Durant Family Saga
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Trilogy Summary
  • Contact
  • Author Biography
  • Events
  • Copyright

National Library Week

4/5/2021

5 Comments

 
Picture
It's National Library Week in the U.S. and I thought it fitting to write a short blog about librarians, archivists, and museum curators.

I dedicated my historical novel Imaginary Brightness to all of you; it says, "This is dedicated to librarians everywhere, because they never stop searching."

For me the research journey started with the one of the librarians on my campus. It was summer and slow and I asked her, how would I find out where a person from 1890 lived and more about her? I gave Margaret the name of Minnie Kirby, the famed mistress of the woods in my novel - and real person. And voila! Within what seemed like minutes but was probably longer, Margaret had her obituary in front of me.

"How did you get that?" I asked her. She showed me this magical site that has old newspaper archives from the North Country in New York.

One thing I appreciate the most about the librarians and archivists I have worked with (and there are many) is their absolute delight, professionalism, and curiosity  when it comes to looking up information. I think some may call it an obsession. I for one am glad. I recall another instance when I was trying to track down William West Durant's transcribed Egyptian Diaries from 1869-1873. I was lucky enough to find a citation on the internet but only two libraries in the U.S. housed it.

The librarian at the Onondaga County Library was able to obtain for me a digital copy from the folks at the NY Public Library.  Within weeks I had it in my possession. Brilliant!

And the collections! Oh the collections. I fall in love with collections. There was nothing like finding a post card drawing made in 1932 by the artist Lillian Tiffany, addressed to Poultney Bigelow tucked away in the 10,000 letters that are housed under his name at the NY Public Library.

And then there was the visit I made to the Isle of Wight Registry Office in the UK in the summer of 2014. I was feeling forlorn that I didn't find what I was looking for on the Durants when the archivist showed me this wonderful 1876 real estate portfolio of the Binstead Estate.  It had a hand drawn color map, and layout of the estate from the time period when  William West Durant would have been a visitor of his family lawyer and friend Sir Charles Locock who lived there at the time. Grist for the mill: I was able to visualize what it would have been like for William to participate in a hunting party on the estate.

What amazes me as well is the various levels of sophistication at each of the places I have visited. The Library of Congress as a fancy schmancy digitzer. Then there is the old copying machine at the Adirondack Museum. I was in there copying a court case document for so long that the archivist came to check that I was still alive
(mind you, it wasn't fragile). I promised him if I made money on my book I would try to donate some to them so they could buy a digitizer.

Big, small, old, new. It's all the same. Libraries are the world's repositories of all of our secrets.


5 Comments

Falling in Love with the Wrong Man

4/7/2020

 
PictureActress Ellen Terry. Photo by Julia Magaret Cameron.
I was giving a talk at a book event on the challenges of writing historical fiction and I asked the audience the question: what do you think would cause a woman living in the late 19th century to give part of her inheritance to a man she hardly knew?

The answers were diverse: blackmail, love, the thought of making more (greed), hope of getting married.

I chose falling in love with the wrong man.

I might be wrong but when I read the biographies of other famous women of the time period (late-Victorian era or Gilded Age) I found a familiar theme: seemingly competent, well-to-do women who had everything going for them, fell for men that were not only rakes but abusive as well. I modeled my plot line on the biography of a couple of them.

The famous French actress, Sarah Bernhardt was a good example. I found a biography written about her in 1921 by a fellow actress. Indeed, the author of the biography, Madam Berton, was the wife of Sarah’s former lover, mentor, and the man that discovered and launched Sarah’s career -  Pierre Berton.


PictureSarah Bernhardt
Sarah was a successful actress. She made what would be considered in today’s money millions for her stage productions in France, the UK and America. She was courted by royalty, including the Prince of Wales. But she ended up marrying a man named Jacques Damala, another actor, who her biographer called ‘the god of evil’ , a classic Greek beauty, and a dark and handsome man. Sarah ignored the warning signs and rumors about his reputation as a womanizer. Worse for her however was that after their courtship, Damala became abusive and a morphine addict.

Bernhardt’s biographer claims Damala made a game out of demeaning Sarah; criticizing what she wore, how she spoke, even her acting. She would become enraged, he would leave her and wait until she came to him. Indeed, he would state publicly that he “had Sarah on her knees last night, begging for forgiveness.” Hard to believe that a woman as famous as Sarah Bernhardt would allow herself to be treated this way?


PictureLillie Langrty 1885
Well maybe not. I then turned to the biography of another famous actress of the time period: Lillie Langtry. And the same pattern emerged. Here was another woman of great beauty and talent; courted by the Prince of Wales as well (and considered his official mistress for awhile) and she too fell victim to an abusive relationship. Her first marriage to Edward Langtry was a disaster. He drank his way through his inheritance and turned the other way while Lillie used her considerable charm and good looks to keep them afloat financially.

Lillie had a number of lovers after her affair with the Prince waned and she became pregnant by a man other than her husband Edward. Although her relationship with the Prince of Wales ended on a sour note because of a prank she pulled on him at a dinner party (she put an ice-cube down his back); Prince Bertie did help her launch a theater production company. When she was finally able to rid herself of Edward through divorce, she started up a relationship with an American socialite named Freddie Gebhard.

Freddie introduced her to racing horses and they became business partners. She seemed to do well for a number of years with Freddie as her partner and then she married a titled Scotsman named Hugo de Bathe. Various biographies claim the marriage was unsuccessful, one claiming he physically abused her.


PictureElla Durant 1884.
When it was time for me to consider the behavior of one of the characters in my novel set in the same time period, Ella Durant, I had to re-imagine her motivation for giving away close to $20,00 of her inheritance to a Parisian Count to invest for her. I only had court testimony to go by. In 1893 Ella sued her brother William for her share of the inheritance that she believed he squandered. His defense was she could not take care of herself and was financially irresponsible. But besides mentioning this ‘lost investment’ there was no explanation. A letter addressed to Ella from her mother's companion provides a hint of their relationship:

"Your mother exceedingly regrets you accepted a jeweled cross from Count Seguin de La Salle..she does wish you had refused it...he would have far greater respect for you if you had done so."

Ella Durant was an author and American heiress who was living and socializing with literary figures such as Anne Thackeray Ritchie, Henry James, Oscar Wilde, and Bram Stoker in London during the late 1880s. What would it have been like to have money at her disposal, cavorting around London and managing financial affairs on her own? Wouldn’t she be prey to men who would want to take advantage of her beauty and wealth? And what would be the enticement? The most basic of human instincts, the need to be loved.
Photo Source: Wikimeida, Winterthur Musuem


<<Previous

    Author

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

    Subscribe to blog

    RSS Feed

    Follow me on Facebook or Twitter!

    Categories

    All
    Adirondacks
    Alvah Dunning
    Anne Thackeray Ritchie
    Arpad Gerster
    Awards
    Camp Kirby
    Coffee
    Collis Huntington
    Divorce
    Dr Thomas Durant
    Editing
    Egypt
    Ella Durant
    England
    Gilborn
    Gilded Age
    Giveaway
    Great Camps
    Green Wood Cemetery
    Hell On Wheels
    Heloise Durant Rose
    Historical Fiction
    Hochschild
    Huntington
    Isle Of Wight
    J.P. Morgan
    Julia Margaret Cameron
    Last Of Mohicans
    Lillian Tiffany
    Marketing
    News
    Ozymandias
    Pine Knot
    Poultney Bigelow
    Research
    Sagamore
    Sarah Bernhardt
    Tea
    Uncas
    Utowana
    Vanderbilt
    Verplanck Colvin
    William West Durant

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.