Docent Dateline: Spring 2021

Docent Dateline

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2020

WALKI NG

in the

WOODLAND

by Vincent Cimmino

D O C E N T DAT E L I N E

One positive note in this challenging past year has been discovering Reynolda’s outdoor offerings. While our doors were closed until February 18 of this year, the woodland paths and gardens have been open and free to enjoy.

Pre-pandemic, we held Historic Reynolda Grounds and Garden Tours featuring discussions about the Gardens, boathouse, pump house, outdoor pool and camping sites. The routes to see these places are easily accessible with or without a guide. But of course as guides, we possessed the archival photos and diagrams of the structures as they were in Katharine’s days.

Lasting about 90 minutes, a stroll through the wetlands, trails and lawns gave docents and tour participants a better understanding of sites often hidden from view from the house but publicly accessible since the inception of the bungalow. At seven stops along the trail we discussed what was there originally and gave participants a chance to ask questions and see old photos of the family and employees.

If you would like to follow along in real time, start at the greenhouse, proceed to the boathouse, then follow the path to the right.

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LORD & BURNHAM GREENHOUSE

B O AT H O U S E

This line of greenhouses has been continually manufactured since 1849. It was sent as a “kit” and constructed on site. (A Gardens staffer likened it to Ikea-like instructions.) Frederick Lord was a glassmaker and William Burnham was a boilermaker, two ideal partners for creating greenhouses. The foundation is made of volcanic rocks found across the estate (seen in other buildings and structures in the village). Katharine once wrote to Charles Barton Keen: “...we were fortunate in striking a great quantity of round stones, which we need so much in the foundation work...” The beautiful London Plane trees at the entrance to the village are commonly used in big cities because their rooting systems do not extend very far, and their size can be controlled by pollarding, a method of stunting growth.

Charles Barton Keen’s original plans have not survived, but the boathouse was probably built before January 1913. That year, Katharine wrote that the lake was lacking a foot and a half of water. The boathouse contained changing rooms, a bathroom and closets.

The terrace was built in time for a July 4, 1916 barbeque for R.J.’s salesmen and their wives, who arrived by train from points east of the Mississippi River. Today, it is used as an education center for Reynolda Gardens.

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L A K E K AT H A R I N E

PUMP HOUSE

The 1,067 acres that Katharine accumulated were ideal because of their water sources, both above and below ground. About sixteen acres in size, the lake was formed when a dam impeded the flow of Silas Creek.

The bridge over the dam was once the start of a 3.5 mile road that ran completely around the lake; today a paved footpath connects Reynolda to the Wake Forest campus. An unnamed creek parallels Silas Creek, and together with underground artesian wells, they gave the state-of-the-art farm its ample water supply. In spots, the depth of the lake was as much as twenty feet.

Silt and sediment build-up is common in man-made lakes and started soon after the lake’s completion in 1913. It continued for fifty years, transforming the beautiful lake surrounded by 60,000 daffodils into the wetlands of present-day.

Visible on the corner of Coliseum Drive and Reynolda Road are the remains of a concrete cistern. A pump house situated along the trail housed two industrial pumps that supplied 30,000 gallons of water per day from three artesian wells, ponds and the lake, via piping systems that ran throughout the estate. To quote from Barbara Millhouse’s book Comfort and Convenience: The water was ”… regularly analyzed to guarantee an abundance of purest water for both man and beast. Since the system was installed, there is yet to be made a report that does not show that the water is as pure as can be found.” Water was pumped from the pump house to the cistern, then gravity sent the water all around the estate.

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OUTDOOR SWIMMING POOL

CAMPING SITE & OUTDOOR KITCHEN

At the site of the original pump house, the outdoor pool was used by the family and children of employees.

Originally built as an irrigation basin for the golf course, the pool had no deep or shallow end, and the water in it was much colder than the water in the lake.

The pool was filled in during the 1960s when the old water system was no longer used. The remains of the border and locations of a diving board and a slide can be seen, and pictures of the era show it being used by children.

Katharine, R.J. and the children enjoyed the outdoors and, especially while the bungalow was being built, camped at a spot along the trail where a concrete slab, still visible today, identifies where their kitchen was set up.

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THE MEADOWS

The great lawn that stretches nearly three-quarters of a mile was used extensively by the Reynolds family.

The boys used it for airplane take-offs and landings, sometimes with their sisters and cousins aboard, terrifying them with barrel rolls and loops above the estate. A nine-hole golf course was at the south end.

Prairie ecosystems were once common in the Piedmont and trace their roots back to Native Americans from as early as the 1500s. These open savannahs were used for hunting and grazing, but modern agricultural practices led to a decline in the areas dedicated for these purposes. Today visitors can often be seen relaxing, dog walking, playing Frisbee, bird watching or just strolling through the meadows.

Please feel encouraged to enjoy a part of Katharine’s open-air creations.

Outdoor walking tours will be coming back to Reynolda in June 2021.

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Detail. Charles Willson Peale, Portrait of Baron von Humboldt, 1804, oil on canvas, 21 x 17 in., The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, The image of the Baron Von Humboldt is used by kind permission of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia.

Photograph by Constance Mensh, Copyright 2019 by The College of Physicians of Philadelphia.

Cosmos A L E X A N D E R VO N H U M B O L DT A N D

C R O S S P O L L I N AT I O N

Connections

by Jeremy Reiskind

D O C E N T DAT E L I N E

Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) would have loved our current exhibition, Cross Pollination: Heade, Cole, Church, and Our Contemporary Moment, because interconnections among scientific disciplines and between science and the arts was what Humboldt was all about. Now largely forgotten, in the 19th century he was hailed as the most famous scientist of his age.

Presently there is an exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum entitled Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture. It is a perfect complement to our own show. It brings to our attention all aspects of Humboldt’s activities and thoughts. Trained as a geologist, Humboldt was a scientific explorer who endeavored to bring all aspects of the environment together to better understand the world we live in.

Humboldt first came to America’s attention when he visited Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. in 1804 after five years of travel in northern South America, Cuba, and Mexico. Here he met America’s scientific luminaries, including then-President Thomas Jefferson. He shared invaluable information about Mexico at a time when the border between the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase and Mexico was ill-defined.

The handsome young Prussian, still in his early thirties, impressed everyone he met. Charles Willson Peale painted a portrait of Humbolt. He was smitten by the American “experiment” in democracy. However, as an abolitionist he was deeply critical of the institution of slavery. After his visit he considered himself “half-American’’ and throughout his life welcomed visiting Americans fervently.

Upon his return to Europe he wrote many volumes on his travels that made connections regarding physical conditions (temperature, altitude, wind, sky color, etc.) and biology, in particular the distribution of plants.

He much appreciated the native peoples he met. His travel narratives inspired many, including the young Charles Darwin and the painter Frederic Church, both of whom followed in Humboldt’s footsteps with trips to South America.

Humboldt’s many writings culminated in a five-volume work entitled Cosmos (1847 and onward) that endeavored to bring together all then-current scientific knowledge. It also promoted the appreciation of the aesthetic as well as scientific aspects of the natural world. In this regard he encouraged landscape painting.

The book that accompanies the Smithsonian exhibition, by Eleanor Jones Harvey, has chapters concerning all aspects of Humboldt’s contributions. One chapter in particular, entitled “Embodying Cosmos: Frederic Edwin Church,” deals with Church’s travels to see and paint the spectacular Andean volcanoes and landscapes Humboldt had visited fifty years earlier. As regards Church’s resultant paintings Harvey refers to “the blending of art and science”: “Church, the landscape painter Humboldt had called for…,” an artist “to see the landscape through scientific as well as artistic eyes,” and paintings that contained “scientific rigor linked to an aesthetic sensibility.”

Just as Humboldt’s writings culminated in the writing of Cosmos, so Church’s works culminated in the painting of Heart of the Andes (1859) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the spectacular and detailed portrayal of geologic and biologic successions from lower to higher elevations. An earlier Church landscape, our own The Andes of Ecuador (1855), was extolled by art critics of the time “for the warm humid light that suffuses the landscape.” Harvey points out that “the lyrical qualities of The Andes of Ecuador thus stand in pronounced contrast to the crispness of each individual plant and landform in Heart of the Andes.” She suggests that “Church moved from a generalized and distilled overview [in ‘Andes of Ecuador’] to portraying the overwhelming amount of specific information found in his sketches [in ‘Heart of the Andes’].” The two paintings follow the progression that Humboldt followed from a general impression to specifics. “If The Andes of Ecuador visualizes the moment of synthesis, Heart of the Andes revels in the restlessness associated with endless discovery of new data.” I suggest that the reader compare the two paintings with this in mind.

Both paintings owe a great deal to Humboldt’s vision of the unity of art and science.

Humboldt believed in the interconnectedness of nature, art and humanity — a concept that has recently come (back) into its own. The concept is celebrated in both our show and that at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. I hope you will take the opportunity to investigate/explore both.

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Dickinson, Heade, and Hummingbirds

by Becky Brown

D O C E N T DAT E L I N E

In the fall of 1882, Emily Dickinson wrote a poem and sent it to her acquaintance Mabel Loomis Todd. Todd had sent her a drawing of an Indian pipe, a native plant that resembles clay pipes. Dickinson wrote a note thanking her and telling her, “I cannot make an Indian Pipe, but please accept a Humming bird” (Benfey, p. 202). The poem that she sent was “A Route of Evanescence.”

Todd had recently been visited by artist Martin Johnson Heade, who had taught her painting. Heade had made a name for himself by painting hummingbirds during the 1860s and 1870s. Some had been painted on trips to Brazil, and some had been painted from memory (Stebbins, p. 145). He carried a portfolio of the works on his trip to Amherst to visit Todd and her friends (Benfey, p. 191-193).

Dickinson’s “A Route of Evanescence’’ and Heade’s Orchid with Two Hummingbirds (RHMAA, 1871) offer us a glimpse of that circle of Amherst friends talking about hummingbirds. It is important to keep that setting in mind when, a hundred and seventy-five years later, we look at the two works. Otherwise, the rabbit holes we go down could get weird.

Emily Dickinson would have been familiar with the ruby-throated hummingbird, the only hummingbird that appears in the Northeast (Stebbins, Life. p. 127). It is about that hummingbird that she wrote the riddle: A Route of Evanescence With a revolving Wheel — A Resonance of Emerald — A Rush of Cochineal — And every Blossom on the Bush Adjusts its tumbled Head — The mail from Tunis, probably, An easy Morning’s Ride — (Dickinson, p. 619)

In the first four lines, she depicts the little bird’s appearance and speed. She mentions the glancing green of its feathers and the scarlet bib below the neck of the male bird. Its ability to appear, dart around, and vanish lends it a transitory quality. She captures the whirring sound of the beating of its wings with repeated “r” sounds: route, with, revolving, wheel, resonance (Dickinson wants us to notice sound and uses a “sound” word), emerald, rush. Although the first helicopters would not appear until the next century, she imagines the bird’s ability to hover “with a revolving wheel.”

The second four lines of the poem move the hummingbird from ephemeral to exotic. She has set us up for it by choosing “emerald” instead of green and “cochineal” instead of red. The blossom “adjusts its tumbled head” in the hummingbird’s presence. She uses “adjusts” instead of “raises” which might have logically followed her use of sound in the first four lines. We are alerted, therefore, to look for something different. A first reading might suggest that the blossom is reaching out to the hummingbird for its pollination. A second reading is that the hummingbird’s visit is so fast and evanescent that the blossom is left (if it acts at all) shaking its tumbled head.

The hummingbird is fast. The message it is delivering to “every blossom on the bush” may be from Tunis—“an easy Morning’s Ride.” While all Dickinson biographies are sketchy, we can be pretty sure that she never went to Tunis. Tunis conjures turbaned dark men in long robes, calls to prayer from mosques, ships resting in harbor, and pirates—exotic images for Dickinson.

N.B. This piece first appeared in the fall, 2018, edition of Notes on American Literature. It is used here with the permission of the editor.

Images: (L to R): Emily Dickinson. Daguerreotype. ca. 1847, Amherst College Archives & Special Collections. Martin Johnson Heade (1819–1904), Ruby Topaz, circa 1863–1864, oil on canvas. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas. 2006.81. Martin Johnson Heade, 1860, albumen print (Photographs of Artists, Collection I, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.). Martin Johnson Heade (1819–1904), Hooded Visorbearer, circa 1863–1864, oil on canvas. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. 2006.93.

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Unlike Dickinson, Heade was well-traveled. He had visited and lived in both Europe and South America.

When he went to Amherst in the summer of 1882, he had a series of paintings of various hummingbirds paired with tropical flowers. Both subjects were exotic to their audience. Orchid with Two Hummingbirds depicts two different species of hummingbirds in a steamy jungle-like setting and features a large brilliant pink cattleya orchid. A first look makes the viewer think the birds might be in some kind of mating dance.

A Brazilian Fairy hummingbird hovers over a Phaon Comet hummingbird that is perched on a branch.

What one might describe as a sultry atmosphere, then, becomes merely humid. It’s not a mating dance; it is probably a hostile encounter. The misty foreground is lit by a break in dark clouds. Other than the orchid in the foreground, the flora consists of ferns and deadlooking tree limbs draped in vines and moss. The background is a distant, nondescript hilly forest.

Hummingbirds aside, both the poem and the painting deserve a deeper look. The mid-nineteenth century was a fecund time for poets, artists, and scientists. Romantic notions of fifty years earlier were being challenged in the atmosphere that fostered Darwin’s Origin of the Species, Audubon’s studies of birds, and even Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Nature, in all its beauty, is a place where only the fittest survive. Scientific studies were replacing mere awe and adoration of nature. Big fish eat the little fish. All creatures do what we can to survive.

Against that backdrop, Dickinson’s “route of evanescence / with a revolving wheel” takes on a different aspect. She had lost close friends and her father by the time she wrote these lines, and her mother was an invalid who would die in November of that year.

She recognized the essence of life in the transient, evanescent nature of the hummingbirds.

The corpus of her work testifies to her seeing life as metaphor.

It can be forgiven, then, for us to look at the poem as being more than simply a poem about a hummingbird.

The first quatrain with its emphasis on both the fading, fleeting and

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revolving nature of life with its flashes of color is balanced, in the second quatrain, by the joyful bowing to the inevitable in awe. The “mail from Tunis” is beyond our knowing and we are, simply, left in wonder.

Heade, on the other hand, takes a more realistic and less romantic approach. His hummingbirds and orchids are attempts at exact representation. The misty backdrop that might have seemed sultry had the two hummingbirds been doing a mating dance is, simply, the backdrop. On the other hand, in its essay on the painting, Reynolda House Museum of American Art notes, “The vines hanging from lush foliage against an ominous gray sky create a dramatic backdrop and suggest Heade’s interest in the transitory effects of nature.”

At most, the hummingbirds are vying to fertilize the orchid. If we look hard for metaphor, the fact that the orchid, once fertilized, loses its blossom and sets a seed might support the “revolving Wheel” of Dickinson’s poem and indeed suggest that Heade was saying more than immediately meets the eye. Nevertheless, the careful reader (viewer) must ultimately concede that the painting is a science lecture more than it is a philosophical statement.

Juxtaposing the two pieces, then, gives us a good glimpse at the shift from the romantic, transcendental world to the growing interest in realism and scientific studies. Our twenty-first century ruminations on the works can be only speculations. Yet speculate we do.

We listen closely for wisdom from the past even if it is evanescent.

FURTHER READING

Benfey, Christopher. A Summer of Hummingbirds: Love, Art, and Scandal in the intersecting Worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade. New York: The Penguin Press. 2008.

The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Thomas H. Johnson, editor. Boston: Little Brown and Company.

1960.

Stebbins, Theodore E., Jr. The Life and Works of Martin Johnson Heade. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1975.

Opposite images: Top: Martin Johnson Heade (1819–1904), Amethyst Woodstar, circa 1863–1864, oil on canvas. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas. 2006.84. Bottom: Martin Johnson Heade (1819–1904), Ruby-throated Hummingbird, circa 1863–1864, oil on canvas. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas. 2006.91.

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