dual personalities

You’ve probably heard the oft-told story that poet Wilfred Owen’s parents received their son’s death notice as the bells pealed to honor the end of World War I and the streets filled with celebrating people. I have always thought that story was just horrible, but then I found this family twist on the same theme.

Five years ago, I posted about Dorothy Chamberlin, out great uncle Guy’s wife. In that post I wrote that Guy’s death in France in September 1918, “was, of course, a terrible blow to the family, made more so by the fact that he was the youngest, and that unbeknownst to them he had gotten married  just weeks before he died.  According to family tradition, the young widow showed up in Vermont to meet her ‘new family’ and was promptly dismissed as a tacky, gold-digger, who had had the audacity to claim the poor boy’s pension.” As it turns out, that’s not how it happened.

Poor Dorothy found out about Guy’s death when she read it in the newspaper! Presumably, he never bothered to tell anyone that he was married. After all, he was young and did not expect to die. He certainly hadn’t told his relatives, who, though they had received a telegram announcing his death, found out about the marriage when the Burlington Free Press picked up the Washington Evening Star story and ran it!

The Burlington paper, where our grandfather worked before the war, had blown it big time. They followed up their blunder with this announcement.

So, Dorothy found out about Guy’s death in the newspaper, and his family found out about her the same way (and we think social media is bad!). The news was too much for the Chamberlins, and yet, one other little detail suggests that they did not reject Dorothy outright. When Anna Hendren Chamberlin, the grieving mother, died in 1919, the Free Press noted:

Someone must have sent her the news. How else would she have known about Anna’s death? Could it have been her sister-in-law, our grandmother? It must have been an awkward trip for Dorothy, who is not mentioned in the funeral notice, but then neither is anyone else in the family.

In another unusual twist, I discovered a poem that our grandmother had written about Guy’s death published in an obscure Mississippi newspaper!

Mississippi? I have no explanation for that one. Maybe one of her college friends lived there and published the poem. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know…

Have a grand weekend and be sure to spend part of it thinking about your ancestors, who deserve to be remembered.

Here we are about to enter the last week of February and I can finally chortle in my joy, “the kitchen-back hall-mudroom renovation is finished!” Remember when the kitchen looked like this?

Now it looks like this — an amazing improvement if I do say so myself!

In the hallway, we’ve put the rug back down and the pictures up. We also added a little red table that we brought home from our cottage. It may not stay, but it’s nice to have somewhere to put the phone (yes, we still have a landline).

Here’s another view.

My sharp-eyed DP might notice that a new engraving hangs where my brother’s painting used to be. We moved that to our bedroom where it fits the space to much better effect. The 18th century engraving (on the left) by William Woollet copies an original painting of the palace at Kew Gardens by Joshua Kirby. Kirby is one of the wild 18th century mathematical types whom the DH studies. I’ve become quite fond of Kirby, who did math and painted for fun, was clerk of the works at Kew Gardens, and good buddies with Gainsborough, Hogarth and George III. Anyway, I think the Kirby print balances the knight quite well.

The mudroom is now fully functional, too.

That’s a recycling bin, not the garbage you see in the corner.

That funky structure hanging from the ceiling is our “Sheila Maid”, a wonderful drying rack that lowers via a cool pulley system. It was indispensable when our children were young, but we still find it useful for items can’t go in the dryer.

In case you wondered, our local home-store finished the kitchen project for us. They were incredibly nice, efficient, and quick. Obviously, I should have gone to them in the first place! They even sent us flowers — blue ones to match the decor!

Although the renovation experience was not altogether joyful (here’s to the absence of strong men tracking snow across hardwood floors!), I did meet some very nice people who went out of their way to help us. We haven’t heard from our original contractor, and I don’t expect we will. In any case, I wish him well. Sooner or later his actions will catch up to him. I just hope he doesn’t land in prison!

Before I sign off for the week, I’ll share one of the many genealogical tidbits I discovered in the newspaper archives. I plan to post them gradually, so let this one whet your appetite.  Since I’ve been talking home-renovation, I thought I’d start here:

The ad appeared in the Burlington Free Press on October 20, 1922. One is immediately struck by the way house prices have skyrocketed over the nearly 100 years since then — yikes!  Beyond that, I am mystified as to why my great grandfather built a house apparently in order to sell it. It is not larger than the one he lived in on Loomis street, and his own children were all gone by then anyway. I suppose it was a business venture. I wish I had a house with “dainty electric fixtures”, don’t you? If I am correct, 20 Russell st. should be the house on the left in this photo.

Well, I think I can say with some conviction that I am done with house projects for the foreseeable future. Let’s hope so anyway. For the rest of the weekend, I plan to grade (yuck), read, attend church and immediately afterward the “Presbyterian ham dinner” (not exactly an elegant Italian dinner).  Later in the afternoon we’ve got a tea to attend — zut alors!

Have a great weekend, and remember Rilke’s good advice:

“Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final.”

*Lewis Carroll, “Jabberwocky”