The Vivacious Lilac: 2022

On a late-morning walk today, I encountered this brilliant purple morning-glory, which I usually imagine as a vine twining around a porch post, but instead was in splendid isolation in a neighbor's side-garden. And right away a phrase from Ralph Waldo Emerson's poem The Rhodora popped into my head: "beauty is its own excuse for Being" (capitalization Mr. E's).

We read The Rhodora early in the year in Mrs. Marion Beardsley's 8th grade Language Arts class at Riverside Junior High School, my first year in Springfield, Vermont. I was kind of in a daze of joy in those early days after moving to Vermont anyway -- you could see mountains from the classroom window! -- so I suspect I was especially primed for Emerson's, pardon the pun, flowery verse.

I had never forgotten that line in the poem, I believe its most famous, but it had been a long time since I had read it in it entirety, which I went back home and did, being reminded of its full title when I did so: The Rhodora: On Being Asked, Whence is the Flower?

   In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
   I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
   Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
   To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
   The purple petals fallen in the pool
   Made the black water with their beauty gay;
   Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
   And court the flower that cheapens his array.
   Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
   This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
   Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing,
   Then beauty is its own excuse for Being;
   Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
   I never thought to ask; I never knew;
   But in my simple ignorance suppose
   The self-same power that brought me there, brought you.

Not only did the poem, and my nerdy love for it, come back to me with shocking familiarity, I find it hard to believe that many middle school English classes would tackle such an old-fashioned work today. (I myself even had to look up the exact definition of whence: "from what place, source, or cause"). But then I think, this happened in 1969, and Mrs. Beardsley might have been, I don't know, in her 50s?, which meant she was likely born in the teens of the last century, so imagining what her own education was like, assigning a group of 12- and 13-year-olds a highbrow classic of the Transcendentalists must not have seemed strange at all.

Mrs. Beardsley's class had a profound influence on me. We read Romeo and Juliet, my first Shakespeare; Mrs. Beardsley herself encouraged me to pursue writing my own poems, and thanks to this encouragement I began to think of myself as someone who might have a talent for writing. Without doubt from that day to this the written word has occupied an important place in my life.

Beauty is its own excuse for Being. Over the years, although I only thought of the phrase from time to time, I never forgot Emerson's words and at some deep level they became my mantra. Beauty indeed is its own excuse for being; it needs no explanation, reason, or practical function. Such a belief has fueled my passionate interest in and love for art, poetry, literature, nature, and yes, flowers.

Out of curiosity, I Googled Mrs. Beardsley, without much success, except for one serendipitous hit: from 1960 to 1961 she was president of the Springfield Garden Club.

Below is a slightly revised version of an email I sent to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts about a painting in their collection. In these bleak political times, it felt good to immerse myself in this purely pleasurable research project -- I love the way there are so many stories silently embedded within this portrait. (I might have made a good art historian!)

During a visit to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond last week, I was drawn to Edmund C. Tarbell’s Mrs. Horatio Nelson Slater and Children, dated 1901.[i] There are times when I can’t resist Googling the subjects of a painting, especially when, as here, it is a woman identified only by her husband’s name.

It didn’t take me long to conclude that the woman depicted in Tarbell’s painting is Mabel DeCarteret Hunt Slater[ii], the second wife of Horatio Nelson “Ray” Slater [iii] and thirty years his junior, along with their four children. (An image of the Tarbell painting was even added by someone to Mabel Slater’s Find a Grave entry.) Horatio Slater died in 1899, two years before this portrait was made. As indicated by his obituary[iv], Horatio Slater was a member of a wealthy New England textile manufacturing family;[v] his grandfather Samuel Slater built Slater Mill, the first cotton mill in America, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island [vi] in 1793.

Ray and Mabel married in Bar Harbor, Maine, on September 17, 1891, when she was 26 and he was 56.[vii] A fascinating side story is that Mabel’s sister Enid married Samuel Slater, Ray’s son from his first marriage, at the same time Mabel married Ray – a father and son marrying sisters![viii] At the time of their nuptials, Enid was 29 and Samuel 30. They had no children and divorced about ten years later. Samuel died in Paris in 1932 and left his fortune to his housekeeper.[ix]

But back to the painting. Ray and Mabel’s four children – Esther Hunt “Hope” Slater, Ray’s namesake Horatio Nelson Slater, Mabel Ray Slater Murphy, and William Morris Hunt Slater – were born in 1892, 1893, 1895, and 1898 respectively and therefore would have been about nine, eight, six, and three at the time this portrait was painted. Little William, sitting on his mother's lap with his curls and white flounced dress, could be mistaken for a girl by 21^st century folks. Daughter Hope Slater has quite a story in her own right.[x] She married and divorced twice and resumed her maiden name. Her first husband, Benjamin “Sumner” Welles was connected to the Roosevelt family, rooming with Eleanor Roosevelt’s brother Hall at Groton, and serving as a page in FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt’s wedding in 1905. Welles was a closeted homosexual or bisexual who served in the Roosevelt administration as Under Secretary of State, resigning in 1943 after a scandal where he allegedly solicited sex from two Pullman porters.[xi]

The depiction of Mabel Slater in the painting reflects her station in life at the time. She is dressed entirely in black, with no jewelry or adornment, as befits her recently-widowed status. While the four children all look directly at the viewer, Mabel Slater has her eyes cast downward and an almost vacant expression on her face. Although her uncle, the famous American architect Richard Morris Hunt, is mentioned in the museum label [the item description next to the painting], also noteworthy is that she was the daughter of the prominent American painter William Morris Hunt, after whom her younger son William was obviously named.

Mabel Slater was a pretty remarkable person in her own right,[xii] who battled for ten years after her husband’s death to ultimately obtain possession of the Slater textile mills. Sadly, she was institutionalized the last twelve years of her life at the Craig House Sanitorium in Beacon, New York, the first privately-owned psychiatric hospital in America. There is a story there, too. Mabel Slater became the subject of a custody battle between her three surviving children (William, the youngest, died in 1916 at 17), who had her committed, and her siblings, who unsuccessfully took legal action to get her released.[xiii] ”I can’t hold out much longer. Take me away before I die,” she wrote her brother Paul Hunt in the early 1930s. A group of New England clubwomen even petitioned then-Governor of New York Franklin Roosevelt to free her, but he declined to intervene. Mabel Hunt Slater ultimately died at Craig House, passing away in 1942 at the age of 78. The Sanitarium, which closed in 1999, catered to the rich and famous (Zelda Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe spent time there, as well as JFK’s sister Rosemary after her botched lobotomy), and, to close on a note of irony, is currently being renovated as an upscale hotel.[xiv] Craig House back in the day:

Here is a portrait of Mabel Slater by John Singer Sargent http://www.artnet.com/artists/john-singer-sargent/portrait-of-mrs-mabel-hunt-slater-IORAFMHDEFcrdB5edN3X9w2 and a photograph of her that she gave to Isabella Stewart Gardner - https://www.gardnermuseum.org/experience/collection/34058. There is also a rather somber passport photo of Slater in middle age posted on Find a Grave:

It might be worth adding a little of this rich history to the museum label. And if you don’t, I certainly enjoyed exploring the history of the people in this painting and I hope whoever reads this does too!

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[i] https://vmfa.museum/piction/6027262-55297650/

[ii] https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/99212730/mabel-de_carteret-slater

[iii] https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/33231021/horatio-nelson-slater

[iv] From the "Springfield Republican," (Springfield, Massachusetts), 13 Aug 1899:

Horatio Nelson Slater Dead.

Millionaire Manufacturer of Boston and Webster Dies at Magnolia.

The death of Horatio Nelson Slater, the Webster millionaire mill owner, at Magnolia, was announced in a message received at Webster yesterday afternoon.

It plunged the entire town in mourning, as Mr. Slater was closely identified with the town's existence.

He was born in Providence in March, 1834 and was the son of the late John F. Slater. His grandfather was Samuel Slater, the first cotton manufacturer in this country and the founder of the town of Webster. Mr. Slater received his university education at Brown and in later years read law at Harvard. He came into possession of his fortune through the death of his uncle Samuel Slater, who willed him his entire wealth, thereby making him sole proprieter [sic] of four large mills, three located at Webster and one in
Wilkinsonville.... His wealth has been estimaed [sic] at over $10,000,000. His winter home was at Back Bay, Boston.

Mr. Slater was twice married, his first wife being Miss Elizabeth Vinton of Providence, by whom he had two children, Samuel of Boston and Mrs. Charles C. Washburn of Worcester, wife of the Worcester wire manufacturer.

Mrs. Slater died in 1880 and in 1891 he married Miss Mable Hunt, daughter of William Morris Hunt, the artist. Four children were born, all of whom survive.

The body will be taken to Webster for burial in the family lot at East Webster.