Category History
Guinevere Sinclair Gould Brodrick
I love stories about rich people. They have a fairy tale aura about them, but they actually happened. I especially like those among the wealthy who are eccentric or hapless, whose foibles and follies are writ large. Such a gem was George Jay Gould. Born in 1864, he was a son of Jay Gould, […]
Charles Dickens in New York
Famed English author Charles Dickens was a nineteenth century rock star, packing houses everywhere he went, reading aloud from his works to adoring audiences. Such tours were Dickens’ only way to make money in the United States as publishers here pirated his work, paid him no royalties, and there was no law with which he […]
Death Pools in History
“The game had no name and is probably as old as creation itself.” — Jean Shepherd, In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash (1966) You need three things for a death pool: 1) celebrities, 2) news media, and 3) people who differ in their opinions. Even if we insist that celebrities and media require […]
Bessie Love and James Abbe
In June of 1998, I was spending a day at Pike Place Market in Seattle, a busy hive of shops where one can find anything from fresh fish to antique postcards. I was in a quiet corner of a shop specializing in the latter, when I was stopped, frozen, by an image that still fascinates […]
Eleonora Sears and John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent and Eleonora Sears are both favorites of mine, and so I was delighted to discover their paths crossed in 1921, when Sargent wrote to Sears asking her if she would sit for a drawing, and she accepted. Ethel Barrymore, the actress, wrote of her friend Eleo, “She has more charm than anybody […]
Louisa Lander and Nathaniel Hawthorne
The early spring of 2004 found me on a southern island, in a garden, looking at a statue for which I had no explanation. “It’s Virginia Dare,” a friend said, but the Virginia Dare of my understanding was a child, the first European child born on these shores, part of the Lost Colony of Roanoke […]
Edison the Executioner
When we bought our house in Skaneateles, it came with the appliances, including a built-in microwave oven with some unusual features. For one thing, it turned itself on. A repairman said that was probably the circuit board getting ready to go, “and that’s really expensive.” If we had chosen to call a witch doctor, I’m […]
Faithful Readers 