<\/p>\n
By no means did we exhaust last week the treasures contained in the diary of Mrs. Albert Drummond’s Aunt Ardella Prince of Buckfield. Let us dig a bit more into that diary today.<\/p>\n
The year 1879 will be remembered by Maine historians as the year of the Count-out Election. In the following January the State House at Augusta was held by physical force by one party, while it was besieged by the opponents. The holders didn’t dare leave lest the besiegers take over, and the besiegers didn’t want to risk open violence. It was, however, only the intervention of General Joshua Chamberlain and militia companies that finally brought peace.<\/p>\n
In August 1879 the political atmosphere was just beginning to get well heated in preparation for the September election. Ardella Prince tells us about a political rally of that eventful year: “August 27 – Mr. Maxfield took us all to Bridgton to the great Republican mass meeting. Nine of us packed into his big stage. When we got about half way, the pole broke, but Mr. Maxfield, being a man of expedients, soon spliced it and we proceeded. We arrived at the grove ten minutes before the speakers and secured excellent seats. We first listened to a speech on finance from Mr. William Rice, Congressman from Massachusetts. Then William P. Frye, Congressman from Maine, gave us what he called the prelude to his evening speech. He said if the new, fantastic school of finance should prevail, we would have to rechristen the White Mountains. Mt. Washington would become Mt. Solon Chase, Mt. Adams would be Mt. Todd, and Mt. Jefferson Mt. Deacon Gove.” (Here we had better interrupt the diary with a word of explanation. Solon Chase was leader of the Maine Greenback Movement, the attempt to save the nation’s economy with paper money. Two of Chase’s supporters were Todd and Gove.)<\/p>\n
Now to resume in the words of the diary: “The grounds were crowded, but I saw no one whom I knew. We drove to Lovers’ Lane and ate our supper. Just outside North Bridgton a creaking warned Mr. Maxfield that the boxes on his stage were getting heated. We stopped by the side of the road, while Mr. Maxfield and Bertie walked back to get oil and grease. We reached home about 9 p.m. on a lovely moonlight night.”<\/p>\n
As August turned into September, the summer guests left for their city homes. Ardella wrote: “Our guests have now all departed. Mrs. Kimball decided to accompany them as far as Portland. I took them to the boat at North Bridgton and had a delightful drive back all alone.”<\/p>\n
It was then that someone tried to interest Ardella Prince in spiritualism: “September 3 – Mr. Porter loaned me his book on ‘Spirit Communicating’. His first wife (he has had three who have passed on) addressed him, he said, as ‘brother and friend’. I was quite amused at his asking her spirit if she had another husband up there. The second wife then spoke to him, saying the first called him brother out of sheer jealousy, which the second confessed existed in the next world just the same as it did on earth. Wife No. 2 said she had no direct communication with Wife No. 1 because in her own world Wife No. 1 had always repulsed No.2, and anyhow No. 2 was so far above No. 1 in heavenly glory that communication was impossible. As for Wife No.3, she seemed to be left out in the cold.”<\/p>\n
Before the Kimballs left for Brooklyn they exacted a promise from Ardella that she would spend the winter with them and continue instruction of the two boys. But first Ardella had to go home to Buckfield. What was her delight to find on arrival then that John D. Long had sent her an autographed copy of his Aeneid translation.<\/p>\n
It was the end of October before Ardella could leave for her winter with the Kimball family. That should not have been too late to go down the lakes, but perhaps by the end of October the boats had been taken off for the season. Anyhow Ardella went from Waterford to South Paris by stage, and there took the Grand Trunk train to Portland. Changing trains at Portland, including a hack ride from one station to another, she boarded the Boston and Maine, getting into Boston at 8 p.m.<\/p>\n
The next morning she hurried to the Old Colony depot and took the train to Fall River where she became a passenger on the famous Fall River Line of boats to New York. The reason why that was the usual boat route for passengers was because it avoided the long passage around Cape Cod that was necessary for boats out of Boston for New York.<\/p>\n
When Ardella awoke on the boat the next morning she was surprised to find they had not arrived at their New York pier. She wrote in the diary: “I was surprised to learn that, owing to head winds, we were far from New York. We did not get to the pier until 10 o’clock, but Mr. Porter was patiently waiting for us. He escorted us to the new house, 135 Remsen Street, Brooklyn.”<\/p>\n
It seems the Kimball family were not due until the next day. By some mistake, Ardella arrived ahead of them. Let her tell the rest of the story: “I persuaded the boy in charge to deliver the keys to me and I sat down to await the arrival of my trunk. There was nothing to do but wait. At about 6 p.m. the cook, Mrs. Draper, appeared like a good angel. She went at once to the express office and telegraphed for my trunk, and I was very glad to see her return with a bag of sandwiches, for I was getting hungry. Soon after that my trunk arrived, and by the time the Kimball family showed up, Mrs. Draper and I had a good supper ready.”<\/p>\n
Ardella had been less than a week in Brooklyn when the November elections occurred. She was anxious about the fate of her beloved John D. Long, who was running for Governor of Massachusetts against the notorious Benjamin F. Butler. Ardella need not have worried. On Nov. 5 she was able to put into the diary: “Hurrah! John is now Governor of Massachusetts.”<\/p>\n
Very soon Ardella was introduced into the musical and theatrical circles of New York. One of the family of boarders that had come to Waterford in the summer was that of the composer James O. Buck. On Nov. 19 Ardella wrote: “The crowning event of the evening at Mrs. Buck’s was having Mr. Buck read to us the first act of an opera on which he is at work. The libretto is by a member of the Tribune staff and is very funny.”<\/p>\n
As for the theater, on November 3 Ardella went to see Sothern as Lord Dundreary in “Our Ameri can Cous i nIt. On the 11th she went to the Opera House to see Aida, and in that opera she heard Andre, Cary, Campanini and Galassi. She declared that the stage setting was superb and the music ravishing.<\/p>\n
By 1879 Ardella was quite used to the celebration of Christmas. Her mother as a girl had been accustomed to see the day go unrecognized in Buckfield, or for that matter anywhere else in New England. But the years since the Civil War had produced marked change in people’s attitude toward the Christmas festival. So on that Christmas day down there in Brooklyn, far from her Buckfield home, Ardella Prince wrote: “We lighted the tree immediately after breakfast. Among the presents I received an opera glass from Mr. & Mrs. Kimball, a lace tie from Allie, a beautiful pearl inlaid Japanese jewel box from the Buck family. Went to morning service and heard beautiful Christmas music on which Mr. Buck and his choir have worked for a month.”<\/p>\n
The new year saw a change in the Kimball residence. Mr. Kimball had bought a large tract of land in Bricksbury, New Jersey, where he planned an extensive housing development. He set out at once to build a new hotel there, in which he planned to place his own family in residence.<\/p>\n
After Ardella had helped the Kimballs observe the New Year custom of calls, of which the family made more than thirty on that single day, Mrs. Kimball took Ardella to the new Gilbert and Sullivan opera, “The Pirates of Penzance”. She proclaimed it “very bright and amusing, even better than Pinafore”.<\/p>\n
Ardella had some misgivings about the life of geniuses. On Jan. 21 she wrote: “We all went to the Bucks for dinner. Mrs. Kimball was late, thereby delaying the meal a little, much to Mrs. Buck’s annoyance. Genius is a thing to prize, but perhaps a commonplace man makes quite as comfortable a husband. A glass of wine, a bottle of beer and a good dinner have a mollifying influence however, and we were entertained by Mr. Buck’s reading the second act of his opera — funnier than the first act.”<\/p>\n
Then Ardella tells us about some experiences in New York City: “Jan. 27, 1880 – Mrs. Kimball and I started for New York after dinner, despite a threat of rain. By the time we left the elevated road at 18th Street it was pouring. After we had bought table linen for the Bricksbury Hotel, it was raining so hard that we got a carriage to take us to the 23rd Street station. We reached home at 8:30 p.m., tired and hungry.”<\/p>\n
As February opened, Ardella’s “uncomfortable genius”, Mr. Buck, somewhat redeemed himself. He won the Cincinnati Prize for his new opera “The Golden Legend”. Dr. Orrin Hall, husband of Ardella’s sister Mary, had for some time not been well, and in early March he was stricken with pneumonia. Ardella put in some anxious days as she awaited each new word from Maine: “March 6 – Card from Mary says the Doctor is very sick with pneumonia in the right lung. He went to West Paris but was unable to come home alone. On Thursday Augusta went to get him and brought him home to Lockes Mills in the cars. March 9 – Augusta writes that the Doctor is worse. March 11 – The Doctor still lives but I am not encouraged despite the attending physician’s opinion that the lung is clearing. Mary takes care of the patient night and day. March 12 – Card from Augusta. Just as I thought, the Doctor is worse. March 13 – Augusta writes that they have given up all hope. The Doctor has expressed the wish to see me, but I cannot get there in time.”<\/p>\n
But Ardella’s fears were unfounded. On that very night the Doctor’s illness reached its crisis, and he was soon on the mend.<\/p>\n
In early April the Kimball family, taking Ardella with them, moved into the hotel at Bricksbury. A suite of four rooms had been fitted for family use, and Ardella was soon busy helping Mrs. Kimball get settled. Scarcely did they get their feet placed in the new quarters when they found themselves threatened by a forest fire: “April 13 – All this afternoon we were running to the top of the house to watch the progress of a forest fire that is raging all around us. As the darkness came, the flames were thrown aloft against a black sky — a magnificent sight. From the livid wall of fire leaped long tongues of flame, while again and again a blazing banner streamed from the top of a tree. A large force fought the fire, but as the wind blew a gale all day, their efforts availed little. April 14 – The fire seems to gather new force. Several dwellings only two miles away have been burned, and in one direction the flames have come within half a mile of the hotel. There has been some talk of packing trunks, but for the moment we are holding on. At night a third of the horizon is a solid wall of fire. Every man who can be spared is out fighting it. April 21 (one week later) – Drove out on the Louis Road to see the ravages of the fire.”<\/p>\n
At the end of June it was time for Ardella to plan to go home. On the way she had a pleasurable stop in Boston, where she called on Gov. Long at the State House and was escorted over the building by the Governor’s military aide. On the train from Portland she was delighted to encounter her brother Charles, Josephine’s father, who was on his way from Georgia for a visit with his Buckfield relatives. On July 6 Ardella wrote: “Home at last. I found Mother well and Buckfield more beautiful than ever.”<\/p>\n
Year: 1966<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #689, Broadcast on May 1, 1966<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42954,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8598"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8598\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}