Miss Hannah Sterns received plenty of marriage proposals in her time. There was Ben Ransom, the fickle, restless charmer who cheated his older brother David out of his most beloved possession—their father’s watch. And Ray Prescott, the minister who dreamed of the good works he could accomplish for Christ with Hannah by his side. Yet Hannah remained unmarried in the big house on the farm just outside town . . . until the fateful day that Hannah’s heart was finally touched by love in a most unexpected way.
But old beaux have a way of coming back, and after years of separation, Hannah finds herself mired in Ben Ransom’s troubled life. Soon, Hannah realizes that the future of the one she loves most is inextricably tied to Ben Ransom, his brother David, and David’s beloved silver watch.
This edition of the 1905 classic Christian novel includes a biography of the author and additional bonus content.
Click on the cover to read sample chapters on Amazon and learn more about Stephen Mitchell’s Journey.
By 1900 streetcars were plentiful in large cities and were an accepted method of transportation about town. But riding the cars presented certain difficulties for ladies. There were, for instance, specific streetcar rules of etiquette for women. One of the primary rules was that ladies must refrain from riding the cars during peak commuting hours of the day, so they wouldn’t hinder men on their way to and from work.
Ladies’ conduct on streetcars had to be modest and lady-like at all times. Perspectives on Etiquette, an early book by Emily Post, admonished:
On the street, in streetcars, and in all public places, if your voice or conduct attracts attention you will be considered “loud,” “common,” vulgar.
That sentiment is in keeping with a scene Isabella Alden described in her book, Workers Together, where Miss Mason, the Sunday school teacher, observed one of her students, shop-girl Hester, behaving brazenly on the streetcar.
Behold, directly opposite to her, sat the girl with the queer bonnet! Queer it certainly was. Not merely the queerness of bad taste in selection, but that worst form of queerness—an attempt at being stylish, which, in this case, resulted only in a profusion of bright, cheap flowers, mingled with yards of bright ribbon of contrasting hue, so arranged that the whole effect was exasperating to refined taste. There were more serious defects about the girl than an ill chosen bonnet. She was a loud-voiced girl, who talked much and laughed much, and was altogether so very familiar with the young man in the gay neck-tie who stood before her, holding on by the strap, that Miss Mason shuddered as she listened.
Later, Miss Mason criticized Hester to the Sunday school superintendent:
“I don’t like the girl’s appearance. She is one of the loud-voiced, gay sort; converses on the street-car in a tone loud enough to be heard by all the passengers.”
There were other rules for ladies. Miss Leslie’s 1864 book, The Ladies’ Guide to True Politeness and Perfect Manners gave the following instructions:
If, on stopping an omnibus, you find that a dozen people are already seated in it, draw back, and refuse to add to the number; giving no heed to the assertion of the driver, that “there is plenty of room.” The passengers will not say so, and you have no right to crowd them all, even if you are willing to be crowded yourself—a thing that is extremely uncomfortable, and very injurious to your dress, which may, in consequence, be so squeezed and rumpled as never to look well again.
It is most imprudent to ride in an omnibus with much money in your purse. Pickpockets of genteel appearance are too frequently among the passengers.
If you are obliged to have money of any consequence about you, keep your hand all the time in that pocket.
No lady should venture to ride in an omnibus after dark, unless she is escorted by a gentleman whom she knows. She had better walk home, even under the protection of a servant. If alone in an omnibus at night, she is liable to meet with improper company, and perhaps be insulted.
Marion Harland’s 1914 book, Complete Etiquette advised:
One of the things that most women need to learn is the correct way of getting off a street-car, which is to step off with the right foot, facing front, which saves awkwardness in every case and sometimes, if the car starts too soon, an accident.
Why was this bit of helpful instruction so important? By 1910, women’s fashion had changed dramatically. Gone were voluminous skirts measuring three to four yards of fabric at the hemline. Instead, ladies’ skirts were close fitting with sometimes only a single yard of fabric at the hem. Called “hobble skirts”, these skirts were cinched at the ankles and often cinched at the knees.
Cartoonists lampooned the fashion, ministers decried them from the pulpit, and newspaper editors vilified women who wore them. The editor of the Monroe City Democrat in Missouri pronounced:
“Wearing a hobble skirt will make the sweetest girl resemble the stopper to a vinegar cruet.”
Women’s skirts had always posed a danger on streetcars; they got caught in doorways and their volume often blocked a woman’s view of steps and other hazards. Women often complained of the difficulty and immodesty they suffered in riding public transportation.
This newspaper photo of a lady in a wide-hemmed skirt (pre-dating the hobble skirt fashion) shows the difficulty women had climbing aboard streetcars and navigating steps that often measured 15″ to 20″ high.
But it wasn’t long before the introduction of hobble skirts had a disastrous impact on the street-car system. Cars stopped running on efficient schedules because ladies wearing the slim skirts blocked car doors while trying to hike their skirts up sufficiently to allow them to climb into the cars.
In subways, women were injured when they tried to step across the gap between the train and the subway platform and their feet slipped into the open space.
During rush hours, women who could not walk rapidly because of their skirts found themselves carried along by the force of the crowd behind them, or—even worse—pushed to the ground and trampled. In New York, the Interborough Rapid Transit Company was inundated by lawsuits from women who had been injured while entering, exiting or riding on cars.
The problem reached such a pitch that the New York transit company designed and implemented a new model of streetcar to accommodate women. Called Hobble Skirt Cars, they were constructed lower to the ground and featured one wide, sliding door set in the middle of the car. Passengers boarded by climbing a single step that was only six inches from the ground.
New York City Hobble Skirt Cars running up Broadway from a postcard circa 1914
Close-up of a New York Hobble Skirt car
The car design was a vast improvement and was so successful, more cars were ordered. By 1912 New York City ran Hobble Skirt Cars up and down Broadway and the engineering trend spread across the nation.
Photo from Chicago’s The Day Book dated April 10, 1912
The reinvented cars were a great relief for women, but their troubles weren’t over. Click on the link below to read an article from 1922—a time when women wore much shorter skirts with much wider hemlines. Even in 1922 ladies still struggled to use public transportation. The Evening World 1922-06-21 New York step height
All fashion plates in this post are from 1914 issues of The Woman’s Magazine.
Click here to read more about “riding the cars” and public transportation in Isabella Alden’s day.
Street-cars traversing Thomas Circle in Washington, DC in 1907New York City looking north on Broadway in 1910.
When Isabella Alden wrote about her characters “riding the cars,” she wasn’t referring to automobiles. The “cars” she wrote about were steam cars and streetcars.
Steam cars were steam-engine locomotives, which ran between cities on rails. By the late 1800s, the period when most of Isabella’s stories take place, railroad stations were springing up in small towns and running across rural areas as fast as workers could lay the rails.
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Offices of The Herald newspaper in New York City.
Like locomotives, streetcars also ran on rails, but the passenger compartments were smaller and narrower. They were typically powered by either cable-pulley systems or electricity, but early streetcars were pulled by horses. Streetcars were common forms of in-town transportation in the early 1900s. Small, mid-size, and major cities across the country had robust street-car systems to transport riders throughout a city’s major business areas and often from one end of town to another.
Streetcars running on First Avenue, downtown Seattle.
In Twenty Minutes Late, Caroline Bryant saw her first streetcar when she arrived in Philadelphia. Her only previous experience with riding a car was a seven-hour train trip she’d taken with her mother years before. In Philadelphia, her companion led the way to the street and lifted his hand in a peculiar manner.
A man who was driving what was to Caroline the strangest-looking wagon she had ever seen, drew up his horses and the wagon came to a stand-still. It had a number of little wheels, smaller than Caroline supposed wagon wheels were ever made.
“We’ll get into this car,” he said, “and that will save us a long walk and leave us a long enough one at the other end. I often wish I lived nearer the depot, but then it wouldn’t be so nice for my children as where I am now.”
Caroline was busy with one word: “car.” But there was no engine, only two horses.
“It must be a street car.”
She had heard Miss Webster speak of them, and also Judge Dunmore, and here she was getting into one!
When Twenty Minutes Late was published in 1893, horse-drawn streetcars were the norm, but by the early 1900s, streetcars became more mechanical and horse-power was replaced by cables or electricity.
Main Street in Butte, Montana about 1907.
Smaller cities and towns had streetcars, as well. This hand-colored photo from a 1907 postcard shows a streetcar running the length of Main Street in Butte, Montana.
In Judge Burnham’s Daughters, the Judge’s young son, Erskine, was very fond of riding the cars. One Sunday the Judge offered to take the family into the city to attend church at St. Paul’s, a fashionable church where the worship music was supposed to be very fine.
An example of a train and streetcar station. This one is in Worcester, Massachusetts.
It would have been an easy trip. From their small town the Burnhams would have ridden a steam car into the city. Upon arrival, they wouldn’t have had to leave the station to find a streetcar to take them to the area of town by St. Paul’s church.
Busy Main Street in Worcester, Massachusetts, 1910.Streetcar workers in New York City.
But the Judge’s wife Ruth refused to let little Erskine go because she believed it was wrong to ride the cars on the Sabbath.
“My darling, don’t you remember mamma told you how the poor men who have to make the cars go, cannot have any Sunday—any time to go to church, and read the Bible, and learn about God and heaven?”
Streetcar workers in Albany, NY.
“I know, mamma; but the cars go all the same, and the men have to work, and so why can’t we ride on them? They wouldn’t have to work any harder because we went along.”
In Ruth Erskine’s Son, the street-cars stopped at the corner of the Burnham’s residential street, where widowed Ruth Burnham lived with her son and his wife. Now an adult, Erskine Burnham took the 8:00 a.m. car to his office downtown each morning just “as surely as the sun was to rise”; and every evening he returned home by streetcar to his wife and his mother.
“I don’t suppose you two can fully appreciate what it is to me to get home to you after a stuffy, snarly day in town. I sit in the car sometimes with closed eyes after a day of turmoil to picture how it will all look. But the reality always exceeds my imagination.”
A streetcar running down a residential street in Bristol, Rhode Island.
In the evenings, his doting mother, Ruth, was able to watch for Erskine’s return from her bedroom window.
She leaned forward, presently, and watched Erskine’s car stop at the corner, and watched his springing step as he came with glad haste to his home.
In the majority of her books, Isabella Alden’s characters rode on the cars to get to work, to escape the city for a country idyll, or simply to run errands around town. But riding the cars was a little different for women than it was for men. Watch for a future post,Ladies Riding Cars, that will explore one of the unique challenges women faced while traveling on public transportation.
In her books about the Chautauqua Institution, Isabella Alden often described her characters walking with—or against—great crowds of people going from one lecture or class to another.
Serenity at Chautauqua Lake.A Bunch of Beauties at Chautauqua Lake, 1906
A visitor to Chautauqua could stay busy from breakfast to bed-time if he or she took advantage of the many learning opportunities offered throughout the day.
But the Chautauqua experience included leisure activities, as well. Chautauqua’s very location enticed visitors to walk the beautiful grounds or enjoy the lake’s offerings.
Visitors could join friends in the park, take a swim in the lake, rent a canoe or sailboat, or explore the paths and walkways on their own.
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The Bathing Beach. Undated hand-colored photographCanoing at Chautauqua, 1910.At an inlet in Chautauqua Lake. Postcard from early 1900s.Sailing past Miller Memorial Tower. Undated postcard.One of the walking paths at Chautauqua leading from the Amphitheatre.The view from atop the rustic bridge. Undated photograph.
For those who wanted a little more structure to their leisure time, Chautauqua offered organized activities, as well. The Men’s Club opened its doors in 1892. The Women’s Club opened soon after, and the “club model” progressed, with new clubs formed for almost every possible interest.
The Chautauqua Men’s Club near the pier, as it looked in 1909
There was a Golf club, an Athletic Club, a Croquet Club, a Sports Club, a Quoit Club, and Modern Language Clubs in French, German, and Spanish. The Music Club met in their own studio on College Hill. The Press Club was formed by men and women who wrote books and articles for magazines and newspapers.
A baseball game with the lake in the background, circa 1910. Isabella Alden wrote about a baseball game in Four Mothers at Chautauqua.
There was a Lawyers’ Club, a Masonic Club, a College Fraternity Club, and Octogenarians’ Club, which only admitted members aged eighty years and older.
Lawn bowling at Chautauqua. Undated, hand-colored photograph.
The Bird and Tree Club helped catalog the flora, fauna and bird life of Chautauqua and the surrounding area.
A branch of The King’s Daughters and Sons met regularly at Chautauqua, and in 1972 the organization moved its headquarters to the Chautauqua Institution. This organization was founded on the principal of Christian service to others. You can learn more about The International Order of The King’s Daughters and Sons by visiting their website at www.iokds.org.
A game of shuffle board at the Sports Club, circa 1920s.Kindergarten class on a straw ride in 1896.
Young people also found plenty of fun things to do at Chautauqua. For the little ones there was a kindergarten at Kellogg Hall, which included a playground and sandbox. The Children’s Paradise was a completely equipped playground on the north end of the grounds.
Older girls aged eight to fifteen had their own club geared specifically to interests of girls who were not quite young women. Members of the Chautauqua Boys’ Club wore distinctive blue sweaters bearing the club’s C.B.C. monogram.
Original 1896 headquarters of the Chautauqua Boys Club.
There were many more clubs and organizations that found a home at Chautauqua, but two activities never made an appearance: Card playing and social dancing were taboo—not because they were condemned activities, but because they were “unsuitable to Chautauqua conditions and even hostile to its life.” Chautauqua was an interdenominational assembly; so it was natural that some attendees found no fault with card playing or dancing, while others believed they were incompatible with Christian life. The Chautauqua founders decided that allowing either activity would simply be distracting and divisive, so they maintained a tradition that neither pursuit had a place at Chautauqua.
Next stop on our Tour of Chautauqua: Lessons and Classes
In this 1879 short story, Isabella Alden leads us through a day in the life of a young woman who is busy with the Lord’s work.
If Miss Susan Carleton has one overriding ambition in her life, it is to one day hear the King say: ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’ She won’t be content with anything less than the commendation God promised to those who faithfully serve Him.
And serve she does, filling one single day with more testimony and more kind Christian acts than most people accomplish in a lifetime. With so many lives to be helped and souls to be won, Susan draws energy and inspiration from God’s promise, “Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these, my brethren, ye did it unto me.”
Click on the book cover to begin reading My Daughter Susan right now!
You can find more free reads by Isabella Alden by clicking on the Free Reads tab above.
In this series, a young minister and his family face the blessings and challenges of serving the Lord.
Aunt Hannah and Martha and John
Hannah Adams raised her nephew John to be a good, Christian man; so when newly-ordained John accepts a job ministering to a congregation only a few miles away, Hannah couldn’t be happier—or prouder.
John Remington begins pastoring at the Belleville church with his new bride, Martha at his side. And what John and Martha lack in experience, they make up for with enthusiasm. In the face of nosy neighbors and church gossips, they’re certain their faith and vigilant prayer will carry them through. But when the congregation misunderstands Aunt Hannah’s act of kindness, their faith will be tested in ways none of them could have imagined.
In Book 2, John Remington assumes a new pastorate in a large city, where the congregation welcomes John and his growing family with open arms. But when his deep Christian convictions cause him to run afoul of one of the church leaders, John finds himself the target of dark forces that will stop at nothing to silence his message.
But John isn’t about to back down from a cause he believes to be just. He’s certain God will keep his loved ones safe . . . until his enemies gain an advantage that tests John and Martha’s faith in a way they never imagined.
Chautauqua Bay 1908. You can see the tower of the Hotel Athenaeum peeking above the treetops.
The Chautauqua Institution was constantly evolving and improving. From its humble beginnings as a camp-meeting for the purpose of educating Methodist Sunday School teachers, it grew into an esteemed and respected institution of general education for anyone willing to take on the curriculum and abide by Chautauqua’s basic principles. Over the course of several decades, buildings were erected and dismantled; surrounding acres were acquired; and landscapes changed.
The Promenade, with Chautauqua cottages on the left and the lake visible through the trees on the right.
Isabella Alden wrote about Chautauqua’s transformations in Four Mother’s at Chautauqua. When Flossy, Eurie, Marian and Ruth stepped off the steamer onto Chautauqua’s dock in 1913, they gazed about in wide-eyed wonder.
“It isn’t the same place at all!” was Mrs. Roberts’s final exclamation. “Marian, don’t you remember the mud we waded through on that first night? We must have gone up that very hill, only, where is the road? Look at those paved streets! The idea! What is the name on that large building over there?”
“That’s the arcade,” volunteered a brisk young man who was looking out for possible boarders. “The jewelry store is there, and the art store; and all sorts of fancy-work classes meet there.”
Arcade and Sherwood Hall circa 1920
“Fancy-work classes!” repeated the dazed little woman. “Who imagined such frivolities at Chautauqua!”
Mrs. Dennis laughed. “You will have to accustom yourself to more startling changes than those,” she said. “Aren’t we all going to a hotel for the night? Imagine a hotel of any sort at Chautauqua! I confess I had some fears lest it should not be large enough for our party, but those houses in the distance reassure me. Do you remember the dining-halls and the man who told us which ever one we went to we should wish that we had taken the other?”
“I wonder where they were located?” said Mrs. Burnham. “One was on a hill, I remember; the hill must be here still, but I don’t seem to recognize even hills.”
Miller Park, 1906. In the background are the Miller Bell Tower and the steamboat landing.Standing room only at the old Amphitheater. July 1895
Many things had changed since the girls’ first visit. By 1921 there were six to eight hundred all-year residents on the Chautauqua grounds; the summer session lengthened from twelve days to fifty; and Chautauqua’s summer population swelled to the thousands. But whether resident, worker or visitor, everyone who entered Chautauqua’s grounds had one thing in common: they had a ticket.
Before the Assembly opened each summer, every family had to obtain tickets. The only exceptions to the rule were children under the age of 9 and bedridden invalids. Even those who leased property on the grounds had to have tickets to enter and exit the grounds. Ticket prices were nominal, as illustrated in this table of charges from 1908:
Ticket Prices in 1908
On Sundays the gates were closed. No one was allowed to enter or exit on Sunday with one notable exception: Sunday passes were issued to any members of churches not represented at Chautauqua who wished to attend services in nearby Jamestown. Otherwise, Sunday passes could only be obtained in emergencies.
Once you were inside the gates, you had free access to the grounds and most classes or lectures. A map like this one from 1874 helped visitors navigate the streets and get to lectures on time. Click on the image for a larger view.
Map of Chautauqua, 1874
Isabella Alden incorporated many of the Chautauqua Institution buildings and locations in her novels. Her descriptions were so vivid, it isn’t hard to imagine how the buildings looked in their natural, woodland settings. Here are some of the buildings and settings Isabella wove into her stories; many of them are marked on the 1874 map.
Amphitheater. Located at the intersection of Clark and Waugh avenues, this remodeled venue seated almost 6,000 people. The choir gallery had seats for 500. In 1907 the Massey Memorial Organ was installed. Under the choir-loft and on either side of the organ were the Department of Music classrooms and offices.
Arts and Crafts Building in 1936
Arts and Crafts Building. On Vincent Avenue, this 1903 complex housed the Arts and Crafts School as well as shops. Henry Turner Bailey, who directed the Arts and Crafts School, was famous for delivering entertaining lecturing at the same time he drew pictures on the blackboard with both hands at once.
Miller Bell Tower and Pier, 1915
Bell Tower. Located at the Point beside the pier, the Miller Bell Tower was dedicated in 1911. The bells rang five minutes before the lecture hours and at certain times throughout the day. After the final bell each night, silence was supposed to reign across the grounds. It was near the Miller Bell Tower that Ruth first encountered Hazel crying near the shore in Four Mothers at Chautauqua.
The Colonnade Building circa 1909
Colonnade. Facing Miller Park from the intersection of Pratt and Morris avenues, the Colonnade was the business center of Chautuaqua. It housed the post office, a barber shop, a hair salon, a tea room, and various stores, including grocery, dry-goods, shoe, hardware and drug stores. Visitors approaching the Colonnade building from the right passed through a vine-covered pergola.
The Vine Clad Pergola with The Colonnade in the background, 1909The Golden Gate. Behind the gate you can see the steps leading up to the Hall of Philosophy, which was also known as “The Hall in the Grove”.
Golden Gate. The Golden Gate at St. Paul’s Grove was used once a year as part of the C.L.S.C. Recognition procession. No one was allowed to pass through the Gate except those who had completed a C.L.S.C. course of study. We’ll share more about the Golden Gate in future posts about the C.L.S.C.
The Hall of Christ from a 1909 postcard.
Hall of Christ. This monumental stone and brick building sat at the corner of Wythe and South avenues. Created by Bishop Vincent, it was used as a chapel for meditation and prayer; and as a place of quiet, spiritual fellowship.
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The Hall of Philosophy. The long flight of steps led down toward The Golden Gate.
The Hall of Philosophy. Known as “The Hall in the Grove” to Isabella Alden fans, this structure, modeled after a Greek temple, was located in St. Paul’s Grove. It was a regular meeting place of the C.L.S.C. conferences and gatherings.
When Caroline Raynor first arrived at Chautauqua in the book, The Hall in the Grove, young Robert Fenton took her to see his favorite building.
“Now which way do you want to go?”
“Whichever way you are pleased to take me. I have not seen anything save what I couldn’t help looking at when we arrived.”
“Then I’m just going to take you to the Hall. The rest rush to the Auditorium first and rave over that. It is splendid, I suppose; large, you know, and makes one think of crowds and grand things. But I can’t imagine people enough here to fill it—not to begin! With the Hall, now, it is different; just a nice audience would fill that, and it is so white, and so—Oh, well! I can’t explain, only it’s nice, and you will like it. Some people don’t care about it much; but I know you will.”
“Thank you,” said Caroline, and her heart was smiling as well as her eyes. She understood the boy; imagined something of what he would have said if he could have expressed his feelings, and she understood and appreciated the delicately-sincere compliment.
“This is a lovely avenue that leads to your favorite building,” she said, as she turned back to look at the straight wide road they had traversed, lying clear-cut amid the shadows of the overhanging trees.
The Hall of Philosophy, viewed from the side.
“Isn’t it!” declared Robert, with ever-increasing enthusiasm. “This is another thing I like so much—this avenue. I’ll tell you, Caroline, when it must be just grand, and that is in full moonlight. Ha! There it is!”
It is impossible to describe to you the delight that was in the boy’s tones as the gleaming pillars of the Hall of Philosophy rose up before him; something in the purity and strength, and quaintness, seemed to have gotten possession of him. Whether it was a shadowy link between him and some ancient scholar or worshipper I cannot say, but certain it is that Robert Fenton, boy though he was, treading the Chautauquan avenues for the first time, felt his young heart thrill with a hope and a determination, neither of which he understood, every time he saw those gleaming pillars.
In the Hall’s concrete floor are inserted tablets in honor of the C.L.S.C. classes that contributed toward construction of the building. This diagram shows where each tablet was inlaid. You can see the tablet for Isabella Alden’s class of 1887 near the lower left corner. Click on the image to view a larger version.
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Kellogg Memorial Hall, 1895.
Kellogg Hall, at Pratt-Ramble-Scott-Wythe avenues, was erected in 1889. The Kindergarten Department, Ceramics Department and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union had headquarters here.
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Palestine Park, 1908.
Palestine Park. Located on the shore of Lake Chautauqua near Miller Park, this model of old Palestine was constructed as a teaching tool to illustrate lessons from the Bible. Watch for more on Palestine Park in a future Tour of Chautauqua blog post.
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The Post Office as it looked in the 1920s.
Post Office. The Post Office was located on the same plaza as The Colonnade. It was in the post office that Burnham Roberts encountered the charming Hazel Harris in Four Mothers at Chautauqua.
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The Post Office in 1913.
This photo from 1913 shows the busy Post Office. The number of people strolling through the plaza hints that it may have been a convenient thoroughfare for going from building to building on the grounds.
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The Plaza showing the Post Office on the right and the front of The Colonnade Building on the left. The ladies walking on the flower-bordered path will approach The Colonnade through the Vine-Clad Pergola.
There are many other places to explore at Chautauqua.
In the early days of Chautauqua, there were no hotels or boarding houses where visitors could stay. Instead, visitors rented tents or small cottages erected on the grounds. Some cottagers with room to spare rented out rooms to paying guests, but Chautauqua rules prohibited anyone from providing meals for pay.
If you were not lucky enough to have a kitchen of your own in which to prepare your meals, you had to eat in the dining-hall, which was a long, open-air building furnished with rough, unpainted tables and benches.
A Chautauqua cottage in 1908
Visitors often complained that the roof leaked and the backless benches were uncomfortable, but the dining hall was the only place visitors could have meals unless they prepared food themselves.
In Four Girls at Chautauqua, Isabella Alden used the no-board-for-profit rule to show the difference in personalities between practical Marion and wealthy Ruth as they ate in the dining hall:
The old dining hall.
It was a merry dinner, after all, eaten with steel forks and without napkins, and with plated spoons—if you were so fortunate as to secure one. The rush of people was very great, and, with their inconvenient accommodations, the process of serving was slow.
Marion, her eyes being opened, went to studying the people about her. She found that courteous good-humor was the rule, and selfishness and ungraciousness the exception. Inconveniences were put up with and merrily laughed over by people who, from their dress and manners, could be accustomed to only the best.
Ruth did not recover her equanimity. She was rasped on every side. Those two-tined steel forks were a positive sting to her. She shuddered as the steel touched her lips. She had no spoon at all, and she looked on in utter disgust while Eurie merrily stirred her tea with her fork. When the waiter came at last, with hearty apologies for keeping them waiting for their spoons, and the old gentleman said cordially, “All in good time. We shall not starve even if we get no spoons,” she curled her lip disdainfully, and murmured that she had always been accustomed to the conveniences of life, and found it somewhat difficult to do without them.
In 1876, the meal restriction was removed and anyone could provide rooms and meals for a fee, as long as a specified percentage of the amount charged was given to the Institution. Within a year, boarding houses had sprung up as if by magic, while a vast number of individual cottages sported signs offering “Rooms and Board.”
Chautauqua cottages along Miller Park in early 1920s. To the right, just out of view, is Chautauqua Lake.
In Four Mothers at Chautauqua, Mrs. Bradford and her daughters rented a cottage for the summer, despite the fact they could ill afford it. Mrs. Bradford was always on the look-out for ways to economize and found one way to make her pennies go further at Chautauqua:
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Before Mrs. Bradford’s table economies reached what Josephine called the “starvation point” a method of relief was discovered. It was learned that among the numerous boarding houses scattered over the grounds, certain of them furnished fairly good meals for twenty-five cents. They were named lunches, to be sure, but on occasion they would serve excellently well for dinners. Pencil and paper together with a vigorous exercise of Josephine’s computation powers proved that seventy-five cents would afford three of them better dinners than that sum would produce in the kitchenette.
The Longfellow in 1907
The Longfellow Cottage was a large boarding house. Centrally located on Roberts Avenue, it was only one block away from The Amphitheatre, the C.L.S.C. Building, the Children’s Temple,the Administration Building, The Colonnade and the Post Office (which will be featured in the next leg of our tour).
The Palace Hotel was the first hotel on the Chautauqua grounds, but it was far from luxurious. It was little more than a three-story, wood-framed tent, with canvas partitions to divide the guest “rooms.”
The Palace Hotel
In 1881 the Palace Hotel was replaced by The Athenaeum, a proper hotel that featured elegant accommodations and beautiful views of the lake.
An undated postcard from The Hotel Athenaeum
As the Athenaeum attracted more guests, the cottages and boarding houses grew in number, size and comfort in order to compete for their share of paying boarders.
The Hotel Athenaeum as it looked in 1908. The hotel is still in use today.An 1897 magazine advertisement for The Hotel Athenaeum
When the Four Mothers returned to Chautauqua with their children and grandchildren, they stayed at a hotel that sounded very much like The Athenaeum. Isabella Alden set many scenes on the hotel’s upper and lower verandas and her characters made great use of the lush lawns that led from the hotel down to the lake.
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This image of The Hotel Athenaeum and its verandas is dated 1911, just two years before Four Mothers at Chautauqua was published.
Visitors to Chautauqua used a Handbook of Information to locate places to stay. These sample pages from the 1908 Handbook list hotels and boarding houses on the grounds, their addresses, and the owners of the establishments. The Longfellow boarding house (pictured earlier in this post) is listed on the top of the second page.
The St. Elmo was another hotel on the Chautauqua Institution grounds that was listed in the 1908 Handbook. Here’s how The St. Elmo looked in 1920, as it stood at the corner of Ames and Pratt Avenues.
St. Elmo Hotel in the 1920s
With all the boarding and hotel options, tent living still thrived. Chautauqua’s founders, John Heyl Vincent and Lewis Miller, maintained residences that were hybrids of cottage and tent.
Bishop Vincent’s Tent Cottage
Lewis Miller’s cottage. He accommodated overnight guests in a tent he erected on the lawn.
As Chautauqua grew and offered more and more styles of accommodations, many visitors still chose a simple summer of tent life in God’s great outdoors.
Next on our Tour of Chautauqua: Touring the Grounds
Learning to live with her mother-in-law was an understandable challenge for Rebecca Edwards, but never more so than when Mrs. Edwards’ constant criticisms and complaints drove her cook to quit on the very day guests were expected for dinner.
A 1912 advertisement
Sensing the woman’s dilemma, Rebecca confidently said:
“I can get dinner—as good a one as Mr. Romaine gets at a New York boarding-house, I dare say. Just install me in the kitchen for the day, and see what I can do.”
Mrs. Edwards had no choice but to accept Rebecca’s offer . . . even if her acceptance was somewhat ungracious.
Here’s how Rebecca described her day in her mother-in-law’s kitchen:
1895 Trade Card
Mrs. Edwards was there, looking distressed and perplexed over every single thing that I touched. It was in vain that I assured her that I was perfectly well acquainted with legs of lamb, and that I had cooked as many fishes as there were in the sea, and that the summer Mrs. Demarest, of Boston, boarded with us, she asked me for the recipe for our fish sauce, because it was the best she ever tasted.
With the question of dessert came up new trouble. It so happens that, not having had much time for studying the accomplishments common to girls, I gave much time and fuss to the getting up of especially dainty desserts. During the season we kept those dreadful Boston boarders I really became an adept at that sort of work.
1895 British advertisement
But Mrs. Edwards didn’t believe it. She hovered over those eggs and that butter and sugar, and was sure I had too little butter and too much powder, and not the right kind of flavoring. I became almost distracted. Several times my tongue fairly ached to drop egg-beater and spoon, and say: “Well, now, Mrs. Edwards, if you understand this business better than I do, please attend to it, and I will go and take my ride.” I am so glad I didn’t do it.
We nearly quarreled over the merits of soda and cream of tartar versus baking powder. Mrs. Edwards is certain that powder is an out-growth of this degenerate age; says the cake is neither so nice-looking nor so delicate that is made of it; that she always tastes the powder, and that she would never use it, if she went without cake. I was really obliged to be firm in that, for I understand the art of making cake with powder, and I don’t know how to make it with those other vile articles that must be balanced just so or they make a fuss.
An 1890 trade card.
Still, I might have got along without saying: “So far as that is concerned, I can tell at the first mouthful whether there is cream of tartar in cake. I always taste it.”
Whenever I say anything of that sort, Mrs. Edwards is sure to remind me of my youth.
“Young people are, and always have been, remarkable for their discernment,” she said, very dryly. “Their mothers managed to make very palatable cake with the despised stuff before they were born, and long afterward. But as soon as the daughters get so they can stir up a gingerbread they, of course, know more than their elders ever did.”
Perhaps another symptom of a degenerate age. An 1890 trade card for self-rising flour.
Now, what had that to do with the subject under discussion? I am sure I can’t see.
The simple truth is that Mrs. Edwards can’t even stir up a gingerbread. She knows nothing about cake-making; she has never been obliged to know. And I confess myself unable to see why, because a person has lived sixty years, she should be deferred to by one who has only lived twenty years, on a subject of which she knows nothing, while the other has given six or eight of her twenty years to the learning of that subject.
I wanted to tell my respected mother-in-law that such was my opinion, but I forbore, and meekly asked her if Jane, the second girl, could be trusted to set the table, or whether she would rather have me do it.
Rebecca’s dinner was a success. The guests ate serenely, and Mrs. Edwards, after the first taste, lost her anxious expression and regained her quiet composure that was so much admired in the fashionable world. In the end, Mrs. Edwards discovered that Rebecca really could cook a delicious dinner and Rebecca discovered that she could keep her temper in the face of her mother-in-law’s taunts and complaints.
You can read more about Rebecca Edwards’ life with her mother-in-law in Links in Rebecca’s Life.
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