Big Bertha

I didn’t know my Aunt Mary. She was my grandfather’s sister, and he never said a word about her. But I do know that in May of 1916 she helped out at a 10-day bazaar raising money for the widows and orphans of German soldiers who had fallen in battle in the Great War. The Braun family was German-Americans; Mary’s parents were born in The Fatherland, so it’s not surprising she was there, in Buffalo’s Broadway Auditorium, smiling upon visitors to The Pergola of the Biedermeier Garten, an enclosure of latticed hedges and apple blossoms set aside for dancing, one attraction among many.

In hindsight, one might ask about Mary Braun’s timing. Didn’t the U.S.A. fight the Germans in the first World War? Indeed, but not until the year after Mary’s volunteer effort. Until April of 1917, the United States was neutral.

Yes, in August of 1914 the German army had occupied neutral Belgium, killing 6,000 civilians, routing a million more, and laying waste to all they touched, including the entire city of Leuven. And yes, the ocean liner RMS Lusitania had been sunk by a German submarine in May of 1915, drowning in the space of two minutes 1,198 passengers and crewmen, including 118 Americans. And yes, in October of 1915 a British nurse, Edith Cavell, was tried for helping Allied soldiers escape from Belgium and shot to death by a German firing squad of eight men. (The charge was treason against the German state, of which Miss Cavell was neither a citizen nor a resident, however, the law was tailored to suit.)

But apparently these far away incidents did not dampen the spirits of anyone attending the Deutschwehr charity bazaar at the Broadway Auditorium, for which the honored guests on the opening night set the tone. Speaking in German, Louis Schmidt, president of the Deutschwehr in Philadelphia, said:

“We are faithful and loyal citizens of this, our adopted country. But nobody can blame us if we don’t throw overboard our good old mother, Germania. We can and will be true and faithful to both. And if Columbia and Germania should go hand in hand, the two could rule the world. I mean create universal peace.”

Henry Lierz, vice-president of the Deutschwehr in Philadelphia, a supporter of choral singing and said to be quite an orator, really warmed to his task:

“Hardly ever has a people which was faithful and true and helped to build up the country of its adoption, helped to make it great, been treated so shabbily and unfriendly as the German-Americans have been. Formerly we were angry over these would-be Americans. Today we are sorry for them. The time will come when the German will demand restitution for this unfair and uncalled for treatment. We German-Americans have awakened to the fact that this country owes us a great deal and that we do not need to swallow these indignities of the pro-British element which has the audacity to call itself truly American.”

Only the Rev. T.F. Bode of St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church delivered his address in English, and, as if gifted with foresight, he appealed to the virtues of patriotism, love, service and sacrifice.

The speeches over, the charity bazaar gave itself over to merry-making and money-making. There were 66 booths in all, showcased in an idealized German village designed and built by Alphonse Ball, a well-known local scenery painter. While the Buffalo Deutschwehr bazaar could not match the 320-booth extravaganza that had taken place in New York’s Madison Square Garden just two months earlier, it was grand enough.

As at New York City’s bazaar, one of the most popular attractions was an “exact reproduction of a 42-centimeter gun, named by the German soldiers the Big Bertha, from Essen.” To add to the novelty, the full-scale model of this Krupp masterpiece was hosted by Keru Scholz, an African native from the German colony of Kamerun (Cameroon), who was educated in Berlin and spoke the German language “perfectly.”

A real taste of the war could be had at the Trench Field Kitchen, a replica of a field kitchen in the trenches where one could enjoy goulash, a popular dish among the German and Austro-Hungarian soldiers, exactly as prepared and served at the front. Other popular dining places included a Bratwurst Glöckle booth, a Vienna café, and weinstube conducted by the Rheinish-Prussian society and the Austro-Hungarian Alliance.

There was, of course, a shooting gallery. And a fish pond, a Turkish bazaar, a curiosity shop, and “gypsy palmistry by Miss Windrath.” At the Niagara Falls booth, “half-lifesize Charlie Chaplin dolls with sparkling eyes” were big sellers. The Ladies’ Aid Society of the Zion Lutheran church offered embroidery, pillows, hand painted vases, paperweights and other china “of exquisite design.” One of the most popular souvenirs was the Iron Cross, on a stickpin for men and as a pendant for women. Another popular booth was hosted by a local pastor who had been “compelled to flee Canada last year because of war sentiment;” his supply of carved and inlaid toys made of wood and bone by German prisoners of war in England and Scotland was exhausted by the final night of the bazaar.

For those with deeper pockets, or willing to take a chance in a raffle, one donor offered a diamond ring, Charles Kurtzmann & Co. of Buffalo donated a mahogany upright piano, and the North German Lloyd and Hamburg-American steamship lines donated a round trip to Germany. (German U-boats, sensibly, were not sinking German passenger liners.)

Music and dancing enlivened the days, and concerts brightened the evenings. The Schwabischer Saengerbund, the Paponia Liederkranz and the Tyroler Alpenchor held forth; the YMCA band played, and on the stage there was a production of Hansel & Gretel. The pageant of the Pied Piper of Hamelin was presented every afternoon, directed by Harriot Milinowski, with 150 local children participating. The perfect choice, Mrs. Milinowski had lived in Germany for 15 years, was the wife of a lieutenant in the Prussian army, and was active in the kindergarten movement. The Piper was played by well-known actress Jessie Bonstelle, who in the evening had a booth where she sold autographed photos to admirers.

Jessie Bonstelle

Also, every afternoon at 4 o’clock Mrs. Reinold-Shultz told fairy tales to children, and one afternoon a chorus of 200 children sang cradle songs of all nations. In the bazaar’s 10-day run, $50,000 was raised for the Deutschwehr charity. A disappointed German columnist in the Buffalo Express noted, “Concerning the contributions of the rich German-Americans, the bazaar was not a success. In other cities, Indianapolis, Philadelphia, Detroit and New York, where charity bazaars for the war sufferers in Germany, Austria and Hungary were held, the rich people contributed the largest part of the fund. There were brewers who donated $5,000 and $10,000.”

Worse was to come. In March of 1917, the New York City Deutschwehr suspended its activities, citing some financial irregularities of the Berlin-based organization and “present political conditions.” The following month, the U.S.A. was at war with Germany, and posters for events such as this one from San Francisco…

…were replaced by this one…

…and this one.

German-Americans began to rethink their identity as hyphenated Americans, and there would be no more charity bazaars to benefit sufferers in The Fatherland.

My wife thinks I have gone around the bend because I have begun watching golf on television. I have never played golf, unless you count courses with a windmill hole. But I enjoy watching, and I have a regimen that I find very fulfilling. First, I place a pint of excellent beer within my reach. I put my feet up on the ottoman, and my dog, a miniature dachshund, comes and sits on my lap. I position a volume of Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: A Narrative on the sofa to my left, and with my right hand, I use the remote to summon golf to the screen. During commercials and slow moments on the course, I listen to Shelby Foote’s beautiful, flowing prose being read aloud inside my head. When something cool happens in the match, like someone hitting a ball into a forbidden forest, I look up and see tall trees, sweeping lawns, sinuous sand traps, shimmering lakes — and, of course, some remarkably talented people doing incredible things with a club and a ball. Apart from an occasional volume adjustment, my right hand is free to pet the dog, of which he approves. I find I can spend two or more hours doing this, without any danger of boredom. The announcers speak softly, no one gets hurt, the scenery is soothing, the dog is sleeping, I am smiling. Life is good.

On occasion, one experiences a confluence of comments on the same subject that amounts to a sign, a call to action. And so it was last week when Shannon and Marcia both mentioned cheese. Shannon turned my attention to a list of legendary parties that included President Andrew Jackson’s Cheese Party at the White House. And Marcia wrote about Sausage Cheese Balls on Facebook. Clearly, I was meant to write something about cheese.

To begin, I read about the the cheese that made its way to Andrew Jackson in History of Oswego County, New York, 1789-1877 and in a few modern accounts as well. But I smelled something other than cheddar. The dates were all over the place, the duration of the cheese’s stay in the White House varied, the scholarship was careless.

And so before the big payoff (Marcia’s recipe), I must set the record straight on the Cheese Party, also known as the Grand Cheese Levee of 1837:

During the presidency of Andrew Jackson, in 1835, a dairy farmer near Sandy Creek, N.Y., decided to make a giant wheel of cheese and give it to the president. The farmer was Colonel Thomas S. Meacham and his 1,000-acre farm was on the old Salt Road (today’s Route 11) in a small community about 40 miles north of Syracuse. Col. Meacham earned his title from his service in the War of 1812, and gathered his milk from a formidable herd of 154 cows who were fed on grass, hay and a half bushel of carrots each, daily.

Meacham built a gigantic cheese press with 24 staves, one for each state of the Union, and a hickory hoop, in honor of “Old Hickory.” Into the press went the curds from five day’s worth of milk and out of it came a wheel of cheese two feet in depth, four feet in diameter, eleven feet in circumference, weighing 1,400 pounds. He also made smaller cheeses, about 700 pounds each, to be given to the cities of Rochester, Utica, Troy, Albany and New York, and to Governor Marcy of New York, Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, Vice President Martin Van Buren and the U.S. Congress. The gifts were to serve the dual purpose of thanking the dignitaries for their service and publicizing the cheese-making prowess of Oswego County dairymen.

(The Rochester cheese was delivered earlier, on October 14th, and auctioned off on January 1, 1836, raising more than $1,000 for that city’s Fireman’s Benevolent Association.)

In November, the cheeses were loaded onto a wagon decked with flags, and began their journey from Sandy Creek, drawn by 24 teams of gray horses (48 horses in all). It was an impressive train and attracted hundreds of followers. Col. Meacham stopped the mile-long procession in Pulaski to display the cheeses, and then headed west to Port Ontario.

On November 15, 1835, to the accompaniment of cheers and cannon salutes, the boat, cheeses and Col. Meacham set sail for Oswego, some 20 miles distant. After a brief display in Oswego, the cargo was shifted to a canal boat to travel south to Syracuse, and then sent east. On November 17th and 18th, the cheeses were displayed in Utica and Troy before traveling to Albany for another showing. From the state capital, the cheeses made their way down the Hudson River to New York City.

In New York, Meacham put his cheeses on display at the Masonic Hall, and one of the 700-pound wheels was sold to the St. Nicolas Society for its annual banquet at the City Hotel. The quality of the cheese was said to be excellent.

On December 4th, the cheeses were joined by a 400-pound roll of butter sent from Sandy Creek by Mrs. Meacham. Displayed vertically, the roll reminded one New York Spectator reporter of “Cairo and the Pyramids—Pompey’s Pillar and Cleopatra’s Needle.” After their star turn at the Masonic Hall, the remaining cheeses were conveyed to the store of S. & W. Hotailing near Coenties Slip, a shipping inlet on the East River in lower Manhattan.

On December 8th, Meacham offered one of the cheeses to Sen. Daniel Webster, who was passing through New York on his way to Washington D.C. Sen. Webster visited Hotailings’ and selected a 750-pound wheel. He had it sent to Boston where, in January of 1836, “Meacham’s Brobdignagian cheese” was exhibited at Faneuil Hall. A few days after Webster’s visit, the 1400-pound cheese and the remaining 700-pound cheeses were loaded onto a boat and taken down the Atlantic coast to the Delaware River and thence to Philadelphia for another viewing. On December 31st, the cheeses arrived in Baltimore via Chesapeake Bay, and the next day made their way to Washington via the Potomac River.

On New Year’s Day, 1836, President Jackson accepted the mammoth cheese from Thomas Meacham and reciprocated with twelve bottles of wine from the White House cellars. (One account notes that Meacham also gave a painting to the President, but does not specify the artist or subject.)

For all of 1836 and an early part of 1837, the 1400-pound wheel of cheese sat in the entrance hall, the Vestibule, of the White House. (Some later accounts say the cheese was moved to the East Room, but this differs from accounts published at the time.) It is said that the giant cheese ripened much as a giant cheese could be expected to do in the days, weeks and months that passed.

Then, in a letter of February 4, 1837, Jackson wrote, “I intend to have eaten on the 22nd instant, my large cheese, presented by my friends of the state of N. York – can you, and my friend Seeper be here & partake of the feast – see him if you please, present him my kind regards, & ask him for me to partake with me on that day of this feast, & any of your friends who may wish to accompany you – it will be my last & only public day.”

And so, on February 22, 1837, George Washington’s birthday, the President opened the doors of the White House for his final levee (public reception) and invited the people of the capital city to polish off the giant wheel of cheese.

A reporter who went by “O.P.Q.” and served as the Washington correspondent of the New York Express, described the scene:

“The old Romans talked of democracy, and the Greeks pretended something in that way. But for the genuine, pure, patent-right democracy, it’s our government against the world! This is Washington’s Birth day, you know. The President, the departments, the Senate, and we who are mightier than all—we the people, I mean—have celebrated it by eating a big cheese! The President’s house was thrown open. The multitude swarmed in. The Senate of the United States adjourned. The representatives of the various departments turned out. Representatives in squadrons left the capitol—and all for the purpose of eating cheese!

“Mind you, I don’t laugh at it. Who has a better right to eat cheese than we? It is all the spoils we can get, and as others nibble at the Treasury, here on earth should not we the people nibble at a big cheese?

“Mr. [Vice President Martin] Van Buren was there to eat cheese. Mr. [Daniel] Webster was there to eat cheese. Mr. [Levi] Woodbury [Secretary of the Treasury], Colonel [Thomas Hart] Benton, Mr. [Mahlon] Dickerson [Secretary of the Navy], and the gallant Colonel J. Trowbridge were eating cheese. The court, the fashion, the beauty of Washington, were all eating cheese. Officers in Washington, foreign representatives in stars and garters; gay, joyous, dashing, and gorgeous women, in all the pride and panoply and pomp of wealth, were there eating cheese.

“Cheese, cheese, cheese was on everybody’s lip and in everybody’s mouth. All you heard was cheese. All you saw was cheese. All you smelt was cheese. It was cheese, cheese, cheese. Streams of cheese were going up in the avenue in everybody’s fists. Balls of cheese were in a hundred pockets. Every handkerchief smelt of cheese. The whole atmosphere for half a mile around was infected with cheese.

“I sniffed it in every breeze. I rushed with the crowd to get a bit, and even with a look I would have been content—but alas unhappy  me! I got no cheese. I smashed my hat in vain—I pushed over negroes, and jammed up bonnets—I pushed and writhed and struggled in the crowd, and maddened at last with desperation, I mounted the very shoulders of the mass for cheese. But it was gone! All gone! Naught but a few straggling, suspicious crumbs were left when I reached the table on which it had been spread. Col. Benton had a lump, on which he was expatiating [speaking at length]. Oh how my mouth watered for that lump of cheese. To the day of my death I shall remember, I got no cheese.”

Indeed, at the end of two hours the cheese was gone, except for that which had been ground into the carpet or smeared on the drapes which doubled as hand towels.

Illustration (uncredited) from Perley’s Reminiscences of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis (1886) by Benjamin Perley Moore

On February 25, 1837, the New York Spectator printed this account headlined “Correspondence of Commercial Advertiser” and dated February 22nd:

“We have had various excitements of late—abolition excitement, Texas excitement, exploring expedition excitement… and this day, the anniversary of the birth of the only Washington, the great and good father of his country, brought with it cheese excitement!

“It had been officially given out in the Globe [the ‘house’ newspaper of the Jackson administration] that the President’s mansion would be thrown open to the people on this day, and that they would be entertained with a cheese, sent from your own state, my dear editors, four feet in diameter! two feet thick!! and weighing fourteen hundred pounds!!! a cheese which, according to the official organ, beats quite hollow the great cheese that was made an offering to Mr. Jefferson, as the most appropriate present the farming class could tender to the President!

“The play-bill of the manager of the Theatre Royal, Little Pedlington [a fictitious theater in a satire by John Poole], did not present more attractions, or a more powerful cast, than did the invitation in the Globe. Who could resist it? No one. The whole city was on the move; and as the morning was mild and sunny, Pennsylvania Avenue was quite gay and animated with the various groups rapidly wending their way to the White House, or as it sounds more pleasantly to the royal ears, the Palace.

“The Senate caught the spirit of the hour, and adjourned about one o’clock, on motion of Mr. Benton. The House attempted to hold on… nothing was done but making motion after motion for adjournment, and calling the ayes and noes, and discussions whether they should go or stay.

“The spectacle at the President’s home was a strange one. The rooms were not only crowded to overflowing, but the hall, the doorway, and every vacant place around were filled. People had poured in from Baltimore in the railroad cars, from the country in all sorts of vehicles, and the steamboats and stages from Alexandria were so crowded as to render passage by any of them extremely hazardous. The company reminded one of Noah’s ark—all sorts of animals, clean and unclean. There was quite a superabundance of the latter for the rag-a-muffins of the city had got into the gardens—thence clomb to the terrace—and thence entered by the windows into the East Room. The marshal of the city and his deputies did their best to keep the canaille [lowest class of people, from the French and Italian for “pack of dogs”] from entering by the front door, but ‘the boys’ were too clever for them and got in by the windows!

“I forgot the Cheese. It was served up in the salle-à-manger [the translation means “dining room” but neither the State or Private Dining Rooms were used for the occasion; the writer is using the phrase to refer to the Vestibule] and the whole atmosphere of every room, and throughout the city, was filled with the odor. We have met it at every turn—the halls of the Capitol have been perfumed with it, from the members who partook of it having carried away great masses in their coat-pockets. The scene in the dining-room soon became as disagreeable as possible, and I gladly left it, after a brief observation, and mingled with the beauteous and brilliant throng in the East Room.”

Another account was written by Nathaniel Parker Willis, one of America’s most popular writers at that time, and appeared in his Loiterings of Travel in 1840.

“I joined the crowd on the twenty-second of February to pay my respects to the President and to see the cheese. Whatever veneration existed in the minds of the people toward the former, their curiosity in reference to the latter predominated, unquestionably. The circular pavé, extending from the gate to the White House, was thronged with citizens of all classes, those coming away having each a small brown paper parcel and a very strong smell; those advancing manifesting, by shakings of the head and frequent exclamations, that there may be too much of a good thing, and particularly of a cheese.

“The beautiful portico was thronged with boys and coach-drivers, and the odor strengthened with every step. We forced our way over the threshold, and encountered an atmosphere, to which the mephitic gas floating over Avernus [a crater in Italy which emits poisonous vapors] must be faint and innocuous. On the side of the hall hung a rough likeness of the General, emblazoned with eagle and stars, forming a background to the huge tub in which the cheese had been packed; and in the centre of the vestibule stood the ‘fragrant gift,’ surrounded with a dense crowd, who without crackers or even ‘malt to their cheese’ had, in two hours, eaten and purveyed away fourteen hundred pounds! The small segment reserved for the President’s use counted for nothing in the abstractions.

“Glad to compromise for a breath of cheeseless air, we desisted from the struggle to obtain a sight of the table and mingled with the crowd in the east room. Here were diplomats in their gold coats and officers in uniform, ladies of secretaries and other ladies, soldiers on volunteer duty and Indians in war-dress and paint. Bonnets, feathers, uniforms and all, it was rather a gay assemblage. I remembered the descriptions in travellers’ books, and looked out for millers and blacksmiths in their working gear, and for rudeness and vulgarity in all. The offer of a mammoth cheese to the public was likely to attract to the presidential mansion more of the lower class than would throng to a common levee.

“Great-coats there were and not a few of them, for the day was raw, and unless they were hung on the palings outside, they must remain on the owner’s shoulders; but with a single exception (a fellow with his coat torn down his back, possibly in getting at the cheese), I saw no man in a dress that was not respectable and clean of its kind, and abundantly fit for a tradesman out of his shop. Those who were much pressed by the crowd put their hats on; but there was a general air of decorum which would surprise any one who had pinned his faith on travellers. An intelligent Englishman, very much inclined to take a disgust to mobocracy, expressed to me great surprise at the decency and proper behavior of the people. The same experiment in England, he thought, would result in as pretty a riot as a paragraph-monger would desire to see.

“… by four o’clock the guests were gone, and the ‘banquet-hall’ was deserted. Not to leave a wrong impression of the cheese, I dined afterwards at a table to which the President had sent a piece of it, and found it of excellent quality. It is like many other things, more agreeable in small quantities.”

An editorial in the Poughkeepsie Eagle of March 1, 1837, took a less rosy view of the day:

“We perceive that General Jackson on the 22nd ult. ‘cut his big cheese’ in honor of the day. As vermin have ever a great fondness for that article, as was to have been expected, the government rats rushed in great numbers to secure a share of the spoils. In a short time the whole cheese, weighing 1,400 pounds, was carried off. The proceedings were so purely Republican that hundreds of loafers crowded into the East room and made free with everything they found there.”

After its consumption, the cheese of Thomas Meacham left a lasting legacy at the White House. In March of 1837, when newly elected President Martin Van Buren moved in, his new home still smelled of cheese. In 1838, he told a dinner guest, Eliza Bancroft Davis, wife of Senator John Davis of Massachusetts, that he had to air the carpets, dispose of the curtains, and whitewash and repaint the walls to be rid of the aroma.

In 1839, President Van Buren sold the last of Meacham’s cheeses (doubtless kept somewhere other than the White House) with the proceeds going to charity. The National Intelligencer noted:

“A cheese weighing 700 pounds is now at the store of Mr. William Orme, near the corner of Eleventh Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, where it will remain entire for one day, and will afterwards be sold in quantities to suit purchasers. It is from the dairy of Colonel Meachem of Orange [sic] County, New York, by whom it was presented two years ago to the President [Van Buren] of the United States, and has been preserved with great care. Having been made expressly for the President and by a gentleman whose cheeses are in high repute, it may be supposed to be of the very best quality.”

In Sandy Creek, a marker stands at the site of Thomas Meacham’s farm, “Home of the Big Cheese.”

Which brings me to the second mention of cheese, by Marcia, who recently made a batch of Sausage Cheese Balls. As someone who loves sausage and cheese almost as much as accuracy in research and writing, I asked for the recipe. Marcia’s generous reply:

“Super easy… 1 lb of Jimmy Dean HOT sausage, 1 lb of shredded sharp cheddar cheese, 2 cups of Bisquick. Mix those ingredients together WELL… make into little balls and bake at 325 degrees for 25 minutes. YUM.”

And there you have it: the story of Andrew Jackson’s cheese party and something special to bake, should you ever be invited to one like it. Thank you, Shannon and Marcia. And hail to thee, Sandy Creek!

Tea Island photographed by Seneca Ray Stoddard, circa 1880

I love Lake George, islands and tea, so it was inevitable that I write something about Tea Island. The southernmost island in the lake, it has agreeably posed for many photographers. One of the best known is Seneca Ray Stoddard, who in his Lake George; A Book of To-day (1883) writes:

“Tea Island is a perfect little gem, a trifle over one mile from Caldwell [today's Lake George Village], somewhat resembling the crater of an extinct volcano, with the rim broken away on the east side, allowing the water to flow in and out, forming a beautiful harbor in miniature.”

Stoddard also shares the two legends about the island. The First dates from the French & Indian War: In the summer of 1758, a British General named James Abercrombie led 15,000 men north to attack the French, but first buried the expedition’s working capital on Tea Island, for safekeeping. The attack was a disaster, 2,000 men killed or wounded, and the survivors came running and paddling back the way they came, with undignified haste, fleeing to their fortified camp south of the lake. The men who buried the treasure were either in no mood to stop for it or very dead on the field of battle, and so the treasure remained buried. (Another account claims the treasure was planted by French General Louis-Joseph Montcalm when he was besieging Fort William Henry the previous summer, in 1757. Take your pick.)

The second legend is, to my mind, much more believable. It is said that the small harbor was once an entrance to a tunnel that went all the way to China, where one could buy tea and bring it back without paying customs duties. This could be the origin of the name, but for those with less imagination, we do know that around 1828 someone built a small tea house on the island so that guests at the hotels could enjoy a short excursion on the water, have a cup of tea, and then return refreshed to the village.

Photo by G.S. Irish

Stoddard was not the first to write about Tea Island. This is from a guidebook, The Northern Traveller and Northern Tour (1831):

“Tea Island, about 2 miles down the lake, is another favourite retreat. The little bay in which the boats land is remarkably retired and beautiful, and there is an old hut standing which affords something of a shelter.”

Photo by George W. Conkey

And this just three years later from the American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge, September 1834:

“Tea Island, near the western shore, is a great curiosity. The exterior line is nearly a circle. A small opening, near the eastern shore, receives the water, which spreads within and covers nearly one third of the surface. A handsome summer house has been erected here for tea parties.”

In her Retrospect of Western Travel (1838), British writer Harriet Martineau spent a little more time on the island and on her description:

“First we went to Tea Island. I wish it had a better name; for it is a delicious spot, just big enough for a very lazy hermit to live in. There is a tea-house to look out from, and, far better, a few little reposing places on the margin,—recesses of rock and dry roots of trees, made to hide one’s self in for thought and dreaming. We dispersed; and one of us might have been seen, by anyone who rowed round the island, perched in every nook. The breezy side was cool and musical with the waves. The other side was warm as July, and the waters so still that the cypress twigs we threw in seemed as if they did not mean to float away. Our boatman laid himself down to sleep, as a matter of course; this bearing testimony to the charms of the island; for he evidently took for granted that we should stay some time. We allowed him a long nap, and then steered out course to Diamond Island. This gay handful of earth is not so beautiful as Tea Island, not being so well tufted with wood.”

In 1853, Henry Marvin made an unexpected comparison:

“The first island we pass is Tea Island, near the west shore one mile from the head of the lake. It is a beautiful and romantic isle, with a harbor resembling in miniature, the counter-part of Havana.”

In the late 1800s, the Edward Stieglitz family purchased a summer home nearby on the western shore, and the owners’ son, Alfred Stieglitz, took many photos, including this one of his wife, Emmeline, enjoying the quiet there.

Emmy on Tea Island at Lake George by Alfred Stieglitz, circa 1893

It’s a fascinating little island, and one can read much more in Trip Sinnott’s Tea Island: A Perfect Gem (1993); it’s available at Amazon.com.

I was reading about polo in India and the role played by the British military in bringing polo from India to England, and thence to the United States, when I came across another British sport in India that involved a spear rather than a mallet, and an enraged boar rather than a ball.

Pig sticking certainly doesn’t have polo’s cachet, but for a time it had its own journal, Hog Hunters’ Annual, and books devoted to the subject, including Sir Robert Baden-Powell’s Pig-Sticking or Hog-Hunting: A Complete Account for Sportsmen and Others (1889), Reminiscences of Twenty Years’ Pigsticking in Bengal (1893) by “Raoul” and Modern Pig Sticking (1914) by Major A.E. Wardrop.

A watercolor by Snaffles

Pig sticking even had its own Super Bowl – the Kadir Cup – its own toast – “To the Boar!” – and its own songs, most probably sung after several toasts. A number of artists illustrated the sport for magazines and prints, most notably Charles Johnson Payne (1884-1967), who signed his sketches “Snaffles.” The sport thrived in India from the early 1800s until just after World War II. Its essence was described by Major General J.G. Elliott in his Field Sports in India 1800-1947:

“Armed with a nine-foot lance, the pig-sticker rode a galloping horse in pursuit of wild boar which had been flushed out of the bush by beaters. The aim was to stick the boar immediately behind the shoulder, so that the spear would pass through the lungs and out at the breast.”

The sporting aspect came from the marked reluctance of the boar to cooperate.  The boars of India grew up to five feet in length and three feet at the shoulder; Elliott wrote of one bad boy who measured 44 inches at the shoulder and weighed more than 400 pounds. Such boars ran as fast as a horse, could make a 90-degree turn at a full gallop (a practice known as “jinking”), and came armed with curved tusks up to 9 inches long, sharp teeth and a profoundly irritable disposition. When unable to outrun its pursuer, the boar turned and charged.

In the  middle was the horse, who could be cut, even killed, by the boar’s tusks. And once speared, boars were known to struggle upwards on the lance to get to the wide-eyed man at the end.

“The Pig Takes a Toss,” a sketch from the Kadir Cup of 1923 by Lionel Edwards (1878-1966)

The boar aside, the pursuit itself was dangerous. Elliott notes, “The horse had to be able to remain upright when galloping full tilt through thick grass six to nine feet high, over ground as hard as rock, seamed with large and small nullahs [steep, narrow watercourses, usually dry] and the occasional sunken buffalo wallow…  Old, disused wells, completely overgrown by long grass, were a constant hazard… in 1890, a Colonel Napier fell into one and broke his neck.”

Watercolor by Sir Robert Baden-Powell

Baden-Powell offered this advice to riders:

“So, considering the extra dangers inherent in pig-sticking it would be well for the beginner to cultivate what art there is in falling, for all things are possible to the hog-hunter who knows how to fall. The main thing is under all circumstances to keep hold of your reins, for three reasons : first, because it is at least a nuisance to be left horseless in the presence of an angry boar ; secondly, because it may sometimes save you from being dragged, if your foot catches in the stirrup; thirdly, because the act of hanging on to the reins often gives the body a cant up at the critical part of the pitch and so saves a broken collar bone.”

Cigarette trading cards

Pig stickers, much like polo players, sought horses suited to the task. Captain Scott-Cockburn  wrote of his favorite mount:

“Carclew really loved a hunt. At the cry ‘woh jata’ (there he goes) I could feel his heart thumping between my legs; once a boar had been singled out he would follow him as a greyhound will a hare. In the open he would place me right to spear within a minute. In thick tamarisk or grass it was no more necessary for me to steer him than in the open. Whenever we lost a pig it was either in impenetrable thorn, or when the cover was over my head. I think he must have accounted for a good third of the 500-odd boar on which I got ‘first spear.’ In ten years’ hunting, he was never cut by a pig nor missed his turn.”

“Tent clubs” served to organize the hunts, and their activities were reported in The Oriental Sporting Magazine. The killing of female hogs was frowned upon, and pregnant sows always received a pass. Any member of the Calcutta Tent Club who accidentally killed a sow was fined 12 bottles of champagne.

Photo from an 1895 magazine article; the only image I’ve ever seen with women, and it could be me, but they don’t appear to be too pleased. And below, a second image from the same article.

The beaters were the final, and indispensable, members of the cast. Elliott wrote:

“Barefoot, clad only in a loincloth and pagri [turban], and carrying a stout pole, a hundred of them in line would beat through the high grass until a rideable boar emerged with a savage ‘woof-woof’ from a thicket. And all for a few annas a day. There was, however, another attraction. Fox hunting has been described as the ‘unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable,’ but pig sticking has the edge as pork was considered a great delicacy by the beaters.”

“The Line of Beaters” by Sir Robert Baden-Powell

The day’s hunt, in a field where temperatures might be over 100˚F in the shade, would end at mid-day with a quick lunch, “plenty of cold beer,” and a long nap before an evening visit to the horse lines and then dinner in the mess tent where the men would talk about pig sticking.

The Kadir Cup

The sport had its competitive side. First held in the 1870s, the Kadir Cup was a competition for “first spear” and hosted more than 50 entrants annually. Groups of three were drawn and when a pig was flushed the men galloped off, each trying to spear the pig and draw first blood. The first to do so showed his spear to the umpire and went into the next round. At day’s end, the winner received the entry fees and with the money bought a replica of the trophy.

Lord Baden-Powell

The most famous winner of the Kadir Cup, in 1883, was Sir Robert Baden-Powell, a Lieutenant-General in the British Army in India and Africa, and the founder of the Boy Scout movement. In a chapter on pig sticking in his autobiography, Lessons from the Varsity of Life (1933), he wrote:

“Yes, hog-hunting is a brutal sport – and yet I loved it, as I loved also the fine old fellow I fought against. I cannot pretend that I am not inconsistent. But are many of us entirely consistent ? Do what we will and say what we like, although we have a veneer of civilisation, the primitive man’s instincts are still not far below the surface.”

Hog hunting in India came to an end after World War II, as cavalry gave way to mechanized warfare and the British departed. The sport is still pursued in other nations.

A particularly appropriate Snaffles sketch from Hog Hunters’ Annual

There are people who will tell you that a Liberal Arts degree, in the possession of an English major, is one of the most worthless pieces of paper in general circulation. But as I possess one such scrap of parchment, I am not one of those who will speak disparagingly of it.

And this is why: Years ago, I was chatting with Mary Rubenstein at Middle Ages Brewing, and she told me that they had just made a stout, and asked if I had any ideas for a name. It had to be Arthurian, in keeping with the Grail legends. It was a lovely stout, more black than brown, rich, velvety, delicious and seriously dark, and I was immediately reminded of Mordred, the black-hearted, a shadow cast across Camelot, because I had read Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and a host of other Arthurian tales, and Mordred was not a character one forgot easily. And so I said, “How about Black Heart Stout?” And Mary liked the idea, and applied to the BATF. But they said, “Aren’t ‘black hearts’ a kind of drug?” And Mary said, “Oh, no, it’s a reference to Mordred, the black-hearted,” and they said, “Oh, okay.” And there you have it.

I was reminded of this on Saturday when I had a growler filled with Black Heart Stout at Middle Ages Brewing, and spent a wonderful weekend with it.

A weekend all the more delicious because I had named the beer, and a lovely beer it is.

* * *

With thanks to N.C. Wyeth from The Boy’s King Arthur (1917); Arthur Rackham in The Romance of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table (1917); Howard Pyle for “Sir Mordred the Traitor” from The Story of the Grail and the Passing of Arthur (1910), and (below) Alfred Kappes’ “The Combat of Mordred and King Arthur,” from The Boy’s King Arthur (1880).

“And when Sir Mordred heard King Arthur, he ran unto him with his sword drawn in his hand. And then King Arthur smote Sir Mordred under the shield with a foin of his spear throughout the body more than a fathom. And when Sir Mordred felt that he had his death’s wound, he thrust himself, with the might that he had, up to the bur of King Arthur’s spear. And right so he smote [the king] with his sword holden in both his hands, on the side of the head, that the sword pierced the helmet and the brain-pan. And therewithal Sir Mordred fell stark dead to the earth. And the noble Arthur fell in a swoon to the earth, and there he swooned ofttimes.”

– From The Boy’s King Arthur: Sir Thomas Malory’s History of King Arthur and His Knights of the R0und Table (1880) edited by Sidney Lanier.

The following story is repeated, with the photo above but with no attribution, many times on the Internet:

“Artist R.G. Harper Pennington in one of his paintings depicted a nude Robert Gould Shaw II as the character ‘Little Billee’ from the bohemian novel Trilby by George du Maurier. This painting hung in the bedroom of Henry Symes Lehr, the homosexual husband of Elizabeth Wharton Drexel.”

This has troubled me for a number of reasons, the first being that Little Billee never poses in the nude in George du Maurier’s Trilby.  In the 1894 novel, it is the title character, a young woman named Trilby O’Ferrall, who poses nude for artists, which horrifies the sensitive and morally upright Little Billee. “He was young and tender, was Little Billee,” Du Maurier tells us, “he had never been to any school, and was innocent of the world and its wicked ways.” Little Billee was in fact shocked, and fled, when he discovered Miss O’Ferrall posing nude for artists. So, Little Billee nude? Not likely.

Secondly, we are told the Shaw/Pennington painting hung in Harry Lehr’s bedroom; in some accounts the source is given as his wife, or his wife’s autobiography. Elizabeth Wharton Drexel Lehr wrote two autobiographical books – “King Lehr” and the Gilded Age (1935) and Turn of the World (1937) – but neither book includes any reference to Harper Pennington, R.G. Shaw II or “Little Billee.” None at all.

Nor can I find any reference, outside of the one above, to Pennington painting Shaw, or Shaw posing for Pennington.

On page 55 of King Lehr, Mrs. Lehr did note this of her husband and his bed chamber:

“He always longed for the picturesque clothes of the Middle Ages – for the lace ruffles and jewels of the French courtiers. Over his bed always hung the picture of the Duc de Joyeuse, the famous ‘mignon’ of Henri III of France.”

A portrait of Anne de Joyeuse

Joyeuse was a royal favorite and one of Les Mignons (French for “the darlings” or “the dainty ones”), a group of courtiers who wore their hair long and curled, and sported little bonnets of velvet, ruffled collars, rings, earrings, and makeup. As Harry Lehr enjoyed dressing in women’s clothes and appearing as a woman in entertainments, in his native Baltimore and at Newport, his affinity for the Duc de Joyeuse comes as no surprise.

Harry Lehr, who was exceptionally proud of his legs

But while the story of the Shaw/Pennington painting hanging in Lehr’s bedroom is totally undocumented, it is believable.

If the actual model for the painting was Robert Gould Shaw II, he was within character when he posed. Wealthy and dissolute, he kept a mistress while at Harvard, and left her only briefly to marry the wealthy Nancy Langhorne. She was repelled by Shaw and bolted after three days. Given a shove by her family, she returned, but later claimed that she never knowingly had sex with Shaw, however she did recall his coming into her bedroom one night with a rag soaked in chloroform, which explained the birth of their son. Shaw, meanwhile, went back to his mistress, and even married her, without divorcing Nancy. When Shaw’s father realized his son could be jailed for bigamy, he begged Nancy to divorce the wastrel. She agreed, and Shaw married his mistress a second time, pretending it was the first time. Most accounts note that he drank heavily during this chapter of his life, and for most of the other chapters as well. And given that the model’s relaxed pose goes well beyond a loosened tie, one can imagine Shaw being fortified on this occasion as well.

And certainly, Harry Lehr was a candidate for a male nude in his bedroom. On his wedding night, as recounted by his bride in King Lehr, he told his wife that women repelled him and that she, in particular, really repelled him; he had married her for her money and they would never share a bed. He was not like other men; the door between their bedrooms was to remain locked, and so, goodnight.

We can also be sure that Lehr and Pennington knew one another; they were both members of high society, summered at Newport and attended many of the same parties in New York. One can easily see Lehr buying the painting with his wife’s money.

And now, two more “if’s.” If Pennington painted the picture, and if it was actually titled “Little Billee,” I can suggest a reason why. It starts with another artist, James McNeill Whistler, who Pennington idolized. Whistler was young Pennington’s mentor and his hero, and when Trilby was first published, serialized in Harper’s Magazine in 1894, it contained a character, Joe Sibley, who was Whistler through and through, and not Whistler on his best day. Whistler was stung and furious with George Du Maurier, and let both Du Maurier and Harper’s Magazine know it.

Pennington wrote to Whistler:

“Decidedly, dear Jimmy, our ‘friend’ Dumaurier is lacking in taste. Of course I read ‘Trilby’ as it came out, & had a real ‘turn’ when I ran across some of the personalities which the author has dropped in… but, later, as, one by one, real, living persons were described – for no earthly reason that I can see, as far as the story is concerned – I felt that the joke had gone much too far.”

Whistler got some satisfaction when Du Maurier and Harper’s agreed to remove all traces of Joe Sibley from the book before its hardcover publication, but perhaps Pennington decided to get in a lick as well. What better way to get back at Du Maurier, and play up to Whistler, than to undress Du Maurier’s tender and sensitive hero, paint him lounging lasciviously in the nude, and tell the world that this was Little Billee?

Or, another possible explanation: Perhaps the character from Trilby that Pennington portrayed was not Little Billee, but rather his fellow artist Talbot “Taffy” Wynne. Note the similarity in pose between Pennington’s painting of Shaw (above) and George Du Maurier’s sketch of Taffy from the serialized version of Trilby, and the relevant quotation:

“I have also, like Svengali, seen Taffy ‘trying to get himself clean,’ either at home, or in the swimming-baths of the Seine; and never a sitting woman among them all could match for grace or finish or splendor of outward form that mighty Yorkshireman sitting in his tub, or sunning himself, like Ilyssus, at the Bains Henri Quartre…”

And below, the original image to which Du Maurier refers, a sculpture of the river god Ilissos, from the Parthenon:

Perhaps the painting wasn’t a jest at all. What if someone just confused the characters?

The Shaw/Pennington painting, we are told, again without a source, was “almost certainly destroyed.” That makes sense. Lehr died many years before his wife, in 1929, and one can’t imagine his widow hanging on to the painting for old time’s sake.

If someone out there can document any of this, I’d be grateful. It’s a good story, but there are so many “if’s.”

As a writer I’ve only used two pseudonyms: “Evan Nescent” back in the ‘70s and more recently, “Dirk Wagstaff,” which came into being after the collision of two movie memories.

Fans of the Marx Brothers will recall that Professor Wagstaff was Groucho’s character in Horse Feathers. Groucho had many wonderful names: Wolf J. Flywheel in The Big Store, Otis B. Driftwood in A Night at the Opera and Rufus T. Firefly in Duck Soup. Hard to pick a favorite, but “Wagstaff” worked for me.

“Dirk,” however, has a more complicated etymology, stemming from my freshman year of college. In 1964, if you wanted to see a movie, you went to a theater. Or you stayed up until 11:30 for the late movie on television, small screen, black & white. But on campus, I was informed, they showed a free movie on Friday night. That first Friday, the room was packed, predictably, with freshmen. And no parents.

The film was Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Elizabeth Taylor’s name appeared on the screen and the young men in the audience cheered. Paul Newman’s name appeared and the young women screamed their approval. Burl Ives’ name appeared, and there was silence. Then laughter. (Wasn’t he the guy who sang “Froggy Went a’Courtin’”? Yes, but as it turned out, Burl Ives was the best thing about the movie.)

The next week, the movie was Rob Roy: The Highland Rogue, the 1953 Disney version. Not a film you’d pick for a college audience in 2013, but back then, hey, it was in color, it was a movie. And it was interactive, not quite Rocky Horror Picture Show interactive, but the audience cheered and offered commentary. We had just got to the moment when Rob Roy is celebrating his marriage with a swell reception, when suddenly the English arrive with a warrant for his arrest. Rob’s friends all reach for their swords, but Rob says, “Put up your dirks, men.”

Dirks, indeed. This simultaneously struck about 150 young men as insanely funny. The room exploded with laughter, and I don’t think anyone heard a line of dialogue for the next minute or so. The word still brings back the memory and makes me smile again. And it fits nicely with Wagstaff.

War is a dangerous pastime, and the enemy is not the only hazard. This was brought home to me recently when I was researching four young men from my village who died in the war in Vietnam. One was just 19 years old, and the news reports said he was killed in action while on patrol near the DMZ. But the official cause of death was later listed as “accidental self destruction.” As both a veteran and a student of English, I wondered what that clerical term might cover.

The Internet was helpful. “Accidental self destruction” is when you kill yourself by accident. Perhaps you pull the pin of a grenade that is (or was) attached to your vest, or fail to yield right of way to a tank. The term is grouped with “accidental homicide” – which is when you kill someone else by accident – perhaps shooting the man in front of you as you trip over a tree root. And then there is the umbrella term of “misadventure.”

One example helped me sort this out: Three men are in a mortar pit; one of them drops a mortar round which explodes on impact with the ground. For the person who drops it, it’s “accidental self destruction.” The other two men are victims of “accidental homicide.” Or, it could be classed as “misadventure” for all three.

And such accidents were more common than one would think. Among the men killed in the Vietnam war, 842 died by “accidental self destruction,” 944 by “accidental homicide,” and 1,326 as a the result of “misadventure.”

Vehicular accidents accounted for another 1,187 deaths in Vietnam. And then there were “on purpose” deaths:  234 intentional homicides (i.e., murders) and 382 suicides. Also, 273 fatal heart attacks and 42 strokes. That’s almost 5,000 “non-hostile” deaths that had to be categorized, 5,000 carefully worded letters that had to be sent to parents and spouses.

War. It’s a nasty business.

It was the summer of 1963. I was 15 years old, a Boy Scout, just in from a week on the trail at Philmont Scout Ranch in Cimarron, New Mexico. We had a day to kill in Tent City, the base camp, before the bus took us back to Buffalo, N.Y.  I was drinking a lot of 7Up and eating a lot ice cream, having walked in at a very dehydrated 102 pounds. And I was talking to other Scouts.

There is a Boy Scout Camporee/Jamboree tradition of standing in circles with Scouts from other parts of the country or the world, and talking. Somehow, I found myself in a circle with a group from the South. One of them said, “Why can’t the negroes just be patient, and wait for things to change?”

And I said, “They’ve been waiting a hundred years.”

That stopped everything. Ten, twelve Boy Scouts not saying a word, just staring at me. “Hey,” said the guy  next to me, “let’s go to my tent.” I said, “Okay.” And as we walked away, with two others, he said, “You can’t say stuff like that. You could’ve got beaten up.” And before I could say anything else, he said, “We’re Jewish. We understand. People have been discriminating against us for 2,000 years.”

For the next hour or so, he and his friends talked to me about growing up Jewish in the Deep South, about their parents’ country club which admitted negroes. We talked about race car drivers, too, Parnelli Jones, who had won the Indy 500 a month or two earlier. And then my new friends walked me back to my tent, probably fearing, and probably right, that I would naively wander into another conversation, where my idealism would be rewarded with a beating. I got back to my tent, and back to Buffalo, safely.

I wish I could thank those young men, but I don’t remember their names.

I can’t help but think that Maud Allan would have been better off with a few cast changes in the play that was her life.

Born Beulah Maude Durrant in Toronto in 1873, she spent her childhood in San Francisco before traveling to Germany at age 22 to study piano. While she was away, her brother, Theodore Durrant, strangled and mutilated two young women at the Emanuel Baptist Church, hiding one body in the church’s belfry and stuffing the other corpse into a closet. The San Francisco trial of “The Demon of the Belfry” gained nationwide notoriety and Theodore was hung for the crimes. To escape the unwanted fame, Beulah Durrant took the name “Maud Allan.”

She also chose to give up her career as a pianist for one as a self-taught interpretive dancer, basing her dancing on natural movement in response to music. In Vienna in 1906, she debuted her own production of “Vision of Salomé,” with a score by Belgian composer Marcel Rémy.

Although “Vision of Salomé” stemmed from a Biblical story, it was not what you would call a religious play. In the Bible, King Herod’s step-daughter danced for him and he was so taken by her performance that he promised her anything she desired. Her mother, the king’s wife, told her to ask for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. The king was holding John as a prisoner but had no intention of executing him. But he could not go back on his word, and so ordered John’s head removed and plated.

Maud Adam’s “Salomé” costume, which she designed herself, delighted many and shocked others. Some people were so offended that they saw the show twice, to get the details right for their letters to the editor. The brevity of the outfit, combined with Miss Allan’s barefoot twirling, held audiences spellbound.

Moving to England in 1908, Allan gave 265 performances of “Vision of Salomé” in one year, packing the seats and aisles of London’s 1700-seat Palace Theatre from March through November, commanding £500 a week. Postcards of Miss Allan sold by the thousands. A reporter for the New York Sun, writing from London, calmly described the classical pieces Allan performed early in her program, but shifted into another gear for her entrance as Salomé:

“Her hair is now black, Orientally arranged and surmounted by a headdress of Eastern fashion. Her breast shows the circular plates seen in pictures of Amazons. Across the front of the torso swing two or three pendants. From a waistband supported by the hips hangs a skirt of some black gauze. Just below the waist is some sort of undergarment of the kind usually worn by ballet dancers when they appear in tights.

“But this dancer does not wear tights. Neither above or below does she wear them. Except for the articles mentioned she is absolutely naked, body and limbs. This is no dance of the seven veils. It is a dance of only one veil, and not much of a veil at that. She does not take it off. She does not need to.”

But he saved his best prose for the appearance of the head of John the Baptist:

“She sees it and folds up like a recoiling serpent. Then she unwinds and creeps toward it, she hesitates, she throbs, she turns away, she approaches again and finally pounces upon the head and carries it toward the footlights. There she goes into a spasm of physical raptures over it…

“Suddenly the dancer springs to her full height and swinging the head at arm’s length brings it above her face. Then she suddenly drops the white lips upon her own and for a moment seems to drink obscene kisses from them as from the brim of a cup. Then follows a writhing revulsion. She puts the head behind her, hides her face with one arm and creeps back toward the pedestal. In another moment she drops it behind the pedestal and falls shuddering to her knees.

“Again she rises, this time slowly. Her whole nude figure quivers. She writhes and worms her way across the stage.  She wreathes fantastic figures with her arms, her legs, her gleaming body. She staggers, she reels, she falls, a shining mass in the pallid moonlight.”

Oh my goodness.

But Allan was growing weary of being known as “the Salomé dancer” and in 1911 commissioned Claude Debussy to write a score for a new dance-play: “Khamma” was to have an Egyptian theme, with a young woman dancing before a stone god, beseeching the deity to protect her city from an army at the gates. Debussy worked on the score but the collaboration was not a happy one; Allan was often on tour (she played Russia, South Africa, India, China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Chile, Peru and Argentina) and when she was back in Europe she was not happy with Debussy, nor he with her. She lost interest in “Khamma” and instead developed a new work, “Nair, the Slave,” with music by Enrico Belpassi. (The Debussy score was performed with other dancers in 1947, and survives in piano and orchestral versions.)

In 1915, while in California, Allan starred in a silent film, The Rug Maker’s Daughter, which included three of her dances, but no copy survives.

An ad for the 1916 Binghamton, N.Y., engagement

In 1916, Allan was set to tour the U.S. with Ernest Bloch conducting her 40-piece orchestra. Among the dances she planned to perform were her interpretations of Strauss’ “Blue Danube,” Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” Grieg’s “Peer Gynt,” Rubenstein’s “Valse Caprise,” Mendelssohn’s “Spring Song,” a cycle of Chopin’s preludes arranged by Bloch, and the finale, “Nair, the Slave.” The tour began with well-reviewed appearances in New York, Albany, Ithaca and Binghamton, with newspapers praising Miss Allan, her dancers, the elaborate sets and her orchestra. However, the initial investment was too great, attendance too low, and the company went broke in Ohio, stranding Bloch and the others.

In 1917, Allan was reduced to playing vaudeville. She returned to England in 1918, and, perhaps to relive her glory days, gave two private performances of the “Vision of Salomé” for her admirers.

Noel Pemberton-Billing

Having “The Demon of the Belfry” as a brother was a bad break, and now Allan caught the eye of another whack job: Noel Pemberton-Billing, an English MP and a self-motivated reformer who had been libeling England’s powerful and famous hoping to provoke court cases so he could command attention and proclaim his views.

Pemberton-Billing published his own magazine, The Imperialist, later re-titled The Vigilante, wherein he published the writings of Arnold Henry White and Capt. Harold Sherwood Spencer (the latter recently discharged from the British Army as mentally unstable). In a nutshell, Pemberton-Billing, White and Spencer believed that Germans, Jews, Communists and homosexuals were in league to bring about Britain’s defeat in World War I by weakening the nation’s will and moral fiber. For example:

“The German, through his efficient and clever agent, the Ashkenazim, has complete control of the White Slave Traffic. Germany has found that diseased women cause more casualties than bullets. Controlled by their Jew-agents, Germany maintains in Britain a self-supporting – even profit-making – army of prostitutes which put more men out of action than does their army of soldiers.”

But wait, there’s more:

“There exists in the Cabinet Noir of a certain German Prince a book compiled by the Secret Service from reports of German agents who have infested this country for the past twenty years, agents so vile and spreading such debauchery and such lasciviousness as only German minds can conceive and only German bodies execute.”

Spencer claimed that the “Berlin Black Book” named 47,000 (!) British perverts who were being blackmailed by the Germans into giving up military secrets and weakening the war effort. And Spencer knew the document existed because he had been told about it by Prince William of Albania in 1914.

“It is a most catholic miscellany. The names of Privy Councilors, youths of the chorus, wives of Cabinet Ministers, dancing girls, even Cabinet Ministers themselves, while diplomats, poets, bankers, editors, newspaper proprietors, members of His Majesty’s Household follow each other with no order of precedence.”

Not content with the 47,000 existing British perverts, Germany was hard at work to create new ones:

“Meretricious agents of the Kaiser were stationed at such places as Marble Arch and Hyde Park Corner. In this black book of sin, details were given of the unnatural defloration of children… wives of men in supreme positions were entangled. In Lesbian ecstasy the most sacred secrets of the state were threatened.”

In “Lesbian ecstasy” indeed. Pemberton-Billing claimed that Margot Asquith, wife of former Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, was a lesbian and a German spy. And in an article entitled “The Cult of the Clitoris” (what a way he had with words), he said that one of Margot’s lovers was Maud Allan, who had years before been a luncheon guest at 10 Downing Street and had recently performed sex acts on stage as Salomé.

Maud Allan took the bait and sued for libel. Pemberton-Billing reveled in his new forum, defended himself and coached his witnesses in lies. His star witness, Eileen Villiers-Stewart, when told to vacate the witness box, informed the courtroom that the trial judge, Charles Darling, was also listed among the 47,000 perverts.

Pemberton-Billing also told jurors that Maud Allan’s brother was a murderer, and suggested that Miss Allan’s dancing with the head of John the Baptist mirrored her brother’s behavior with the corpses of his victims. So there.

The jury bought it and rolled in it. Noel Pemberton-Billing won. Maud Allan lost. Basil Thomson, who as head of Britain’s Special Branch was responsible for catching real German spies, wrote in his diary, “Everyone concerned appeared to have been either insane or to have behaved as if he were.”

The victors, however, had little time to celebrate. England and its allies won the war and conspiracy theories suddenly looked silly. Harold Spencer was sent to jail for libeling another public figure, and striped of his army rank; after his release he was arrested again for “disgusting behavior.”  Under oath while being tried for bigamy, Eileen Villiers-Stewart admitted she lied in the Maud Allan case, and then went to jail for being married to two men at the same time, about which she had also lied. Exposed as a perjurer and a fraud, Pemberton-Billing slunk out of Parliament, citing “ill health.”

Allan resumed her career, but her popularity waned. For a time, she lived in Holford House in Regent’s Park, London, with Verna Aldrich, her secretary and, some say, lover. Maud Allan eventually moved back to California, and gave her last performance in Los Angeles in 1936. An automobile accident in 1938, in Pasadena, ended her dancing career, but she continued to teach dance. She returned to London for a time, and served as an ambulance driver during the Blitz, before returning to California in August of 1941; one account notes that she worked as a draftswoman for Douglas Aircraft in Long Beach. She died October 7, 1956, in Los Angeles.

* * *

Maud Allan by London society photographer Alexander Bassano

Maud Allan in “Spring Song,” by London theatrical artist Charles A. Buchel

Postcard of Maud Allan in costume for “Spring Song”

Postcard of Maud Allan in costume for Chopin’s “Marche funèbre”

“Maud Allan and Century Plant” (1916) by American photographer Edward Weston

Postcards of Maud Allan

* * *

A complete list of Maud Allan’s works and many more images can be found at Dance Collection Danse.

Many, many years ago, in the early 1960s, I dated a young woman whose older brother was something of a legend. While a student at a college that shall remain nameless (RPI), a member of an anonymous (Delta Tau Delta) campus fraternity, he was awakened one Saturday morning by a model airplane enthusiast flying his plane in a nearby parking lot. It was about 8 a.m., much too early for the rising and falling sound of a metallic mosquito. Had it been you or I, perhaps we might have shouted out the window, or pulled on our clothes and walked outside to ask the young aviator to desist. Peter, however, went to his closet, took out a .22 rifle, opened the window, lined up the plane, led it just a touch, and with one shot blew it out of the sky. The bang of the shot and the explosion of the airplane seemed simultaneous. In the parking lot, a stunned young man held a slackening length of wire that suddenly led to nothing.

Witnesses dwelt on the lad’s face, how waves of loss, disbelief and bewilderment played across his features, and the contrasting calm of Peter’s expression as he returned the rifle to the closet and himself to bed, to sleep until noon. Shortly afterward, a small trophy that Peter had won for racing (he liked to go fast, when awake), was dubbed The Schwabl, and given to fraternity brothers who did something remarkable. Although no one could top the inaugural event.

Some childhood memories just won’t go away. This is one I can’t forget:

My brother had his first car at 15, and when he was old enough to drive, he had his second, a Chevy Bel Air, blue and white. He drove to school, out on dates, and on Sundays he drove his car to church.

One summer Sunday, I asked my mother if I could ride home from church with my brother, and she said yes. At a traffic light, we pulled up behind her car and saw that she was alone. Dad wasn’t in either car. I knew this was not good.

At home, Mom sent my brother back out to pick up our father, retracing the way he had driven home. A short time later, my brother returned. He said Dad refused to get in the car, and just kept walking.

I went to the bedroom I shared with my brother and stood facing the corner, as close to the wall as I could, with one hand on the wall and one hand on my dresser, trembling.

I waited for the sound of the side door, the sound of my father coming up the hall stairs.

My mother met him at the door and said, “Keith…”

My brother stood in our bedroom doorway and said, “Dad…”

And my father screamed, “You son of a bitch!” I felt his voice pass through my body and I shook harder and harder, my hands and feet moving all by themselves, jumping right off the floor at the slam of his bedroom door. I could hear my father crying. My mother went in, closed the door behind her, and we heard Dad shout, “Always asking for something. You see if he ever gets anything again!”

Mom came back out, closed the door behind her, and we all listened to him sobbing for another five minutes. I didn’t move from the corner.

Mom went back in. “Everybody saw me,” he cried. “Everybody at church saw you left me there.” I heard my mother whispering. The sobbing grew softer.

No one spoke at dinner.

Poker is in my blood, but so is losing, so I won’t be turning pro.

My parents played poker every week, in spite of being Baptists. In my father’s case, the Baptist prohibition against gambling was one of many “thou shalt nots” that he honored in the breach rather than in the observance, but you could safely say it was my mother’s only vice, a modest one: penny-ante poker, played in the dining room on Saturday or Sunday evenings.

Mom and Dad both had leather bags that held their pennies, Mom’s decorated with beadwork. They kept the bags in their dresser drawers and brought them out on game night (usually after I’d been put to bed). I remember the sound of the bags hitting the table, and then the crisp shuffling of the cards. The guests were usually Mike and Betty, and/or Fran and Chuck, and sometimes Flo and Morris. I dreaded Flo, because she had a voice that could wake the dead and a laugh that startled crows, and I would not be able to sleep until the game was over.

Flo aside, the games were low key. I remember my mother telling me that Fran said one evening, “I guess you win; all I’ve got are two pairs of fours.” The same pennies flowed back and forth for years.

My own training started early. Someone, either my mother or my older brother, taught me the order of the hands as soon as I was old enough to “make a fan” with the playing cards. “One pair, two pair, three of a kind…” – it was a litany. We played poker with my cousins, who lived at my grandparents’ house. We used my grandfather’s chips: blue worth 10, red 5, white 1. The chips made us feel cool and rich, and I learned the basics of math.  While my parents played all manner of weird variations – hi-lo, baseball, etc. – we kids stuck to five-card draw, with none of that “draw four with an ace” foo-foo. Occasionally, deuces might be wild, but we drew the line at any other nonsense.

Growing up, I watched “Maverick” on Sunday nights, with James Garner as a smooth, poker-playing character in the Old West, and I bought a paperback of Poker According to Maverick. In college I saw The Cincinnati Kid with Steve McQueen, more than once. A fraternity brother tipped me off to Herbert O. Yardley’s The Education of a Poker Player. But we did not play much poker in college, perhaps because no one had any money.

But in the Air Force, with an actual check arriving every two weeks, I began to spread my wings. In the barracks, the main card game was hearts, during which we drank many beers. But for poker, I remained sober, and folded every bad hand. My cohorts drank and never folded, so I prospered. However, I was never able to take any of Buck’s money, because Buck knew my secret.

“It’s simple,” he said. “Whenever Kihm has good cards, his hands shake.” Indeed, there was no need to study me for subtle “poker tells.” My trembling hands and widening eyes announced the quality of my cards as clearly as the Hole Cam on televised poker. I remember having a mittful, three kings, one evening, and Buck smiling, laying down his hand while everyone else raised and re-raised. (It helped that I drew one card to the three kings, and everyone but Buck thought I’d missed a flush or a straight.) I won $13 on that hand, $18 that night, but none of Buck’s dollars. And feeling guilty, I bought everyone breakfast at an all-night diner. (The dollar went a long way in 1968.)

About 20 years later, and 20 years ago, I was playing poker with my parents during a visit, and suggested my daughter sit in. My father said, “Ah, does she know the rules?” And she looked up at him and said, “One pair, two pair, three of a kind…” and he said, “Oh, I guess she does.” I was so proud of her.

Amarillo Slim once said, “If you can’t spot the sucker after 15 minutes at the poker table, it’s you.”  It doesn’t take me 15 minutes to figure that out; I know it’s me going in, but I love the game. So I read a lot of poker books, and watch poker movies (my favorite being A Big Hand for the Little Lady), and I am content.

* * *

Recommended viewing:

The Cincinnati Kid (1965)
A Big Hand for the Little Lady (1966)
Kaleidoscope (1966)
Rounders (1998)
All In: The Poker Movie (2012)

Recommended reading:

Dealer’s Choice: The World’s Greatest Poker Stories (1955) which includes “Ladies Wild” by Robert Benchley and many other classics
The Education of a Poker Player (1957) by Herbert O. Yardley
Poker According to Maverick (1959)
The Biggest Game in Town (1983) by Al Alvarez
Big Deal: One Year as a Professional Poker Player (1990) by Anthony Holden
Positively Fifth Street (2003) and Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker (2009) by James McManus
Take Me to the River (2006) by Peter Alson

Illustration above: His Station and Four Aces by C.M. Coolidge, 1903

The other day when Republicans in the North Carolina House of Representatives slipped anti-abortion provisions into legislation forbidding Sharia law, I asked myself, “In the first place, why are these people so upset about Sharia law?” So I did a little digging, and the reasons became clear:

Under Sharia law, charity is obligatory, as is paying taxes to support the needy. But financial speculation, bribery and corruption are criminal. Ouch!

The privatization of resources – such as oil, water, pasture land and forests – is forbidden.

Right there, you can see why a North Carolina state representative would sound the alarm.

But there’s more: Under Sharia law, that representative would have to pray five times a day, and visit the sick and dying.

Should the representative be single, he would have to remain a virgin in order to marry a virgin. If the representative was caught engaging in premarital or extramarital sex, he would receive 100 lashes in front of witnesses.

And if that representative was caught stealing – perhaps in the form of misappropriation of funds – his right hand would be amputated. If he stole again, his foot would be cut off. How would that look in a suit?

And if that wasn’t enough, women, such as female lobbyists, would be forbidden to “display their beauty and ornaments.” So that hot blonde from the timber industry, the one with the great legs, she’s got to wrap it all up.

Bourbon and bacon are out, too, but that seems like small potatoes compared to losing the right to take bribes, sell influence, plunder national resources and hump like a hound dog.

Bill sponsor Rep. Chris Whitmire summed it up nicely, “We are making sure that the most fundamental basis on which we exist is protected.”

Yup.

In the wake of Colorado’s “Biblical flooding” and the typhoon that swept through Kyoto, I am reminded of my first hurricane, in October of 1954.

I was seven years old. We lived in Buffalo, N.Y., not exactly a coastal area, but Hurricane Hazel defied history and logic. She first killed 1,000 people in Haiti, then made landfall in the Carolinas. Usually, hurricanes lose power over land, but Hazel was special. Passing over Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York, she maintained winds of up to 100 miles per hour.

I was told I could not go outside, so I watched from the front window of our house. The year before, my father had planted a tree out front, a Mountain Ash, with orange berries, and as the winds roared through, the tree swayed, then bent over, farther and farther, until the top of the tree touched the ground, making a perfect arc. I watched, fascinated. Someone later said that if the tree had been a year or two older, it wouldn’t have bent; it would have snapped.

Hazel killed 95 people in the U.S., mostly from drowning, and then hit Canada, where she linked up with a cold front over Toronto and dumped more than 8 inches of rain in just a few hours. Creeks and rivers rose more than 20 feet, 50 bridges were destroyed, 81 people died and 4,000 families were left homeless.

In its wisdom, the city of Toronto did not rebuild homes in the floodplains, some of which had been under 10 feet of water. Instead, they built parks. At the time, I had no idea of what the storm had done, or even its name. I just knew it bent our tree over until the top touched the ground.

On September 1, 1939, the morning the German army invaded Poland, the postal workers at the Polish post office in Gdańsk delivered more than mail.

There was a lot of history behind the 1939 invasion of Poland, and specifically the invasion of Gdańsk. The borders of Poland had been redrawn many times since its birth in 997 AD. In fact, in 1793 the borders were erased entirely and Poland ceased to exist on paper, its territory being divvied up by Prussia, Russia and the Hapsburg Empire of Austria. At that time, the Polish postal service, which dated from 1654, also ceased to exist.

It was not until 1920, in accordance with the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I, that Poland was once again made a nation. A clause in the treaty guaranteed Poland access to the Baltic Sea, with a corridor that led to the port of Danzig, or Gdańsk as it was known to the Poles; the port was declared a “Free City,” neither German nor Polish. However, 95% of the population of the city was German and many of these Germans did not welcome their loss of sovereignty.

Polish postage stamp for use in Gdańsk

The first Polish post office in Gdańsk was established in 1920, to shepherd mail and parcels to and from the port to Polish territory, but it was not open to the public.

On January 5, 1925, the Polish Postal and Telegraph Office (shown above) opened its doors to the public in Gdańsk and its mailboxes were put up in the city. The first night, the mailboxes were defaced with paint, and oil or tar were poured into mail receptacles. In the weeks and years to come, letters posted to “Gdańsk” were not delivered by the Germans because they were not addressed to “Danzig.” In the mid-1930s, with the rise of Nazism in Germany, the harassment took on a more strident tone.

Then, on August 25, 1939, the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein dropped anchor in the “free port” of Gdańsk, and in the early morning hours of September 1, Germany invaded Poland from the west, south and north. In Gdańsk, the German battleship opened fire on the Polish garrison at Westerplate, and at the same time Danzig policemen and local units of the S.A. and S.S. with armored cars moved to occupy the Polish post office building.

The Poles, however, had anticipated a German attack. Inside the building, 52 postal workers armed with pistols, rifles, three Browning machine guns and three boxes of hand grenades repulsed the first attack, hoping that they would soon be relieved by the Polish army. At 11 a.m., the Germans began firing on the building with 75mm artillery pieces at almost point blank range, but a second assault was also repulsed. At 3 p.m., the Germans called for a cease-fire and demanded the surrender of the postal workers, who refused.

During the lull, the Germans brought in a 105mm field gun, and their combat engineers mined a wall of the building. At 5 p.m., the device was detonated, the wall collapsed and the Germans took the building, except for the basement. The Poles in the basement refused to surrender. At 6 p.m., the Germans flooded the basement with gasoline and lit it up with flamethrowers. Five Poles burned to death before the rest fled the basement. The first two Poles to exit the building, waving white flags, were shot. The rest were allowed to surrender.

For almost 15 hours, a handful of postal workers had held off the German police, the S.A. and an S.S. unit with field artillery.

Among those who died were the building’s janitor and his 10-year-old daughter, who lived there. More men died from their burns and wounds in a hospital. Those who survived were interrogated and then tried by the Wehrmacht for being “illegal combatants,” with an S.S. attorney acting for their defense. The janitor’s wife was acquitted; the postal workers were sentenced to death. They were executed by an S.S. firing squad on October 5, 1939, and buried in an unidentified mass grave.

After the war, the prosecuting attorney who demanded the death penalty and the judge who passed sentence on the men were never charged or tried. They were “de-Nazified,” and enjoyed successful careers as attorneys, dying peacefully in the 1970s.

In 1979, a memorial to the postal workers was raised on the site. Their remains were found in 1991 and re-buried in a cemetery for victims of Nazism. They are remembered as heroes.

I am past weary with those who venerate the U.S. Constitution without reading it.

Written and adopted in 1787, the document was intended, among other things, to form a more perfect union, establish justice, promote the general welfare and secure for us “the blessings of liberty.”

But tucked into the fine print was Article I, Section 9:

“The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.”

The Constitution, in all its perfection, while claiming to establish justice, the general welfare and liberty, also guaranteed the existence of the slave trade for twenty (20) more years. For an entire generation, slave traders could import men and women into the United States, for sale to the highest bidder, with no interference from the U.S. Congress.

And to make it more disgusting, the framers of the Constitution reserved the right to raise revenue for the federal government on the slave trade, to levy a tax of up to $10 on each “Person” imported – not only condoning and protecting the trade, but keeping their options open should the government itself choose to profit from it.

Enshrined in our Constitution is a clause that enabled white men to become rich, while people of color suffered and died in bondage. One need not wonder why today’s Conservatives express such love for the document, and find themselves of one mind with the Founding Fathers.

Few things make me happier than the arrival of Architectural Digest, and the December 2013 issue more than fulfilled my eager expectations. Savor with me this morsel from a feature on a Paris apartment (“A Backward Glance” by Mitchell Owens):

“And what about the hefty red-marble pedestals holding aloft two Japanese covered jars? They came from the Neuilly hôtel particulier of Chilean guano magnate Arturo Lopez-Willshaw, one of the mid-20^th century’s most exalted cognoscenti.”

A guano magnate in a “hôtel particulier” in Neuilly-sur-Seine – you can’t make this stuff up.

And the next time you hang a picture, think about this Manhattan duplex and the way the owners chose their decorator (“Bridging Cultures” by Michael Cannell):

“Forty architecture firms pitched proposals to a nine-person selection committee comprising the clients and several family members and friends who work in the fields of art and design.”

And what did they get for all those meetings? Step inside:

“Nine stepping-stones span a reflecting pool fed by a 32-foot waterfall, a paper-thin sheet of liquid spilling quietly behind a white-onyx stairway lit from within by LEDs. Waiting on the far side of the pool is a full-scale wood-and-rice-paper teahouse constructed in Kyoto and assembled on-site by Japanese craftsmen.”

Just what I would have done. I can’t wait for January.

* * *

Read more about the amazing Arturo, “king of guano,” here.

Louise Astor Van Alen Mdivani

Alexis and Serge Mdivani, two Georgian princes who fled to Paris after the Soviet invasion of their birthplace in 1921, excelled at marrying wealthy women and creating polo widows, the latter skill financed by the former.

In 1931, Alexis Mdivani married Louise Astor Van Alen, but in 1933 he dumped her to marry Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton, who gave her new husband a string of polo ponies as a wedding present, and rarely saw him after that; he spent most of his time on the polo fields of Hurlingham and Ranelagh. When she divorced him in March of 1935, she described herself as “just a polo widow.”

Had they remained married for a few more months, Hutton would have become a widow for real. In August, Alexis took up with the 26-year-old Baroness Maud von Thyssen-Bornemisza, wife of Baron Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kászon. While her husband was away from Paris, the Baroness slipped down to Spain for a sunny tryst with Alexis. But then the Baroness got a frantic phone call from her maid in Paris saying the Baron had returned early and was furious at her absence. So the lovers packed in a rush and headed for Perpignan to put the Baroness on the first train for Paris.

Alexis was at the wheel of his Rolls Royce, also a gift from Barbara Hutton, doing about 100 mph on the Spanish roads when he tried to pass a truck, caught the edge of a culvert on the far side of the road, ran into a tree and flipped five times. Alexis’s head went through the windshield, left his shoulders and kept on going. The Baroness survived but lost an eye, bit off most of her tongue, and was seriously disfigured. To add insult to injury, the Spanish newspapers noted she was not wearing underwear at the time of the crash, and dubbed her “the princess without panties.” She spent a month recovering in the hospital and, after a polite interval, the Baron divorced her in 1937.

On to Alexis’ brother, Serge. He married actress Pola Negri in 1927, but she lost a fortune in the stock market crash of 1929 and Serge divorced her in 1931. Two weeks later he married opera singer Mary McCormic, who in turn divorced him in 1933. In February of 1936, months after his brother’s death, Serge jolted society by marrying his former sister-in-law, Louise Astor Van Alen Mdivani, who had been unattached since Alexis had divorced her.

Like his brother, Serge had a passion for polo, and less than two months after the wedding he was playing at the Gulfstream Polo Club in Florida. His team, the Georgians, was trailing the Texans 4-2 in the final of the Southeastern Polo Championship when Serge reached out and swerved across the line of play to take the ball away from Cecil Smith. Crossing the line of play is a foul in polo, and one made all the more egregious on this occasion by the considerable heft of Cecil Smith, his 10-goal rating and the speed of his mount. The horses collided and both men were thrown to the ground.

Serge was unhurt, but as he began to rise from the grass, his pony kicked him in the head. This time, he did not get back up. Louise had been in the stands; she ran out onto the field and Serge died in her arms. She was now a polo widow in the grimmer sense of the phrase.

Fortunately, there is something of a happy ending to all this, at least for Louise. She went home to Newport to mourn and there met a handsome young Englishman named Alexander “Sandy” Saunderson. They fell in love, married, and divided their time between an apartment in Paris and a home in Santa Barbara. Mrs. Saunderson, “Lulu” to her friends, was known for her tea parties, her wit and her philanthropy. She enjoyed breakfast in bed every morning and lived a long and full life. She died in 1998, at the age of 88.