With one ear to the floor, I could see Undy’s white shoes passing back and forth outside the closed door. For some long forgotten infraction I had been consigned to the dark of the coat closet to serve out a sentence.
In 1929 I was four. My three-year-old sister, Holley, evidently not party to the crime, was spared.
Undy and me
We called her “Undy.” Mrs. Unterberg, practical nurse—an out-sized, no-nonsense vision in white—hired to care for us, from time to time, over a period of several years during mother’s frequent extended absences, some as long as a month. Mother had an ailing father at her childhood home in Ithaca, New York, and once accompanied my father on a one-month business trip to Texas. During those early years she was gone from us for days equivalent to six months; days filled with the presence of Undy, who would occasionally threaten to remand us to the “Thumb” [Thom] school—a mysterious institution–in our minds, filled with dread.
Mother and me
I have many memories of mother from this early period, but none of real affection.
Once in a tantrum I threw a fork as she stood in the kitchen doorway—I see it still in the air over her head. The result was a rush to the bathtub where she ran the cold and put me in with my clothes on. Its supposed shock value was blunted owing to the slow tub filling. (What would the future Dr. Spock have had to say about that?)
From then I have few memories of my father. He is reported to have said that he was reluctant to interact with us until we had “reached the age of reason.”
In 1930—after having moved from 27 Claflin Road in Brookline to a house in Wellesley—mother’s absences lessened and, in any event, we two had become by then almost old enough to be left more or less on our own with our housekeeper, Maud Smith.
Mother was a talented phenom. Having studied the classics at Cornell and several years of art at Pratt Institute, she could create almost anything: watercolors, theatrical masks and backdrops, batiks, party games, and costumes galore. She produced our family Christmas card for twenty-five years.
We would often sit beside her on the sofa as she read extensively from the now classic children’s literature. I do remember these as warm and pleasant moments.
What at the time we didn’t understand was that mother was bi-polar—and thus emotionally unavailable to us for much of the time. There were days of headaches in darkened rooms and visits to various doctors and practitioners—some, my father was sure, were quacks.
As I grew older my relationship with her became more practical. I began to avoid closeness. She certainly noticed this change. One time in my early teens she observed that I had become overly “philosophical.” And I guess it was true. I found myself experiencing relationships from the outside in, rather than from the inside out. To this day it’s hard to for me to relate emotionally to others—I tend to stand aside and watch.
Mother died in October, 1947 after a years-long bout with invasive cancer. She was fifty-seven. I was twenty-two.
During her final months I was home from college, but spent far less time with her than I could have. In retrospect, what I lost in not talking to her about her life seems immeasurable; what pleasure might that have given her? And she given me?
However, I felt little loss. Somehow, I was protected. Her death was an external event. I was an observer, not a participant. And because of that I felt guilty, especially in relation to my father who took critical notice of my affect.
Later that year I attended a party of high school friends and fell into a long conversation with the hostess, mother of one of us, a psychiatrist teaching at Boston University.
She expressed sympathy in regard to my loss and I opened up to her a bit as to how I was feeling about it.
As the conversation ended, she said to me—”One day you’ll cry for her.”
Thirty years later I found myself miserable with an unrequited crush on a young woman and was, in general, confused and upset about some aspects of my life. A psychiatrist friend gave me a referral at McLean Hospital.
And, so, I met cigar-smoking Dr. Harold Williams with whom, for several years, I spent a pleasant hour every Wednesday. He liked hearing about my mountaineering adventures and was generous with his appreciation of my jokes. We laughed a lot and developed a close relationship.
But, on the serious side: Who was this young woman; what was she to me; and why was I so torn apart by her indifference? After all she liked me. She called me often unsolicited and included me in much of her social and outdoor adventure life, even going so far, on one practical occasion, as to share her celibate bed.
Harold saw the parallel between my two emotional disconnects. The more I revealed in the one the more I found myself weeping over the other.
Until, arriving home one night, my eye fell upon mother’s photograph on a bookshelf. Unexpectedly, a vast wave of remorse swept over me. I put on Berlioz’s Romeo and Juliet, turned up the volume, and cried my heart out for almost a week.
Memory I shared at November 2018 services for Catherine Vakar Chvany after her death on October 19, 2018. Full bio and obituary are here.
On a cold night in January 1941 my mother drove with my sister Holley and me down to the Wellesley Farms station to meet Daddy, arriving on a train from New York City. I don’t remember what we had been told to expect, but I guess we knew that he had met a ship from Lisbon and was arriving with two refugee sisters from occupied France—Catherine (“Katya”) and Anna Vakar. Of the train trip itself I remember only that Daddy said he was asked by Anna, “Is there a dog?” Upon his response in the affirmative she slept for the rest of the trip.
At first the two girls shared the small guest room, but once established in school they needed expanded study space. For adventurous Anna we fixed up an otherwise unfinished space in the attic, and Katya had a desk in the upstairs hall. I remember only that their integration into our family was virtually seamless. Holley and I started out with fractured French but it wasn’t long before English took over completely. Mother and Daddy became Madame and M’sieur.
That spring Katya and Anna attended the local schools at a grade level below their natural abilities until English was no longer a serious impediment. For their age levels they were clearly ahead of us in arithmetic and language, and in September moved up into their natural public school grades. I was 16, Holley 15, Katya 14, and Anna 13.
In the spring of 1942 their parents, Nicholas Vakarand his wife Gertrude, arrived safely and it wasn’t many months before they became well enough established to take their girls back to a new home in the Jamaica Plain suburb of Boston. Their education hence forth was at Boston Latin. Over the years my mother and father maintained a close friendship with the Vakar family and we visited with them often.
Katya attended Radcliffe from 1946-48; later graduated PHD from Harvard in 1970, and became a professor at MIT. Anna became a well-known Canadian haiku poet residing in Oliver, BC.
One year I came home from Cornell to the news from my father that Katya was to be married—“She’s marrying a man with a Chvany name.” he said.
Notes:
Ken Burns’ documentary film “Defying the Nazis: The Sharps’ War“—directed by Artemis Joukowsky III—tells the story of the Vakars and the other refugee children who were placed with American families like mine. Catherine Chvany (“Katya” Vakar) features prominently in on-camera interviews.
Cover photo (L-R: Nicholas Vakar, Anna Vakar, my mother Elsie Church Atkinson, Gertrude Vakar, my father Kerr Atkinson, Catherine Vakar): Picture taken on the occasion of the arrival of Katya and Anna’s parents to visit us in Massachusetts in 1942.
A reminiscence based on the personal diary of a 14-year old in the last gorgeous summer of 1939 in France
La Cour aux Glycines: L’Hôtel de la Renaissance, Rue Murger, Bourron-Marlotte, Seine et Marne, France
Prologue
In the spring of 1939 my father could see the War coming and realized that the coming summer would be the last opportunity for him and my mother to see their European friends—of twenty years—before the end of peace. He had not taken a real vacation for ten years or so and arranged for an entire summer of vacation.
My father had served with the AEF in France in the summer and fall of 1918 as a Lieutenant of engineers (303rd Engineer Train, 78th Division) where he commanded a corps of one-hundred mules and fifty motor trucks seeing action near St. Menehould in the Argonne Forest building pontoon bridges under fire at night to permit river crossings by the AEF.
Paris- 1918 (Kerr on right)
Following the November 11th Armistice he was billeted for the fall, winter, and spring months of 1919 in the house of a family named Chapeau (also Fleureau) in the village of Vénary-les-Laumes—a billet he shared with two fellow officers Herring and Lokensgaard (see framed sepia-tone of trio taken in Paris). My father became attached to the family and especially to the small boy Fernand Chapeau to whom he later sent assistance for his schooling. The old uncle (Fleureau) in residence had lived through two Prussian invasions of France (and as yet unforeseen, was to witness and to survive a third).
Leandre et Mme. Legal 22 Rue St. Martin, Hautvillers
My mother had gone, in December of 1918, under the auspices of the YMCA, to do canteen work in France at Bay-sur-Aube for the soldiers who remained in France long after the Armistice—for lack of available shipping. There she came to know another Y-girl, Juliet Whiton. Later, in June 1919 when that assignment ended, in order to remain in France over the summer, she joined an American Red Cross group, locally administered by British (Quaker) Friends, where she met “Jock” (Lady Chalmers) and “Benjamin” (Grace Lindley); British women, who took men’s names for a lark (my Mother became “Rufus” owing to her auburn hair) and who became lifelong friends. With them in Nanteuille-la-Fosse (now-la-Forêt) and Hautvillers near Epernay she helped in the rural reconstruction, worked in the vineyards, and came to know the widow Legal—later Minoggio—and her son Léandre, to whom she became “marraine” or godmother.
In 1921 my mother and father (who had grown up together in Ithaca, NY) met again by chance in the New York subway and were married in Ithaca on August 18th, 1921. They spent the rest of that summer on their honeymoon in France during which time they visited the friends they had come to know in 1919.
This summer of 1939 would be their last foreseeable opportunity to revisit them. I was fourteen (just leaving eighth grade) and my sister Holley was thirteen. We lived at 85 Ledgeways, Wellesley Hills, MA.
Much of this account is pretty mundane. Pay more attention to the annotations in italics and later parts as the War clouds gathered.
Diary
June 6th, Tue. Wellesley Hills, New York (by car: a new ’39 Pontiac)
“We started from Wellesley Hills about 8:00a with a farewell party in the driveway. Had lunch in Westbourough [sic] then went by the Merritt Highway into the Whitestone Bridge. Found our lodgings and went to the Fair. We saw the Federal Bldg., Railroads, and the Trylon and Perisphere. Tomorrow will see all the countries. We wore our feet out walking and went to bed.
So worried had been my father about getting away on this trip that for several days in the preceding weeks he had forbidden us to go to school where mumps were for a while prevalent, and forbade us to go to at least one party or social function which seemed to us at the time as desperately unfair. Tears of anger and frustration! In the driveway at 85 Ledgeways the neighborhood kids came over on their bikes to hang out and to say goodbye. The Merritt Parkway had just opened that spring and was considered a marvel of modern highway engineering. The Fair, of course, was the New York World’s Fair of 1939.
Trylon & Perisphere (NYDailyNews)June 7th, Wed. Flushing Meadows, Long Island
“Got up early. Ate breakfast at Blue Bird Inn. Daddy went in to New York City and left Holley and [me] at the Foreign section. Had lunch at Childs then saw Chrysler, Ford, aviation, maritime, US Steel, Italy and USSR. We were so tired that we ate at the Blue Bird Inn and went to bed. PS we saw the smallest [electric] motor in the world. It was about the size of a kernel of corn.
At US Steel a full-sized automobile was suspended above the floor by a steel wire so thin it could hardly be seen and somewhere else a bicycle rolled continuously on rollers in wavering balance without a rider, controlled by some sort of rudimentary feedback computer. June 8th, Thu. Long Island
“Up at 7:30 and had breakfast at the Blue Bird Inn. Then we went to the Fair. We were at the Fair all day and saw Petroleum, Westinghouse, Amer. T&T, Communications, France, DuPont, Carrier Corp., Metals, Cons. Edison, Kodak, Sweden, [Missourie] and the fireworks on the Lagoon of Nations. When we came home we met mother. Coming home we went right to bed.
Holley and I wanted desperately to go on at least one of the seemingly spectacular rides (Parachutes, roller coaster, etc.) but my parents wouldn’t allow it; too frivolous a waste of time otherwise to be spent in educational pursuit!
June 9th, Fri. Long Island
“Up at 7:30. Went right to Fair and saw General Motors. Also we saw Glass, and again Kodak and General Electric. In afternoon we met Randolph Cautley for supper. Saw French and Coronation Scott [?] exhibits. In morning Daddy smashed up the car and we had to have it fixed. We leave for the boat tomorrow, oh! boy!
June 10th, Sat. Long Island, New York City, MV Georgic
“We left Flushing and went to Pennsylvania Station by the subway. From there we went to the Cunard dock and had breakfast. Then we got on the boat. We sailed at noon and passed the Statue of Liberty. After dinner we looked around the boat and had tea. After supper we went to bed. I have an upper berth.
MV Georgic [GracesGuide.co.uk] The ship, the Cunarder MV Georgic was, I believe, later lost during the War after having been converted to a troop ship. In 1939 ordinary people were unable to fly across the Atlantic as regular commercial air service became common only after the War.
June 11th, Sun. MV Georgic
“Had breakfast and made some new friends. Then we went to church. After that we had some fun at deck tennis and the gym. In the afternoon we went swimming and had tea. In the evening we saw “Gunga Din” in the lounge also we set our clocks back one hour.
To this day I remember scenes from that film—vultures taking to the air from desolate desert telegraph wires and, at the end, as the unsuspecting British Gurkhas approach the rebel ambush, prisoner Gunga Din, wounded but determined, struggles to the top of the fortress dome with his bugle to sound the alarm. Not quite what Kipling had in mind but a stirring story nonetheless. ECA [my mother]: Holley fell out of the upper berth so we put her in the lower.
June 12th, Mon. MV Georgic
“Holley and I played deck tennis all morning. In the afternoon we had a swim and played ping-pong. Later there were some “horse races” but we did not bet. After supper we played some more ping-pong and went to bed.
June 13th, Tue. MV Georgic
“Got up and played deck tennis with Holley. After dinner we played ping-pong. Later we went on a trip through the engine room of the ship. I had a slight headache all afternoon. After tea we played chess and watched the horse races. In the evening there was a movie “The Cowboy and the Lady” which was lousy. Went right to bed.
I remember some popular tunes of the time which I always associate with this ocean trip: “Bei Mir Bist du Schoen”, “The Three Little Fishies” (They swam, and they swam, right over the dam), “Deep Purple”, and “My Heart Belongs to Daddy”.
June 14th, Wed. MV Georgic
“Slept very late in the morning. Wrote four letters in the writing room. Holley and I played deck tennis all afternoon. The sea is pretty rough and the ship is rolling a little. Played ping-pong and went to bed late.
June 15th, Thu. MV Georgic
“Got up at 7:30 had breakfast. Played around with the elevator boy for about an hour. Holley and I played deck tennis all morning. At 11:00 we went on a tour of the ship. In the afternoon we played deck tennis and skipped a kiddie’s party. At supper there were balloons again. Broke several. Went to a concert and saw the “Little Princess” [Shirley Temple]. Bed late.
The concert was a string quartet. My mother was continually annoyed at not having been able to place one of the passengers whom, she was convinced, she knew personally or, at least, had seen before somewhere. It was revealed at the concert; for the man she “knew” was playing first violin. She had observed him closely, she finally remembered, at a concert in Boston in the spring. They were the Pro Arte String Quartet [the first violinist was Alphonse Onnou, who died of leukemia at age 46 in late 1940].
June 16th, Fri. MV Georgic
“Got some guys and played Michigan in the morning and afternoon. Also watched them hauling cars out of the hold. Someone said we would see land in the morning. Bed early.
June 17th, Sat. MV Georgic
“Got up at 6:30 and saw first glimpse of Ireland. Came in to Queenstown [sic; it was Cork] harbor and the tender came to meet us. Watched the passengers and cars go overboard to the other boat. Also saw the pilot come aboard. Left Queenstown and headed for South Hampton, England. Saw “The Wings of the Navy” then went to bed.
June 18th, Sun. MV Georgic, Rouen
“Got up early and watched the boat come in to South Hampton. Cars and [ship’s] laundry were unloaded. Had lunch and headed for Europe across the English Channel. Played Michigan and lost. Arrived at Le Havre, France. Started driving to Paris and stopped at a hotel in Rouen. Went to bed.
June 19th, Mon. Rouen, Les Petites Andelys
“Had a lousy breakfast. Went out and saw the Cathedral, the market place and the tower where Joan of Arc was a prisoner. After lunch we started for Paris but stopped at Les Andelys on the Seine to see a lady [Mme. Champsaur]. We had to wait so long that we stayed for the night. While there we saw the Chateau Gaillard built by Richard the Lionheart—all in ruins. Stayed at the hotel Chain d’Or.
June 20th, Tue. Les Andelys, Paris
“Got up early. Took the [guide] book back to Mme. Champsaur. Started driving for Paris. Arrived in Paris and found the Hotel [Universitie]. Went to the Amer. Express Co. and got mail. Holley and mother to a hairdresser. Daddy and I saw the Luxembourg Gardens. After supper [Rallye] we saw the Tuileries Gardens and the Arc de [Triumph]. Drove in the car and saw the [Eiffle] Tower. Back to the Hotel and bed.
June 21st, Wed. Paris, Fontainebleau
“Had breakfast in Paris. After this we started driving for [Fontainbleau]. Saw a palace that Napoleon built and found a place to stay. After dinner we went on a tour through the Chateau of Napoleon then walked around the garden. We went to look for hotels for the summer. Had supper and stayed over night at the Hotel Angelus “lousy”.
June 22nd, Thu. Fontainebleau
“Went back to Fontainbleau to the “Cascade”. Played ping-pong and wrote letters. Daddy at Chateau for music. All afternoon looked at hotels and at last found one [La Renaissance] that we [all] liked. Had supper at the Cascade and played ping-pong. Bed and bath.
Les Cascades was in Avon just south of the Palace. We had great arguments about hotels for the summer. Mom and Dad would like what Holley and I hated and vice versa. Holley and I sort of liked the Cascade. Nice graveled yard and garden, games, etc. In the dining room of the Cascade was a painting of the head of an American Indian carrying a grim expression on his face; mother commented that it seemed to her that he had just had an “arrow escape”. Groans all around.
June 23rd, Fri. Paris, Fontainebleau
“Played ping-pong for awhile. Daddy and Mother walked to Fontainbleau while Holley and I played at the Cascade. In the afternoon we went back to the Hôtel [de la] Renaissance and took a walk in the forest. We drove to the firing range [champ de tir] of the artillery school and back to the hotel. When we finished our business there we watched an old painter at work [in the street]. Had supper and played tennis. Bed.
At the champ de tir the guns [French 75s?] were firing directly away from us toward a distant hillside. My father claimed that, at the height of its arc, he could discern a fleeting shadow of the shell itself in flight directly away from us. I looked, and looked, and could never see what he saw.
June 24th, Sat. Fontainebleau, Paris
“After P.D. [petit déjuner] we started driving for Paris. On the way we played a new game. We went to the Amer. Exp. Co. and to the Louvre and saw some artists. After dinner we went to Notre Dame and saw the 3 rose windows. Then we climbed to the top and saw the grotesque gargoyles. We stayed for supper at a hotel [Victoria Palace] took a walk [Luxembourg Gardens] and went to bed. P.S. bought a map of New England, 1580 A.D.
June 25th, Sun. Paris, Fontainebleau
“Got up early at the Hotel Victoria Palace and went to Napoleon’s Tomb. Then we went to Versailles and went through the palace with an old man. After that we had lunch and walked around the gardens. We watched the fountains for a while and went to Fontainbleau had supper and went to bed.
In Paris in late June and early July dark does not come until almost eleven at night so that the days can be long filled with activity.
June 26th, Mon. Fontainebleau
“Daddy took us to see them firing on the champ de tir. On the way home we got caught in a rain storm. Had lunch. Went and played in the sand pile while Daddy and Mother went to Fontainbleau. Holley and I ran to the champ de tir saw them fire and walked back [to the Cascade]. Holley walked with Mother and Daddy then supper.
June 27th, Tue. Fontainbleau, Bourron-Marlotte
“We played ping-pong all morning while Mother and Daddy packed. After lunch we packed our bags and played ping-pong. Then we took the bags down to [La Renaissance in] Marlotte and on the way we watched the firing. We watched the old painter finishing his picture and then went home. After supper Holley and I tried to see how far we could get in ping-pong, we made 120 times.
We spent the summer at the Hôtel de la Renaissance on the Rue Murger in Bourron-Marlotte. It was owned by the family Perronet (Madame, M’seur, and their two boys Jacques, the elder, and Michel who were just a year or so older than we).
One entered from the narrow street through an iron gate which opened onto a spacious gravelled court—itself widely open beyond to a wooded wilderness after crossing hedged and gravelled garden paths. Buildings enclosed the court on three sides, a two story connecting structure forming the façade on the street and the roof of the gate; all of it old and stuccoed. Overhead garlands of hanging wisteria draped the court in the center of which was a small stone “well”. The section on the right housed a dining room—used only in bad weather—and farther back, under more wisteria and flanked by a kiosk, an open gravelled space served as the al fresco dining patio; tables all around under parasols. The kitchen was nearby and beyond somewhere was the kitchen garden. On the right over the dining room and other ground floor rooms were other guest rooms and the residence rooms of the Perronet family. We were assigned rooms on the left over some public spaces containing a billiard and a ping-pong table and another (with a piano) large enough for fencing matches. There are three surviving color stereopticon photo’s of the courtyard area two of which have Holley, Jacques, and me in the middle ground. There is as well a sepia tone postcard probably of the thirties. Thereon the yard is grandly called La Cour aux Glycines. Renoir’s house is across the rue Murger, occupied then by his son. Anyone who has stayed here and at the same time has read Rumer Godden’s novel The Greengage Summer would be convinced that the two venues must have been one and the same.
June 28th, Wed. Marlotte, Loire valley
“Got up very early in order to get an early start for the [Chateaux] Country. We started at 9:00 and drove to Blois where “Ze Duc de Guise vas here kill-ed right in ze middle of ze room”. We had lunch and drove through Tours to Chinon and the Castle. Here we had tea and saw the ruins of Chinon. There were towers and dungeons all around. When we got to the car we [had] lost the keys but [I] found them again [in the grass]. We drove to Tours, had supper and went to bed.
When my parents were at Blois in 1921 their guide had so described the demise of the Duc and my Mother delighted in repeating the phrase whenever it seemed vaguely appropriate.
June 29th, Wed. Loire valley, Marlotte
“Had breakfast in the girls bedroom then drove to Loches and saw all the awful dungeons and tortures. We had our picture taken at a stone dog. Then we went to Chenonceaux and its Chateau. After lunch we drove to Amboise and saw a spiral ramp where horses could climb up. Then we drove to Marlotte and had supper and bed.
The picture by the stone dog(s) is among the stereopticon photos that we took with my father’s two-lens camera. At Loches my parents were sure that they had the same man as a guide that they had had in 1921. They remembered him as a master at rattling the keys, locks, and chains in the dimly lit dungeons. He gave me a rose blossom which I saved and dried and put in a little screw-top bottle; sill among my things. It smells as rich now as it did then. At Loches in 1999 I asked the guides about this man and they remembered him well-—he had died sometime in the seventies at a great age. I took a picture, again, of the stone dogs.
June 30th, Fri. Marlotte
“Bought a ping-pong ball and played, (it was lousy). Holley smashed the ball so we played billiards. Then after lunch we played more billiards, put another dent in the ball and played more billiards. After supper Mother read to us.
July 1st, Sat. Marlotte
“Stayed in bed all morning, wrote a letter and two postcards. Mother read to us. Had some soup in bed. Played some games, told some jokes then had an orange. Mother and Holley drew me in bed and Mother drew Holley. Daddy came home and went to sleep had supper and went to bed.
July 2nd, Sun. Marlotte
“Had breakfast in the girl’s room. After breakfast Mother read to us from Holley’s book. Then I got up for lunch. After lunch we played billiards and then studied the verb donner. Then played more billiards. After supper Mother read to us then we went to bed.
July 3rd, Mon. Marlotte
“Played billiards with Holley. Mother and Daddy went to Fontainbleau after lunch and we played chess. Holley won twice and I won once. Then we played billiards with Jack Perronet. After supper we went to see about French lessons. Then came back and talked with M. Perronet. Bed.
My parents had enrolled in the American Summer School at Fontainebleau for the summer; my mother in French and the history of music and theater, and my father in violin—which he played moderately well but which he enjoyed immensely. With our parents at school part of most weekdays Holley and I were left to ourselves and to play with Jaques Perronet. Michel must have been elsewhere; I have almost no recollection of him.
July 4th, Tue. Marlotte
“Holley and I played billiards then went with Mother to rent bicycles. We rode around Marlotte in the morning. Mother and Daddy went to Fontainbleau for lunch. We had lunch alone then rode almost to Grez [-sur-Loing]. When we came back we played a tie game of chess. Then we rode our bicycles with Jack and he showed us his room. After supper Jack showed us a new game of cards. Bed late.
July 5th, Wed. Marlotte
“Had a French lesson with Mlle. Coquard. It was lousy, rode around the garden and then had lunch. In the afternoon Jack took us up to the “Gorge au Loups” and we sailed boats. Then he gave us some good tea. After supper we played cards with Jack in our room then went to bed.
July 6th, Thu. Marlotte
“Had a French lesson. Then went down and played chess and rode bicycles. After lunch played chess and rode bicycles. After supper read and went to bed.
P.S. Went and saw a much better lady about French lessons.
July 7th, Fri. Marlotte
“Had a French lesson. Rode our bikes then had lunch. Daddy took Mother to Fontainbleau for her French lesson. Holley and I played chess then went to a violin quartet in Fontainbleau. After supper we read in our room. Bed.
At lunch and dinner there was always fresh garden salad available. Without fail, a minute or two after salad had been ordered, we would see the tall blond waiter fly from the kitchen to the garden and back, long curly hair streaming behind him like wings on a casque. My mother called him Hermes.
July 8th, Sat. Marlotte
“After breakfast we had our last French lesson with Mlle. Coquard. After the lesson we rode around the garden. We had lunch and then did some sketching on the street. Then Holley and I rode our bicycles into the forêt. After supper we rode around the garden with the French family. Bed 10:00.
July 9th, Sun. The Argonne
“Started for the Argonne forest. Had lunch at St. Menehould then went to the forest. We saw the front line, the old German machine gun nests and trenches. Daddy took us over the same route that he and his mules went over in the war. Also we saw the big American cemetery and monument [at Romagne]. We saw the German dugouts also. Got home at 12:00 very tired. Bed!!
P.S. Daddy got stopped for having white headlights on our car. The French ones are yellow.
ECA: “Started for the battlefields. A day of showers, sun, and cloud shadows. The countryside was beautiful. Drove to Grand Pré where K. showed us all his hangouts during the War. Swung around by Varennes and the Argonne Forest. Saw Joy’s and my dugout salle de bains and the Kron Prinz dugout. Then to Romagne to see the American cemetery. Home by way of Montfaucon where we climbed the high war monument. Everything is green and the scars of the War are practically gone.”
July 10th, Mon. Marlotte
“Got up very late and had breakfast. We rode around on our bicycles around the garden. After lunch Mother and Daddy went to Fontainbleau. Jack, Holley and I rode to Fontainbleau and saw the champ de tir, the Palace, and his school. I painted a stained glass window then we had supper and read. Bed.
July 11th, Tue. Paris, Vincennes
“We rode around all morning. Then we and Jack drove to Paris and the Bois de Vincennes [a zoo]. We had lunch at the bois then saw the animals. They are all in pits surrounded by cement like stone. I liked the bears and the seals the best. We climbed the big rock and then went home. After supper we played ping-pong and went to bed.
July 12th, Wed. Marlotte
“Wrote letters in the morning then had a drawing lesson with Madam Bourgose. We drew a hand. After lunch Jacques took us to a big sand pile in the forest. He had some firecrackers and almost killed himself (oh yeah). Played ping-pong after supper and had a [bike] crash. I got a flat tire. Bed.
July 13th, Thu. Marlotte
Window
“After breakfast we wrote some postal cards and letters. Then had our French lesson. I drew Mme. de l’Epinois’ bathroom window then had my lesson. After lunch fooled around the garden and then went and watched the artist [M. Vaillant] sketch the street. Started one myself. After supper did some more and went to bed.
Madame de L’Epinois (our “new” French teacher?) was a middle aged lady whom my parents more or less befriended. She had an old house directly across from La Renaissance with an ornate bathroom window that overlooked the street.
July 14th, Fri. Marlotte, Riom, La Bourboule
“Got up at 7:00 and had breakfast in the room. Then started driving to Clermont-Ferrand. Had lunch at St. Pierre and went on. At Riom we turned off for La Bourboule through some beautiful mountain country. When we got to Bourboule we found a hotel and then went up a funicular railway and got a good view. Then we went into a church and saw some [Bastille Day] fireworks. Bed.
July 15th, Sat. La Bourboule, Clermont-Ferrand,
“Started driving for Clrmt. Ferrand. On the way we stopped at a Chateau and saw it. It is in Murols. Had lunch at Champaix. Got to Clrmt. Ferrand and found Daddy’s friend [Paul DeBrion]. They took us to their summer place. There we saw their baby. On the way back we saw a rainbow that was very beautiful. Stayed for the night at La Palisse. Bed Very tired.
The rainbow was memorable for its having been projected well below us against a dark, forested background as we traversed a high mountain road above a deep valley. It was double. I have seen few like it since—one from halfway up 1,200 foot Cannon Cliff in Franconia Notch, NH as I retreated by rappel to the talus after a soaking hail storm.
July 16th, Sun. Clermont-Ferrand, Venary-les-Laumes, Marlotte
“Started driving for Venary. Arrived there at dinner time. We stayed for lunch at Fernand Chapeau’s house. After lunch he took us to see a statue of Vercingetorix. Saw some Phenoecian ruins. After this started driving for Sens and Marlotte. Had supper at La Renaissance. Very tired so went to bed.
KA, Fernand Chapeau, MFleury/ HA, WA, MmeC?, MmeFC, MmeF?/ PierreC, SisterC
The ruins are actually Roman—The ancient site of Alesia.
Vercingetorix is, I believe, the inspiration for the French cartoon character Asterix.
Whom we visited was young, thirtyish Fernand Chapeau of Venary. The village is Venary-les-Laumes near Montbard between Auxerre and Dijon. After a long search ca 1999 I found Fernand’s son Pierre at the same house. He was smitten, and he later told me that his sister refused to believe my visit. He was maçon and described his father, who had died several yeras earlier, simply as écrivan without elaboration. I have wondered since about this reticence. The Vichy period during the War was a divided and dangerous place.
July 17th, Mon. Marlotte
“After breakfast we wrote some letters and then went to our French lesson. Then we had lunch. Mother went to Fontainbleau and we fooled around and then we had tea with Jaques Perronet. Went sketching with Mother. Started a street scene. Read after supper out of “Land For My Sons”. Bed
July 18th, Tue. Marlotte “Played around with Jacques then took our bikes to be fixed. After dinner we sketched awhile and I finished a very good one of the street. Got our bicycles and had supper. Then we read while it rained. Bed.
July 19th, Wed. Marlotte
“Had to write a letter to Mr. Mackey in picture writing. Went to our sketching lesson with Madame Bourghus. Had lunch. Rode our bikes then went to Moret to sketch. I did a shield. After supper we walked and then read. Bed.
Mr. Mackey was the “hired man” at the Booth farm in Locke, NY where Holley and I were boarded out for several summers in the mid-thirties. He was memorable for having taken a more or less educational interest in us. Showing us unusual things in the woods, how to make pokeberry ink, making for us a board with mounted and labeled samples from a dozen kinds of tree, building a little water wheel mill in the stream behind the barn, etc. We considered him somewhat mysterious as he would come and go for extended periods without ever telling us children where he went. I still have the watercolor of the shield and the other “drawings” mentioned in this account.
July 20th, Thu. Marlotte
“As in all others. Wrote letters and then had our French lesson. She showed us her dog’s medals from Paris. Had lunch and then sketched the Rue Murger from where the artist first sat. Had supper then read “Land For My Sons”.
July 21st, Fri. Marlotte, Paris
“Had breakfast in the room!!! Then Daddy drove us to the train at Montigny and we went to Paris. We shopped all morning then had lunch. Got on the train and went to Montigny where Daddy met us. Rode our bikes then finished “Land For My Sons”. Bed.
July 22nd, Sat. Marlotte, Moret “Went to Moret and started to sketch the old gates but it poured rain and we went into the church. I did a stained glass window. After lunch we went for a walk and I lost the party and came home. After supper we started “Quentin Durward” by Sir Walter Scott. Bed.
Louis XI figured prominently in Scott’s Quentin Durward and Loches was one of his venues. It was Louis Onze who invented the cages and many of the tortures there. He wore a soft cap with cast leaden ornaments. His massive wooden cages—too small either to stand in or to lie full length—can still (1999) be seen at Loches.
July 23rd, Sun. Marlotte, Chateau Thierry, Reims
“Started for Reims to see the Cathedral. On the way we stopped at Chateau Thierry and saw two monuments. Here is where the heaviest fighting on the American side was done during the war. Also we saw Epernay where mother was after the war and saw Hautvillers and the house where she stayed [at Nanteuille-la-Fosse, 110 rue de Bré]. At Reims we had lunch and saw the Cathedral. Then came home and then went to bed.
July 24th, Mon. Marlotte
“Wrote some letters then watched the gym teacher do some junk. Went to our French lesson and had lunch. Mother et Daddy went to Fontainbleau and we fooled around. Went to the big sand pile and made a ball shoot. Started home and got caught in a hail and rain storm. Got soaked. Came home and dried off. Read, supper, read and then Bed.
July 25th, Tue. Marlotte
The gate at Moret
“Wrote a postcard and then went to Moret with Mother and Holley. I drew one of the ancient gates and Holley drew nothing. Had a late lunch. Played ping-pong with a man. Daddy met him and he is a Baron. After supper we played billiards and went to bed.
This man was Danish Baron Peter von Soren a member, we later learned, of the British Intelligence Service. After communicating with him for a year or so we lost touch and presume that he was lost in the War. Peter had a goatee and somewhat resembled likenesses of Shakespeare.
July 26th, Wed. Marlotte
“Wrote a postcard then went to our drawing lesson. It was lousy. Had dinner then fooled around. Later we went to meet Baron Peter Soren for tea. Then he took us canoeing. Had supper then read and to Bed.
July 27th, Thu. Marlotte
“Did jobs and went to our French lesson. After lunch we went to Fontainbleau and met Polly Applewhite and her friend. Then went to the movies. The first one was lousy but the second Marco Polo was swell. Afterward we went home had supper and read Quentin Durward. Bed.
Polly and her mother we had met on the Georgic.
July 28th, Fri. Marlotte, Melun
“Played around until dinner. After dinner we went to Melun on some tourist business. After that we saw a beautiful chateau called Veaux le Vicompt. Afterward we passed some plages and I walked home from Montigny. After supper we read. Bed.
The French government had issued a requirement that all aliens must register for “Cartes de Tourismes” at the nearest departmental seat—for us, Melun. There was a huge line for the caisses—one had to wait in one line for one part of the process and then go to the end of the other line for the second part. It took forever. When my father finally reached the first window the fonctionaire began to review his papers. Upon being asked in what capacity he was last in France (as my father had noted on his form) my father answered, “Comme soldat“. The man exploded “Comme soldat, comme soldat!” and passed him instantly to the head of the second line and we were out of there in moments. Vaux le Vicompt was designed by the builder of Versailles; André le Nôtre.
July 29th, Sat. Marlotte
“Looked at the maps of Brittany for mileage. Played around and had dinner. After dinner we went to Fontainebleau and played a new game of billiards there. Got some ice cream and came home. After supper Daddy and I played billiards then went to bed.
July 30th, Sun. Marlotte
“Went to Montigny to get Peter Soren. Mother and Daddy went with him to church while we went to the restaurant. It was closed but we got in later. After lunch we went canoeing with Peter and went swimming it was cold. Came back and had supper. Read and went to bed.
The restaurant was in Montigny-sur-Loing called La Vanne Rouge and its terrace was right on the river dotted with tables and parasols and with a boat ramp and canoes.
ECA: “[for dinner] they served chicked and veg., fresh melon, salad, cheese, fruit, tarts, coffee. Peter is a conoisseur on wines so we had him choose. He took Grande Cru Croton, 1910, a red wine, very nice.” La Vanne Rouge is still there (1999) as I went out of my way to find it. It was late afternoon and closed; the patron wouldn’t let me in for a beer so I had only to peer through the cracks in the gate to get a glimpse. I tried to walk from there to Marlotte but found the distance (3 km) far greater than I had remembered, so great in fact that I had to return to get my car. In 1939 we thought nothing of walking to Montigny and back of a summer evening.
July 31st, Mon. Marlotte
“Did jobs and went to Fontainbleau and picked up Polly and her mother. Then came to the hotel an got a pick-nick lunch. Went to the Loing river got a big rowboat and went up the river. Had our supper and boy what sandwiches. Had a swell time coming back. Took them to Fontainbleau and then went to bed.
ECA: “In Fontainbleau we saw whole lines of artillery soldiers file by on horseback in the moonlight.”
August 1st, Tue. Marlotte
“I got out the maps and planned the mileage for our Brittany trip. After lunch rode to Fontainbleau and met Polly at the Palace then we went to the restaurant and played all afternoon. Came home and had supper then went to bed.
August 2nd, Wed. Marlotte
“Went to our drawing lesson. Holley started an oil painting. After lunch we went to Peter’s hotel and then he took us to a little weekend house and we played ping-pong. Mother and Daddy came and we had tea and played chess. Read out of Quentin Durward.
August 3rd, Thu. Marlotte
“Went down to breakfast then went to our French lesson. I drew and started some oils and Holley some palette knife. After dinner it rained so we went over and finished painting. Rained all afternoon then we had supper and went to bed.
August 4th, Fri. Marlotte, Nemours
“Had breakfast and then got Peter and went to Nemours and saw the church and an old museum with some guns and old locks in it. After lunch we went to Fontainbleau on our bikes and met Polly and two others with red hair Billy and Joan. Had tea under the arch with Simon Pigley. Glad to get rid of Joan. Had supper with the Applewhites and heard the concert. Bed.
August 5th, Sat. Marlotte, Paris, Libourne
“Got up and packed for Libourne near Bordeaux. Had an early lunch then took the bus to Paris. Saw the museum of Arts et Metiers then saw the Wax Works [Musee Grevin]. Had supper then went to the station [Gare Quai d’Orsay] and got on the wagon-lit. Went to bed in the upper berth.
The Gare Quai d’Orsay is now the Musée d’Orsay since 1986.
August 6th, Sun. Libourne, Ste. Foy la Grande (Gironde)
“Got up at 5:00 and got off the train at Libourne. Then took a small train to Ste. Foy la Grande. Here we met the Minoggios and went to their house [Villa Anfa, Rosière] and had breakfast. Took a walk [along the Dordogne] until lunch. After lunch we took another walk to town and the park. Came home and had supper. Played with the cats then went to bed in the cellar.
Mme. Minoggio (Mme. Legal) was the woman that my mother knew from Hautvillers (Epernay) in 1919 and to whose son, Léandre, she became marraine (see prologue). At this time he was in the French airforce in Morocco. He survived the war; I met his son Jean Pierre Legal in Paris in 2003 on one of the days of the infamous weeklong canicule in which thousands of Parisians died.
I found Léandre’s son Jean Pierre in Paris after a laborious and months long search by mail through the mairies of France and Luxembourg where resident records are kept. Sadly, as a teenager, he had had a moto accident that put him in a wheelchair for life. In spite of this disability he drove a car and showed me around Ile de France in several subsequent years. He died in 2016.
ECA: “They showed us photo’s of Léandre and Janny(?) in Morocco where they live. Also showed us the pictures of ourseves that they had framed, and the oil portrait of Leandre which Papa [Irving Porter Church] had painted.”
August 7th, Mon. Ste. Foy la Grande, Libourne
“Played with the cats in bed. Had breakfast then took a walk to the Gare to find my hat. Saw the church and the river. After lunch we made tents for the cats then had tea. Went to the train and went to Libourne. Went in the church and waited at the Gare for the train to Paris. Went to bed on the train and went to sleep.
August 8th, Tue. Paris, Marlotte
“Got up at Austerlitz Gare and had breakfast. Took the Metro to Opera and left Daddy at the American Exp. Co. We shopped all morning and I got a French railway car. Went to the Bastille to see about the bus then had lunch. Took the bus to Marlotte and played around until supper. Read then went to bed.
August 9th, Wed. Marlotte
“Rode to Fontainebleau with Mother and found Polly. We all rode to Marlotte and fooled around. Had lunch and then went to the sand pile and just sat and talked all afternoon. Rode to Fontainebleau and had tea. Played in the restaurant then came back for supper and saw a fencing match.
August 10th, Thu. Marlotte
“Went to our French lesson. Then had lunch. After lunch we rode to Fontainebleau and met Polly for an hour then went to the Spicer-Simpson’s for tea. Played deck tennis then came home and had supper. Later we went to say goodbye to Peter. He also gave us tea and we talked then came home and went to bed.
Autographs: Peter Soren, Spicer-Simpson (Ship personnel)
Mr. Spicer-Simpson was a well known sculptor and medalist. He lived in the Bourron part of Bourron-Marlotte.
August 11th, Fri. Marlotte
“I went to the sand pile with Holley while she collected colored sands. After dinner we went to Fontainebleau and found Polly and Rowena LaCoste then went to Samoise plage to swim. Came home and played ping-pong at the restaurant. On the way home we got soaked in the pouring rain. Had supper then read and went to bed.
August 12th, Sat. Marlotte, Chartres, LeHavre
“Packed our bags and started driving for Chartres. Saw the cathedral then had lunch. After lunch drove all afternoon to Le Havre and got supper there. After supper we walked down by the docks then went to bed.
August 13th, Sun. Le Havre, Avranches, Rennes
“Got up and in the middle of breakfast Benjamin [see preface] came in and Mother and she renewed acquaintances. We drove to the river side in the fog to get a bac or ferry but waited 3 hrs for it. Went to Honfleur and met Jock then had lunch in a little town. Drove all afternoon to Brittany. Stopped at Avranches and saw le Mont St. Michel across the water. Drove to Rennes in the dark where we spent the night.
P.S. stopped at Bayeux and saw the famouse tapestry there. Made by the wife [Queen Mathilde] of Wm. the Conquerer. [Got a folding reproduction of the entire tapestry.]
August 14th, Mon. Rennes, Quimper
“Drove to Quimperlé where we had dinner. Walked around and saw the church then went on to Quimper. Found a hotel and settled there. Drove to Concarneau to see the fishing boats then came back to Quimper. Holley got her coifs and Daddy left for Paris on the train. Bed.
August 15th, Tue. Quimper, Vannes
“Walked around Quimper and saw the fair. Drove to Quimperle and had lunch. Then went to Carnac and saw the old Druid tombs. Had ice cream then went to a museum. Took a drive around the coast then went to Vannes for the night.
August 16th, Wed. Vannes, Sillé-le-Guillaume, Marlotte
“Said goodbye to Jock and Benjamin and drove all morning. Had lunch at Sillé then drove all afternoon to Marlotte. Had supper and went to bed. Dead tired.
August 17th, Thu. Marlotte
“Did jobs and then had lunch. Afterwards we rode to Fontainbleau on our bicycles to see Polly. Rowena was there and we ducked Isabella. We went to see the rocks in the woods but did not find the cave. Played in the restaurant then came home. Had supper and went to bed.
These rocks are undoubtedly among those which became popular and world renowned rock climbing (bouldering) venues after the War. August 18th, Fri. Marlotte
“Packed all the bags and trunks for Switzerland. After dinner Mother drove us to Fontainbleau to see Polly. We just sat and talked then went to Polly’s lesson. Daddy got us and we said goodbye and went home to bed.
P.S, This was Mother’s wedding anniversary but Daddy and Mother both forgot it.
August 19th, Sat. Marlotte, Grenoble
“Got up early and had breakfast in the room. Packed and started for Grenoble in the alps. Drove all morning and had lunch at Chalons and drove on to Lyon. South of Lyon we saw our first “alp”. We drove to Grenoble and found a hotel. This hotel [Lesdiguires] had super elevators and swell surroundings. Had supper and went to bed. We were amused to see telephone booths labeled “Allo-1” and “Allo-2”.
August 20th, Sun. Grenoble, Annecy, Chamonix
“We went [to] the Syndicat d’Initiative [local chamber of commerce] and found out about the alps. Drove to Annecy and had lunch at the top of an aerial tramway and had a swell view of the lac. Drove through the Col des Aravis which was 1,400 meters high. In the mountains the cows have bells. We came out of the pass and came to Chamonix to spend the night [at the Beau Rivage].
In 1997 I took a detour through the Col des Aravis and found it exactly as I had remembered it almost sixty years before. It was here that I remember looking from the car window up the grassy alps and to the rocky towers above thinking, “Wow, wouldn’t it be swell to be able to climb to their tops”.
August 21st, Mon. Chamonix
“Went to the teleferique du Aiguille de Midi and went halfway up Mt. Blanc in the little cable car. Took a short walk to the snow line and threw a snowball. Had lunch at the top of the teleferique. Then took a long walk over a glacier [Glacier des Pelerins] and saw some huge cracks. And a natural bubbler. The avalanches of snow and rock sounded like the crashing of distant thunder. Came down had supper and went to bed.
P.S. I had no supper because of a bad headache.
The top in 1939 is now only “halfway” up and is now called Plan de l’Aiguille.
August 22nd, Tue. Chamonix, Annemasse
“Went to another teleferique [du Brevent] with two stages. Stayed at the top and got a few views. After lunch we came down and finished packing. Started out for Geneve. Got halfway and Daddy found he had lost the passports. We looked all over car but in vain, turned around and looked in the hotel—but in vain! Then, after searching the baggage again Daddy found them in the bottom of his bag. Whew! Drove to Annemasse and spent the night. The hotel was dingy.
August 23rd, Wed. Annemasse, Lausanne
“Got up in Annemasse and packed the bags then took an hour going through the customs at the border. Drove to the Amer. Exp. Co. and did some business in Geneve. Had lunch [Coq d’Or] then took a bus trip around the city. Saw the League of Nations buildings. Then drove to Lausanne and found a hotel [Mont Fleury]. Had supper, wrote in this book and went to bed.
In Geneva I remember that my father took me especially to see the confluence of the Rhone (clear water from Lac Leman) and the Arve (glacial rockflour filled water from Chamonix). The two streams run parallel in the same bed essentially unmixed for miles.
August 24th, Thu. Lausanne, Interlaken
“Packed and went to see the church. Went up in the steeple and saw the town. Drove to Aigles and on the way saw Chateau Chillon on Lac LeMan—Lord Byron was there. Had lunch and drove through a high pass to Interlaken. Here we found a hotel and had supper. Went and looked at the stores then went to bed.
At the hotel in Interlaken we slept for the first time under huge, white down featherbeds, something we had seen heretofore only in movies like Heidi.
August 25th, Fri. Interlaken, Altdorf
“Drove to Grindelwald and took a long walk around the cliffs. I saw a mountain goat. We watched some boys and girls scale a cliff with mountain climbing equipment. A fall meant death. We came home and had lunch [Parc des Alpes] then drove to Altdorf and went to bed.
ECA: “When we came down we saw a real mountain climber giving a demonstration of the use of spikes and rope. It was quite thrilling”.
August 26th, Sat. Altdorf, Luzern, Zurich
“Went and saw the church and the monument to Wilhelm Tell. Also saw the chapel by the lake. Drove to Luzern and the Amer. Exp. Co. Had lunch then went on a tour of the city; we saw an ancient wooden bridge with paintings of death in the tympani. I got a Swiss chalet. Drove to Zurich and had supper. Walked around outside the Fair grounds and went to bed.
August 27th, Sun. Zurich
“Went to the [Industrial] Fair and spent all morning there. Had lunch and stayed there all afternoon. It is very interesting. I liked it better than the World’s Fair. Had supper, took a walk and went to bed.
August 28th, Mon. Zurich, Bern
“Went to the Exposition and stayed there all morning. Had lunch then packed to go on. Drove to Bern where we found a hotel. Had supper by the riverside at a place under a bridge. Read Quentin Durward. Bed.
August 29th, Tue. Bern, Basle, Lausanne
“Went to tourist office and got a guide to show us the city. We drove around all morning and saw a big clock strike. The clock was really complicated. Had lunch then drove to Basle and looked into Germany. Drove all afternoon to Lausanne and spent the night at the same hotel as before in the same rooms. On the way to Basle we realized that the Swiss were mobilizing [their army]. We had to get gas ration cards. Tank traps were in the roads at Basle.
ECA: “Found that we could not get gas without a permit from the military”.
In 1949 with my roommate from Cornell we were picked up while hitch hiking to Bern by one Edith Roth, captain of the 1939 Swiss ski team. She drove alarmingly fast. The reason, it turned out, was so that we would arrive in Bern at noon, in time to see ths old clock go through its paces.
August 30th, Wed. Lausanne, Bourg
Went to Geneve and got our laundry and went back to Nyon to cross into France [at La Cure in the high Juras] but the border was barred with barbed wire and wagons. We went to the next place [Divonne?] and found it barred too. We got scared so went to the American consul [in Geneva] and he told one that was open. Drove to Annemasse got through the customs and had lunch at Annecy. Drove all afternoon to Bourg where we spent the night.
P.S. Got a flat tire and changed it. [First] blackout at Bourg.
ECA: “Tension seems to be growing. Hitler has replied to the note from Great Britain”.
My recollection of Annemasse is one of barbed wire, tank traps, and visible machine guns.
August 31st, Thu. Bourg, Marlotte
“Had breakfast early. Drove all morning and had lunch at Marlotte. Drove to Fontainebleau said goodbye to the [American] School and came back. Played with Jaques Perronnet and had suppper. Then played in the billiard room. Bed.
ECA: “Partial mobilization [of French Army] taking place everywhere.”
September 1st, Fri. Marlotte
“Washed and dried all morning. Had lunch while Mother and Daddy went to see Peter while we played battleship and swatted flies. Changed rooms and then had supper. After supper finished Quentin Durward.
P.S.! Hitler attacks Poland. Refugees from Paris in all small towns. General mobilization in France and England. “Mobilisation général” was on every tongue!
September 2nd, Sat. Marlotte
“Drove to Fontainebleau with Peter and got some papers and went to the bank. Mother, Daddy, and Peter read the papers and we are not sure [now] about our sailing. Had lunch then Holley and I played battleship all afternoon. Had supper then Mother, Daddy, and Holley went to see Mr. Spicer-Simpson. Bed.
P.S.! Blackout in Marlotte. Hitler still in Poland. France and England are mobilized. The Bremen is on its way across under the watch of the British cruiser Warrick.
In the evening outside the Renaissance I remember “Hermes”, the hotel waiters that we knew, and other young men of the town all gathered in the street by the gate in their army uniforms and with their knapsacks and guns. They were saying goodbye to their friends and families.
September 3rd, Sun. Marlotte, Paris, Marlotte
“Collected Peter and all went to Paris. There we went to all the Consulate, Am. Exp. Co., and Cunard. ‘Abris’ all over also blue lights and windows. Had lunch at the Rallye then came back in the pouring rain. Packed a little went to bed.
P.S. War declared! Hitler still in Poland. France and England declare war on Hitler as we were told by the doorman at the Consulate.
On this day the Cunarder Athenia was sunk by a German submarine.
September 4th, Mon. Marlotte, LeHavre
“Got up and had breakfast early in our rooms. Said goodbye and drove all morning. Had lunch in the car then came to Havre. Looked for hotels and found a nice small one. Went to the Consulate and Express Co. Also the U.S. Lines. Had supper at the Hotel Bordeaux. Daddy met [ran into] Mrs. McBride of the Music School [in the steamship office line].
ECA: “American Consul advises only American boats. The ‘President Harding’ and the ‘Washington’ are being sent over by the end of the week.”
September 5th, Tue. LeHavre
“Woke up to the tune of an awful air raid siren at 6:00. Boy, what a noise! Had breakfast. Did some business then sat by the sea untill lunch at a small restaurant down the street. After lunch went to the beach and swam untill 4:00. Fooled around untill supper. Had supper at a small restaurant then went to bed.
The [Cunarder] Athenia having been sunk we cancelled the Mauritania passage. My father considered it by then too dangerous to sail on a British ship.
September 6th, Wed. LeHavre
“The siren blew again twice. Did some jobs around LeHavre then met Mrs. McBride for lunch. Drove around the port then went swimming until supper. Had supper. Learned some bridge then went to bed.
September 7th, Thu. LeHavre
“Did some business in Havre and Mother met some old war friends [Juliet Whiton] and we had lunch with them. Sat around while Daddy wrote a lengthy document on efficiency then went swimming. Had supper learned some more bridge then went to bed. Boy are we bored!
My father was incensed to distraction by the confusion and lack of efficiency exhibited by the steamship companies in handling the hordes of tourists, mostly American, trying desperately to arrange for safe passage home. Queues at information and booking windows—in which one could stand in vain for more then half a day only to be denied in the end an answer to a simple question—contained hundreds of people, stretching outdoors into the weather and down the streets. There were never any useful general announcements; no one had any idea of what was going on or how to manipulate the “system”.
Dad was going to remedy all this and spent days writing an efficiency manifesto to be given to all the steamship companies for their edification. However, the exercise was rendered moot the next day as the port of Le Havre was summarily closed by the French government and the mobs of tourists were directed, thence, to Bordeaux, four hundred miles and two days travel away. A real disaster for anyone having to take a train or bus.
September 8th, Fri. Le Havre
“Did some washing and darning then went swimming. Boy was it swell because the tide was out. Had lunch then stayed in the room all afternoon waiting for Mother and Daddy. Several British fighter planes were doing manoevers over the city. Fooled around then has supper. Played some bridge (not very well). Bed.
September 9th, Sat. Le Havre, Alencon
“Packed and put Mrs. McBride’s luggage on the fenders [of the car] and went into town. Spent the morning in all the steamship offices then had lunch. Mrs. McBride got passage on a freighter so we took her bags off. Started driving for Bordeaux and stopped at Alencon at Hotel France. Bed. Many trucks and troops are passing [the other way] on their way to the front. Roads jammed with southbound cars. All of France in blackout.
September 10th, Sun. Alencon, Bordeaux
“Started driving for Bordeaux. On the way had sort of a hard time getting gasoline. Met several long lines of old trucks being collected for the army. Had lunch at Chatellerault then drove on. We were stopped once to have our head]lights painted blue. Awfully hot. Gas rationing pretty serious. Got to Bordeaux then found a stuffy and dingy hotel. Had supper and went to bed.
At one point below LeMans we encountered an endless southbound tie-up. As we neared the bottleneck it became clear that it was caused by a huge water-filled pothole in the road around which “les poilus” were struggling to direct traffic—cursing and swearing at drivers whose cars went in and then had to be muscled out. When it became our turn the soldiers put up an anguished shout and covered their eyes as my father headed more or less straight for the hole, lumbered in, gunned the engine, and lurched clear on the far side. Smiles of amazement on the faces of the soldiers; “Voiture du millionaire!” one shouted as we passed on.
Poilu with blue paint
As dusk fell, somewhere in the countryside south of Poitiers two poilus stepped into the road, bayonets crossed against us. We stopped and a third scurried out of the bushes with a brush and a can of paint; he painted our headlights blue.
September 11th, Mon. Bordeaux
“Went around Bordeaux to the U.S. Lines and Consulate. Found a better hotel then had lunch. After lunch moved in to our new hotel then Holley and I played slapjack. Daddy took us to an old church with the tower across the street [Tour Ste. Michele]. In the bottom [crypt] of the tower there are a whole mess of skeletons (some chemical in the ground preserved them) that were found when the tower was started. We bought some soup then had some supper. Bed. I slept on the floor.
September 12th, Tue. Bordeaux
“Played cards most of the morning then had lunch. Played some more cards then had supper. Played bridge. Boredom terrific. Bed. Much chiseling and graft in the steamship lines. No passage in view for several weeks.
September 13th, Wed. Bordeaux
“Same as before. Played cards and such things and walked in the park.
ECA: “They say the ‘Washington’ by a mixup of wires was almost entirely booked in London when it came to Le Havre and so a great many people there were disappointed. The U.S. Lines have certainly made a mess of things but I suppose it is not entirely their fault. With 1000’s of people milling around Havre, Bordeaux, and Paris—what a proposition. All we can do is wait and hope.”
September 14th, Thu. Bordeaux
“Mother and Daddy went to the Consulate. We played cards and had lunch then played some more cards. Had supper then played some bridge. Bed.
September 15th, Fri. Bordeaux
“I started a paper airplane. Had lunch and Isabella [Murray] walked in. She treated us to a patisserie. Had supper at the Becassine with the Murrays. Bed.
P.S. Isabella showed us her gas mask. They are building abris in the Allees de Tourneys.
ECA: “Stormed the Consulate and offices of U.S. Lines again but there was such a crowd everywhere that we didn’t accomplish a thing. …they say Toscanini is here and stands in line with the rest of us.”
September 16th, Sat. Bordeaux
“I worked on my paper airplane and started a car. Mother walked with Mrs. Fitzherbert and we talked until lunch. Worked some more then had supper with Mrs. Fitzherbert and the Murrays. Bed.
My parents had run into Mrs. Fitzherbert a close neighbor in Wellesley Hills.
September 17th, Sun. Bordeaux
“Made some more things of paper. Had lunch with Mrs. Fitzherbert. Fooled around until supper with the Murrays. Bed.
ECA: “The children were so homesick today that they were making maps of Wellesley.”
September 18th, Mon. Bordeaux “Daddy went out and I and Holley waited. Daddy came back with passage on the ‘Manhattan‘, Sept. 22nd. Had supper at the Dubern with Mrs. Fitzherbert. Met Miss Boreson and she ate with us. Bed.
September 19th, Tue. Bordeaux
“Saw Mrs. Fitzherbert off with Daddy to the train [to le Verdon]. I worked some more then had lunch. Worked after dinner then had supper at the Becassine with the Murrays. Bed.
September 20th, Wed. Bordeaux
“I worked some more [on my paper and mucilage models; by now a steamship and a steam locomotive]. Mother and Holley went shopping. Had lunch and went to the movies. Saw all about the Maginot Line and France’s defense. Took a buggy around the town. Ate at the Becassine. Played in Isabella’s room.
September 21st, Thu. Bordeaux
“Finished the paper stuff. Got the Murrays and had dinner at the Capon Fin. Wow! Packed and fooled around until supper at the Richlieu. Bed.
September 22nd, Fri. Bordeaux, le Verdon, SS Manhattan
“Drove early to le Verdon and got the car on the dock. Much red tape along the way. Sat on baggage and finished book. Got passport stamped and got on board ship! Met the Albros. Had supper then went to bed. Our cabins connected by a bath.
September 23rd, Sat. SS Manhattan
“Explored the boat all morning and found Alice Albro. Had lunch and explored some more. After supper Daddy and I stayed up and watched [as] the car [was] loaded until twelve o’clock on. After the car got on we stayed up till 4:00a and saw the boat sail away from the dock. Our boat was brightly lighted and painted with [huge] lighted American flags [on the sides]. There were 700 extra people sleeping on cots in the lounges.
September 24th, Sun. SS Manhattan
“Played around with shuffleboard and deck tennis until lunch. Met a boy and played around. Had supper and went to bed.
September 25th, Mon. SS Manhattan
“Played around the ship and had dinner. Sea calm and pretty. Met some more guys and played shuffleboard. [Igor] Stravinsky tripped over my shuffleboard stick in rushing to ask a girl for a ginger ale with him in the bar. Paderevsky was aboard also; he was melancholy all the trip. In morning had a lifeboat drill. Had supper and went to bed.
September 26th, Tue. SS Manhattan
“Not feeling very well so went to bed again. Sick untill about 5:00. Went to sleep. Had some ginger ale.
September 27th, Wed. SS Manhattan
“Went out on deck and played shuffleboard and deck tennis. Had lunch and played around some more. Got a haircut. Had supper; took a bath. Wrote in this book and went to bed.
Here ends my trip diary. Several days later [the 30th] we arrived in New York and drove to Boston by way of the Havilands’ in Hartford where we spent the night. The next day we were at great pains to complete the trip in daylight so that we could show our friends the blue painted headlights. Returning was exciting and we were envied by our friends not least because we were three weeks late for the start of school!
Epilogue
On a several occasions I have returned to Marlotte.
Once, ten years later, in 1949 while on a European trip with my college roommate Bill Pistler. We arrived, having given up hitchhiking from Lyon by boarding a train in Macon. Mme. Perronet put us up in a back room somewhere at no cost. The place seemed exactly as I had remembered it. The War had been hard though. The Germans had taken over the hotel for officer’s billets but the Perronets had been allowed to stay on. M. Perronet had died (of a heart attack) either during or shortly after the War and Michel and Madame ran the hotel. Jacques was following an engineering career in Paris. We later visited with him there. From this visit to La Renaissance I have a photo’ of Madame and my friend and of Jacques and me.
Then not until 1997 (and once more in 1999) was I able very briefly to return; really only for a few minutes each time. In 1997 in an effort to re-contact Madame or Jacques I learned that all three of the remaining family members had died; Madame sometime. probably in the seventies. and both Jacques and Michel of heart attacks, like their father, within this decade. However I arranged to meet Jacques widow, Janine, briefly in Paris to give her the photographs and was able to cajole some friends into taking me to Marlotte one evening to look around. The “new” Madame Perronet has a son, also Jacques, and an apartment in part of the original hotel from which she commutes to Paris.
In Marlotte I found the Rue Murger and La Renaissance which has now been partially dismantled and converted to a cirque hippique. Most of its former charm had vanished.
Bill Atkinson, January, 2000
ECA: additions, January 2002
Conversion to MSWord, May 2010
When it became obvious in early March 2020 that the Covid-19 corona virus would become a national disaster I began this Post as a periodic email to my children and grandchildren. When informed by my elder daughter that nobody—especially grandchildren—reads emails anymore, this is what has emerged.
The most recent update is here at the top. (If you’d like to start at the beginning, scroll all the way down or click here for the March 17 update.)
I’d love to hear from you in the Comments (scroll to the bottom of the post).
Update 21: Thursday, April 1, 2021
Hi All:
“And all the clouds that low’r’d upon our house,
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried. “ Richard III.
Yay! Youville House is fully vaccinated, but still doing weekly Covid-19 testing of staff and inmates. So far all results have been negative. But I imagine we will be masking and distancing for a few more months yet—just to be sure.
We look forward to the opening of the dining room on Easter Sunday although there are still uncertainties in the social details by which this will be administered. We’re all pretty fed up with a year of room tray service which was so stalwartly and for so long executed by our dedicated staff. No longer dining in solitary confinement and making do with the vagaries in the menu. However, for the seating, the management is thinking in terms of “pods”; small groups of people already used to close personal interaction and therefor “safe” from the point of view of Covid transmission. Many of us think, though, that Youville’s record is such that people ought to be able to sit wherever and with whomever they wish—as before the pandemic. As a result some predict prandial chaos; we shall see.
The hair salon opened a couple of weeks ago; this being the personal result after my vow to see what one year would bring:
Our Family Zoom on Sundays will continue into the Covid-free future.
The pandemic is far, far from over; suffering being continuously fed anew at the hands of the many Covidiots who insist upon preserving their . . . Freedumb!
A parting cat pic. Châtelaine wishes you well. She is on Prozac in an attempt to make her a more laid back kitty:
This will be my last Covid-19 post.
Love to all,
XX,
Dad (AKA Bill & Châtelaine)
Update 20: Friday, January 1, 2021
Hi All:
Happy New Year
Youville House is still doing weekly Covid-19 testing of staff and inmates. So far all results have been negative. So we’re just ‘biding our time waiting patiently for the elusive vaccine. I think that the management is on top of this issue.
By an announcement today (12/29) it looks as though the vaccine might arrive here by February. Massachusetts is accommodating nursing homes before assisted livings; as seems reasonable.
Here are links to Covid-19 updates at neighboring assisted living facilities at North Hill and Brookhaven where I have friends. Note: The North Hill site may be having problems.
Brookhaven has had no update since June 22nd having apparently given up on public Covid-19 reports.
North Hill as of today—over the past nine months—reports: 41 cases, 9 dead, and 69 staff positive, similar to their report of last month.
So be happy we are safe here at Youville House! Everyone is good about masks and distancing, although occasionally we bend a bit—e.g., after a long wait for the elevator—by each retiring to its opposite corners.
The Hair Salon is sporadically open, but I am holding off in order to see, tonsorially speaking, what one year will bring. I’m looking a little less like my hoped for Einstein and more and more like Kelly Loeffler of Georgia.
Our Family Zoom on Sundays has devolved into silly hats and spectacular wallpaper. Good for the laughs that we all need now.
We have poets here at Youville who are giving voice to our current condition. Among them are: Ruth VillalovosandJosef Brand.
And we at Youville have been left a vignette from the memory of Supratik Bose.
Rt.live tells us that for MA Rt=1.10 so it is still spreading slowly here.
Here again the current graph from Our World in Data. It shows that the number of new U.S. cases per day is finally showing a weak sign of bending toward fewer cases, but still growing disastrously.
The vaccine news since my last post is now encouraging; by early spring we may begin to see significant numbers of our population immunized.
XoXoX,
Dad (aka Bill, and Châtelaine)
Update 19: Tuesday, December 1, 2020
Hi All:
Youville House has instituted a bi-weekly employee testing regimen in order to establish a baseline for negative tests for all employees. So far all results have been negative.
Here are links to Covid-19 updates at neighboring assisted living facilities at North Hill and Brookhaven where I have friends. Brookhaven has had no update since June 22nd and has apparently given up on Covid-19 reports. North Hill as of 11/23 reports: 1 new case, 39 positive, 9 dead, and 68 staff positive.
So be happy we are safe here at Youville House!
Season’s Greetings:
Hand cut paper snowflake
Family Zoom on Sundays is working well. Keeps the spirits up.
Our own Ruth Daniloff offers us a natural world diversion from our Covid-19 woes: Tasha
Rt.live tells us that, for OR Rt=1.63! and for MA Rt=1.1. The overall U.S. picture, however, is slightly better than it was last month.
Here again the current graph from Our World in Data. It shows that the number of new U.S. cases per day (160,000, up 60,000 since the last post, still climbing, and still highest in the World!) is growing steadily; a confirmation of the increase in national transmission rate.
It is worth repeating that it’s perfectly clear that the U.S., owing to its faux culture of exceptionalism and its fostering of a broad cult of willful ignorance—without a vaccine—will not be out of this pandemic for years. However it seems that there may be a vaccine on the horizon.
Update 18: Saturday, October 31, 2020
Hi All:
Youville has made additions to its update of July 20, but they have only to do with the complex rules of visiting which are sure to become more Draconian as the weather cools and we move inside.
I believe there are no current Covid-19 cases among inmates or staff.
Here are links to Covid-19 updates at neighboring assisted living facilities at North Hill and Brookhaven where I know some people. Brookhaven has had no update since June 22nd. North Hill has a new October 29 update.
Holley and Anna stopped by to drop me off a punkin complete with candles and matches but its size is daunting and I may never find the energy to execute the required surgery. I can donate it to the Youville display.
Family Zoom on Sundays is working well. Keeps the spirits up.
Happy Hallowe’en
Our own Ruth Daniloff invites us to partake of a frightening octopiece in the October 30th, Harvard Gazette: The praying mantis has nothing on the preying Octopus! Eeek! Them eyes! Them suckers!
Rt.live gives us the alarming fact that now there is virtually no state in the US with a negative transmission rate. Infected individuals nationwide are each passing the virus on to more than one other person. This is an explosive state of affairs. Massachusetts is not doing as well as it might.
Here again the current graph from Our World in Data. It shows that the number of new U.S. cases per day has risen to 100.000, (still highest in the World!) and is growing steadily; a confirmation of the increase in national transmission rate:
Here is a sobering graphic from yesterday’s NYTimes.
It is worth repeating that it’s perfectly clear that the U.S., owing to its faux culture of exceptionalism and its fostering of a broad cult of willful ignorance, will not be out of this pandemic for years. It’s going to be a more or less permanent new way of life and we’re just going to have to get used to it.
XoXoX,
Dad (aka Bill, and Châtelaine)
Update 17: Tuesday, September 1, 2020
Hi All:
Youville has made no addition to its update of July 20.
I believe there are no current Covid-19 cases among inmates or staff.
Here are links to Covid-19 updates at neighboring assisted living facilities at North Hill and Brookhaven where I know some people.
Brookhaven has had no update since June 22nd.
North Hill, I may say, seems not to be doing as well as we here at Youville. Kudos! They are in control(?) but have had many infections and deaths. Note again that they are a much larger facility than we and may therefore be more representative of the U.S. in microcosm.
Our isolation moves us to reflect upon friendships and regrets of the past: Ozerki
I went down for lunch last week to the “socially distanced” dining room. It was so efficiently distanced that I might as well have dined alone.
With nearly one-hundred meals to be served—take-out style to your door—three times a day we wonder how the staff can keep up. We have our own little frustrations (the orders are never quite right), but this must be nothing compared to the difficulties of staff trying to do the best they can.
We have a true gem in Connie who drives the Youville truck and keeps us in cat food, kitty litter, and beer.
Zoom! Yay! Holley fixed the microphone problem!
No new pic of kitty. Hoping for a Recumbent and an Odalisque.
Paul Krugman has an encouraging view from New York:
Rt.live tells us today that Massachusetts is holding its place in the transmission coefficient (R0) game among the states. We (MA) are now still negative—meaning that, on average, each infected individual is passing his infection on to very few others. At least in Cambridge, mask use in the streets seems almost universal. Paul Krugman has a sanguine view of his surroundings in NYC.
Here again the current graph from Our World in Data. It shows that the number of new cases per day (43,700, still highest in the World!) is slightly improved from my last post but with no sign of levelling off:
It’s perfectly clear that the U.S., owing to its faux culture of exceptionalism and its fostering of a broad cult of willful ignorance, will not be out of this for years. Now Trump wants to sacrifice two million on the altar of his cult. Sorry.
And here, again, is a link from USAFacts to similar information for all fifty states.
Click around in this link to see how Massachusetts and the rest of the U.S. are doing.
XoXoX,
Dad (aka Bill, and Châtelaine)
Update 16: Sunday, August 15, 2020
Hi All:
Youville has made no addition to its update of July 20.
I believe there are no current Covid-19 cases among inmates or staff.
I have not as yet taken part in the optional and partial opening of the dining facilities newly in effect.
Here are links to Covid-19 updates at neighboring assisted living facilities at North Hill and Brookhaven where I know some people.
North Hill is not doing as well as we are here at our Youville. What’s interesting is the presence of “scofflaws.” Of course they are a much larger facility than we and maybe more representative of the U.S. in microcosm.
The Brookhaven update is not current.
I’m happy to be back on the exercise machine!
I gasp for breath as I watch Stephanie Ruhle and Ali Velshi “bringing me news of fresh disaster.” [“But never you mind, my dear. Put on the kettle; we’ll have a nice cup o’ boilin’ ‘ot water.” Do any of you remember the “Beyond the Fringe” sketch of the sixties?]
And now the clothes washer on my floor has croaked.
Chatelaine Ascendant
Good news at the dentist! Where she had threatened a crown was merely a coronet—the tooth was saved to fulfill its manifest dentistry. RIP Alfred E. Neuman.
Amazingly Rt.live tells us again that Massachusetts has moved back to the head of the line in transmission coefficient (R0) among the states. We (MA) are now very negative again—meaning that, on average, each infected individual is passing his infection on to very few others. Again, I’m not sure why, but the Covid Gods seem to be with us.
Below is the current graph from Our World in Data. It now shows that the number of new cases per day (50,000, still highest in the World!) has remained fairly constant (a straight line), but with no sign of levelling off.
It got better through June and then worse again in July and is back now to where it was in mid July.
It’s perfectly clear that the U.S., owing to its faux culture of exceptionalism and its fostering of a broad cult of willful ignorance, will not be out of this for years. Sorry.
And here, again, is a link from USAFacts to similar information for all fifty states.
Click around in this link to see how Massachusetts and the rest of the U.S. are doing.
Hi Meg and Patrick. Looking forward to sitting at distance with you on the Youville patio on Monday.
XoXoX,
Dad (aka Bill, and Châtelaine)
Update 15: Saturday, August 1, 2020
Hi All:
Here is a link to Youville’s July 20 update.
I have added a paragraph describing the rules for outside (patio) visiting. Its one Draconian measure is that only two guests are permitted at a time.
The fancy dinnerware upgrade has happened. In its first manifestation—today at lunch—I received two entrees: An egg salad sandwich on white and a hamburger. I don’t remember which I had ordered, but one had to go. It’s too bad that the orders are almost never quite “right”. It leads to shameful food waste. But the staff works so hard to accommodate us that it seems petty to complain. It’s good though that we’ve now eliminated a fair amount of single use plastic and bags.
The optional and partial opening of the dining facilities is also newly in effect. People take turns so that social distancing can be observed.
I think I’ll stick with in-house meals for a while.
I believe there are no current covid-19 cases among inmates or staff. I have a good feeling that we’re safer here than in the big suburban prisons.
Here are links to covid-19 updates at neighboring suburban assisted living facilities at North Hill and Brookhaven where I know some people.
Current Massachusetts statistics.
The exercise machine is fixed! I was afraid I might be losing some muscle tone and deep breathing capability.
The tooth pulling was trivial and painless, but she’s discovered that I will probably lose one of my incisors. Bummer. Anticipate my new Alfred E. Neuman smile.
You’ll be glad to hear that I have a renewed appointment with the urologist.
Châtelaine is not very nice to me but I try to be nice to her. How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless kitty.
Rt.live tells us that Massachusetts has further fallen in transmission coefficient (R0) among the states. we (MA) are now very positive—meaning that, on average, an infected individual is passing his infection on to more than one other person, thus promoting growth rather than fostering gradual remission. I’m not sure why, but some are blaming unsafe July Fourth gatherings. It takes about three weeks to see the results of idiocy.
Here is the current graph from Our World in Data. It now shows that the number of new cases per day (52,000, highest in the World!) remains fairly constant (a straight line), with no sign of leveling off:
In my Update 8 of May 1 I mused about a national total infection count of four million by July. I am going to muse again—today it is 4.56 million—and say that by Election Day it will be near ten million—about three in every one-hundred Americans! This because it is by now obvious that the Trump administration has no plan to mitigate the disaster—and it never will.
Just tonight I’m hearing of a virus “catch” party of seven-hundred young MAGAt covidiots in New Jersey.
Here, again, is a link from USAFacts to similar information for all fifty states.
Click around in this link to see how Massachusetts and the rest of the U.S. are doing.
Hope we can resolve the camera/mic problem for some better Zooming,
XoXoX,
Dad (aka Bill and Châtelaine)
Update 14: Wednesday, July 15, 2020
Hi All:
Here is a link to Youville’s July 10 update.
They plan an optional and partial opening of the dining facilities.
And to make an upgrade to the room service, i.e., thermal containers and nicer tableware to replace the plastic. For me this is not much of a change because I already transfer everything to my own washed tableware and microwave as necessary. This way I can eat at my leisure—not worrying the food will be cold.
The dining room schedule will be such that occupancy is limited to promote distancing.
I believe there are no covid-19 cases among Youville inmates or staff.
Here are links to covid-19 updates at neighboring assisted living facilities at North Hill and Brookhaven where I have friends.
Alas, my favorite exercise machine has failed, but I’m assured that new parts are on the way.
I went to my every six-month eye exam and am told that everything is OK.
But now I have to have a tooth pulled, and must suffer the ministrations of the podiatrist for my painful toenails.
A bright naked-eye comet, Neowise, is in the sky and just now (July 15) has become visible in the evening after sunset. The west facing windows on the 7th floor at Youville should be a good place to try to see it. In recent weeks it has been a before-sunrise object but now, having passed perihelion, it is in the evening sky. Seven-hundred years ago the appearance of comets portended disaster and plague—can that be still the case?
In my astronomy days I took a few comet pix myself.
I’m waiting for an e-camera Match has sent me to make Zoom-ing less stressful.
Rt.live tells us that Massachusetts has lost its position as having the lowest transmission coefficient (R0) of all the states. I’m not sure why, but we (MA) are now positive—meaning that, on average, an infected individual is passing his infection on to more than one other person, thus promoting growth rather than fostering gradual remission.
Here is an interesting new metric I just stumbled upon at Twitter. Given any random crowd size from ten to ten-thousand—Georgia Tech predicts (by U.S. county) what the chances are that at least one infected person will be in that group. Poke around in it—it’s frightening. In Arizona it’s 88% for a group of 25. In Massachusetts (Middlesex County) it’s 9%. Wear your masks when outside!
I continue to notice that in Cambridge just about everyone on the street is masked. And inside offices and stores it is universal.
From now on I plan to post twice monthly.
Again, my fears of June 10th continue to be realized. The early and ill-advised (mostly red state) maskless and crowded “openings” in the South and the West have proved disastrous—nationally overwhelming the modest gains made in the Northeast. This failing is owing (let’s admit it) to the Trump administration’s having instituted no national coronavirus policy. The daily increase in the number of confirmed cases in the U.S. [highest in the World!] has ballooned from about 45,000 cases per day (June 30th) to 66,000 cases per day (July 15th) with no end in sight.
Here is the current graph from Our World in Data. It now shows that the number of new cases per day has become constant (a straight line, no longer increasing): It’s that bending back upward that we knew was coming in Update 10 on May 21 when the southern governors first announced their “reopenings.”
This is a long, long way from leveling off to zero.
In my Update 8 of May 1, I mused about a national total infection count of four million by July. There were those then who thought this preposterous. Now July has come and it is 3.43 million—about one in every one-hundred Americans! Update 7/23/20: So, I missed it by a week.
And here is a link from USAFacts to similar information for all fifty states.
Click around in this link to see how Massachusetts and the rest of the U.S. are doing.
I will say it again: The “first” wave is still building and is long from washing over us.
We will be submerged in this national administrative catastrophe for many, many months.
XoXoX,
Dad (aka Bill and Châtelaine)
Update 13: Tuesday, June 30, 2020
Hi All:
Youville House has posted no update during this twenty day period.
I believe there are no covid-19 cases among inmates or staff.
This is owing to the dedication of our essential workers who, themselves, must find it much more daunting to follow the “rules” than for us for the most part safely hidden in our dens.
Here are links to covid-19 updates at neighboring assisted living facilities at North Hill and Brookhaven.
I did go through the car wash. 🙂
And I went elsewhere as well—to the Subaru shop in Belmont, to my old shop in Auburndale for a new inspection sticker, and to Needham for an annual hearing evaluation. I was hugely impressed by the coronavirus response at these places. Masks and distancing universally and cheerfully observed—no Karens in sight. Waiting rooms closed, hand sanitizer on the counters, seating only outside, door handles and steering wheels wiped. Too, masks on the street are almost universal. Cambridge has new lighted traffic signs saying “Face covering required in Cambridge;” in Needham—not so much.
It should be noted that today Massachusetts has almost the lowest transmission coefficient (R0) of all the states, and that its curve of confirmed infections is noticeably flattening. Massachusetts rocks!
My previous posts have been at ten day intervals, but I delayed this one another ten days so that the unfortunate national trend would stand out more starkly.
My fears of June 10th have been realized. The early and ill-advised (mostly red state) maskless and crowded “openings” in the South and the West have proved disastrous—nationally overwhelming the modest gains made in the Northeast. This failing is owing to the Administration’s having instituted no national coronavirus policy. The daily increase in the number of confirmed cases in the U.S. [highest in the world] has ballooned from about 22,000 cases per day (June 10th) to 45,000 today (June 30th) with no end in sight:
Here is the graph showing the upward curving national infection rate between June 10th and June 30th:
And here is a link to data for all fifty states.
Click around in this link to see how Massachusetts and its counties and the rest of the U.S. are doing.
The “first” wave is still building and is long from crashing over us.
We will be submerged in this disaster for many, many months.
Sorry—no cat pic.
XXX,
Dad (aka Bill)
Update 12: Wednesday, June 10, 2020
Hi All:
Here is a link to Youville’s June 1 update.
It’s mostly new complicated and cumbersome visiting requirements—certainly justified in the current Covid-19 climate.
Links to Covid-19 updates at neighboring assisted living facilities at North Hill and Brookhaven.
Again, as for me, there is really nothing new.
As usual, surfing the Twitterverse (with @EricBoehlert and his PressRun.media) trying to hold the feet of the Trump-enabling Press to the fire.
Now that it has arrived it is hard to take advantage of the nice weather—unless you’re resigned to enjoying it alone or, at most, with masked and muffled beings six feet away. My hearing being what it is I don’t much take to it. (I’m thinking of having another hearing exam and aids update.)
As entertainment I’m thinking of taking the car through the local car wash. Any takers?
I continue in my personal view of these current nation-wide “openings” in that they will prove to have been a mistake—if not a disaster—the results of which will be still hidden for another few weeks. The U.S. total infection rate arc continues upward, now just noticeably more steeply than ten days ago. The “first” wave is increasing in size and long from over.
Here is a link to Youville’s May 29 update.
They are announcing that if we should leave Youville for “an extended stay” we will be subject to fourteen days of quarantine upon our return. I’m assuming that this definition does not include local medical appointments; but I think it needs some clarification.
Here are links to Covid-19 updates at neighboring assisted living facilities at North Hill and Brookhaven.
And here is a link to a timely piece, “The Virus,” by Ruth Daniloff, a fellow Youville inmate.
Again, as for me, there is really nothing new.
“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps on this petty pace from day to day.”
I do wonder about my own vulnerability to the virus, not so much as to who I’m with and where I am, but more as to what I am—a product of good fortune and chance. I suppose that reaching age 95 says something good about general health, but it definitely speaks ill of the statistical chances in regard to surviving the infection.
Does it mean anything that I haven’t had a chest or head cold in ten years? Have I had them all? So, that I’m now immune to all of them? Will the new virus respectfully take heed?
They say that a vitamin D deficiency plays a role. I was discovered to have such a deficiency 50 years ago and have been taking pills ever since.
They say that maintaining lung capacity is important; the reason that, every day, I exercise to breathlessness; hoping that in the ICU with “proning”—if it comes to that—I might make it. Sometimes I try to review in my imagination what days and nights of struggling would be like and how I might be able to respond.
I continue my personal view of these current nation-wide “openings” that they will prove to have been a mistake—if not a disaster—the results of which will be hidden for another few weeks. The U.S. total infection arc continues upward, only barely less steeply than ten days ago.
In the states—especially those in the south and central U.S.—many of the total case trajectories are yet becoming steeper: more and more cases per unit of time as time passes. Their peaks may be months in the future.
The national rate of increase has eased slightly from around 20,000 cases per day, but I expect that, owing to reckless national gatherings having become common again, it will strengthen substantially. It’s not that there will be a “second wave,” it’s that the first and only wave will be bigger.
By mid-June or July we will know whether the “reopening” will be sustainable.
I sure hope that something will allow us to be social beings again.
XXX,
Dad (aka Bill)
Update 10: Thursday, May 21, 2020
Hi All:
Massachusetts cautiously “opens” but there is to be no significant change here at Youville.
Here is a link to Youville’s May 21 update.
Anything I could tell you about what’s new at Youville is included in this update.
And again links to Covid-19 updates at neighboring assisted living facilities at North Hill and Brookhaven.
As for me, there is really nothing new. After a few weeks, which will give us time to see what’s going to happen, I will again look into reinstating medical appointments.
We try to sit in the sun for a while but others are so far away that conversation is impractical, especially with hearing aids.
The quality of the food has remained good all along, although sitting down to dinner—alone in ones apartment—is fraught with minor inconveniences like no syrup for the pancakes, no butter for the mashed potatoes, and the impertinent expectations of a kitty-cat.
My personal view of these current nation-wide “openings” is that they will prove to have been a mistake, the results of which will be hidden for another few weeks. Already today news out of Florida suggests that after having opened last week they may be forced to close again.
It no longer makes sense to characterize the change in the infection rate by its doubling time, which has lengthened to a month, because now—owing to sequestering—the case rate of increase appears to be more nearly linear than exponential. The national rate of increase is now around 20,000 cases per day, and will stay that way until it increases again as reckless “reopenings” become common.
I expect that by mid-June we will be able to see whether the reopening is sustainable.
Sources:
Here are two interactive websites that show national and state-by-state data:
1. Our World In Data—The one I have been using for the past several updates.
2. USAFacts—A new one showing state-by-state data that I just found this morning (5/22). Louisiana is interesting because it hints at the up-tick I expect for the rest of the country.
XXX,
Dad (aka Bill)
Update 9: Monday, May 11, 2020
Hi All:
The City of Cambridge has tested us, yet again–for the third time! Go Cambridge!
My result was negative. Also they tested us for coronas antibodies but we’ve not heard back on that.
And again links to Covid-19 updates at neighboring assisted living facilities North Hill and Brookhaven.
Well it’s really a super serving of the “Same old, same old.” What can I say?
Some people have been lifted from fourteen-day quarantines and others have returned from surviving the infection itself. There seems to be a bit more distancing sociability going on, but following speech filtered through masks is tough—you don’t realize how much of speech interpretation is visual, especially with hearing aids.
The weather continues cool and inhospitable and so no one is yet out on the patio.
Here is an example of the current tonsorial state:
Bill
The doubling time continues to increase having now reached thirty-one days. At last post it seemed to me that the total infections might reach four-million by July. If the current count doubles two more times from now—each in thirty-days: to July 11th—it will indeed have exceeded four-million by then.
It is hard to know which course of action will win out. The country in general seems to favor social distancing, but Trump’s “open the economy now” scenario may gain enough strength to cancel the effects of general distancing. We will know the answer by the end of June; watch the doubling time.
Here is the logarithmic plot:
XXX,
Dad (aka Bill)
Update 8: Friday, May 1, 2020
Hi All:
Yet again the City of Cambridge has come through with continuing concern for its citizens. As of Wednesday (4/29) all Cantabrigians are required to be masked when on the street. What an opportunity for lovers of intrigue!
At mealtime a knock on the door precedes the appearance–in the kitchenette–of a plastic shopping bag:
Gloves on!
Soup: In paper container; pour into coffee cup; microwave (30sec on high); container back in bag.
Entree: In plastic doggie-box; transfer to dinner plate; nuke as required; container back in bag.
Coffee: In paper cup; transfer to coffee mug; paper cup to trash.
Shopping bag: Finis! Out the door.
Gloves off!
Banana: Wash with soap.
Milk carton: Wash with soap.
Bon appétit! (keeping Châtelaine at bay the while!)
Sewed two more masks to pass some time. Always hoping not to break the thread. Threading the needle is an exercise–almost–of geezer impossibility. And invokes speaking sternly to the machine.
The family has made two forays into Zoom world with mixed results, owing to having to patch video and audio in from my cell phone–my PC/monitor (for the purposes of viewing the Gallery) having no camera or microphone. Lots of talk-over and frantic waving.
I spend time on Twitter watching the cats and baby elephants go by; marveling at the examples of Why Women Live Longer Than Men–it’s akin to the Darwin Award; and pleading with the @NYTimes to give up its sloppy, Trumpy ways. If you’re on Twitter you should be following @EricBoehlert’s new presence at PressRun.media, as he holds the feet of the wayward Press to the fire.
What’s worrisome now is the occurrence then of three infection peaks of which the second was the worst. The end of World War I enabled a resurgence of influenza as people celebrated Armistice Day on November 11 and soldiers begin to demobilize.
In 1918-19 my father was stationed in France with the AEF. But on November 14, 1918 his father (my grandfather)—botanist and mycologist George Francis Atkinson—died of that second peak of flu while on a mushroom specimen gathering expedition near Mt. Rainier. (It is my impression that my father was given leave to attend the funeral in Raisinville, Michigan—which would have meant at least a month’s absence from his unit in France.)
Fortunately both Elsie Church and Kerr Atkinson spent the winter of 1919 in different rural regions of France where the virus never penetrated.
What to say about the current Covid-19 crisis? The national doubling time is now about 25 days and increasing 😃. But out in Trumpworld the dynamics may turn out be dramatically different. On that path, I’m reluctant to think, the doubling time could decrease again; the national case total then approaching four million by July. We’ll see.
“Be well, do good work, and stay in touch.”–Keillor
XXX,
Dad (aka Bill)
Update 7: Tuesday, April 21, 2020
Hi All:
The City of Cambridge has tested all of us a second time, this time including an antibody test. I have tested negative.
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow had a segment on the independence–from Trump–of some savvy smaller U.S. cities. I’m trying to encourage her to do one on our own super Cambridge.
Youville has built a transparent barrier around the welcome desk to protect the receptionist.
Our isolation from one another is virtually complete. We are encouraged not to visit.
The meals staff has changed from rigid trays to plastic bags; perhaps considered safer because disposable.
If I may dabble in simile I can say that the efforts of our staff are Herculean. Day in, day out–while the rest of us loaf (ha, ha) in our rooms.
April has been unusually cold and wet (snow recently) so we’re looking forward to the first seventy degree day for sitting outside.
I’m reading that practicing strong breathing, through breathing exercise, may have a positive influence on covid-19 outcomes. April is my third anniversary here at Youville and I am blessed to have an apartment on the same floor as the exercise machines, one of which is easy to use for arms and legs. The Internet lately (for a couple of years maybe) has promoted the idea that short, intensive workouts may, in the long run, be more generally beneficial than longer, less strenuous ones. And, since I dislike exercising as much as the next guy, this seemed worth trying. I set the machines’s stiffness to the maximum (15), maintaining a pace of more than seventy strokes-per-minute for seven minutes*–I do the last ten seconds at 80spm. This is enough completely to exhaust me, breathing so hard I can’t talk, but I feel that it has had a salutary effect on my lung capacity. I’ve been doing this every day now for three years.
*Once around the machine’s “quarter-mile” track.
But not everyone here is as fortunate as I am. Those already with heart conditions and compromised lungs can’t take advantage of this idea.
I have friends in retirement communities in Needham, at North Hill and in Lexington, at Brookhaven, each of who are reporting covid-19 cases.
The doubling time has increased significantly from six to eleven days, but bear in mind that the testing under Trump as been an abysmal failure and that the unknown number of actual cases is many times the published figure. And that, owing to the recalcitrance of some GOP state governors, the doubling time may shorten again as their new cases flood the record.
And so–hang in there.
XX,
Dad (aka Bill)
Update 6: Saturday, April 11, 2020
Hi All:
Big news! The City of Cambridge has arranged for every inmate of a nursing home or a retirement community to be tested for covid-19. In fact, two burly fellows in full PPE have just left me after having stuck a long thin swab up my nose.
There is no information yet as to the availability of the results. Note (4/11): I have since found out that there were not enough test kits to include the Youville staff; and that these additional tests are expected to be available on Monday.
Now everyone here is masked. It began with staff and, just a day or so ago, expanded to everybody.
My mask effort
Earlier I had made a mask on a corrugated pattern but it was awkward to make on my sewing machine and was made of some old napkins I had which are too “see light thru” to be of much use.I found a simple mask pattern on-line which used two layers: tight weave cotton bandana outside and cut up fleecy long johns inside. No light see-through the two layers. They look good but are only OK as the fit is not the best and I couldn’t find anything good for the ear loops.
Well, it killed a couple of days anyway.
All Youville all social programs have been cancelled. Staff roams the halls wiping door handles, delivering meals, and checking in on us. They work hard and I hope they will be safe.
My friends at North Hill, a retirement community in Needham, MA, tell me of similar restrictions.
Occasionally the Internet has slowed into uselessness. This was true on Sunday. At first I accused my browser but it was confirmed by my granddaughter in SF. Everybody is WFH, watching YouTube, Zooming, and taking university classes on-line.
It’s been much better since Monday.
I don’t walk well enough to take advantage of the coming nice weather outdoors.
On a political note everyone seems to be blaming Trump for this. This is all very well as a proximate stance, but misses the main point: The true failure is that of our Senate who have the power, if not the will, overnight to alter our calamitous course.
It is time to see what my eight doublings (since March 20) have wrought.
Instead of 64 million we have only 0.5 million.
This is because the case doubling time has increased significantly–a very good thing–and indicative of the efficacy of social distancing which in no way should be relaxed or ended for many, many weeks.
Love,
Dad (aka Bill)
Update 5: Wednesday, April 1, 2020 Hi All: The only significant change here at Youville is that our kitchen staff is now fully masked and gloved when in the common spaces distributing and retrieving trays.
The onus on gathering menu preferences has been transferred from staff to us; a huge relief for them I am sure.People seem pretty upbeat and are putting a brave face on things, although I see so few to talk to day-to-day that this may be a misconception.
While keeping our distance we are free to move about in the building and to step outside for “air” or to walk.However dire the prospect overall there are this week some inchoate signs of change.
My guess for April 1, Wednesday (250,000 U.S. cases) was too high; we’ll have to wait all the way to Saturday for that.
Obligatory cat pic: Châtelaine
Since March 21 the case doubling time has increased (a good thing) from two days to almost five but there is nothing strong to indicate that this trend will continue.
Since, in fact, the total number of cases in the U.S. is much, much larger than this, and is essentially unknowable owing to the national failure in testing ability, we may actually know almost nothing about the future actual doubling times.
Love,
Dad (aka Bill)
Update 4: Wednesday, March 25, 2020 Hi All:
As you see I have transferred this post from email to my website.
Youville has closed its hair salon, a good move, so that all the men now can look like Einstein, and the women like Raquel Welch.
The food stays really good; last night: kudos to the Chef for his medallions of pork.
New plastic dinner trays have replaced the papier mâché. I think this is a good plan; much easier to wash, wipe, and to keep clean.
And they’ve just marked the floor at Reception so that we can’t lean in too closely to the person at the desk.
Meds are still available from Skendarian, the local connection, and we have hard working Connie who is our driver and does our shopping–stuff we need as for pets and the outer man.
We see almost nothing of one another these days, except maybe in the exercise room where some gravitate to the machines–which are now provided with alcohol wipes.
I’m fortunate in having access to the world through my computer; I can’t imagine such solitary confinement without it. Many here were born too soon to become part of the computer age and must be content without it.
We seem largely to be hopeful here inside although outside things are not looking much better:
My 64,000* U.S. infections guess of the last post for the 25th was not met so that there is, as yet, faint hope that the country’s case load has begun to slow, in spite of the fact that the nation has not yet done as much as it should to slow the rise. It is painful to accept that there are, in fact, hugely more U.S. infections than today’s published number indicates owing to the lack of testing and the irresponsibly slow response of our Government.
*By the evening of the 25th the number was 64,000.
You can see that the doubling time has slowed from two to three days and, if this trend continues, that in six days there will be two more doublings to 110,000 cases. We can hope by then that the doubling time has lengthened still further, a good thing.
For the more scientific of you here is the semi-log(arithm) plot in which equal doubling intevals plot as a straight line, the slope (steepness) of which indicates the doubling time. My own feeling is that this conveys less well to the layman the truly alarming nature of the growth rate.
“Be well, do good work, and stay in touch”
Love,
Dad (aka Bill)
Update 3: Friday, March 20, 2020
Hi All:
Things are stabilizing here at my assisted living facility in Cambridge, Mass. People are getting used to the draconian lockdown derangements. We are already pretty much restricted to our digs. Outside visitor ban; even the U.S. mailman is denied entry. All staff and aides are queried and have their temperature taken at the door. Compulsive hand washing [wringing?] abounds.
Social programs have been cancelled and the dining facilities closed. A system of delivering meals to the apartments—initially a bit chaotic— is smoothing out.
Very few of us now are out and about in the public spaces. We miss talking to people. Only one person at a time is permitted in the elevators. Basically I’m just plunked here at my computer.
The staff is knocking itself out to help us and to ease the following of the rules. For them this is a dedicated and dangerous business because they themselves have no way properly to do in-house self-isolation.
Theoretically we seem pretty safe here, but it’s early days and the prognosis for us and the U.S. is not good.
I think many have not really grasped the vastness of this crisis. Few seem to understand the exponential growth function. Especially not the psychopath Trump, his feckless enablers in the GOP, or the Nation at large.
The latest yesterday from Rachel Maddow at MSNBC:
Covid-19 Update 3
With a bit of extrapolation: Today 14,000 cases. The case doubling time seems now to be about 2.2 days. Probably owing to the hordes of the unidentified infected among us.
This is much faster than estimated as recently as a week ago. Originally 9 days.
By April 1 (10 days) four doublings, 250,000 cases.
By April 11, four more doublings: 4 million cases (1% of US population).
We are still essentially without testing and will be for many weeks; flying blind. Hard to imagine a more colossal (Presidential cum GOP) failure, but there it is.
Let’s see what the case number is on March 25th, five days from now.
Two doublings, to 64,000, would confirm this particular prediction. We may then be able to see whether our one week old (and only partial) national isolation mandate is having an effect.
At least I don’t have to worry about my taxes.
I can’t tell you how weird and unsettling this all seems.
Call me alarmist. I don’t mind.
XX,
Dad (Bill)
Update 2: Thursday, March 19, 2020
Hi All:
OK. yesterday, the house instituted a new rule: Only one in an elevator at one time. I thought it would be chaos, but no, our lockdown has sufficiently reduced local circulation so it’s not a problem. The Feds have banned postal personnel from entering the building so staff is now laboriously sorting mail into our cubbies.
Chatelaine: mistress of the castle (foreground) Irving Porter Church: my grandfather (background)
Cat company is good, but with its hazards. Food delivery to the apt. has proved a boon to Châtelaine and a problem for me. She is aggressively into everything that arrives through the door; I have to fight her off.
On leaving a recent long-scheduled Doctor appointment at Tufts Boston, the receptionist said that I needed another appointment.
“In six weeks.
“In six weeks? Are you kidding?
“No. A bone scan in six weeks.
The woman at the next station caught my eye; she was appalled. She knew.
“Don’t you realize,” I said, “that in six weeks the US medical system will be on the verge of collapse?”
Blank stare.
I wished them both well and shuffled on home.
Covid-19 Update 2
I can spend the next few days doing taxes. At least something to do.
Love to all,
Dad
Update 1: Tuesday, March 17, 2020
Hi All:
I’m surprised and impressed with my assisted living facility. Now for the past week no visitors to residents from outside; staff and outside support personnel temperatures taken on arrival.
Today they eliminated all group activity and closed the common dining facility. All meals to be ordered in writing and delivered to individual apts. Worrisome only if paper plates, utensils, cups are not handled carefully. They’re starting out with the usual hot meals.
But I imagine it will morph gradually into cold and packaged food only (cereal, canned stuff, milk, juice, etc.). We all have small fridges and microwave ovens. It seems a bit ad hoc and chaotic today but I think they’ll get the hang of it soon.
It will be interesting to see how the “one person in the elevator at a time” rule works out. I’m still able to negotiate my two flights of stairs–but slowly.
I have a new and friendly shelter kitty cat (Châtelaine by name–the mistress of the castle).
We’re all looking forward to its being warm enough to use the patio.
Alas, it will be unseasonably soon; a harbinger of our other existential crisis.
As Garrison Keillor was wont to say: “Be well. Do good work. And stay in touch.”
Francis Kerr Atkinson 1890-1976: Some Biographical Notes
These notes have not been researched in any substantive way, being largely what I remember from reminiscences told to me during my childhood and from direct experience later.
My grandfather George Francis Atkinson, after having graduated from Cornell University in 1885, held teaching positions in zoology at the University of North Carolina, later of botany at the University of South Carolina, and then at the Alabama Polytechnic Institute in Auburn. He had moved there with his wife Elizabeth Graham Kerr (“Lizzie” Kerr)—formerly of Raleigh, NC where her by then deceased father, Washington Carruthers Kerr, had been the State Geologist. A daughter, Josephine, was born but died in infancy.
My father—Francis Kerr Atkinson—was born in Auburn, Alabama on the first of May, 1890.
In 1892 his father accepted an appointment at Cornell University as an assistant professor of botany and the family moved to Ithaca, New York where his sister Clara Packard Atkinson was born that year.
The family settled on the campus in a house at 5 East Avenue whose wooded backyard sloped steeply down to Cascadilla Creek. From visits in the late twenties I can remember the house which was eventually swallowed by the burgeoning engineering campus after WWII.
At the end of the nineteenth century the mix of public service technology then in Ithaca was interesting. There was no domestically distributed electricity, yet the telephone had arrived and a fully functioning electric street car utility served the town and the campus above. The automobile was a curiosity; all local transportation was by horse and carriage. Houses were piped with gas for lighting and cooking but central heating, such as it was, was hot-air and coal-fired. My father recalled arriving home to a dark house in winter whereupon his father would don slippers, turn on the gas and, after some diligent shuffling of feet on the carpet, touch his finger to the gas jet; lighted by the resulting electrostatic spark. A gas-fired “Geyser” in the bathroom heated water on demand but not without its dangers. One winter night while he basked in the bath his mother sensed that too long a time had passed and went to investigate. After having broken open the door she found him unconscious in the tub, victim of the Geyser’s stealthy coal-fired appropriation of the oxygen in the closed space.
Naphtha launch
At the age of five (1895) Kerr was witness to the tragic drowning of his maternal uncle, William Hall Kerr, a successful textile entrepreneur on whose naphtha launch Watauga the families were enjoying an excursion in Annapolis Harbor. Six year old Philip, one of the four small Kerr boys—my father’s first cousins—slipped overboard, and his father, who evidently could not swim, jumped after him. Others managed to rescue the boy, but the father drowned [1]. Kerr’s mother and his young sister Clara were also on board.
My father disliked the name Francis and took his middle name as his first: Kerr [pronounced “car”]. In his early years he attended “Miss Hitchcock’s” school on the Cornell campus along with other children of faculty families, most notably my mother who was almost the same age—Elsie Sterling Church, daughter of Professor Irving Porter Church of civil engineering. It was there—after a discussion of the children’s ages—that one child blurted out to the young Miss Hitchcock: “Gee, you must be a hundred”!—one of my father’s favorite anecdotes. Kerr and Elsie both later attended Ithaca High School from which my father graduated in 1907 and my mother in 1908. He and Elsie played the violin in the high school orchestra [2]; my father kept on with it for the rest of his life—all through my childhood he practiced in the dining room on Sunday afternoons—themes and melodies that have lasted in my memory to the present day.
During his secondary school years he kept a small but elegant inboard motor launch on Cayuga Lake—the onomatopoetic “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi” after the sound of the engine. I have a series of photo’s of my youthful father off on a picnic in the boat with his family and their black cocker spaniel, Booker T. Washington; which says something about the times and my father’s Southern parental origins. He was always polite, fair, and deferential to Black people although never, I think, able completely to accept them as a natural part of his cultural and professional world.
With the exception of an occasional vignette he never spoke in detail of his years as a boy and young man at home in Ithaca. He rarely mentioned his family or his sister Clara; an omission I never questioned until years later. Only near the end of his life did I learn from him that his parents had separated and divorced over his father’s alcoholism (probably around 1910) and, further, that his sister Clara had died, a suicide in 1917 in New York City [2]. He revealed these secrets to me with great emotion and I realized that they were born in a different cultural era where divorce and suicide were universally considered to be dark and shameful family failings.
Clara was a talented artist all of whose work has been lost except for a clever bookplate designed for her brother when he was at Cornell.
After the separation his father acquired a small rustic house in the woods and fields north of the campus at 138 Ridgewood Road that he called “Laurelwood”, where he lived and worked until his death in 1918. His mother moved to Manhattan with his sister Clara and, sometime after 1925, removed to Asheville, North Carolina where she died in 1952.
Kerr entered Cornell in 1907 and in 1912 graduated with a double degree in mechanical and electrical engineering. The engineering honor society Tau Beta Pi inducted him as a member. His classes in mechanics were taught by Professor Church, his future father-in-law. This period was barely five years after the Wright Brother’s success in 1903 and my father—an early member of the Cornell Aero Club—was active in the designing and building of tethered gliders and towed machines which were tested and “flown” on the open heights to the east of the campus. Cornell (perhaps my father) built one of the earliest wind-powered flight trainers.
Finished with university he immediately got a job in Schenectady with General Electric where, I think, he had had previous summer stints. He was there for more than a year and remembered having met and had exchanges with the eminent Nikola Tesla and Charles Steinmetz.
Eventually a Cornell friend, who was teaching in Missouri at the University in Columbia, invited my father to join him there. He accepted and spent three years as an instructor in electrical engineering during which time he broke his leg playing soccer and broke up with a serious lady friend. Asked why he didn’t stay in teaching he would say: “I could see an inescapable groove”—he meant a “rut”; he would indicate it with an undulating motion of his hand—“forming ahead of me.” He feared that teaching would be too narrowly restrictive and not sufficiently representative of the larger world where the important action lay.
In June of 1916 Kerr began work in Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania for the Lehigh Valley Coal Company where he began as assistant to the company electrical engineer. He told a story of a problem with a new electric traction locomotive which, when set up and ready to go, would not start on the advance of the conductor’s controller. He lay down next to the track close under the engine and asked the conductor to try it again, this time hearing a faint “click” on first contact. After some reflection he directed that the polarity of the connections on one of the two traction motors be reversed; and, lo, the locomotive started. He reminisced that, while lying close to the track in possible danger, it was fortunate that the two electrically mis-opposed motors had exactly balanced starting torques.
One year later World War I overtook him and he enlisted in the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) as an engineer in the officer candidate program. He finished training at Fort Dix in 1917 as First Lieutenant and sailed to France in 1918 as commander of the 78th Division, 303rd Engineer Train “comprising 125 men, 100 mules, 25 wagons and 12 motor trucks.” They were part of the 78th“Lightning” Division. After slogging eastward across France supplying timber and hardware to the builders of bridges across the river Aire under fire and cover of night near Grand Pré they saw several weeks of active service before the November armistice.
Paris- 1918 (Kerr on right)
After the Armistice Kerr’s unit was sent to wait out the return home in Venarey-les-Laumes where he was billeted with a French family, Chapeau, for the winter and spring of 1919. During this period he became attached to the young son Fernand Chapeau, then about ten, and, over many years, sent gifts at Christmastime and small sums to help with his education [3].
After the War he put together a small booklet “Mules and Motor Trucks in France”; a reminiscence and detailed history of the 303rd.
Mules and Motor Trucks in France (1919)
It was while he was in France that his father (George Francis Atkinson) died of the “Spanish” influenza [4] in Tacoma, Washington in November of 1918, interrupting a mushroom specimen gathering expedition in the vicinity of Mount Rainier. It is my impression that Kerr was given leave to attend the funeral in Raisinville, Michigan—which would have meant at least a month’s absence from his unit in France.
After the war Kerr returned to the Lehigh Valley Coal Co. where he remained until connecting with an old friend and fellow engineer, Roderick Donaldson, who had established a small consulting business in Manhattan and who sought a partner. In 1920 Kerr accepted a partnership and moved to New York City where he lived for several years at 502 West 113th Street.
As I have heard it, late in 1920 Kerr bumped into Elsie Church in the New York City subway. I suppose each must have known of the other’s presence in the city but hadn’t yet formally arranged to get together. Elsie had just taken a job at the Guaranty Trust after a summer of odd jobs at home in Ithaca. Following a springtime courtship they became engaged and were married in Cornell’s Sage Chapel on August 18, 1921.
They honeymooned in France where they revisited Kerr’s Fernand Chapeau “family” in Venarey-les-Laumes; the son, Paul Debrion [5] of his mother’s godson in Clermont-Ferrand; Elsie’s Leandre Legal “family” in Hautvillers; and Elsie’s wartime AEF “canteen” village of Bay-sur-Aube.
Back in Manhattan Kerr and Elsie first lived in a small apartment on Tiemann Place on the Upper West Side, but by the spring of 1923 they were expecting a baby and had found a larger apartment at 502 West 113th Street in the same building where Kerr had lived with his mother before their marriage. Sadly, in July the child—a daughter—was stillborn.
Then, on January 13, 1925 I was born, as my mother liked to say, in “Hell’s Kitchen” where the hospital was located on the East Side in the forties.
Later that year Donaldson gave up his part in the consulting partnership and Kerr, who may have already entertained the idea of continuing on his own, gave that up after having received word from his first cousin Philip Kerr in Boston that his employer, the engineering consulting firm of Jackson & Moreland, was hiring. It was Phil who had been saved from drowning in 1905.
And so in October our family arrived in Boston, and by way of a night in the Beaconsfield Hotel—where, I am told, I spent the night in a bureau drawer—we settled into a second floor apartment in Brookline at 27 Claflin Road on Aspinwall Hill. Kerr began what was to become a successful twenty-five year career at Jackson & Moreland where he soon became a project manager directing the design and construction of electrical power generating plants, oil refineries, and industrial facilities.
On March 1st 1926 my sister Elizabeth Holley Atkinson was born in N.E. Baptist Hospital.
To be continued?
References:
[1] The press of the Wm. J. C. Dulany Co. of Baltimore published a small monograph entitled “William Hall Kerr” containing notes on the funeral services, a biographical sketch , and details of this accident.
[2] Clara Packard Atkinson (1892-1917) died in New York City, a suicide.
[3] After a search I was able to find his son Pierre, a mason, in Venary where I visited on two occasions.
[4] The “Spanish flu” pandemic killed 20 million people worldwide and 550,000 in the United States.
[5] Paul’s father, Henri Debrion, was (un filleul de guerre) of Kerr’s mother—as unpoilu killed in a tragic military rail accident in 1917.
Also: A recent search for the traces of Paul Debrion by Les Poilus de Madrid.
June 15th, Thu. MV Georgic
Les Cascades was in Avon just south of the Palace. We had great arguments about hotels for the summer. Mom and Dad would like what Holley and I hated and vice versa. Holley and I sort of liked the Cascade. Nice graveled yard and garden, games, etc. In the dining room of the Cascade was a painting of the head of an American Indian carrying a grim expression on his face; mother commented that it seemed to her that he had just had an “arrow escape”. Groans all around. 
The picture by the stone dog(s) is among the stereopticon photos that we took with my father’s two-lens camera.
“Played around with Jacques then took our bikes to be fixed. After dinner we sketched awhile and I finished a very good one of the street. Got our bicycles and had supper. Then we read while it rained. Bed.
“Went to Moret and started to sketch the old gates but it poured rain and we went into the church. I did a stained glass window. After lunch we went for a walk and I lost the party and came home. After supper we started “Quentin Durward” by Sir Walter Scott. Bed.
“Daddy went out and I and Holley waited. Daddy came back with passage on the ‘
The Hair Salon is sporadically open, but I am holding off in order to see, tonsorially speaking, what one year will bring. I’m looking a little less like my hoped for Einstein and more and more like Kelly Loeffler of Georgia.
I’m waiting for an e-camera Match has sent me to make Zoom-ing less stressful.
It’s that bending back upward that 
The quality of the food has remained good all along, although sitting down to dinner—alone in ones apartment—is fraught with minor inconveniences like no syrup for the pancakes, no butter for the mashed potatoes, and the impertinent expectations of a kitty-cat.
The national rate of increase is now around 20,000 cases per day, and will stay that way until it increases again as reckless “reopenings” become common.
My grandfather 
During his secondary school years he kept a small but elegant inboard motor launch on Cayuga Lake—the onomatopoetic “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi” after the sound of the engine. I have a series of photo’s of my youthful father off on a picnic in the boat with his family and their black cocker spaniel, Booker T. Washington; which says something about the times and my father’s Southern parental origins. He was always polite, fair, and deferential to Black people although never, I think, able completely to accept them as a natural part of his cultural and professional world.
Clara was a talented artist all of whose work has been lost except for a clever bookplate designed for her brother when he was at Cornell.
Professor Church, his future father-in-law. This period was barely five years after the Wright Brother’s success in 1903 and my father—an early member of the Cornell Aero Club—was active in the designing and building of tethered gliders and towed machines which were tested and “flown” on the open heights to the east of the campus. Cornell (perhaps my father) built one of the earliest wind-powered flight trainers.
In June of 1916 Kerr began work in Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania for the Lehigh Valley Coal Company where he began as assistant to the company electrical engineer. He told a story of a problem with a new electric traction locomotive which, when set up and ready to go, would not start on the advance of the conductor’s controller. He lay down next to the track close under the engine and asked the conductor to try it again, this time hearing a faint “click” on first contact. After some reflection he directed that the polarity of the connections on one of the two traction motors be reversed; and, lo, the locomotive started. He reminisced that, while lying close to the track in possible danger, it was fortunate that the two electrically mis-opposed motors had exactly balanced starting torques.
One year later World War I overtook him and he enlisted in the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) as an engineer in the officer candidate program. He finished training at Fort Dix in 1917 as First Lieutenant and sailed to France in 1918 as commander of the 78th Division, 303rd Engineer Train “comprising 125 men, 100 mules, 25 wagons and 12 motor trucks.” They were part of the 78th “Lightning” Division. After slogging eastward across France supplying timber and hardware to the builders of bridges across the river Aire under fire and cover of night near Grand Pré they saw several weeks of active service before the November armistice.
William C. Atkinson 