Amidst the visual splendor of “A Painter at War: The Combat Art of Albert K. Murray” in your February/March 1982 issue is a painting, on page 35, intriguingly captioned, “a U.S. Navy blimp comes to the aid of a downed RAF crew deep in the Amazon jungle. ” Would you be able to tell us what the Royal Air Force was doing in the Amazon during World War II and how a U.S. Navy blimp came to be standing by?
Norman T. Corenthal
New York City
BRAZIL, BLIMPS, AND BRITONS
During the war, members of the RAF—and the WAAF—ferried American planes from South America to Europe, Africa, and the Far East. Pilots often followed the coastline but sometimes they could cut a thousand miles off their journey by flying over the jungle. Some of them came to grief, and blimps, with their ability to move leisurely and to hover, proved the most effective rescue ships. The Navy had blimp bases along the Brazilian coast, the largest at Santa Cruz, where the inadvertent hospitality of the Germans provided the airships with a huge hangar originally built to house the Graf Zeppelin.
JUDGMENTS
Regarding Dr. Fawn M. Brodie’s article “I Think Hiss Is Lying” (August/ September 1981):
Indeed the Hiss-Chambers controversy does continue. Ultimately history will judge it; however, that judgment must derive from facts rather than assumptions, speculation, or innuendo. It would be well, then, to address and refute the following errors of fact in the Brodie piece:
That Hiss was exposed as a spy by Chambers—and as early as 1939.
Brodie says that Chambers “in 1939 had blown Hiss’s cover as an espionage agent by going to Adolph Berle with his story. …” But according to both FBI records and Berle’s own notes on that meeting, such an exposé never took place.
It was Elizabeth Terrill Bentley, another self-confessed Communist, who in November, 1945, spoke of a connection between Hiss and espionage. “It should be noted,” says an FBI report dated January 28, 1949, “that Miss Bentley’s allegations were the first indication received by the FBI that a Soviet espionage ring had existed in Washington.”
That Chambers had threatened to make his Hiss charges public as early as 1945.
According to Brodie, Chambers had “watched with increasing anxiety the rise of Alger Hiss in government … [and] told FBI men … that if Hiss was made temporary Secretary General of the United Nations” he would expose [Hiss] publicly.”
Not only had Chambers told the FBI he had not been following Hiss’s career, but a search of FBI records for 1945 nowhere indicates Chambers had threatened such an exposé.
Further, Chambers really did not want to “go public.” According to an FBI statement dated March 29, 1946, Chambers said he “would have no objection to testifying …hoped that if such an occasion arose, it would be a closed hearing as he wanted to protect his identity. ” Is this the position of a Don Quixote?
That after extensive FBI surveillance of Hiss, the State Department quietly eased him out of his job.
While many in the State Department were relieved to see Hiss leave, no evidence supports the assertion that he was eased out. In fact, according to a September 10, 1948, FBI memorandum, both Secretary of State James Byrnes and Dean Acheson were surprised to learn of his departure.
Although I disagree with many of Dr. Brodie’s conclusions, I have only challenged those assertions that are incorrect based on recently released FBI documents.
William K. Rosenbloom
St. Paul, Minn.
FEEDING THE FAMILY FOR $1.37 PER DAY
Dr. Barnes’s article “How to Raise a Family on $500 a year” in the December issue directed my attention to a book in my library with quite the same subject. Copyrighted 1887 (some six years before the Chicago World’s Fair and the work done on the model home by Katharine Davis), Family Living on $500 a Year by a Juliet Corson and published by Harper and Brothers, Franklin Square. New York, is a Daily Reference-Book for Young and Inexperienced Housewives.”
The preface’reveals that the book is based on a series of articles in Harper’s Bazar and certainly reveals a much less austere diet for the middle-class family of that time. A few figures and comments, liberally taken from this text, show that these families were not quite at the “boiled cabbage, bare existence status revealed in your article. Excerpts follow:
“1. The average income of the prosperous American household of the medium range of intelligence and culture will be from $1,500 to $2,000 a year.
“2. Figuring the lower value of $1,500 per year, average rent to be $25 per month, and the table should not consume more than 1/3 the total income, or some $500 per year. Fuel would cost about $8 per month, a single servant’s wage at $12 per month. Household wear and tear and medical attendance would be covered by $100 per year. Church dues, literature and amusement would require at least $60 a year, leaving $300 a year for clothing.”
The balance of the book—some four hundred pages—then focuses on the $1.37 per day (or $500 a year) for food. For this amount a typical menu is given: “We shall prepare for the daily dinner some such variety as … Soup, or a fish with Potatoes. Two vegetables with a sauce, or one entrée and one vegetable. Roast, baked, or broiled meat, poultry, or game, or boiled or braised meat, with a sauce. Salad with cheese. One large sweet dish or two small ones. Fruit, nuts, coffee.”
Many of the menus and recipes sound quite delicious and would be quite acceptable at today’s table.
One must realize that this 1887 work described that level of population earning three to four times that of the industrial worker described by Dr. Barnes; said worker probably could not have afforded to read Harper’s Bazar let alone keep a servant.
Herbert M. Rosenthal
Anchorage, Alaska
FROM PITTSBURGH, KENTUCKY
James Thomas Flexner’s article entitled “The Miraculous Care of Providence” in your February/March issue leaves us former Louisvillians little choice.
The article states that “Braddock’s mission was to march from Virginia through the wilderness to the falls of the Ohio (now Pittsburgh). …” The city formerly named “Louisville” was established at the Falls of the Ohio in 1779 by General George Rogers Clark, who arrived by canoe from Pittsburgh, a city established where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers join to form the Ohio.
We will not permit mundane geography to conflict with the accuracy of AMERICAN HERITAGE. The most attractive alternative is to change our name to Pittsburgh. In return we expect AMERICAN HERITAGE to arrange for the immediate transfer of both the Mellon and Carnegie fortunes to help our local economy.
Blaine A. Guthrie, Jr.
Louisville, Ky.
YORKTOWN REDUX
Your excellent article “Triumph at Yorktown” in the October/November 1981 issue brings back fifty-year-old memories. I am one of the dwindling number of participants in the sesquicentennial celebration. As a student at the University of Hartford at the time, my contribution was small but vivid. First, I took over my history professor’s class for more than a month while he served as a consultant for the government. Second, I was tapped to be a member of the dramatic group and performed in one of the tableaux. The stained onionskin copy of the script is still in my possession.
The method of performance is more interesting than the script. The stage was set up in the middle of a large field where much of the original battle took place. The bleachers must have been nearly two hundred yards away on both sides of the field, the sound being provided over huge amplifiers.
Following the tableaux—mine was one in which a group of sailors committed themselves to service after being promised hard cash by the French—the battle of Yorktown was fought around us. Cannon were lugged onto the field, and both British and Continental regulars lined up and fired volleys at each other. The number who dropped was kept to the casualties reported. Brought up on westerns and tales of shooting the eye out of a squirrel, I found it difficult to reconcile the number of actual casualties in such a close encounter, but history bears it out.
Douglas M. Fellows
Amston, Conn.
PHOTOGRAPHIC FIRST FAMILY
In the August/September 1981 issue the authors of “Loveland Summer” speculate that James and Nancy Ford Cones might have been the “first husbandand-wife team in the history of American photography.” They were not. John H. Fitzgibbon’s second wife, Maria Louisa Dennis, worked actively in his St. Louis studio after their marriage in 1869. By the late 1870’s she had taken over the daily operation of the gallery, while he devoted himself to editing a magazine.
Fitzgibbon’s journal, The St. Louis Practical Photographer, featured peppery editorials, lyric poetry, practical articles on equipment and techniques, and examples of the work of photographers around the nation. The September 1880 issue spotlighted a portrait of a local debutante, taken at the Parlour Gallery by Mrs. J. H. Fitzgibbon.
Nearly twenty years older than his wife, John Fitzgibbon had begun studying his craft just two years after the invention of the daguerreotype. A pioneer in his field and a progressive by nature, he supported equal opportunities for female photographers. In the January 1877 issue of his magazine he wrote, “To the ladies in the profession, we would say, don’t be bashful, for we believe in Woman Rights, in so far as they are right and shall at all times be most happy to let the world know that some things are as good as others, even if a woman has a hand in it. …”
