Perhaps you might recognize the phrase as Basil Rathbone uttered it in the 1940's: "Elementary, my dear Watson." I've long known that this phrase is NOT in the original Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes' stories, but I always thought it originated in the bone tired brain of some Hollywood hack screen writer. Not so, as I discovered at Gillette's Castle on the Connecticut River at the East Haddam Ferry.
This house (now called a castle by the Connecticut State Park people) was built in 1919 by a very famous actor by the name of William Gillette. As with so many famous people in the past, their fame doesn't outlast their deaths, so I was puzzled as to who this guy was. However, Mr. Gillette was a stage actor who would have been instantly recognizable to the late 19th and early 20th century theater going public. The reason? He took the Sherlock Holmes stories, and wrote stage plays based
loosely on the stories, and then starred in them as Sherlock Holmes all over the world more than 1300 times for more than 30 years. His tour of England netted him over $100,000 which is about 2.5 million in today's money. It is Gillette's play that attires Holmes in the Deerstalker hat, smoking a briar pipe, in a caped great coat or, when he is at home in a silk dressing gown. His Holmes dialogue included the phrase "Elementary, my dear companion" referring to the Dr. Watson character, which morphed into "Elementary, my dear Watson in the movies of the 1930's and 40's. The Holmes we picture in our minds today is a creation of William Gillette.
The more we learned about Gillette, the more fascinating he became. He was the holder of over 40 patents because he devised several 'special effects' devices he used in his plays. His house was also designed with some real quirks and reflected the ego we associate with actors. In addition to the house, he also constructed a miniature railroad on his property with a 3.5 mile track. Prior to building the house, his usual residence was a series of houseboat/yacht accommodations. In fact, while the house was being built, he lived on his last house boat on the Connecticut River. He also collected art, and was a devoted cat lover with over 20 cats in residence at his home. He worked more or less continually in the theater until he retired in the late 1920's, but kept coming out of retirement for special performances which were happily received by the public until the early 1930's. He died in his 80's in 1937.
The pictures are of his house and furnishings. He used Connecticut limestone in the construction of the house, and it was not altogether the correct material for the design. The interior is much more successful, but also has Gillette's individual stamp.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/115478608971584948192/albums/5910688616270086769?authkey=CPzE37GA96yk_gE
We're in Newport, New Hampshire, and today, I met a blacksmith. His family owns a farm in the area, and they have been blacksmithing for three generations. Mr. Stetson also sells maple syrup out of his black smith shop made from his farm's own trees. I have maple syrup stashed everywhere. There's some in my house in Arizona; there's some in my neighbor's fridge in Arizona, and I think my mother-in-law, Merilyn, is keeping some for me.
However, that's all Grade A which is what you can buy in any decent grocery store in America. And, it's all delicious, but if you want to put some in your pecan pie, then Grade B is what you want, and you can only buy that in New England. At this time of the year you have to search for it since most sugaring houses (places that make and sell maple products) are only open for the late spring and early summer. By this time, they are all pretty much shut down waiting for the new sap to rise in the early spring.
The blacksmith shop looked more like a machine shop, and the blacksmith wasn't wearing a leather apron, but rather a set of very dirty Dickie's and a backward ball cap. I asked him about shoeing horses which is what I thought blacksmiths did, and while the horse trade has dwindled, he still has horse boxes pull right up to the door with horses even today They don't make horse shoe house calls. Apparently, his father was a premier horse shoer of draft horses. I tell you; it's always amazing the people you can meet.
We're up here attending the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen Show and Fair. This is our second trip for this 'craft fair'. Supposedly, this is one of the best art shows of craft in the country, and I believe it. Some lucky people will be getting gifts for Christmas from my shopping today. I also got a new piece of jewelry - big surprise.
We did our show survey yesterday - there are seven large tents with at least twenty booths in each tent. We learned last year to take the program which has a layout of each tent, and mark the artists' booths we were interested in. Then today was shopping day. It took about four hours today to get what we wanted, and if we had another $5000 or so, we could have purchased hand crafted furniture and other things for our Arizona house - oh well, maybe next time.
Looking for something to do with the rest of our day, I noticed a 'walking tour' of historic Newport in our motel's three ring binder. I didn't want to take the brochure from the binder, so we stopped by the town library housed in an 1898 mansion, and one of the librarians unearthed the brochure - which is apparently out of print now. She graciously made me a copy, and when I was asking about syrup, a library patron told me about Mr. Stetson, the blacksmith who sells maple syrup.
Now, every town I've ever been in has a 'historic district', but Newport's is the real deal. The town was originally settled by Connecticut farmers in 1761, but it took the coming of a turnpike in 1806 for the town to really get kick started. The oldest buildings are from 1810 and when the town converted from farming to manufacturing, there was a house building boom in the 1850's. There are a multitude of homes - the Italianate style being the most popular
that line the streets around the common green.
Their Methodist Church was built in 1851 in the Gothic Revival style, but First Baptist was built in the same style in 1821. The Episcopals were johnny come latelys; their church was built in 1908. Newport's original Courthouse, now a restaurant where we are having dinner tonight, was built in 1826. The walking/driving tour was excellent, and I'm becoming more adept at recognizing older houses and buildings.
We finished this overnight junket with a trip to Deerfield, Massachusetts. Deerfield is famous for its massacres, and as I discovered, its restored Colonial homes. In 1660 or so, Denham, Massachusetts was becoming crowded, and there wasn't enough farm land, so the "King" authorized an expedition to find new land and to settle it. Going north, the expedition stopped at the Deerfield River noticing there was actually cleared land next to the river since the Indians who inhabited the area were also practicing agriculture as well as hunting/gathering. The English colonists knew a good deal when they saw it, and promptly 'bought' the land from the Indians, who undoubtedly had zero idea of the concept of private ownership. This particular tribe had already been decimated in ongoing warfare with the Mohawk, so they were fairly easily displaced. That is until the French became alarmed at this new English settlement. In 1670 Deerfield was the spear point of westward and northern expansion of the English in North America; Deerfield was the original American frontier.
The French recruited the Indians of the area, and there were two massacres in Deerfield. One in 1675 and the next in 1704 in which more than 50 townspeople were killed outright and over 100 taken captive and marched to Quebec. Each time the town was burned to the ground. The English just kept coming back, and by the 1730's there was a sizable frontier town. A great portion of that town is preserved as "The Street", the location of 14 Colonial houses. In addition, there is a splendid museum which showcases Colonial textiles and furnishings. The Flynt Museum had an approach to antique furniture I'd never seen before: The curator disassembled a few pieces of furniture to show it's construction. One of the pieces was an antique desk with hidden drawers - something I'd known about, but had never actually seen how they were hidden. This was an interesting day to learn about Colonial America. As always, the pictures tell the story. The pictures begin with a few pictures of the old houses and churches in Newport, New Hampshire.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/115478608971584948192/albums/5910677188371077889?authkey=CLrL_un8xO3bPQ
Perhaps you might recognize the phrase as Basil Rathbone uttered it in the 1940's: "Elementary, my dear Watson." I've long known that this phrase is NOT in the original Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes' stories, but I always thought it originated in the bone tired brain of some Hollywood hack screen writer. Not so, as I discovered at Gillette's Castle on the Connecticut River at the East Haddam Ferry.
