Tales of old Nantucket: Grace Hall Hemingway.

Booker, Margaret Moore

INTRODUCTION

GRACE HALL HEMINGWAY (1872-1951) was an accomplished concert singer and voice teacher, and late in life also a proficient painter. However, many would say her primary claim to fame is as the mother of the celebrated writer Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961). Grace was a pivotal person in Ernest's life, because, as author Bernice Kert observed, "he was so much like herin creative, driven to excel...." (11). Grace's artistic pursuits, and her belief that creativity plays an important role in people's lives, clearly influenced her son Ernest, and his five siblings, all of whom excelled in the creative arts. As Ernest's sister Madelaine later recalled, their mother was "the buoyant, creative one in the family, much like Ernie" (cited in Kert 37).

Much has been written of Grace's musical abilities, but her skills as an artist, and as a writer, have not been fully explored. In addition, the important role Nantucket Island, thirty miles off the coast of Massachusetts, played in her artistic life has not been fully researched. The island served as a source of inspiration, and as a place where she felt free to pursue her painting. During a 1937 visit she wrote in a letter to a friend, from the Anchor Inn: "I am having a joyous time, am now on my 4th picture. I shall leave for home in a months time, as am scrambling to catch all this beauty" (To Dorothy). It was also on Nantucket, in the late 1930s, that Grace felt encouraged to work on yet another creative aspect of her life: writing. She wrote notes for stories she collectively called "Tales of Old Nantucket, which she hoped to publish someday with her own paintings as illustrations.(1)

It was not until 1924, when Grace was fifty-two, that she decided to take up painting. (Her mother Caroline Hancock was also an artist.) She took classes in Oak Park, Illinois, and at the Art Institute of Chicago, where she learned by copying paintings in the collection. She also studied with artist Pauline Palmer (1867-1938), and with such renowned Chicago painters as Leon Kroll (1884-1974) and Karl Buehr (active 1900-1935). Later she took classes at the Florida Art School, and Bay View Summer Art School in Michigan.(2) She transformed the large music room in her Oak Park home into a studio, where she primarily worked in the oil medium, and signed her paintings "Hall Hemingway."(3) Painting soon became an all-consuming passion for Grace, and eventually enabled her to partially support herself, especially after her husband's death in December 1928. She would receive wide recognition during her lifetime for her talent as an artist: she exhibited her work in more than thirty solo shows, was invited to exhibit her work at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, and served as director of the Oak Park and River Forest Art League for six years.(4)

As Grace's painting career gained her accolades, she shared her achievements with her son, Ernest. In 1927 she wrote a letter to him in Paris, asking him to investigate the art scene there, and to send her some art catalogues. She also wrote proudly: "Did I tell you I had been voted into the Chicago Society of Artists. I am also a member of the `All Illinois' and the Modernist group ... The teachers at the Art Institute say I have instinctive design" (cited in Reynolds 104-5). Grace was doing well indeed: she was selling some of her works for as much as $200, and in 1927 she was included in the prestigious "Annual Exhibition of Works by Artists of Chicago and Vicinity," at the Art Institute of Chicago.(5)

In 1928 Grace traveled to the Southwest with her brother Leicester, who drove her into the desert to paint scenes of the landscape. Nine years later, in August of 1937, she gave a lecture on Nantucket Island entitled "Travel and Painting in the Great Southwest" for an informal club called "The Neighbors." She illustrated her talk with her paintings from 1928, and at the end she shared with the audience her philosophy about talent and creative work. "The only thing in life that gives real happiness is creative work, because that is partnership with The Great Creator.... The happiest people I know, (and most of them live on the borderline of poverty) are the people doing creative work." She also told her listeners "Talent is just loving a thing enough to work at it.... We all have some of the creative ability and if we refuse to give it an outlet, we live an aborted life" ("Travel and Painting"). It is easy to imagine Grace imparting this same advice to her own children, when they were growing up in suburban Chicago.

The 1937 excursion to Nantucket, was not Grace's first journey to the island. She began visiting in the late 1800s, when she was a young girl. A wonderful photograph of the Hall family, showing Grace in a full-length bathing costume, documents one of these early sojourns. After marrying Ed Hemingway (1871-1928) in 1896, and settling in Oak Park, Grace made five junkets to Nantucket, beginning in 1909, planning to bring each of her children the year he or she turned age eleven (Beegel 20). Grace believed that in a large family it was important for a parent to have time alone with each child. She brought Ernest in the summer of 1910, after which he made his first effort at writing fiction--a short story entitled "My First Sea Vouge [sic]" (Beegel 28). During these visits, Grace was active in island life, attending meetings for women's rights, performing musical concerts, and socializing with artists and writers.

After her children had grown, Grace continued to make periodic journeys to the island, and, appears to have had a particularly fruitful visit in September 1939. She drove her brand: new Ford from River Forest, Illinois, to Woods Hole, and took the ferry over to Nantucket, staying on island for several weeks (Jim Sanford). She kept a road diary for the trip that mostly focuses on expenses, but does give some clues about her time on the island (Jim Sanford). She stayed at Mrs. Edward Evans's home (paying $7 to $10 a week), heard playwright Austin Strong (1881-1952) speak at a church function, went "house sight-seeing" with artist/real estate agent Gladys Wood (1886-1971), socialized with the Gruards, and on 15 September, finished her fourteenth painting of Nantucket. She mentions the titles of some of the works: "Sand & Sea," "The Surf," "A Rose," and "The Moor[s]."

It may have been during this 1939 trip that Grace came up with the idea for "Tales of Old" Nantucket, and began collecting stories and creating illustrations.(6) By this date Grace was in great demand for her "inspirational art" lectures, and, according to her grandson, Jim Sanford, had been taking classes in writing short stories. Writing was clearly another creative aspect of her life. In her 1928 lecture on Nantucket she maintained "It is easy to write, the more you do it, the easier it comes" ("Travel and Painting").

Grace typed her notes for "Tales of Old Nantucket" on seventy-two small envelopes, and also wrote out drafts of the tales--at least one typed version and possibly one handwritten version.(7) As mentioned previously, she intended to publish' the tales with her paintings of Nantucket as illustrations. She apparently also shared these stories during a program she presented to the Oak Park, Illinois Nineteenth Century, Club, entitled "Tales of Old Nantucket In Oil Paintings," on 14 October 1940. In a review of the program, a reporter wrote that Grace held the members of the club "spellbound" as she told the story of the quaint island, in a lecture that was "a product of the story-teller's art illustrated with pictures."(8) After she spoke, Grace invited the audience to view twenty-two paintings of the island that she had brought along, which were probably by her hand.

Grace's desire to publish "Tales of Old Nantucket" was more than likely inspired by previously published, illustrated volumes of Nantucket anecdotes and history, including Eva C. G. Folger's The Glacier's Girl (1911), illustrated with paintings by artist James Walter Folger (1851-1918); Henry S. Wyer's Spun-Yarn From Old Nantucket (1914), illustrated with paintings, drawings, and photographs; and William O. Stevens's Nantucket, The Far-Away Island (1936), illustrated with Stevens's own drawings and paintings. The fact that these books were out of print by the late 1930s may have prompted Grace's desire to publish her own Nantucket tales, to present them and preserve them for future generations of readers.

Unfortunately, Grace's typescript draft for "Tales of Old Nantucket" includes the title of only one of the paintings she was intending to use as an illustration. Entitled "Humane House" it accompanies a humorous story about the Salvage of wrecks on Nantucket by pious islanders. Humane houses of refuge--small shelters placed at strategic places where shipwrecks were frequent--were built on the island beginning in the late 1700s in an effort to save the lives of shipwrecked crews and passengers. Grace depicted one of the four remaining humane houses that can still be seen today on Tuckernuck, in Quidnet, at 21 South Water Street, and at 18 Baxter Road in Siasconset.

The notes Grace typed on envelopes reveal some of the sources for her stories, and offer some interesting editorial comments. Grace was evidently interested in telling the stories of Nantucket's independent, strong-willed women. Her list of the island's "good" women of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries includes Maria Mitchell (1818-1889), America's first female astronomer; Abiah Folger (1667-1752), Benjamin Franklin's mother; Lucretia Mott (1793-1880), abolitionist and leader in the women's rights movement; and Mary Coffin Starbuck (1645-1717), the island's first shopkeeper and one of the most famous Quaker preachers of her day.

Grace begins her "Tales of Old Nantucket" with a short introduction to the island's history, followed by a retelling of the popular and romantic legend of the Newbegins. The story is partially told in several books, however it is from the complete version as told by Mary Catherine Lee in An Island Plant, A Nantucket Story (1896), that Grace extracted the tale. Condensing the story considerably, she follows Lee's story line closely, with much of the dialogue and descriptive material copied verbatim. In her type-written notes on envelopes, Grace made specific references to the "half-wit" father of the Newbegin daughters, in effect blaming him for the girls becoming "weird and estranged from the community." She also focused on the fact that after a "one-kiss" romance with the same whaling captain, each of the sisters sacrificed her life in waiting forty years for his return.

In the next completed story of the typescript "Tales" Grace describes the infamous early island entrepreneur Keziah Coffin (1723-1790). She lists the main source for the story as Joseph Hart's 1834 novel, Miriam Coffin or The Whale-fishermen, in which the character Miriam is modeled after Keziah. Careful examination of the text reveals that Grace also garnered some of her anecdotes about the heroine from other sources, including William Stevens. In particular, she copied the last line from his chapter on Miriam exactly: "It must have been a hard fall downstairs to break that proud neck." In her typed notes on envelopes, Grace expresses her admiration for Miriam, and complains that novelist Joseph Hart "was no feminist," for recording that Miriam's husband returned from his long whaling voyage to "tell her off" for ruining his business prospects. Grace states that Miriam's husband would not have dared to stand up to her in that way.(9)

An additional story is entitled "Gull Island" and recounts the legend of Lily Pond and how a young girl named Love Paddock accidentally drained it. Although the original story is from an unpublished manuscript by Obed Macy, in the Nantucket Historical Association's manuscript collection, Grace could have read full versions of the story in both Eva Folger's The Glacier's Gift 1911), and Alexander Starbuck's The History of Nantucket (1924).(10) Grace researched additional historical details about the Paddock house and Gull Island, and she included her own editorial comment when she says that Love Paddock, by telling the truth about the draining of Lily Pond on her deathbed, "relieved her soul of its one secret fault."

The typewritten draft of "Tales of Old Nantucket" also includes four short anecdotes, perhaps intended to be the kernels of additional tales. The story of Alice (Larsen) Stackpole's cradle washing ashore "at the foot of the lighthouse just in time" was probably gleaned from Alice's husband, Edouard Stackpole, who often told the tale when he met visitors at Sankaty Lighthouse on Nantucket in the 1930s (Stackpole). However, Grace got the story slightly mixed-up --the event did not happen off Nantucket's shores, but rather on 30 May 1912, at Thatcher's Island off Cape Ann, where Alice's father, Eugene Larsen, Was light-keeper, prior to taking over at Sankaty Light in 1914.(11)

Perhaps Edouard Stackpole was also the source for the next two stories Grace describes, about the wreck on the south shore that sent a congregation rushing to salvage the wreck, and the story of Annie Bodfish, who washed ashore as a baby, and was named after a shipwreck. Upon investigation, the latter story appears to have been purely fiction. There is no record of a ship called "Bodfish" having been wrecked off Nantucket's shores, and according to the obituary written for Annie, who died in 1940 at the age of eighty-seven, she was the daughter of Joseph O. Bodfish, who lived in Nantucket on Union Street ("Death of Miss Bodfish").

In the next portion of her draft, Grace tells us that Austin Strong (1881-1952), a successful playwright and author, and the grand-stepson of poet and essayist Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), told her a "couple of charming new tales." Strong, who spent several months each year on Nantucket, where he had a boathouse on Old North Wharf, and a house on Quince Street, gained a reputation on the island as a delightful storyteller. Wearing his yachting cap, he would visit friends around town and share tales about everything from his youth living in the Samoan Islands in the Stevenson household, to events in Nantucket history. In 1927 he presented "The Nantucket Follies" featuring sketches about island life written, directed, and in some instances acted by Strong.

Grace first met the playwright in September 1910, when she brought her son Ernest to the island. She recorded their interview proudly in her letters to family at home (Beegel 26). As she noted in her draft, it was during one evening together on a subsequent trip to Nantucket that the playwright conveyed two short anecdotes to her: one about a whaling captain's wife who rejected her husband's gift of "green" china dishes, and another about an inebriated ship's mate who forgot to write up the day's log. (The latter story can also be found in The Nantucket Scrap Basket, compiled by William F. Macy and Roland B. Hussey in 1916.) One can imagine the two also discussed topics relating to their artistic endeavors, for in addition to writing, Strong was known for his caricatures of island residents and visitors.

It will take more research to piece together the book Grace envisioned, in part because her Nantucket paintings are scattered among descendants. However, it is a worthwhile project, as it will give further proof of Grace's enormous creative abilities. As her grandson Jim Sanford explained in a recent telephone conversation, Grace "really was a phenomenal woman. She was a real professional in her painting, and in her music, and in her lecturing, and in her writing. She really had many facets and took them all seriously" Grace passed on her creative instincts to her children, even that famous son of hers.

NOTES

The author wishes to thank John and Jim Sanford, and Carol Sanford Coolidge, for generously sharing their family papers and family history.

(1.) Grace's grandsons (nephews of Ernest Hemingway), John and Jim Sanford, believe this is what she intended to do. Phone interviews between John Sanford, and Jim Sanford, and Margaret Moore Booker, January 1999.

(2.) She also studied with Carl R. Krafft, William Owen, Henry G. Foote, Dudley C, raft Watson, Anna Lee Stacey, and Margaret Hittle Chapin. See Almco Galleries, Chicago, Illinois, exhibition notice, collection of Jim Sanford, copy in Egan Institute of Maritime Studies archive, Nantucket, MA.

(3.) According to Grace Hemingway's grandson, Jim Sanford, she worked on "heavy board"--masonite and other artist boards (boards being more portable), and on canvas.

(4.) She also exhibited at Bryden's Galleries, Hyde Park Community House, Bay View Art Exhibit, House Beautiful Exposition, Marshall Field's Galleries, Oak Park Club, Oak Park Art Center, and Almco Galleries in Chicago. See Almco Galleries exhibition notice.

(5.) In January 1927, she wrote to her son Ernest that she was being paid $200 for her landscapes (Reynolds 104-5).

(6.) The phrases in some stories are drawn directly from William O. Stevens' book Nantucket, The Far-Away Island, which was published in 1936, so she certainly collected the stories after that date.

(7.) The notes on envelopes are in the collection of the Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin. The typewritten version is in the collection of John Sanford, and his brother Jim Sanford believes the hand-written version is a part of his collection.

(8.) This information comes from Charlotte Ponder, who e-mailed me the contents of a 17 October 1940 article titled "Nantucket Houses and Its People" from the Oak Park newspaper Oak Leaves.

(9.) All references to the notes she typed on envelopes are courtesy of Professor Max West-brook of the University of Texas English Department, who took notes from the original envelopes in the Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin. I am grateful to Susan Beegel for sharing the notes with me.

(10.) Thanks to Nathaniel Philbrick for the Obed Macy reference.

(11.) The cradle washed ashore, possibly from a shipwreck, and was painted by Eugene Larsen It was used not only for Alice, but also used for her son Renny and his sister, and for his sister's children and grandchildren (Stackpole).

WORKS CITED

Beegel, Susan. "The Young Boy and the Sea: Ernest Hemingway's Visit to Nantucket Island." Historic Nantucket 32.3 (January 1985): 18-30.

Exhibition Notice. Almco Galleries, Chicago, IL. Collection of Jim Sanford and Egan Institute of Maritime Studies Archive. Nantucket, MA.

"Death of Miss Bodfish." Inquirer and Mirror [Nantucket]. 2 November 1940.

Folger, Eva C.G. The Glacier's Gift. New Haven: Tuttle, Morehouse, and Taylor, 1911.

Hemingway, Grace Hall. Letter to Dorothy. 18 August 1937. Collection of the Historical Society of Oak Park and River Forest. Oak Park, IL.

--. "Tales of Old Nantucket" Corrected typescript. Collection of John Sanford.

--. "Tales of Old Nantucket." Notes on envelopes. Humanities Research Center. University of Texas, Austin.

--. "Travel and Painting in the Great Southwest." Lecture notes. Collection of John Sanford.

Kert, Bernice. The Hemingway Women. New York: W.W. Norton, 1983.

Lee, Mary Catherine. An Island Plant, A Nantucket Story. Nantucket: Goldenrod Literary and Debating Society, 1896.

Macy, William F. and Roland B. Hussey. The Nantucket Scrap Basket. Nantucket: Inquirer and Mirror Press, 1916.

Ponder, Charlotte. E-mail to the author. 2 March 1999.

Reynolds, Michael. Hemingway: The American Homecoming. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992.

Sanford, Jim. Telephone interviews with the author. January 1999 and 9 February 1999.

Sanford, John. Telephone interview with the author. January 1999.

Stackpole, Renny. Letter to the author. 26 January 1999. Egan Institute of Maritime Studies Archive. Nantucket, MA.

Starbuck, Alexander. The History of Nantucket. Boston: C.E. Goodspeed, 1924.

Stevens, William O. Nantucket, The Far-Away Island. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1936.

Wyer, Henry S. Spun-Yarn From Old Nantucket. Nantucket: self pub., 1914.

MARGARET MOORE BOOKER

Egan Institute of Maritime Studies

"Tales of Old Nantucket"

Grace Hall Hemingway with an Introduction by Margaret Moore Booker That Hemingway's mother was a gifted singer and musician is well-known; her talents as a painter and writer are less studied. Here, thanks to the generosity of her grandchildren John Sanford, Jim Sanford, and Carol Sanford Coolidge, we present for the first time her unfinished short story cycle, "Tales of Old Nantucket," a work she intended to illustrate with her paintings. Margaret Moore Booker, art historian and curator of the Egan Institute for Maritime Studies, provides an introduction.