MVVD Memorial Book

Marie Van Vechten Davenport AUGUS T 17, 1913 - JULY 9, 2 0 0 8

“I still remember the day the world took you back & there was never time to thank you for the thousand scattered moments you left behind.”

Brian Andreas, StoryPeople

Life for our mother, Marie Van Vechten Hayes, began on August 17, 1913 in Pelham Manor, New York.

Effe Huntington

Frank Hayes

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Born the second child to Frank Anderson Hayes, an electrical engineer, and Effe Knox Huntington Hayes, she shared many early childhood adventures with her older brother Frank, who was born on September 14, 1912.

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Frank Jr. was sent off to boarding school at a young age; Marie was home schooled until October 1926 when she matriculated into The Brearley School in New York City.

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During the school year, Marie lived with Grand-ma-ma Knox in New York. In these years, Marie gained a cosmopolitan sensibility, a desire to travel and a passion for the beautiful.

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Marie’s sister Anne was born on June 5, 1925; her youngest sister, Cara Louise was born on September 5, 1928.

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In 1929, the Hayes family moved into Bayberry Spinney, a splendid new residence located in Middletown N.J. designed

by Frank and Effe. The tall stone retaining wall,

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holding the upper portion of the driveway in place, soon became Frank’s favorite backdrop for family portraits. Certainly, some of the magic, passion and attention to detail required

when designing and building a house of one’s own, inspired Marie to pursue the study of architecture.

Despite her shyness, Marie graduated from Brearley in excellent standing, and went on to Bryn Mawr College. In June following her freshman year, Marie traveled to England with her sisters, Anne, then seven, and Cara Louise who was four. As Marie’s sister Anne recalls, “It was June, 1932. Cara and I had just had our tonsils out. Our mother was unable to come to England because she was nursing a Knox cousin. …We traveled by ship with our father, our

nineteen year-old sister, Marie, and our nurse, Lydia, on the Hamburg American Line. I can still hear the foghorns.

The first night we stayed at the White Horse Inn in Reigate (Surrey); the next night we wound up in a house called “Windy Ridge” instead of in the “Big House” because of a booking mix-up. Our mother arrived sometime in July. We were there for three months. I think Marie was allowed to go off to parties in London…”

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Here I pause the story for a moment. A life well lived is not just a series of plot points, rather it is a journey of the soul. What made Marie’s life extra-ordinary, as her daughter Susie has suggested, was her ability to conceive and hold a vision, even in the face of grave difficulty, rather like Elsie Piddock, the central character in Eleanor Farjeon’s children’s story “Elsie Piddock Skips in her Sleep”.

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As those familiar with the story recall, Elsie Piddock was a born skipper who by the time she was 6 could outskip anyone in the country and was known to the fairies. One night at the full moon when Elsie was 7, Andy-Spandy, the fairies’ skipping-master, summoned Elsie to skip for him. In the “skip all together”, Elsie skipped straight through until morning. AndySpandy was so impressed that he agreed to teach Elsie all the fairy skips, which numbered quite a few.

“The High Skip, The Sly Skip, The Skip like a Feather, The Long Skip, The Strong Skip, and the Skip All Together!

The Slow Skip, The Toe Skip, The Skip Double-Double, The Fast Skip, The Last Skip, The Skip Against Trouble!”

While architecture was to remain a life-long passion for Marie, she was not able to complete her degree given the demands of family, tuition and the cost associated with buying her desk at the architectural firm where she had already been accepted. Despite this disappointment, Marie’s

practical, independent and adventurous spirit led her to interview at Fortune Magazine, an interview that landed her a job in the research library. Here, Marie met her future husband, the economist and staff writer, John Alfred Davenport. As Marie related the story to her eldest daughter Ann,

John came to the library in search of a book called The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. He asked if she had read it and invited her to lunch the next day to discuss it. Marie took the book home that night; but at their lunch Adam Smith was not mentioned.

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Who was John Davenport?

In brief, John Alfred was born on September 11 1904, the second son of Russell W and Mona Davenport. Russell was an accomplished a steel man with deep knowledge of metallurgy; alas he died of pneumonia on March 2, 1904. Left alone to bring up two boys, Mona’s determined character and entrepreneurial spirit allowed her to take advantage of all that Philadelphia’s Main Line had to offer them.

However her elder son, Russell Jr., had suffered pneumonia at an early age which caused a slight

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hearing impediment.

Told by a Swiss doctor that Russell’s health would improve in a desert climate, Mona drove her two boys west in a Model A Ford to enroll Russell, then fourteen, in the Thacher school that had just been

founded in Ojai, California.

Russell graduated in Thacher’s first graduating class; John would follow on five years later. As John was to recollect: “I first made this journey at the age of nine in 1913…and was destined to make it many

times over in the next ten years…. My mother set off for ‘the Golden West’ to the astonishment and cluckings of Philadelphia cousins, uncles and aunties who really should have known better.” .

Many years later, the large portrait of Abraham Davenport that had hung in the library of the Davenport residence in Philadelphia was moved to the house at 302 East 65th Street, NY where it created a memorable and challenging link to the Davenport forefathers.

Later, the portrait was gifted to Yale University.

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Marie and John were married on October 11 1941. As his first editor and sometimes researcher, Marie was able to critique as well as appreciate his written positions. Together they would create a

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memorable voice as well as a remarkable family. At his death, she would write: “We have worked together for so long that I miss him both personally and as the strong force for freedom and right in our times that he was”.

In life, joy and tragedy are often intertwined.

Marie delivered her first child, Ann Van Vechten on August 3rd, 1942. This moment of beginning must have been thrilling.

Alas, all too soon after the birth, the Hayes family received a telegram delivered by military personnel that their son, Frank Jr. had been “reported missing and was presumed dead.” As the story was reported, the H.M.S. Veteran, a destroyer on which Marie’s older

brother, Frank, served as chief and only medical officer, had been torpedoed and had sunk on September 26th 1942. In her obituary of Frances Mason Hayes, Ann points out that the designation “presumed dead” cast a grim, uncertain shadow on the lives of the family members who could neither fully mourn nor whole-heartedly hope for Frank’s return.

On July 16, 1944, her second daughter, Glorianna Whipple, was born. Later

that same year, Marie moved her family into a penthouse apartment at 1 East 87th Street. Soon thereafter, Mona, Dad’s mother, became ill and moved into the adjacent apartment. In the next years, two more daughters arrived: Susan Wheeler born on March 9, 1946 and Amy Marie born on August 20, 1947. To insure that her children were engaged in learning activities and to keep costs in check, Marie founded a nursery school that met at the apartment.

As she watched her children and the others who joined interact, she turned her considerable skill as a photographer to a study of sibling rivalry.

Following the death of Mona, the Currie family moved in next door.

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A son, John Jr, arrived on March 30, 1951. By this time, the noise and general chaos of children being busy -- building blocks, roller-skating, and getting into mischief – had become wearing on the neighboring tenants. Marie saw trouble brewing and proactively went in search of a new living arrangement.

Delving into the city’s realestate lists, she discovered two brownstones East of the El on 65th Street that were about to be condemned.

Here the Fast Skip came in handy. In a few days, Marie drew up preliminary

plans that split the two houses into two dwellings, one above the other; she then convinced authorities that aesthetic, structural and financial salvation was possible. For the next year, she did the Skip DoubleDouble to bring the project to completion. Many experimental materials were used, including industrial windows at the back of the ground floor, walls of a “shredded wheat” un-plastered material and wavy light-transmissive acrylic paneling in the kitchen and bathrooms.

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The renovation was just about complete when her family and the Currie family moved in, just in time for the arrival of a fifth daughter, Sharon Huntington on June 21, 1952. Caroline, the youngest, arrived a few years later, on January 23, 1957.

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As the family grew, Marie and John found time to escape and spend time together away from New York. On weekends they enjoyed sailing on the Cindy, a boat John co-owned with his brother Russell.

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Throughout his career, Marie and John would often travel to far-flung corners of the globe where John had been sent on a story assignment for 6 weeks or two months. These activities were made easier by the willingness of Marie’s parents, particularly Effe, to help

bring up the children.

Regular visits to Middletown on weekends throughout the school year and several months during the summer holidays involved strict adherence to routine.

As the older children became old enough to look after the younger

ones, John and Marie settled into the nearby “play house,” which had originally been built for Cara and Anne. Here John would write quietly in the mornings, and in the afternoons after a walk or chore outdoors would often read aloud from the classics that filled the playhouse shelves.

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Over time, Middletown became home. As they married and had children of their own, they brought their children to visit. In time, John and Marie sold their house in NY and came to live full time in this lovely country setting.

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In the fifties and sixties, traveling was very much a High Skip. In those days, air travel was still very expensive and not yet popular. Relatively few Americans had been to Europe, at least not more than once, and even a smaller number of Americans had traveled to Africa, Japan or Peru. Moreover, television was in its infancy and the rage of specialty cookbooks had not yet come into its own.

In short, America was far less cosmopolitan than a

young person born in 1980 or after might imagine. When on assignment, John would lead and Marie would follow joining him for 10 days or two weeks (they never flew on the same plane). Marie always returned from these trips with new ideas, practices and objects which she shared enthusiastically with her children, and through her cuisine with her many dinner guests.

In Italy, Marie learned the secrets of a good risotto; at home she adopted

risotto as a delicious way to re-serve leftovers.

Following a 6-week stay in Japan, rice replaced the potato as a staple in her cuisine. For several years, Marie and many of the children wore white “Tabbies” around the house and tied their wrappers with an “Obi” sash. As it grew, our collection of beautiful dolls dressed in native costume and often fragile was relegated to a corner cabinet to be admired but not touched.

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On a trip to Peru, high over the Andes in a plane with a faulty engine, Marie claims to have wrestled with a chilling fear and for the impact her death would have on the children she might have to leave behind. When she got to “Thy will by done” in the Lord’s Prayer, a real sense of peace came over her and she just knew that whatever happened, “He had her covered”. On that trip, Marie brought back a replica of a church she discovered in the Andes; this artifact was given front and center placement wherever we moved.

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Marie took a keen interest in the abilities and the consequent education of each of her children – tutoring them herself as necessary and moving them for education abroad when even the best schools in New York did not seem

up to her standard. Amy remembers that at age thirteen she was accepted by a school in London, but only on the condition that she retake and pass a test in Math and Latin.

Having excelled in both subjects at school, Marie

became a patient but firm tutor, waking Amy every morning at 6 to begin a day of study. At the end of the summer Amy passed both tests, much to Marie’s delight.

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“The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light.”

William Wordsworth

Marie’s fascination with light drove her early passion for making art, architecture, and photography; at a later stage, this same fascination allowed her to connect with nature.

In seemingly equal measure she adored Michelangelo, Rembrandt, the Impressionists, Chinese Landscape painting, Chartres Cathedral, period furniture and beautiful fabrics. By intuition and habit, she drew things of beauty into her life. Ann remembers more than

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one outing when, for apparently no reason, Marie would dip into an antique shop on 3rd Avenue to admire (and perhaps purchase) a Chinese bowl that caught her eye. Amy remembers an expedition to the Louvre “where, of course, we went to see the Mona Lisa. I told Mom I did not see what the big deal was about the Mona Lisa. She smiled and took

me to the gallery where the Impressionist paintings lived.” Later when she had moved to Middletown, this passion was realized as she shaped her many Azalea plants; many of these would be hand dug, root-balled and moved to Tidmarsh Farm where Glorianna and Evan were building a house.

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Throughout most of her life, Marie’s energy and overarching optimism allowed her to accomplish complex projects – albeit in her own style and in her own time. In making these projects, Marie intuitively sought out structures that would yield pleasure – a windmill, a circular stair, open rafters. While the circumstances might begin as grim, as they were following a devastating fire at Bayberry Spinney from which she only just escaped with the dog Duffer, Marie would figure out the best skip possible under the circumstances and move on. Her particular approach tended to revitalize those around her, giving them courage to move on as well.

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In 1986, her youngest daughter Caroline wrote the following.

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My sense of humor was revitalized and my perspective restored by a call from my mother today. “I am calling to tell you,” she said breathlessly “that I have moved the ficus tree indoors – it is more beautiful than it has ever been and measures about six feet across”.

Mom loves gardening and green things, not in an exclusive or obsessive way as is often the case, but in an inclusive way.

The earth gives her strength and enriches her life. Most of her children share her passion so gardening is one of the

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many links between us. It is appropriate to mention then that the ficus is a much-loved, hand-me-over that was given to Mom by one of her children.

In the winter, it radiates the inspiration of spring in the living room. And in the summer, it is lovingly carted out of doors and set into the ground so that – for four or five months – it can grow alongside many other trees.

As the tree has grown, the trip back to the living room has become a larger job. This year, Mom used a hand cart and

some sort of arrangement of levers that was hard to visualize from her description on the telephone. When I remarked that this seemed to be quite a large job to do twice a year given the size of the tree, she said in a matter-offact tone: “Taking it out in the spring is not nearly as difficult because the tree is smaller by then. You see, every fall when we bring it indoors, it looks around and decides that its foliage is too big for this indoor setting. So it drops its leaves and new, smaller ones grow in.”

Both of us laughed and the conversation kept me smiling all day. It wasn’t so much the creativeness of the idea, although I wouldn’t argue against it. What struck me about the story was the way it demonstrated my mother’s perspective. She sees unity and progression in life’s unfolding, and she brings an infectious joy and goodness to everything she touches.

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Recently, John Jr. characterized Marie, saying “She took care of everybody”. Perhaps it was that those around her provided critical challenges from which she learned about herself.

From caring for Cara Louise and adopting Cara’s daughter, Blaise, to looking after her father, Frank, in his last years, welcoming Ann’s daughter, Caitlin, to live with them as she went to High School, to visiting all her children where ever they live, Marie had a knack for making all family members feel special .

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As Catlin remembers, “She once took a four-hour train ride to visit me on my birthday and take me to a Georgia O’Keefe exhibition.” Amy tells the story of a foot-locker-trunk Marie purchased for her journey to London. “She painted my initials on one end. They were not ordinary initials, but beautifully painted in many shades of blue with lots of flourishes. Many years later she told me how sad she was about my leaving and how worried she was about whether she was doing the right thing. I thought about those painted initials and thought about the love she put into painting them on my trunk, like a reminder that she was there for me if I needed her.”

Before it was sold in 2000 and Marie came to live at the

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Johnson’s in New York, Ann often spent the month of August in Middletown. Sometimes Piers Dixon accompanied her, as he did to help restore order after the fire.

During that period, Piers developed the “Davenport Diamond Geneology” you will find at the end of this book. During these visits, Ann would arrange small dinner parties and visits with Mom’s friends including the Fergusons and the Samuelsons.

Sometimes, Marie’s sister Anne would visit from Richmond, and often Marina, Ann’s daughter, would come for a few days with several of her children.

Glorianna and Evan built a house on their cranberry farm in Manomet Mass.

When Marie heard this was in the works, she asked again when they would be married. In 1999, she was there for the wedding.

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Susie and Piers developed the Bishop’s Barn homestead in England over many years. Marie was especially fond of the tall Scot’s Pines that were planted there for Queen Victoria’s Jubilee.

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Amy and John developed a tradition of Thanksgiving gatherings in Vermont.

Having grown up with family Thanksgivings in Middletown, this annual invitation was embraced by which ever siblings could make the journey. For many years, Marie also enjoyed a weeklong visit to Vermont in the summer.

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Mom traveled west on several occasions to see John and Sharon. Sometimes one of her daughters accompanied her.

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The beach at Edge Lea soon became one of the most frequented summer reunion spots. Here, Marie became part of an extended family that included Hooker Judson, Tante Sita, the Skelseys and many other good friends. In August, family members often made a special trip to this spot to celebrate Mom’s birthday.

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Cheerful and energetic until almost the end of her life, momentary feelings of despair at overwhelming, often conflicting, demands on her time, were put to the piano. When the strains of Beethoven’s Fűr Elise rippled out through the late night air under her agile

fingers, even very small people knew that their born nurturer was in need of nurturing herself.

Religious always, but not formally religious until later life, she had a secure sense of oneness with God and of her place in the world.

“The One remains, the many change and pass: Heaven’s light forever shines, Earth’s shadows fly: Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

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DAVENPORT FAMILY TREE Ann Davenport Piers Dixon (London, England)

Marina Mavroleon Alton Folsom

Jennifer Renee Lewis TJ Allen Keith Thomas Lewis Christa Lewis

John A. Davenport Marie Van Vecten Hayes Davenport

Annessa Marie Lewis, Marty Bushway Miranda Hayes Lewis George Mace Mavroleon Judy Caitlin Mavroleon Glorianna Davenport Evan Schulmann

John Elias Maximilian Mavroleon

(Boston & Manomet, MA)

Susan Davenport Piers Brooke (London & Bishops Barn, England)

Arabella Brooke Rory Cambell-Wheeler Sebastian Brooke Irene

Amy Davenport John Durrance (Montpelier, VT)

Will Kinzel Durrance Charis Durrance

John Davenport (Spokane, WA)

Sharon Huntington Davenport Caroline Davenport David Johnson (New York)

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Sarah Herin Johnson Amelia Lane Johnson Russell Johnson

Tilly Wheeler Harry Wheeler Henry Brooke

Colin Mathew Lewis

Copyright © 2009 Davenport Family. All Rights Reserved.

Design by Hyun-Yeul Lee. Printed by Acme Bookbinding, Charlestown, MA.