Durant Family Saga
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Little Cottage in the Woods

7/18/2014

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Picture
I went to tour  Osborne House - the summer residence of Queen Victoria. After she made the Isle of Wight her summer home, the Isle became a beacon for other aristocrats looking to escape London.

A note to anyone that wishes to visit: give yourself a whole day. The place is remarkable. I have posted some photos of the outside below - I was not allowed to take pictures of the interior. The only thing I have to compare it to in the U.S. is the Vanderbilt Mansion in Newport Rhode Island. And that place is about 1/8 of the size of Osborne. At one time the Osborne estate covered 2,000 acres. It now is 200, but I can imagine the hunting grounds the royal family had at their disposal, that and the fabulous sea.

On my visit I also toured the Swiss Cottage (pictured above in a post card from the 1800s) located on the grounds. The Swiss Cottage was commissioned to be built by Prince Albert as a playhouse for his children. One theory is that he wanted to build a replica of one he remembered from his childhood growing up in Rosenau Coburg, Bavaria. Other theories are that Queen Victoria got the idea from her half-sister Princess Feodore who had a Swiss cottage built for her own children in Baden-Baden. At the time, the Swiss chalet style was popular throughout Germany, France and Britain.

From my readings I learned that the Royal children would enter the cottage, immediately take off their formal clothes and dress in their play clothes. It was here that they could let their hair down, so to speak. They would garden, cook, and do 'normal' things.

While looking through the rooms I couldn't help but wonder if the subject of my own novel - William West Durant - had ever been here, or if he knew about the place when he lived on the Isle of Wight.

It's not too far fetched, as I have discovered from his Egyptian Diaries (1869 & 1873) that he met the Prince of Wales, Queen Victoria's eldest son, in 1869 while they both were touring along the Nile. I have found evidence as well that besides yachting, William lived on the Isle of Wight between 1866-1870 in both Shanklin and Cowes. And even more interesting, in the room that houses the royal children's collectables, were two replicas of Swiss cottages. I couldn't get close enough to tell if they were music boxes, but I wondered if it were possible that at one time these were sold on the Isle of Wight and that William may have acquired one while living there?


Of course where he obtained the Swiss cottage music box that he used as a model for his camps in the Adirondacks is anyone's guess. Anything is possible as William was supported by his father to tour around Europe for much of his youth. Besides the Isle of Wight, I have found in family letters that he stayed in the Gastein Valley of Austria, another popular mountain town said to have healing thermal springs, and plenty of interesting architecture to inspire.

It must have been quite a shock when his father Dr. Thomas Durant showed up in London to inform the family that they were broke and "Oh by the way William, it's time to start earning money instead of spending it. I've got some land investments in the Adirondacks we need to develop."

No wonder then that William sought refuge in the Adirondack Wilderness. It was what he was used to - escaping.


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Keep Calm and Carry On Your Research 

7/16/2014

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I sat listening to the gulls on the sea one evening, squawking at each other, in a tizzy over something.  That's how I felt after a ten hour day trip to Newport to conduct research at the Isle of Wight (UK) records office.

It was comical really, the whole day. I was staying at a small cottage in  Ventnor, and after climbing miles uphill (ok I'm exaggerating - it's a mile) to the bus stop, I made my way to Newport. It was there I planned to meet up with the person at the records office I had emailed from the U.S. weeks prior about any newspaper accounts of the protagonist in my novels: William West Durant and his yacht Utowana.  I needed any reference to him and his yacht appearing on the Isle of Wight in 1891-92.

Of course, I was so worried about directions and finding the place I neglected to
bring the crucial emails from the lady at the records office that indicated the dates and page numbers of the news articles I should specifically be reviewing.

Not only that, the place was mobbed. Every octogenarian in Britain was there doing genealogical research looking through what looked to me like those old index cards we used to use in the libraries back home when we were in grade school. And not only that, the cards all had hand writing on them. Why not hire a history grad student to enter it all in a database I thought?

I approached the hapless archivist on duty and asked for my email buddy only to find out she was not present. He brought me into a stuffy room - windows closed, no AC - and showed me the microfilm machine and the myriad of rolls of the Isle of Wight Press going back to 1870 that I could scroll through. Is he kidding?

"How interesting," I said hopefully, "in the States we can google the New York Times archive and find references to articles."

He just gave me an odd look and said, "Good luck."

So I began - I sat down at this ancient machine that I hadn't seen since my college days and scrolled through the years 1891-1892. I couldn't believe all of the stuff they crammed into the Isle of Wight papers back then that had nothing to do with anything. Suddenly I found myself getting sucked into reading about a servant at Queen Victoria's summer residence at Osborne House who drank a bottle of ammonia because he thought the detectives were after him for stealing one of the Princess's pins. My god! And then there was an article about a wedding between some Lord and Lady and it listed every guest AND their gift. Silver trays, ivory hairbrushes, pins, tea sets etc. etc. What was it I was looking for again? Oh yes, William and his yacht.

Well after 2 1/2 hours I found nothing. I even scanned the articles about the Cowes Cup held every August, it mentions all of the yachts that raced, the royal galas, who attended and nothing about William. What happened I thought? The New York Times claims he hosted royalty on his yacht while docked at Cowes? What am I doing here?

I was about to leave when there she was - my email buddy, I ran into her on my way out. "Oh yes, I remember you," she said. She punched in the Utowana on her computer and up popped the exact dates and page numbers I needed to find in the Isle of Wight Press from 1891 and 1892.


I had to get serious. Time to bring something back with me.

"We close in 5 minutes for lunch," she said. Jeesh! So I wandered around Newport for an hour and when I got back to that machine there was another person sitting at it.

"I have this booked for another 1/2 hour," she told me. It was the only machine with a printer attached.

The poor archivist, who by then realized he may have steered me wrong about the ability to 'google' their newspaper archives, asked her if she would move to another machine.

"That would be wonderful," I said, trying to sound polite and cheerful even though I wanted to bite somebody's head off, "after all I did come all the way here from New York."

She didn't budge.


Then this well-dressed older gentleman sporting a summer linen suit of beige came in to use the microfiche (different machine entirely) and began to struggle with the plug. I helped him out and he told me he used to be the archivist there and HE was the one that made all of the index cards!!  Somehow his demeanor and lack of sweat in the 90 degree F heat of the room made me think I should just let things roll. If he had the patience to hand write those cards, then I could have patience to wait a bit for the printer.

I finally got on the machine and found the articles I needed and went to print them out and the printer was out of ink. The archivist, who by then was getting to know me very well, came to help me, wearing a bright white buttoned down cotton shirt. When he pulled out the strip and shook the toner the black ink went flying everywhere. I just needed to get out of there at that point.

Documents in hand I headed to the Newport bus stop and missed the bus back to Ventnor by one minute (I saw the back of it as it pulled away) and had to wait another 1/2 hour.

Once on the bus I sat on the top - it was a double-decker, and almost had a heart attack when we barely missed hitting a woman with a baby stroller. I still can't understand how the Brits drive on these narrow roads and don't  have road rage!

I was clutching the rail of the bus seat in front of me with anxiety when I look over and noticed the woman across the aisle who had at least twenty years on me was placidly looking out the window. "My god woman! Didn't you see what almost happened?" I wanted to yell at her.

I realized how ridiculous I must look, white-knuckled while everyone else seemed to think that skimming a pedestrian with a 2 ton bus is natural occurrence, so I tried to calm down.


Disembarking from the bus and taking the one mile trek downhill did exactly that, calmed me down.

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    Sheila Myers  Professor at Cayuga Community College in Upstate New York.

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