Durant Family Saga
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Poultney Bigelow: Friend of Durants

9/30/2014

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Poultney Bigelow. Source: Poultney Bigelow Society
While reading an interview given by David Mitchell, author of the Cloud Atlas, in the Atlantic I was intrigued with one of his many musings about writing scenes and characters. In essence he said, one must consider what we now take for granted, for example: health care, technology, owning a car, and then what would a character in the past or future take for granted?

I took this into account while working on my novel on the Durant family. Not only for Durant  family members, but one character in particular, Poultney Bigelow.  He was a friend of the Durants, and from my research I uncovered that he and Ella Durant maintained a friendship well into their 80s.  I speculate from their letters to each other that they were, in their early years, at one time in love with each other.


But as I dug into Poultney's life I was disappointed to learn he was marked by some historians as both an anti-Semite and racist. Indeed,  he was forced to resign his position as Professor of Imperialism at Boston University after his writings on Jews and race as well as his scathing criticism of political corruption during the Panama Canal Project were deemed too controversial.

When I mentioned to a good friend that I was torn about how to portray his character as I found myself taken aback by his bigotry, he suggested most people during his time and with Poultney's socioeconomic standing would appear to us today to be bigots.

Was I taking my own views on bigotry for granted?

And then there was an article in the Toledo Blade (1926) I found on the Bigelow family website about his lawsuit against HG Wells for public slander when Wells, in his account of a dinner party conversation held in Countess Russell's home in London, claimed publicly that Bigelow had the audacity to ask him about his sales income from writing, and then went on to say that he believed Poultney to be ill-mannered.

What to do with this piece of information? It was after all an event that happens well after my current story ends.

I am using it, like all of the research I have found, some flattering, some unflattering, about my characters. Ella, my favorite of all, disappointed me when I found an article she had written to the New York Times (1900) titled: 'The White Woman's Burden' - a diatribe against the maids in New York trying to unionize - again written in a time well beyond my current novel.

It helps, I suppose that two of my main characters wrote for the public. These peeks into the thinking of my characters through their own writings, helps me to weave the tale in such a way as to show that all of my characters, especially those that are most interesting to write about, have human flaws like the rest of us. It's just a matter of perspective.

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The Elation of Discovery

6/12/2014

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Bronze plaques with quotations by famous writers like this one by Virginia Woolf, line 41st Street in New York City. Library Way as it is called, inspired me as I walked toward the New York Public Library to conduct my research on William West Durant and his family.

Monday of this week I traveled from my home in Upstate NY to New York City to conduct research at the New York Public Library (NYPL).

The NYPL is a peaceful oasis in a crazy, busy city. Driving about Manhattan is enough to bring on either: a) road rage; or b) an anxiety attack. After surviving the traffic jams into the city and finally finding an over-priced parking garage, I walked down 41st street, fearing for my life at the street corners; one step off the curb and I would be clipped by a yellow taxi cab racing through the intersections at 100 miles per hour.

But once off the street and through the doors of the majestic library, the stress melted away, I was transformed, transfixed; no more anxiety for me, the only thoughts I had were elation over what I might discovery in the book-lined rooms.

My first stop was the manuscript division.
Here there were two boxes waiting for me from the Poultney Bigelow collection, containing over 5,000 letters of correspondence between Poultney Bigelow and numerous dignitaries or celebrities (these two boxes are a small snippet of the overall collection of more than 10,000 documents and diaries; this man saved everything!). I was hoping to find letters written by Ella Durant Rose to Poultney to verify my suspicion that they once were in love with each other.

I was delighted to find a few letters from Ella to Poultney written while they were both in their 80s. "I remember a time," she said, "when I found favor in your eyes and delight when your letters reached me."

I also discovered that Lillian Tiffany, a early-20th century artist, may have been married to to Ella's son Durant Rose, Poultney's godson. I found several letters from Lillian to Poultney dated in the 1940s. In the letters, she mentions how busy Durant is at his job in Washington D.C. Eureka! I thought, I had been wondering why, when I was looking through Ella's letters at the Syracuse University Library, Poultney jokingly refers to her as Lillian Tiffany Rose.  I suspect that Lillian was Ella's daughter-in-law.

And then I found a letter addressed to Poultney from William West Durant dated 1932 (William:age 83). William must have pulled out the old guestbook from Pine Knot (now housed at the Adirondack Museum) and saw the artwork Poultney sketched inside the pages while visiting the Durant's Adirondack home in 1878.  William reminisces a bit and then adds, "I am poor but in good health and not unhappy."  This confirms what many of his biographers state, he was not a bitter man in his old age, and remained dignified.

After browsing through Poultney's letters I was off to the genealogy division to look through the three volumes of Durant Family documents. There I read heart-breaking letters from Ella and her mother Hannah to Dr. Durant while he was building the Transcontinental Line, begging him to come visit them in England.

In one touching letter dated February 1869, Ella, age 16, tells her 'Papa': "Saturday, knowing it was your birthday, I placed a chair opposite dear Mamma for you and placed flowers on your plate, though you could not be there,... as we are very lonely without you: we heard that on the celebration of the 4th of July the road is to be opened to California. Is that true dear Papa?"


These letters, a relic of past days when people took the time to write to each other instead of just popping off emails, hold small clues for me to grasp while I am writing my story. After reading this letter from Ella I realized my own version of her relationship with her father was too formal, for example, addressing him as 'father' instead of 'Papa'. But how was I to know? Where I can't find information, I am filling in the blanks.

Now, if I could just get over the fact that my editor emailed to tell me he is doing a full scale assault on my manuscript.  "I like how it reads,....don't start fretting," he said to me, via email.
Really?


I think I will go back to my research.......


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

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