Can you believe that June is half over? Zut alors!
It’s tiger lily season here in flyover country. And the geraniums are thriving.
But we are in the middle of a heat wave–a tropical heat wave–records are breaking and all that.
Time to chill.
*Siegfried Sassoon, Idyll
Today in the Episcopal Church it is the feast day of Evelyn Underhill (6 December 1875 – 15 June 1941). She was a poet and novelist, you will recall, as well as a pacifist and a mystic. She was prominent in the Anglican Church as a lay leader of spiritual retreats, a spiritual director for hundreds of individuals, guest speaker, radio lecturer, and proponent of contemplative prayer.
“Therefore it is to a practical mysticism that the practical man is here invited: to a training of his latent faculties, a bracing and brightening of his languid consciousness, an emancipation from the fetters of appearance, a turning of his attention to new levels of the world. Thus he may become aware of the universe which the spiritual artist is always trying to disclose to the race. This amount of mystical perception—this “ordinary contemplation,” as the specialists call it—is possible to all men: without it, they are not wholly conscious, nor wholly alive. It is a natural human activity, no more involving the great powers and sublime experiences of the mystical saints and philosophers than the ordinary enjoyment of music involves the special creative powers of the great musician.”
―Evelyn Underhill, Practical Mysticism
Underhill taught that the life of contemplative prayer is not just for a saintly few, monks and nuns and such, but can be the life of any Christian who is willing to undertake it.
Good to remember when life gets complicated and busy. “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.” (Matt. 6:6)
Here’s to Evelyn Underhill!
O God, Origin, Sustainer, and End of all creatures: Grant that thy Church, taught by thy servant Evelyn Underhill, guarded evermore by thy power, and guided by thy Spirit into the light of truth, may continually offer to thee all glory and thanksgiving, and attain with thy saints to the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast promised us by our Savior Jesus Christ; who with thee and the same Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
–Collect for the day
And, yes, I do think that Underhill icon is awkward.
“History is that certainty produced where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.”–Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending
Everything may be up to date in Kansas City, but as far as I can tell, they are not really very interested in their history. This is a shame.
Majors, McCoy and Jim Bridger
We went to Westport hoping to get a sense of where some of my pioneer ancestors lived and made a home. But there is barely a trace left. Even the river has moved!
We did find the Union Cemetery where basically all the founding city Fathers (and Mothers) are buried: John Calvin McCoy, Virginia Crick McCoy, Alexander Majors, William Miles Chick, Nelsons, McGees, George Caleb Bingham, and my great-great-great grandmother Susan Prowers Vogel who came with her parents and siblings from Virginia in the 1830s.
Also there is her second husband Louis Vogel and one son, Louis Vogel, Jr.
The cemetery is sadly neglected and in need of a lot of work. It is only a hop, skip and a jump away from the very fancy and well maintained National WWI Museum and the Crown Center. Boy, if I won the lottery, I know what I would do!
We went to the Westport Historical Society which is housed in one of only two surviving antebellum houses in the area.
It is a nicely kept house filled with period furniture.
The docent gave a tour aimed at the typical tourist about pretentious slave-owning stereotypes which I felt probably had no basis in reality. Indeed, she and the other woman there could not offer me much real information. They showed me their library and offered the use of it, but I didn’t have the time on this trip to take them up on their offer.
They couldn’t really shed any light on my questions about what had happened to the “landing”–the natural rock shelf where the steamboats could land.
Where, in fact, did the river go? Westport today is a hipster neighborhood surrounded by more buildings. There is no river in sight. What happened?! Well, they said, the landing is under tons of dirt and the river had moved. They didn’t know when or how exactly. There might be a rail yard there now.
They had heard of Louis Vogel and they had a picture of his tavern, taken shortly before it was torn down at the turn of the century.
They had never heard of John Prowers (my great-great-great grandfather), the man who had actually built the house himself before he died suddenly in 1839. Vogel married his widow, Susan Matney Prowers, and turned the two-story oak log house into “Vogel’s Saloon,” where in 1846 Francis Parkman received word of a caravan heading north and west out of Leavenworth, Kansas. Parkman decided to take the journey westward and The Oregon Trail is the result of that trip.
I explained what I could about the Prowers, their two children–John who grew up to become a cattle baron and have a county in Colorado named after him and Mary who married the cousin of U.S. Grant. They asked me to send them what information I had and I will do that, lest they all be forgotten as so many of the early pioneers of Kansas City have been forgotten. Sad to say, if it weren’t for a couple of well-meaning volunteer ladies in pearls and Pappagallos, no one would pay any attention to these things at all. One wonders who will man the Westport Historical Society a generation from now.
We headed over to Council Grove, Kansas on Saturday morning.
This town was one of the last stops on the Santa Fe Trail heading southwest. The first American settler was Seth Millington Hays, who came to the area in 1847 to trade with the Kaw tribe. Hays was a great grandson of Daniel Boone.
My great-great grandfather John Simpson Hough worked with Hays as an Indian trader between 1850 and 1855 and again for awhile after the Civil War by which time he was married and had two children.
Council Grove today is a town of around 2,000 people. There are 13 sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places. One is the Post Office Oak.
Travelers left their mail in this ancient tree to be picked up by others going in the right direction. There is the Kaw Mission School.
and the Farmers and Drovers Bank.
We ate breakfast at the Hays House,
which is said to be the oldest continuously operating restaurant west of the Mississippi River.
It is a nice, well kept little town. Clearly its residents take pride in this historic place.
There is a part of me that would like nothing more than to retire to Council Grove in the lovely Flint Hills of Kansas and disappear under the radar.
You know what I mean?
“History overflows time. Love overflows the allowance of the world. All the vessels overflow, and no end or limit stays put. Every shakable thing has got to be shaken. In a sense, nothing that was ever lost in Port William ever has been replaced. In another sense, nothing is ever lost, and we are compacted together forever, even by our failures, our regrets, and our longings.”
― Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow
The OM and I are back home after our little flyover trip to KC. More tomorrow. Stay tuned!
*J.R.R. Tolkien
I have been to Kansas City three times that I remember. Once I went to an advertising awards event when I was a the copy chief way back in the 1980’s. I remember going shopping at the Country Club Plaza with two very gay co-workers and having quite a time. I went again a few years later to attend a stewardship conference–not half as much fun. The next time I went to K.C. was as a chaperone with my children’s church choir and all three kids. That trip is kind of a blur. I’m afraid I can’t even remember at which church we sang.
Anyway, it has been at least twenty years since I last ventured there. This time the OM and I are just doing some genealogical poking around. I am going to try and get my bearings straight, if that is even possible since there is very little left, I think, of the old Westport area. Now it is hipster heaven.
Not that I’m not curious about this place.
So have a good weekend and think of me in the Big City.
*Rogers & Hammerstein, Oklahoma
ALL are capable of prayer, and it is a dreadful misfortune that almost all the world have conceived the idea that they are not called to prayer. We are all called to prayer, as we are all called to salvation.
PRAYER is nothing but the application of the heart to God, and the internal exercise of love. St. Paul has enjoined us to “pray without ceasing;” (1 Thess. v.17) and our Lord bids us watch and pray, (Mark xiii. 33,37): all therefore may, and all ought to practice prayer. I grant that meditation is attainable but by few, for few are capable of it; and therefore, my beloved brethren who are athirst for salvation, meditative prayer is not the prayer which God requires of you, nor which we would recommend.
…Let all pray: you should live by prayer, as you should live by love. “I counsel you to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that ye may be rich.” (Rev. iii. 18.) This is very easily obtained, much more easily than you can conceive.
Come all ye that are athirst to the living waters, nor lose your precious moments in hewing out cisterns that will hold no water. (John vii. 37; Jer. ii. 13.) Come ye famishing souls, who find nought to satisfy you; come, and ye shall be filled! Come, ye poor afflicted ones, bending beneath your load of wretchedness and pain, and ye shall be consoled! Come, ye sick, to your physician, and be not fearful of approaching him because ye are filled with diseases; show them, and they shall be healed!
Children, draw near to your Father, and he will embrace you in the arms of love! Come ye poor, stray, wandering sheep, return to your Shepherd! Come, sinners, to your Saviour! Come ye dull, ignorant, and illiterate, ye who think yourselves the most incapable of prayer! ye are more peculiarly called and adapted thereto. Let all without exception come, for Jesus Christ hath called ALL.
Yet let not those come who are without a heart; they are excused; for there must be a heart before there can be love. But who is without a heart? O come, then, give this heart to God; and here learn how to make the donation.
—A Short and Very Easy Method of Prayer, Madame Guyon (1648–1717)
Today is the 299th anniversary of the death of Madame Guyon.
But there is no feast day on the calendar of the Catholic Church for her. No, since during her lifetime it disapproved of her ideas and actually threw her in jail for eight years after she published the book quoted above. She seems pretty harmless today, but this French mystic promoted a heresy known as Quietism back in the day. Her published works, the Moyen Court and the Règles des associées à l’Enfance de Jésus, were both placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1688. To the church she was no better than a Puritan or a Quaker. Seems like a good reason to read them.
Surprisingly, the Episcopal Church doesn’t have a day for her either. Kind of an oversight if you ask me.
The painting is “The Light of the World” by William Holman Hunt
Today is the birthday of stage and screen actor Robert Preston (June 8, 1918 – March 21, 1987). You remember him in This Gun for Hire (1942) with Veronica Lake, don’t you?
He was the good guy. Alan Ladd was the bad guy. It’s a great movie, but no one noticed Robert Preston because the young Alan Ladd stole the show.
He was also Digby Geste in Beau Geste (1939) with Ray Milland and Gary Cooper.
And he was the wagon master in How the West Was Won (1962) who couldn’t get Debbie Reynolds to care, no matter how hard he tried.
Of course, he will always be remembered as The Music Man (1962). He finally got everyone’s attention in this one.
He won the Tony Award in 1958 for originating the part of Prof. Harold Hill on Broadway, but, of course, the studio wanted Frank Sinatra to make the movie. Meredith Willson, bless him, held out for Preston and he made the film.
Mothers of River City, heed that warning before it’s too late! Watch for the telltale signs of corruption! The minute your son leaves the house, does he rebuckle his knickerbockers below the knee? Is there a nicotine stain on his index finger? A dime-novel hidden in the corncrib? Is he starting to memorize jokes from Captain Billy’s Whiz-Bang? Are certain words creeping into his conversation? Words like “swell” and “so’s your old man”? If so my friends, ya got trouble!
So tonight let us toast the great Robert Preston, who only got better with age, and watch one of the fine aforementioned movies.
And, hey, I almost forgot, Robert Preston played Steve McQueen’s father in Junior Bonner (1972)!
Done and done.
Some lovely lyrics for Tuesday:
Skylark
Have you anything to say to me
Won’t you tell me where my love can be
Is there a meadow in the mist
Where someone’s waiting to be kissedSkylark
Have you seen a valley green with spring
Where my heart can go a-journeying
Over the shadows and the rain
To a blossom covered laneAnd in your lonely flight
Haven’t you heard the music in the night
Wonderful music, faint as a will o’ the wisp
Crazy as a loon
Sad as a gypsy serenading the moonSkylark
I don’t know if you can find these things
But my heart is riding on your wings
So if you see them anywhere
Won’t you lead me thereSkylark
I don’t know if you can find these things
But my heart is riding on your wings
So if you see them anywhere
Won’t you lead me there
“Skylark” –words by Johnny Mercer, music by Hoagy Carmichael, 1941
Who knew skylarks are so cute!
*Percy Bysshe Shelley, “To a Skylark”
True to my word, I did very little this weekend. I went to hear Nathaniel Philbrook. He gave a rousing talk about Benedict Arnold and the Saratoga campaign.
He signed his book for me and I am looking forward to reading it. In the meantime I re-read his Why Read Moby-Dick? which I highly recommend.
I watched The Italian Job (2003) which I had bought for $2 at an estate sale because of the Mini Coopers. I really enjoyed it.
It made me want to go out and drive fast, but I restrained myself.
I tore apart my office looking for a particular book and then had to clean it up. (I never found the book.)
I rescued another needlepoint pillow.
I spread a lot of mulch and exhausted myself. Sometimes it is a good feeling to exhaust oneself doing physical labor. Watching a baseball game on the couch afterwards is that much sweeter when it is earned.
I also watched Wonder Boys (2000) directed by Curtis Hanson, who is one of my favorite directors. Bob Dylan won the Oscar for Best Song and “Things Have Changed” is indeed a classic. It is a good movie and I like Michael Douglas as a college professor having a really bad day.
Now it is Monday again–onward and upward!
*Bob Dylan
It has been a very enjoyable week: good weather; relaxing Tai Chi classes (yes, grasshopper, Tai Chi), and plenty of quiet time to indulge my addiction to genealogical research.
Today I want to consider names, because there’s no avoiding the fact that those early Puritan settlers of New England went in for some doozies. First let me clarify relationships so you don’t get confused:
Briefly, in 1671 Smith Woodward married Deliverance Hoppin, daughter of Stephen Hoppin and Hannah Makepeace (b. 1626). Smith’s and Deliverance’s son, Smith Woodward, married Thankful Pope in 1691, and their daughter, Sarah Woodward, married John Tukey in 1718. Their son, John Tukey, married Abigail Sweetsir in 1749. John and Abigail were the great-great grandparents of Henrietta Tukey, who married Abiel H. Stanley in c. 1858 to become the parents of our great-grandmother, Isabel Stanley Sargent (b. 1860).
Now there’s nothing particularly unusual about the names of Smith Woodward and his beloved, Thankful Pope, although we can raise an eyebrow at the fact that in 1691 they were fined for “fornication before marriage”. They must have been quite a couple, however, for they produced 13 children, among whom we find another Thankful, followed by Deliverance, Silence, and Submit in that order. Hmm… the last two names seem like Mother’s wishful thinking, but thirteen children is a lot for one woman to handle, even with help.
Smith Woodward’s father, also Smith Woodward, married Deliverance Hoppin (b. 1648). After Smith (Sr.) died, she married Richard Butt and became Deliverance Hoppin Butt (!?).
Deliverance Butt’s tombstone in the Dorchester (Boston) North Burying Ground
And let’s not forget her sibling, Opportunity Hoppin.
Returning to the Woodward family, Smith Junior’s pleasingly named daughter, Sarah Woodward, married John Tukey, and their son, John, married Abigail Sweetsir (b. 1728), who had a brother named Wigglesworth Sweetsir (b. 1735). John and Abigail produced 12, conservatively named children, the only standout among them being Houchin Tukey (b.1754).
Finally, Deliverance Hoppin’s mother, Hannah Makepeace (b. 1626), had a half-sister named Waitawhile Makepeace. In their father, Thomas Makepeace’s will, Waitawhile also appears as Wateawhile, Waytawhile, and Waitstill. It seems that the lawyers subscribed to the idea that consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
Lest you think that the only people to bestow inventive names lived on this side of the pond, my DH has lately discovered some real wonders in England, among whom our favorite has to be the unfortunate lady (and no relation), Fanny Suckspeach, who was arrested for theft in 1827, but eventually exonerated.
Looking for something new and different to name a baby? Dig into your family history!
* W.C. Fields
