we’re plucked as flowers; We fall like autumn’s faded leaves— Are garnered in the whitened sheaves….

Works Cited

And while to earth our dust returns,

George, Angelo I. (1994). Mummies, Catacombs, and Mammoth Cave. KY: George Publishing Company. Gould, Hannah Flagg (1836). “The Child’s Address to the Kentucky Mummy.” Poems, Volume II. Boston: Hillard Gray & Co. Gould, Hannah Flagg (1846). Gathered Leaves:or Miscellaneous Papers. Boston:William J. Renyolds. Lunt, George and Hannah Flagg Gould (1878). Oak Hill Cemetery (Consecration of Cemetery, 1842). Newburyport, MA: William H. Huse.

As odors rise while incense burns, The spirit triumphs o’er decay, Recalled to God, and soars away. We here appoint, by solemn rite, On this sequestered, peaceful site With flowery grass and shadowy tree, The City of our Dead to be. Though this now sacred turf must break, Our dearest forms of life to take, Of Nature’s calm, maternal breast ’Tis meet her weary children rest….

Rod Kessler

Again, the tone and imagery here are far from Gothic. While Gould’s wit is not so much in evidence, there is a restraint in these lines that prevents them from slipping into sentimentality and that distances them from the macabre style of, say, Poe. At the same time, the tone here is markedly different from that of “The Child’s Address to the Kentucky Mummy,” and gives the reader some sense of Gould’s range.

Kimberly (Townshend) Underhill recently completed Salem State College’s graduate program with a master’s degree in English literature. For a brief period of time she was simultaneously a student, an alumna (BA ’93), a staff member (administrator for the School of Business), and a member of the faculty (part-time in the English Department). She still teaches continuing education courses and is now employed as a content manager for Akamai Technologies in Cambridge.

R E T R O S P E C T

Salem State College Archives

I N

Editorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Note: When in 1933 Salem Normal School became Salem Teachers College, the world was experiencing an economic crisis that would last a decade and help usher in the Second World War. The austerity of the Great Depression and the devastation of the war had a profound impact on the college and the students who attended it.

few months after school began at Salem Teachers The students who attended Salem Teachers College College in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt won a landduring the 1930s would find out that the severity and lonslide victory for President of the United States. gevity of the depression would be unparalleled in their Also, at this same time in history, Adolf Hitler became the time. Humanity was on trial, and it showed many sides. Chancellor of Germany and in just a few months would Salem Teachers College students never lost site of progress be given dictatorial powers by and promise. The lessons of the the German Parliament. On thirties only showed them how The students who attended May 10, 1933, as the students to make the most out of life at Salem Teachers College Salem Teachers College during the 1930s and its possibilities. Students were preparing for final exams were self-respecting and selfwould find out that the severity and in the free world, the dark sky governing people working to in front of Berlin University, build a better society. They longevity of the depression would be Germany, lit up as the Nazi pooled their resources and unparalleled in their time. Humanity party burned books. Any and helped one another. They knew all books this party declared first hand experience that was on trial, and it showed many sides. from un-German went up in flames. storms make skilled mariners The Germans began to enand the storm they were living force a ban on Jewish merchants and the Nazi party became through would pass. Our graduates who lived through this the only political party in Germany. depression were victorious over a time they never would 29

want to live through again. In 1938, as our students listened, Kate Smith sang “God Bless America.” It only reinforced their belief that America was still the greatest country in the world…. The parents of our students were working in the pursuit of their dream—to make a better life for their families. However, they did not have much choice as to their own occupation. Available work was dictated by the industry in the town. Mills and fishing were a way of life and it was almost taken for granted that the kids would follow in their parents’ occupation. The common folks who worked in these mills had made a life for themselves. Through their efforts they enabled their children to pursue education, professions, and other opportunities that were not available to them….

Suzanne Revaleon Green – Class of 1933

uzanne Revaleon Green recalls some of her memories about life at Salem Teachers College. Suzanne commuted from Cambridge to Salem each college day. Her day would start out at 5:30 a.m. She would board a trolley and travel a subway that would take her to North Station in Boston. There she would ride the 7:18 train to Salem. She fondly remembers those large steam locomotives, the shrill whistle, and the chug-chug uneven starts. When the train gained speed the click-click-clack of

wheels running over rails could be soothing. As the train progressed, the conductor would walk through the aisles to collect the tickets. Tickets were purchased on a monthly basis. If students’ finances did not permit them to have a ticket the first few days of the month, the conductor would usually let them ride at no charge. He knew when they had the money they would purchase a ticket. The conductors were well aware of the severity of the depression and they, as many other people, showed compassion for the needs of others. They would never discourage a youngster from trying to push on with courage and dignity. Suzanne and all the students who were commuting would never forget the sight of the Salem train station. It was called “The Castle” because it was built like a castle. Constructed in 1847 of solid granite, it held the distinction of being the only railroad station in America built with a roof over street-level tracks. To make it even more formidable, it had two large solid towers standing tall on either side of the front entrance. Upon leaving the station most students and travelers would glance up at the large round clock perched high on the tower to check the time. Suzanne remembers the one-mile walk up Lafayette Street as very pleasant and pretty. She also remembers how cold this walk would be in the winter months. Some of her happiest memories would be in the spring when large green elms formed an arch along the path of the sidewalk. She would walk by some of Salem’s finest homes. As she approached the college, she saw beautiful rhododendrons and lilacs lining the campus walks. The campus consisted of two yellow brick buildings, the Horace Mann Training School and the Teachers College Building [Sullivan]. Both buildings had ivy climbing up the yellow bricks. The campus had beautiful green lawns, flowers, and trees that made for a lovely scene. Upon arriving, the first thing Suzanne would do was to attend the chapel service. Dr. Pitman [president of the college, 1906-1937] would read from the Bible, say a prayer, make some announcements, give the students a few words of encouragement and send them on their way to class.

Salem State College

Dr. Edna McGlynn on Chapel [Dr. McGlynn joined the faculty at Salem Teachers College in January 1936]

Archives

U Above: View of “The Castle” – The Salem train station. Previous Page: Morning Assembly – Attendance at morning assembly,

more commonly known as “chapel,” was required of all students. Students were asked to be “prompt and quiet, as this is a devotional period.” The assembly hall was on the second floor of the Sullivan Building.

nder President Pitman, we started the day with chapel. We came into the auditorium very solemnly and everyone said “The Lord’s Prayer” and then he would read a passage from the Old Testament. According to Massachusetts state law, the teacher could not comment on religious readings. Dr. Pitman would make several announcements to do with the work of the school and then he would say solemnly, “Let us now take up the work of the day.” Chapel would last seven to ten very strict,

very formal minutes and you got all the information and news at the beginning of the day. When President Sullivan took over, he conducted chapel at 9:00 a.m. every morning. Things continued the same until the president decided that most students were not good public speakers. He was now going to use chapel as a place to let students practice a speech. Every student received an assignment to speak for fifteen minutes on a subject of his or her own choice before that chapel audience…. Well, it was a good experience for them, in the sense that most people do get terribly stage-struck and tremble all over the first time they see a large group. Just think of the audience though, day after day after day, listening to these deadly speeches. Once in a great while somebody would come up with something new or different, which was refreshing. The faculty sat in the audience. Most of us sat near a window and watched cars go by or counted the leaves on branches of the trees. Overall, it was deadly boring even though it might have been a good experience for the students. Most people gradually found ways of not attending chapel and I think this is the reason chapel eventually declined. Just before the Second World War started we had a very positive feeling on campus. The poverty of the depression had a profound impact on those who lived through it. They would never forget it, and it has colored their thinking all of their lives. A lot of us have unique ways because we saw and lived through some really bad times. These young people at Salem were awfully glad to

s Salem State College Archive

– 1937 m The Compass o fr – s se en p x Freshmen E se few is sufficient.” The ember of e is w e th to d or “A w ming m od able to every inco words are applic may be prepared and off to a go e he the college, that ad of fruitful experience and wis ro e th g on start al m. spending at Sale colat the opening of ion, e du , es ns pe ex l it Your initia lf year’s tu 00 for the first ha fee. Checks for 5. $2 be ill w , ge t le rs e full-year blanke and $5.00 for th made payable to the State Teache e th be to ld tuition shou e blanket fee m; checks for th le Sa at – ge le ol C ociation. Cooperative Ass some club in ould plan to join out $1.00. sh an hm es fr ry Eve age ab ill probably aver which the dues w s, including gymnasium outfits, Books and supplie 2.00 for the year.You may bring will cost about $3 me, or you may purchase it in ho , your lunch from our lunchroom. This expense is n part or entirely in individual and involves your ow of course, wholly d habits. personal tastes an during $5.00 to $10.00 Another e us to an pl to l It is wel functions. dues and school for the year for class tuition will be due in January 00 5. $2 payment of ter. the second semes location and pends upon your Salem, board de el av tr of t os C in tation. If you stay mode of transpor about $8.00 a week. Train fare es and room averag e cent per mile for students. on averages about

View down Lafayette Street – Many students walked up Lafayette Street to the college after arriving in Salem by train. Some students received physical education credit for walking everyday.

be in college. They had been through all sorts of adversity as children and they were willing to help each other out. Many of them took the train from Boston to Salem. Every morning there was a whole long line—a couple of hundred students—walking up Lafayette Street because they didn’t have the money for bus fare. I’ve often told them, and I mean it sincerely, that most of them were of a caliber who could have gone to Harvard or to MIT. We had excellent students. Better than I’ve ever seen. I used to say to them, “You’d be in Harvard if your families had the money, so you make the best of what you’ve got here.” Many of these students turned out beautifully and went into the professions and we were very proud of them. When the Second World War approached, they became more and more concerned about what Mussolini was doing in Ethiopia. When the Germans entered the Rhineland, they were all kind of stunned for a day or two. As each bit of peculiar development came from across the waters, they were disturbed and ready to talk about it, but there was that solemn approach to it. What did it mean? Did it mean another war like the First World War that they had heard about? Monday morning, December 8, 1941, the students came to chapel. Just previous to the chapel service President Sullivan stood silently in the door of the history department office and shook his head from side to side. In a voice cracking with disbelief and distress he said, “I’m putting a radio in the assembly hall so everyone can hear President Roosevelt speak at noon.” He then turned and walked slowly into his office. A few minutes later we went to chapel hall. The faculty all gathered on the platform as usual, and they didn’t feel like talking to each other. There was absolute silence in a hall of five hundred students and faculty. Dr. Sullivan started the proceedings and said, “I’ve arranged to have a high-powered radio put here in the hall at noontime so that you all can listen to the President.” 31

At noon students and faculty returned to the hall. Faculty sat on the platform, and students sat below in portable wooden chairs. Again the room was silent. The scene was grim yet highly emotional. In his speech, President Roosevelt asked Congress for a declaration of war, “A Day of Infamy!” he remarked. War was declared, and three days later the country would be at war—not only with Japan, but also with Germany and Italy.

The War Years

eginning December 7, 1941, the impact of the war would be felt in the homes of every American. All military recruiting offices were filled to overflowing with young men and women enlisting. Parents were proud as a spirit of patriotism and unity prevailed everywhere, but at the same time minds were heavy with worry. The thought of their children, far from home, being shot at, and the fear of never seeing their sons and daughters again, were causes for many a tearful departure. With family members gone to the war, an emptiness and a sense of loss prevailed over the town. Mothers hung

small flags in the front windows of their homes that consisted of a blue star on a field of white. Some flags carried two or three stars, each star representing a family member serving his country. As the war ground on, many blue stars were replaced by gold that indicated a family member had given up their life for their country. The mental suffering and pain was immense as more and more gold stars appeared. Women who lost loved ones were referred to as “Gold Star Mothers.” The Atlantic Ocean may have acted as a buffer zone separating us from the battlefields of Europe but we, on the home front, were prepared for attack. At Salem Teachers College compulsory first aid courses were taught. All students and faculty members were trained in the art of stopping bleeding, dressing wounds, making splints from scrap wood, and even using doors as stretchers. Students and faculty practiced bandaging on each other. The entire community was trained on how to put out an incendiary bomb with sand. Sand was stored in the attics of most buildings. Windows were to be left open in case of attack, which would prevent flying glass from causing more injury. Dr. Edna McGlynn at Salem Teachers College had a group of students making up packages [of brownies] and writing letters.

George J. Bates Papers, Salem State College Archives

Recruiting Station – Enlistees line up at the local navy recruiting station. Over one hundred Salem Teachers College students and alumni enlisted and served in the various branches of the military during the Second World War.

Salem State College Archives

Student Actors – Other assemblies were a little less solemn, even during the depression era. Students produced plays, sang in the chorus, and listened to outside lecturers. This picture shows the cast members of the play “Family Album,” which was put on by the freshman class in 1934.

First Aid – On the home front, students enrolled in Defense School, which offered classes in first aid and air-raid precautions. Pictured here is the Volunteer First Aid Detachment Unit in 1943.

Edna Mauriello – Class of 1944

he war in Europe hung heavily over us. There was always the uncertainty of where our country was headed. Our section started out with about four men, but by the time we were seniors they were all in the service. Gradually almost all the men in the college volunteered or were drafted into the armed forces. We missed

Collegiate Defense Committee – The Collegiate Defense Committee formed in 1942, with its mission to send care packages and letters to the college’s alumni and student enlistees. Dr. Edna McGlynn produced “The Salem Newsletter,” which contained excerpts from letters received, information on campus activities, and other home-front news for the people in service.

them, worried about them, and prayed for them. Because of our youth we were still fun loving and enthusiastic, but as the war in Europe escalated, we worried about our friends and family members who were in the service. We tried to find ways that we could take part in the war effort. We sold shares of war stamp books to students for ten cents each. When a book was filled with stamps we had a drawing during chapel for those who had bought shares. The winner took the book to a bank where it was redeemed for a twenty-five dollar war bond that cost eighteen dollars and seventy-five cents. We had a drawing 33

Presidentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Message to

Salem State College Archive s

Dr. Edward A. Sullivan â&#x20AC;&#x201C; President Edward Sullivan was appointed in 1937 and saw the college through the end of the depression and the difficult war years. He retired in 1953.

almost every other week. Even though it was a sacrifice to pay ten cents a week for a stamp, we felt good about contributing to the war effort. Eventually most of us had at least one friend who won a war bond. In the summer, many of us worked at one of the General Electric plants in Lynn because most of the male factory workers were in the service. It made us feel good to know that we were directly involved in helping our country in the war effort. I was at the G.E. Allerton Street plant making parts for B-52 bomber planes. I used to go to the movies to see the bombers in the newsreels before the main attraction. I felt proud to think that I probably helped to make those bombers fly. All of us shared snapshots of our family members and boyfriends who were in the armed forces. Very early in the war, the whole college was saddened to learn of the death of James Attridge, who was our first student to be killed in the line of duty. He was killed when his bomber crashed on September 13, 1942. There is a plaque in the Sullivan Building on the second floor commemorating his valor in the service of our country. At Salem Teachers College he was a brilliant student and an outstanding leader. There were so many tragic deaths to follow, but his was the first and it made a lasting impression. 34

the Class of 1942 I share with every reader of thi of war. It is the most frightful s message a horror and detestation con stifles; it corrupts; it consumes; dition in which mankind can exist. It it the accomplishments of centuries destroys; it tears down and obliterates . business has been brought home The futility of the whole brutal with startling clarity to the mi and hearts of our people by the nd experience of twenty years ago. s Yet, despite its awful significance , war has always been. It has scourged the earth incessantly through every generation since the birth of time. I can recall a col leg prove that war will be inevitabl e debate in which I undertook to e of the past, as long as envy, gre as long as nature follows the pattern ed, and hatred control the destin of men, and until the significa ies nce something more than a shibbolet of human brotherhood becomes h and a sham. The merits of that contention are irrelevant here, but the fact remains that our own generatio n finds itself in the midst of a glo conflict whose cataclysms are so gruesome that the imagination bal staggers before them. In the yea rs be affected, not slightly, not ind that lie ahead, every American will ire currents of his life will be divert ctly, but so affected that the very ed rights, which are treasured as a and transformed.The inalienable heritage, will be circumscribed the restrictions of necessity and by law now accepted as a matter of rot . Luxuries and physical comfor ts e wil Sacrifice and danger will replac l be enjoyed only in retrospect. e of death will stalk the househo normal, happy living.The shadow lds of our land. Can anything be done to ameli Much can be done. Our history orate the drabness of this panorama? poi proper course for the future, we nts the way. If we would chart a need only turn the pages of the There may be found the imperish past. cause of justice, braved the per able story of pioneers who, in the ils found the thrilling record of col of an unknown land. There may be on of a tyrannous king. There may ists who flung defiance in the face be found the chronicle of Appom where that very serfdom, which attox no people of Europe, was forever ban w torments the once proud free be found the saga of those indom ished from these shores.There may itable crusaders of the First Wo War who hurled themselves int o the very arms of death to per rld petua a democracy which had been sea led with the blood of their ances te There may be found, on a page tors. wh of men like Colin Kelly and Ed ose type is hardly dry, the exploits ward Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Hare and Douglas Ma cArthur. Surely there is inspiration for us in all of thi s.We yield nothing to the past in our intolerance of opp res sio n, in ou r hatred of injustice, in our contempt for the doctrine tha t mi gh t is syn onymous with Perver ted conceptions of govern ment which have their roots in right. for soil can never thrive in a natio n whose whole history is a living eign against them. Our flag stands today exactly for what it has sto protest od through all the brave years tha t universal equality born upon thehave gone. It stands for the spirit of se shores one hundred and sixtyyears ago, nurtured and made strong by successive generations six of patriots, to be kept vigorous by us in our time and by those wh o follow us until the end of time.

George J. Bates Papers, Salem State College Archives

End of War – Crowds gather in Salem to hear Congressman George J. Bates speak at the end of the Second World War.

1945 – The Changing World

Susan Edwards is the archivist at Salem State College. She received her bachelor’s degree from Hamilton College and her master of science from the University of New York at Albany. Her recent exhibit, “Writing Home to Salem: Students at War,” examined the Second World War years at Salem Teachers College. Leon Jackson

The big change at Salem Teachers College was the return of the veterans. Classes were rapidly filling up with male students as many servicemen took advantage of the GI Bill. This program was the key to a college education and future opportunities.

Leon Jackson

n 1945, when the Second World War ended, 50 million people worldwide had been killed. Of these, 17 million men and women died in the service of their country, and over 33 million civilians were killed through related activities. This was the worst war in history. Germany and Japan were in ruins, and many European countries had been reduced to rubble. The United States temporarily controlled Japanese territory. Parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa faced starvation. The Soviet Union and the United States emerged as the two greatest world powers.

William O. Thomson, Professor Emeritus in the Department of History at Salem State College, retired in 1996 after teaching for thirtythree years. Although retired, he has remained actively interested in Maine lighthouses. His most recent publication is Boon Island Light. He has also consulted for and appeared in several television specials,including the National Public Broadcasting series on “Maine Lighthouses,” and programs that have aired on the Discovery Channel and the Learning Channel.

B O O K

Polymorphous Perversity Albert J. Hamilton The Essential Gore Vidal Edited by Fred Kaplan 1999 Random House $24.50 The Smithsonian Institution Gore Vidal 1998 Random House $23.00 At first glance, reviewing a collection of the previously published works of a major author—The Essential GoreVidal—albeit a collection of nearly 1,000 pages, is a less than daunting task. After all, what is there to say about a lot of works published and reviewed long ago? Does one comment upon the all-inclusive nature of the collection or upon the remarkable nature of the Introduction or the attractiveness of the print? Or upon the appropriateness of assembling this particular author’s work in a collected edition? When the author is Gore Vidal, however, a thousand pages seem too brief, the Introduction almost irrelevant, and the answer to the final question self-evident. Gore Vidal has published some of the most fascinating literature of the post-Second World War era. His work mirrors his life. It is intelligent, satirical, and urbane. It displays a man whose thinking emerges from wartime America, develops and changes with the times even while offering severe criticism of those changing times. His writings are about mainstream America as seen from an ivory tower of privilege bolstered by oldfashioned American hard work and, for much of the time, written from a self-selected exile. Vidal’s writings, like the author himself, are representative of a libertarianism recently gaining so much prominence in American political and cultural life. 36

S H E L F

Vidal’s work is history, but it is not. It is about religion, but not exactly. It was shocking, but no longer is. The once titillating Myra Breckenridge (1968) now is only an exploration of identity. His work is pre-postmodern or poststructuralist (who can imagine such labyrinths?). It is an example of a highly developed gay sensibility. It surely is an example of what Christopher Hitchins, in his essay in the New York Review of Books, identified as “The Cosmopolitan Man.”

GoreVidal has published some of the most fascinating literature of the post-Second World War era. His work mirrors his life. It is intelligent, satirical, and urbane. Among Vidal’s best known works are ones not readily identified with his name: the successful Broadway play, The Best Man (1959), and his 1950s television and movie scripts for such productions as Ben Hur and Visit to a Small Planet. All of these were written about the same time that Fred Kaplan —editor of this collection—believes

Vidal “discovered his distinctive voice as a writer of fiction.” He identifies the moment as the publication of The Judgement of Paris (1952). Fred Kaplan is a Distinguished Professor of English at Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center. He has previously written about Carlyle, Dickens, and Henry James, and prepared the current collection of Vidal’s works as a prelude to his full-length biography, which appeared at the end of 1999. Kaplan’s collection is not to be seriously faulted. It illustrates its subject as prolific, delightful, somewhat pompous, urbane, and surely the “cosmopolitan man.” Kaplan’s collection has been described accurately as a Knott’s Berry Farm sampler of Vidal’s work. It entices you into those works without drowning you in a particular one. The Essential Gore Vidal includes excerpts, or in some cases works in their entirety, from topics Vidal has addressed throughout his life: politics, religion, and sexuality all wrapped in an analysis of American mores and history. The collection glances at Vidal’s early fictional works and presents a delicious sampling of what Kaplan refers to as Vidal’s “inventions,” including all of Myra Breckenridge. The bulk of the collection concentrates on Vidal’s American novels from Burr to Washington, D.C. and concludes with a large assortment of essays. Indeed, the collection of twentyfive essays is quite representative of what many consider to be Vidal’s forte. Yet to include them here for 300 pages is a bit of overkill since Vidal published a rather complete collection of his essays as recently as 1993. It certainly took some writing and some living for Vidal to discover his “distinctive voice.” Gore Vidal was born in early October, 1925 at the United States Military Academy at West Point where his father, Eugene Vidal, was the Point’s first aviation instructor. Vidal’s childhood was both privileged and deprived. The privilege originated with his maternal grandfather, U.S. Senator Thomas P. Gore (yes, it is the family from which the contemporary Tennessee Gores de-

By the end of the last century,Vidal had written twenty-three novels, produced a collection of short stories, five plays, several television dramas and Hollywood scripts, a memoir, and ten collections of essays— Oh yes, he also ran for Congress in the early sixties and nearly won.

ample, refused to review Vidal’s books for a number of years because of the homosexual theme of this book. By the end of the last century, Vidal had written twenty-three novels, produced a collection of short stories, five plays, several television dramas and Hollywood scripts, a memoir, and ten collections of essays—Oh yes, he also ran for Congress in the early sixties and nearly won. Kaplan argues that these works are infused with the several antitheses that are “key to Vidal’s mature work”: the old American republic and the new American empire, culture and barbarism, art and war, home and homelessness. And, one might add, the hidden and the apparent.

scend) of Oklahoma and his mother’s second marriage to Hugh Auchincloss. In the first instance he gained political and literary acuity. Senator Gore, an anti-New Deal Democrat, was blind. Vidal, therefore, had the privilege of reading everything from the Congressional Record to the literary classics aloud to his grandfather. He also had the privilege of political associations not common for young people. In the instance of his mother’s second marriage he became familiar with the much less literary and political world of northern Virginia wealth in the somewhat vacuous environment of the Auchinclosses. In the second marriage is buried at least one of the strands in Gore Vidal’s development. It was not just the contrasting life-styles, but the second marriage itself. Vidal’s father—a leader in the growing field of aeronautics and a hail-fellow-well-met— virtually disappeared from his life before he reached his adolescence. In the meantime and thereafter, Vidal retained his voracious reading habits, finding as much guidance in his books as he did from the senator and the comings and goings of his parents. His formal education took him from the St. Alban’s School in Washington through a stint at the Los Alamos (New Mexico) Ranch School and finally back east to Phillip’s Exeter. In 1943 he enlisted in the Army, where he eventually served on a supply ship in the Aleutian Islands. It was during the war that another life-determining event occurred. Jimmy Trimble died at Iwo Jima. Jimmy seems to have been Vidal’s first love, and his death had an impact on Vidal’s early writings and surely on his later work. Vidal began seeking his fictional voice during the War. His first published work, Williwaw (1945), is based upon his wartime experience. By 1950, Vidal had written five more novels, notable principally because they are a part of his “cleansing” or “voice-seeking” period and, at least in the case of The City and the Pillar (1948), as a page in American social history. The New York Times, for ex-

Gore Vidal, novelist, critic, and playwright, at the age of thirty-four.

In his early and less mature works Vidal addressed some of the familiar strains of his thought: family, American society, and sexuality. Williwaw and then In a Yellow Wood (1947) drained the war from Vidal’s system and The Season of Comfort (1949) at least lightened his familial baggage. In The City and the Pillar and A Search for the King (1950) Vidal presented his readers with his homosexuality. Dark Green, Bright Red (1950) brought him to politics and the American empire. What might be termed his historical works are Vidal’s most read and most accessible. Burr (1973), Lincoln (1984), 1876 (1976), Empire (1986) Hollywood (1990) and Washington, D.C. (1967). All of these works are amply treated by Kaplan. These are clever tales successfully tied together with ancestral and social threads. Similarly Julian (1964), Creation (1981), and Live from Golgotha (1992) provide us with thought-provoking considerations about religion as well as contemporary times.

Vidal’s most recent work—The Smithsonian Institution—appeared too late for inclusion by Kaplan. In some ways Smithsonian is Vidal’s most brilliant work. It falls into a category with Myra Breckenridge and, especially, Duluth (1983). In Duluth, Vidal had explored the relativity of place and time as depicted in the centuriesspanning concept of “Regency Hyatt England,” or the placement of Duluth somewhere amid ice, snow, and desert. In Smithsonian he toys with the historical “what if?” Contrary to the historical record, “what if ” the First World War had not occurred? Would there be a Hitler? Would there be a Pearl Harbor? Would Jimmy Trimble die on Iwo Jima? We thus return to Vidal’s public jousting with sexuality. In The City and the Pillar in 1948 the matter of homosexuality was problematic for readers as well as the writer. Homosexual man murders uncooperative friend. Hardly the sort of thing to 38

encourage a coming out party! Yet in light of events since the Stonewall Rebellion of the sixties, Vidal’s work can be seen more as a tale of the destructiveness of closeted living. At the time it was published Vidal clearly challenged sexual stereotypes not simply by talking about homosexuality as something other than an aberration, but by talking about sex at all in a rather matter of fact manner.

Bentsen was getting impatient.“From 1880 or whenever to 1939 is perfectly normal. We’re traveling on the same road we took to get back there. But we can never go beyond where we started, which happens to be right now. The fact that the technology exists—and I don’t really understand it, not my field—to show future images does not mean you yourself can go forward. It is the Great Contradiction. If you’re not in that picture to begin with, you’re not going to be in that picture, ever, except as a seventeen-year-old.” —excerpt from The Smithsonian Institution—

In Smithsonian, a thirteen-year-old math whiz, a student from St. Alban’s named “T,” is encamped in the bowels of the Smithsonian Institution where all the wax figures return to “living,” albeit in the past, each night. It is in this time warp that T struggles to prevent the Second World War by preventing the First World War. In the course of his efforts T travels widely through American history and converses with presumably dead presidents and their wives. Grover Cleveland presents a particularly interesting scenario. Since he served two non-consecutive terms, Cleveland exists doubly at the Smithsonian. In the end there is a war and T literally appears to fight in it on Iwo Jima. He appears at that place at that time in order to save his other self who had remained at St. Alban’s and ended up in the Marines fighting on Iwo Jima. In the end T is blown apart and put back together in the secret Science Building of the Smithsonian. Was T actually Trimble? Was T united with Trimble? Did Vidal, on the other hand, finally come to closure with the rest of his wartime experience, the death of his boyhood love? It may not be entirely coincidental that the first selection in Kaplan’s collection is The City and the Pillar, and the last selection, an essay of memories of Tennessee Williams entitled “Some Memories of the Glorious Bird and an Earlier Self.” Both pieces, like Smithsonian concern themselves clearly with what Vidal referred to as “homosexualist” matters. While each piece is quite clear in its concerns and ideas, explicitness about personal sexuality is not easily found in Vidal. That is not because Vidal is uninter-

ested, but because, as he says in his closing essay “In his Memoirs, Tennessee tells us a great deal about his sex life, which is one way of saying nothing about oneself.”

Unlocking the Diary

Gore Vidal seldom, save in some of his essays, talks about his sex life. Yet he does tell us much about himself. (This is not to ignore the fact that in his later years Vidal has become more outspoken about such matters.) For example, last year saw the publication of Sexually Speaking: Collected Sex Writings by Gore Vidal, a collection compiled by Donald Weisse “with Vidal’s blessing.” Indeed, an awareness of Vidal’s sex life and his own views of it may be important to those seeking to define or understand the concept of “gay sensibility.” Vidal, like the playwright Edward Albee, certainly forbids a definition of the concept based solely upon the gender with whom one sleeps. He insists that “there is no such thing as a homosexual person, any more than there is such a thing as a heterosexual person. The words are adjectives describing sexual acts, not people.”

The HiddenWriter: Diaries and the Creative Life Alexandra Johnson 1997 Doubleday $22.95

In the end, Gore Vidal is a polymorphous, cosmopolitan author who has used his fictional voice to provide us with opportunities to laugh at ourselves, understand ourselves, reconsider ourselves, and simply share in literary pleasure. While providing us with that nourishment, he has somehow dealt with his familial dysfunctions, his development as a complete personality, his wartime experiences, his personal political views, and his relationship with America.

Rod Kessler

Anyone who grew up with siblings —especially with an older sister— understands the lure of finding and unlocking someone else’s private diary. What secrets exactly did we hope to learn? When Boston-area writer Alexandra Johnson probed the diaries of Alice James, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Anaïs Nin, May Sarton and other women writers, she knew what she was after, clues to the inner lives that furthered or frustrated a talent. She wondered as well whether diary-writing functioned as a sketch-pad for great fiction, affording the developing artist a protected zone where one’s voice might emerge and where one’s observations might be tested. The result is The Hidden Writer: Diaries and the Creative Life.

Among the pleasures of this book are the passages of wit, insight, and brilliance that Johnson gleaned from her writers’ diaries and journals (Johnson uses the terms interchangeably). Here’s May Sarton musing about why she writes: Writing for me is a way of understanding what is happening to me, of thinking hard things out. I have never written a book that was not born out of a question I needed to answer for myself. And here’s Anaïs Nin on the secret emotional gains a journal might yield: The false persona I had created for the enjoyment of my friends, the gaiety, the buoyant, the receptive, the healing person, always on call, always ready with sympathy, had to have its other existence elsewhere. In the diary I would reestablish the balance… I could let out my demons. But it would be misleading to suggest that Johnson provides a true sense of Sarton’s, Nin’s, Woolf’s, or any of her subjects’ journals as texts: there’s little to convey the day-to-day stylistic

history and academic vice president at Salem State College since February 1991. He also has served as dean of arts and sciences at Manhattan College in New York City and as associate professor of history at John Carroll University in Cleveland. He received his doctorate from the University of Notre Dame.

Albert J. Hamilton has been professor of

qualities that characterize their writing, little of her subjects’ diary-keeping style, their characteristic literary brush strokes. (Was the syntax of Woolf’s entries as sinewy as the sentences from her novels? Was Sonya Tolstoy an effective prose stylist? Did Katherine Mansfield date her entries? Did Alice James write every day?) For readers interested in what the journals themselves are like, The HiddenWriter is no substitute for the originals— fortunately, these are available, some famously so. Johnson’s strength lies in her use of the diaries to illuminate the lives of her subjects: child-diarist Marjory Fleming, Leo Tolstoy’s wife Sonya, Alice James, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Anais Nin, and May Sarton. Johnson reports, for example, that In drawing rooms across Russia, readers construed Tolstoy’s assault on marriage as an unbridled attack on his wife, the inevitable postscript to his famous lines in War and Peace when a world-weary aristocrat warns Tolstoy’s hero, “Never, never marry, my dear fellow! That’s my advice: never marry till you can say to yourself that you have done all you are capable of, and until you have ceased to love the woman of your choice and have seen her plainly as she is.” Sonya, tongues wagged, had overstepped her place. Had Sonya? Johnson interweaves accounts from the journals with other biographical information to present a fascinating and lively portrait of the fractious Tolstoy household. Equally fascinating is the glimpse inside the Cambridge home of the illustrious James family, where sister Alice turned to a life of invalidism and, eventually, journal-keeping, to establish and preserve a sense of self in a setting where the dominant successes—and egos—of famous brothers William and Henry seemed to take up most of the air and space. 40

Johnson is an excellent biographical historian, teasing from the journals the lively, specific, personal details that exemplify how the external contexts of family, culture, and historical moment worked to further —or hinder—the writing careers of her subjects. That these subjects are exclusively women affirms the book’s unabashed feminist bent, but is there anything remarkable in that focus, given that most readers, as well as diary-keepers, are women? If The Hidden Writer is a sure bet for readers interested in feminist literary biography, does it hold up for the increasing numbers of diary-writers and journal-keepers interested in exploring the genre? (Johnson reports that ten million bound blank books are now sold each year.) The book is definitely no “how-to” manual, yet in the prologue and epilogue that bracket the six biographical chapters, Johnson employs the informal memoir form to identify provocative issues: — Is the point of keeping a diary or journal to create a safe, private, protected zone wherein the suppressed and voiceless can develop and establish their voices and use them to preserve emotional dignity and equilibrium? — Are diaries and journals at best a secondary art, handmaidens,

perhaps, to the writer’s finished work: the stories, the novels? — Are diaries and journals ever truly private, written for the eyes of the writer alone? — Can a journal written for a public be a valid art form, as important as the novel? — Is there more to the art of journal-writing than uninhibited self-exposure? — Do diary and journal writers inevitably convey more than they intend, as their readers intuit as much from what is said as from what is left unsaid? (In our journals, are we more naked than we intend?) — Are there moral obligations and limits that journal-writers ignore at their peril? — Is our “culture of confession” enabling us to find in the memoir and journal a candor that we once could find only in the novel? That Alexandra Johnson lays out such questions is to her credit, and we who write from day to day about our own lives are given room to define ourselves within the range of possibilities just as we like. Like May Sarton, I regard the journal as a valid public form. As Johnson notes, the older she got, “the more Sarton held firm to her belief that ‘private dilemmas are, if deeply examined, universal, and so, if expressed, have a human value beyond the private.’” Emerson, I believe, was of the same view. Johnson’s book is, in the end, a stirring tribute to the idea that if our lives are to be worth living, we could do worse than to take pen in hand and examine them. And it’s comforting to think that we journal-keepers are somehow deeper, more empathic, more fully human than the rest of the species that lead unarticulated lives. Rod Kessler, an English professor at Salem State College, is a former editor of Sextant. He now serves

as coordinator of the college’s honors program.

S O U N D I N G S

Lisa Mead, mayor of Newburyport, also provided her support of our project on Ms. Gould. Finally, we thank the following for their many kinds of support: Nancy Ranahan from Institutional Advancement; Betty van Iersel and Lee Ann Ball from College Relations; Donna Hoffman, secretary of the Psychology Department; Nancy Schultz and Frank Devlin from the Writing Center; Patricia Buchanan, chair of the English Department; Janet Stubbs, chair of the Psychology Department; Anita Shea, dean of Arts and Sciences; Albert Hamilton, vice president of Academic Affairs; and Nancy Harrington, president of Salem State College.

Leon Jackson

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS With this issue, the Sextant loses two very talented people. Eileen Margerum has served on the editorial board since the Sextant was reintroduced eight years ago and has provided perspective and hard work during each and every one of them. But now she will direct her energies toward her forthcoming book on Palmer Cox, illustrator and writer of children’s stories. Bill Coyle, as assistant editor for the year, provided perspective too, Eileen Margerum and we have clearly profited. But now he will be concentrating his attention on the classroom. We will miss them both. As is always the case, many people play critical roles in helping to produce, print, and distribute a magazine, and the Sextant is no exception. Once again, Susan Case has read each line looking for misplaced comas, misspellings, and inconsistencies. Despite the number of times we read the words, Susan finds something we have overlooked. Eleanor Reynolds, librarian, and Susan Edwards, archivist, have helped us find obscure graphics and quotes. Carol Morgan and Joyce Rossi-Demas of the Publications Department have helped us with our spelling, layout, and even the dreaded reproduction requests. Leon Jackson, photographer extraordinaire, has provided photos, both traditional and digital. Shipping and Receiving—John McElaney, Lee Gagnon, and Barbara Houle—continues to support the Sextant by extending its reach on campus. Mail Services—Monica Clinkscales—ensures that we all receive our personal copy of the Sextant. Ralph Berry, who oversees both of these operations, lends his support behind the scenes. Academic Affairs—Kris Cowles, Amie Marks Goodwin, John Thorpe, and Lucille McCarter—helps us pay our bills and keeps an eye on our budget. Jared Sheffield of Information Technology arranged an ftp site so we could receive artwork digitally. Derek Barr and Nick Giarratani of Instructional Media and David Borge of the Art Department provided all other technical support. Thank you all. The list of people off campus who deserve our grateful thanks remains remarkably stable. Raquel Irizarry of Corbis provides us with quality graphics. Scott Prewitt, Richard Hall, Paul Vallee, Todd Bonham, and the rest of the folks at Imperial Company provide us with quality printing. But, in addition, each issue brings us in contact with new people who also deserve our thanks. Jay Williamson, curator of Cushing House Museum and member of the Historical Society of Old Newbury, provided us with invaluable resources as we hunted for material on Hannah Flagg Gould.

MV & SM

ERRATA In Richard Levy’s essay “Revolution(aires) on the Internet,” Volume X, No. 2, the year in which the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect should read 1994. Also, the correct year for subcommandante Marcos’s journal entry is 1994. We regret that Mark Keene was not credited as the photographer for the portfolio “Metalsmithing: A Series of Works” by Daniel Frye, also in Volume X, No. 2. He did a wonderful job, and we thank him.

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Reminiscences: Salem Teachers College During the 30s and 40s Page 29

Leon Jackson

Second Lieutenant James F. Attridge ’41 was the first Salem Teachers College alumnus to lose his life during the Second World War. A member of the Army Air Corps, he died in the crash of a bomber in South Carolina in 1942.