William Gillette's Castle - East Haddam, Connecticut

Gillette’s Castle is a most unusual home belonging to, and built by, a most accomplished and unusual man. He was William Gillette, one of the leading actors of American theater in the 19th and early 20th centuries. His most famous portrayal was as Sherlock Holmes, and for a generation, Mr. Gillette was Sherlock to the public.

He also added a few touches to Sherlock that we now associate with the character, but that did not come from the author of the original Sherlock Holmes stories, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

William Gillette, 1895.  Photo in the public domain.

It was William Gillette who gave Sherlock the deerstalker hat after an original Strand illustration. Gillette came up with the meerschaum pipe, changing Sherlock’s originally written straight pipe. He also came up with the exclamation, “Elementary” as in “This is elementary, my dear fellow…” which was changed in the first Sherlock Holmes movie to “Elementary, my dear Watson.”

Gillette’s creativity as a playwright, and actor, director, a producer, a stage manager also led to his inventing some stage special effects, and a few patents for such, and other gadgets like a time stamp.

View from the ferry landing below the Castle.

But his most unusual creation, and his most lasting presence, is to be found here in East Haddam, Connecticut, perched atop a hill overlooking the Connecticut River. Here he built is 184-acre estate. The stone had to be moved up the hill by a tramway he devised. It is a 24-room mansion he designed himself, completed in 1919.

With ultimate stagecraft, he created rooms with built-in couches, secret entrances, and no door exactly the same, but all crafted handsomely in oak and stone. It looks medieval, but is constructed and appointed with amazingly functional simplicity.

Outside on the extensive grounds among handsome walking trails is a narrow gauge railroad he built.

William Gillette was born in Hartford, a descendant of the founder of Hartford, Thomas Hooker. His last performance was at the Bushnell Theater, in Hartford, in 1936. He died in 1937, and the State of Connecticut purchased the property in 1943. Gillette’s wife had died before him, and they had no children.

For more on the Gillette Castle State Park, have a look at this website.

View from the Castle terrace looking westward.  You can see the other ferry landing on the opposite side of the river.

The view from the terrace looking southward down the Connecticut River.

Below are a couple of short clips on William Gillette. (Don’t forget to scroll down to the bottom of the page to pause the music so you can hear the videos.)

The Big E - West Springfield, Massachusetts

For those of you who can't get to West Springfield, Massachusetts for the Eastern States Exposition (the "Big E"), here's a quick trip around the fair.

The Big E, for those of you beyond New England, is a state fair in which all six New England states participate.  An iconic signature of the fair is the Avenue of States, where replicas of the original statehouse buildings of each state are popular attractions.  Inside, information, local food (see lobster, chowder, maple syrup, pies, etc) and manufactured products are on display and for sale. 

Think of it as a kind of Epcot Center for New England, where you can travel all the six states in an hour or two.

There is also Storrowton, of course, another permanent attraction on the fairgrounds with actual 19th century buildings restored and re-created here as a New England village.

The rest of the fair is food and livestock, prize-winning vegetables, handicrafts, artwork, cooking demonstrations, and miracle mops.  Try to get here if you can, the fair runs until October 2nd this year.

For more on the Big E, have a look at this previous post, and at the official website here.

End of Summer - Wells and Ogunquit, Maine

The surf at Wells Beach, Maine, where only the scarcity of swimmers may indicate this is the end of summer.

King of all he surveys from a height of about nine or ten inches, this seagull may regret the end of summer, if only because he has fewer opportunities to mooch off beach-goers.

Down the road in Ogunquit, this single rosebud on The Marginal Way is more optimistic about plenty of summer left to come.

The Last Rose of Summer by Thomas Moore:

"'TIS the last rose of summer
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone;
No flower of her kindred,
No rosebud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes,
To give sigh for sigh.

I'll not leave thee, thou lone one!
To pine on the stem;
Since the lovely are sleeping,
Go, sleep thou with them.
Thus kindly I scatter
Thy leaves o'er the bed,
Where thy mates of the garden
Lie scentless and dead.

So soon may I follow,
When friendships decay,
And from Loves shining circle
The gems drop away.
When true hearts lie withered
And fond ones are flown,
Oh! who would inhabit
This bleak world alone?"

Summer beaches

The New England shoreline is not so firm or impregnable as these rocks around Westerly, Rhode Island would seem to indicate.  The shoreline is moving thing, that alters with each storm, sometimes a lot and sometimes only a little.

They know about such things over at Chatham, Massachusetts, where the sand bars dance with the ocean and the beach departs without so much as a goodbye.

Still, it seems that summer is eternal, even when it is gradually leaving us.  It will come back next year, and until then be stored in our memory, as will the beach, just as it was when we last saw it.





Bridge of Flowers - Shelburne Falls, Mass

Here is the Bridge of Flowers in Shelburne Falls, western Massachusetts on another beautiful fall day. Our beautiful fall tourist season is fast approaching, though with a few less trees this year. Just this past weekend with Hurricane, then Tropical Storm Irene, the Bridge of Flowers faced another weather challenge from the rapidly rising Deerfield River.

Rivers become angry, scary creatures in the wake of too much rain or snow melt, and as we have often seen, can do terrific damage. Smaller hill towns can find themselves isolated, without power, emergency assistance, or escape. Irene could have been much worse, but a storm is never a good thing under the best of circumstances. In the past, the odd hurricanes that meander up here often destroy businesses that never reopen. It is sometimes easier for us to put a number on the horrific loss of life than it is to account for jobs and income lost.

We don’t know yet what the extent of damage and loss still occurring in Vermont. Many communities are isolated from washed-out roads. Some of Vermont’s celebrated covered bridges are damaged or swept away.

The Bridge of Flowers may have a happier fate. It has a modest history, the pride of this small town of Shelburne Falls. It had been a trolley bridge built in 1908 by the Shelburne Falls & Colrain Street Railway. It connected Shelburne Falls and Buckland across the Deerfield River. The trolley company went bankrupt in 1927 (another flood year, as it happens), when more people and goods began to be transported by car and truck. You can see the old restored No. 10 trolley and more info at the Shelburne Falls Trolley Museum. Have a look at this website.

The year after the trolley bridge was discontinued, in a series of public spiritedness and plain good ideas, the bridge was bought by the Shelburne Falls Fire District, and the Shelburne Falls Woman’s Club sponsored a project to turn the old railway bridge into a unique garden. In the spring of 1929, loads of loam and fertilizer were laid out on the bridge, and donated labor created a garden and a pathway through which one could stroll from Buckland to Shelburne Falls along one of the prettiest routes ever created.

In the earlier 1980s, the community again banded together to restore the aging Bridge of Flowers.  For more information on the Bridge of Flowers, have a look here.

In weeks to come I’ll try to post more on some of Vermont’s covered bridges, both ones that were swept away and those that remain. Unfortunately, it will take some weeks for the Green Mountain State to even assess the ruin left by Tropical Storm Irene. One can only speculate at this time if their upcoming beautiful fall tourist season may be one of those casualties.

Constitution House - Windsor, Vermont

Here at Elijah West’s tavern in Windsor, Vermont along the Connecticut River, the locals decided in July of 1777 to make this place a free and independent republic. There were a few things to iron out of course, land grants claimed by New Hampshire across the river, and claims by New York on the other side (independence from its neighbors more than independence from Great Britain was the main issue at this stage), and then this whole Revolutionary War hullabaloo. Also, a few months earlier it was decided in a preliminary vote to call the whole prospect “New Connecticut”.

But (we may presume) over a tankard or two, they got down to business and decided that Vermont would be the name (a derivation of the French verd mont -- green mountains), and that their constitution would be a bit different to what had been hammered out by the other states. Vermont was the first to outlaw slavery, and to assure universal voting rights for men whether or not they owned property. Vermont was also the first to establish free public schools.

Having got that out of the way, it was another decade after the Revolutionary War ended that they got around to shedding their Republic and joining the United States in 1791. Vermonters like to be sure, and they seem to have decided the USA was going to work out all right.

For more on the Constitution House, now a museum, have a look at this website.

The Current Rate of Exchange

My latest novel, "The Current Rate of Exchange" is now available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.  For a limited time, the books is FREE on Smashwords, and currently at 99 cents through Amazon and Barnes & Noble, however I expect at some point those other two stores will match Smashwords' price and also make it FREE.  For a limited time.

The novel is a little silly, a little serious, about an American woman's post-9/11 journey to New Zealand.  Here's the blurb: 

Rose, a tall, bumbling American woman, travels to New Zealand to re-establish ties with her late mother’s family, navigating the otherworldly tension of traveling in the months after 9/11. With an offbeat spirit of adventure and optimism, Rose discovers the better angels not only her nature, but in those around her.

Her ill-planned adventure turns her life around, and that of Nora, her New Zealand cousin, whose family problems immediately begin to involve Rose. Nora’s elderly mother, who broke off ties with Rose’s family; Nora’s unemployed husband who confides his dreams to Rose instead of his wife; and Nora’s brother whose emotional meltdown when losing the family farm all challenge Rose to face her family’s past and try to mend a bitter loss.

A sudden romance with the farm manager with the mysterious past of his own was not on her original agenda. She is anxious about continuing it lest she repeat mistakes her American father and New Zealand mother made. Armed with old family letters, Rose also manages to trace her mother’s footsteps as a World War II government agricultural worker, or Land Girl. In a moment of crisis, the information Rose learns from her mother’s letters might prevent a tragedy in Nora’s family.

Available through Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com, and currently FREE at Smashwords.