March 2011

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Scotland and spent the last years of his life in Samoa, but for a year he lived in California, and that year was a turning point in his life. It is not too much to say that he belongs at least as much to us as he does to Scotland or to Samoa.

Even today, Americans who love books remember that Stevenson was often sick as a child “and lay abed,” tenderly cared for by his affluent and loving family. But few know that, in August 1879, he traveled from Scotland to California, desperately sick and by his own choice almost penniless. He was in pursuit of Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne, an American woman whom he had loved for three years and would marry in California.

Virtually every issue of American Heritage closes with one or another of the editors disgruntled because there is no room for a favorite painting—or because no piece of caption-writing cleverness could make it appropriate to the story that needed illustrating. The Winter Art Show, now in its fourth year, gives those paintings a second chance. Here, along with ones gathered in for specific articles, are many paintings that we came across during the year and just liked. The criteria of our choices are that a work be accomplished and that it show us something about the past—as, we feel, every picture in this year’s gleaning does, whether it is the arresting, superbly rendered whimsy on the facing page, or an ardent vision of the great 1893 world’s fair, or an impressively authentic look at American casualties huddled in the dusk after the assault on San Juan Hill.

In regard to your article “Day of the Player Piano” in the May/June issue, while Mr. Fox mentions that “rolls for the pianos have been manufactured continuously since the 1890s,” he makes no mention of the fact that player pianos themselves are still being manufactured.

We purchased a new one four years ago; it plays rolls electrically and by foot pedal and can play a wonderful honky-tonk sound as well as the normal piano tones. It has been a tremendous source of entertainment for us and for our guests. People do still like to gather around a piano and sing.

The player piano was made by Aeolian Pianos, Inc., of Memphis, Tennessee. Rolls feature not only music of bygone eras but modern show tunes and rock ’n’ roll as well.

One cold January a few years ago, the daughter of a French friend of mine wrote that she was coming to America. She would, of course, visit New York, and then she hoped to see some of the rest of the country, possibly les Grands Lacs. It was not hard to imagine a young tourist unfolding a map of the United States and settling on Rochester or Duluth as the kind of lakeside resort you might enjoy poking around in the off-season. What was hard was thinking where to send her instead. Miami? Los Angeles? Now I wouldn’t hesitate. I’d send her to Santa Fe.

Indian violence against white settlers on the Pennsylvania frontier had reached a frightening pitch. Gruesome tales circulated of scalping, torture, and wholesale slaughter. Many wanted to strike back, and, for some, any group of Indians would do.

On the morning of December 14 a group of about fifty rangers, scouts, and sturdy backwoods types from the town of Paxton and vicinity closed in on a tiny village of Conestoga Indians near the town of Lancaster. The Conestogas were peaceful, and the charges against them ludicrous (one of the raiders claimed an Indian had melted down his pewter spoons), but the vigilantes were out for blood. They killed the six Conestogas who were there, including a small boy, and set fire to the settlement.

Gen. George McClure of the New York militia, glumly holding Fort George on the Canadian side of the Niagara River, watched his ranks dwindle as enlistments expired and soldiers headed home for Christmas. On December 10, with just a hundred men left under his command, McClure decided to withdraw.

As a final gesture before leaving, he set fire to the village of Newark. The general later said he had meant to deprive British troops of winter quarters; but the only buildings left standing after the fire were Army barracks full of tents, provisions, and artillery. The British were splendidly outfitted for winter, but some four hundred Newark inhabitants, largely women and children, were left homeless.

Cary Grant is the British image Americanized. The wary frown and tense jaw give humanity to the perfect tailoring and layers of subtle texture. A self-doubting American spirit inhabits all this smooth wool—one we can believe in. Grant helped create the image of the handsome American man whom women may adore in formal clothes but whose private self really makes the conquest. This 1946 image is at odds with the confident characters Grant played on screen: here the wide shoulders lend protection rather than power, and the hat is a shield, not an ornament. The man is tantalizingly accessible, and feels it.

This crisp and disciplined model of turn-of-the-century elegance is Adm. George Dewey, the hero of Manila Bay. Yachting clothes in all their later adaptations—the universally becoming blue blazer and pale trousers in all their variants—suggest the freedom of the seas rightly subject to poised and purposeful masculine control. Even a rather massive figure is flattered by the clean, cool style.

Dressed like an American Diaghilev or Prince of Wales, the artist Frederic Remington (1861-1909) here wears the clothing of manipulative power, a sleek style quite correctly remote from the actual product he marketed. Remington helped create the romance of the West, elevating Cody’s cowboy-and-lndian melodrama into enduring art. He showed how the Western myth] could be regenerated by Eastern talent, but instead of dressing the part, he let his pictures and sculpture carry the message. Here he sports the rich trappings of lateVictorian success: single-breasted jacket and striped trousers, walking stick and bowler, finished off with a cigarette.

1763 Two Hundred and Twenty-five Years Ago 1813 One Hundred and Seventy-five Years Ago 1863 One Hundred and Twenty-five Years Ago 1888 One Hundred Years go 1913 Seventy-five Years Ago 1938 Fifty Years Ago 1963 Twenty-five Years Ago