On the first day of June, 1918, the third great German offensive of the year drove into a tangled old hunting preserve called Belleau Wood. General James Harbord, commanding the Marine Brigade, received an order from the rattled commander of the French 6th Army: “Have your men prepare entrenchments some hundreds of yards to rearward in case of need.” Harbord answered tartly, “We dig no trenches to fall back on. The Marines will hold where they stand.”
The oyster is an ancient species, and one that has evolved little over millions of years. It is found in the tidal waters of every continent but Antarctica, on the shores of every sea but the Caspian. It flourishes best in the bays and estuaries where salt- and fresh water mix and people build resorts. And despite the saying that it was a bold man who first ate one, the oyster has been consumed by humans since before the oldest certifiable man-made artifact.
But the oyster is no ordinary food. From time to time since the Romans, enlightened individuals have recognized extraordinary qualities in the family Ostreidae, and about the middle of the nineteenth century, Americans joined in what amounted to a mass democratic cult, virtually worshiping the creature. The privileged few usually define their delicacies in terms of how rare and, therefore, how expensive they are. But in gaslit America, high society’s every fine meal began with the same oysters that could be had on the street for pocket change by the rudest workingman.
For a long time the Pueblo Plateau of west-central New Mexico has promised more than it has given. That was true as early as 1540 when conquistador Francisco Vasquez de Coronado marched his eager army through this pinon-and-juniper country looking for the Seven Cities of Cibola—a vanity recalled on today’s map with Cibola National Forest, whose timbered slopes drop down from the 7,796-foot-high crest of the Continental Divide to the two paved lanes of U.S. 60.
We look different this month. As a letter from our president explained to you recently, and as our publisher points out again in her enclosed note, it was the appalling rise in the cost of everything we need to produce the magazine and get it into your hands—paper, ink, printing, binding, postage, and the rest—that finally made the decision to adopt flexible covers imperative. Be assured, though, that the quality of the magazine will remain the same. Our beat is still precisely as Bruce Catton defined it in our first issue: “anything that ever happened in America.” We think the new format works very well indeed, thanks largely to the handsome design devised by our art director, Murray Belsky. But more than that, we believe that the flexibly bound magazine will provide another, non-economic advantage: increased access to history. It is our hope that a less expensive, less formal-looking magazine will help attract a new generation of readers eager to understand our shared heritage.
In 1938 the pioneer American folk-art enthusiast Jean Lipman set down a thoughtful answer to a question that still is being debated: what marks the difference between a primitive masterpiece and an ignorant daub? “The typical American primitive,” Lipman concluded, is “based … upon what the artist knew rather than upon what he saw, and so the facts of physical reality were largely sifted through the mind and personality of the painter. The degree of excellence in one of these … paintings depends upon the clarity, energy, and coherence of the artist’s mental picture rather than upon… the subject matter.… The outstanding artists… arrived at a power and originality and beauty which was not surpassed by the greatest of the academic American painters.”
George Washington, writes Carry Wills, “succeeded so well that he almost succeeds himself out of the hero business. He made his accomplishments look, in retrospect, almost inevitable. Heroism so quietly efficient dwindles to managerial skill.”
But if Washington today strikes some as a remote figure who merely had the good fortune to be there when history was ready for him, he was an object of extraordinary reverence to his contemporaries. Their adoration gave rise to a society which, many believed, threatened the very existence of the new republic. In this perceptive essay, Wills shows how Washington’s essential greatness allowed him to cope with veneration just as, a few years earlier, it had helped him stave off despair, calumny, and defeat.
Dean Acheson, who served as Secretary of State under Harry S Truman from 1949 to 1953, kept up a lively and unusual correspondence with the former President after the two men left office. Acheson's letters were lively because their author was a witty and elegant writer; they were unusual because he was no sycophant. The letters reflect Acheson s respect and affection for his chief, along with a readiness to assert his own views that mixed inquiry, mischief, advice, and admonition, befitting a correspondence between two retired statesmen in a democracy. This article is excerpted from Among Friends: The Personal Letters of Dean Acheson, edited by David S. McLellan and by Acheson’s son, David C. Acheson, soon to be published by Dodd, Mead & Co.
February 10, 1953
In recent years Pine Street has become the center of Philadelphia’s antiques market, and the shopkeepers there would give a great deal to be able to visit a store that must have been the object of considerable ridicule to their turn-ofthe-century forerunners. It stood at 1237 Pine, but we have no record of what the owner called it, or even of his name. Yet, as this photograph attests, he was something of a pioneer. Most of his stock anticipates by a good half century the recent boom in folk art.
In the mid-nineteenth century, Mystic, Connecticut, was at once identical to all the small seafaring communities that stood on the Eastern seaboard and unique in that it turned out a greater tonnage of sturdy ships than any town of its size in America. It also bred more than its share of great seamen: Dick Brown, who sailed the America when she took the Queen’s cup; Henry Holdredge, who skippered the Black Ball Packets; Joseph Warren Holmes, who rounded the Horn eighty-three times.
The town and its people early drew the attention of the photographer Everett A. Scholf ield, and he spent most of his long life recording them. Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1843, Scholf ield learned his trade from his father and settled in Mystic in 1865. He worked there until 1894, when he set up a studio in New London, but he lived in the town until his death in 1930.
Jerome Horowitz of Bellmore, New York, takes issue with a caption: “Just completed the June/July, 1979, issue, and must write a note of correction. In the article ‘Neon’ by Rudi Stern, the design in the upper right-hand corner of page 103 is captioned as follows: ‘The fez lit up the window of a storefront house of worship. ’ Actually, the design involved is that of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, specifically that of Jerusalem Temple in New Orleans. I assume the confusion is caused by the fact that Shrine meeting places are denominated as ‘Temples,’ although they are definitely not houses of worship. Within these Temples are found the most wonderful Brotherhood and the most widespread Benevolence known, but no religious observances or services, as these are strictly forbidden by our constitutions. I must admit that the description of the design gave me a hearty chuckle. … Thank goodness, for we must report that Mr. Horowitz is Immediate Past Potentate of the Mecca Temple of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine.