"Renaissance Child", 9x12, oil on linen-not for sale
I have had many people ask to purchase my painting of the little girl above. Truth be known, I can't bear to part with her. I have asked myself why that is. She is certainly not the best painting that I've ever done. But it's that look on her face that makes me certain that I've got to keep her.
I have always had a fascination for things of the past, and this little child in her bonnet is a wisp of history past. I own a diary that was written in 1917 by a child named Mary Elizabeth Althouse, and I'd like to share the story of that diary with you. Increasingly I have become saddened by the state of today's world- and thinking of the gentler time that Mary lived in, just helps to accentuate how far we have gone from that gentler era.
Unlike Mary, the children of today know nothing of crocheting, tatting, and helping out at Orphan's homes. They are glued to their cellphones and TVs and Headsets and communicate via texting, rather than talking. Mary's childhood was an era that preceded two World Wars, global genocides, and genetically modified food. The diary was written one year before one of the greatest plagues in history- a plague which wiped out 50 million people! So this diary, in my mind, and Mary's prim and proper little life, was the cusp of a paradigm shift in life as we now know it.
The following tale of Mary's diary was a 6 year old blog entry into my old blog, (now private) and a phone call last night took me back into the past, so please forgive me for my nostalgia. And if you like my painting of the Renaissance Child, I do hope that you'll visit the Bold Brush Painting contest
here, and vote that you like it!
I wrote this entry back in December 2005, in my old blog, "Inside the Gilded Cage," and I had dozens of comments from kind people who enjoyed the story of Mary Elizabeth Althouse's dairy.
Since I never followed up with another entry about this story, I decided it was about time to do so. If you read the entry back then, you’ll probably want to read the postscript at the bottom, even if you skip the entry.
I grew up in a little Quaker town outside of Philadelphia called Lansdowne.
In the 1980's, I was the busy mother of 3 active little boys, and I rarely had an opportunity to visit my old hometown which was located about an hour’s drive away.
My husband, however, went there almost every day.
Ironically, he worked in that little town, although he had never heard of it until the day that he met me.
Anyhow, you’re probably wondering why I’m telling you this, so I’d best get on with it.
One day about 25-30 years ago, my husband was out walking through Lansdowne’s tree-lined streets on his lunch hour and he came across a woman that was having a garage sale on the front lawn of her big Victorian home.
My husband, knowing that I adore old treasures, picked up a little book which he brought home to me that night. It was titled "The Wanamaker Diary, 1917".
In lovely penmanship across the front of the book was written:
Mary Elizabeth Althouse, Sellersville, Bucks County, Pa.My eyes lit up when I saw that it was a diary, and I quickly read through the pages that documented Mary’s everyday life like a sponge absorbing water.
The first 150 pages of the diary contained Wanamaker business ads, poems, floorplans of every theatre in Philadelphia, and some fascinating information about Indians, dangerous roads in Mexico, the new method of color-coding bands on highways in America according to the direction in which they ran, and how to grow bulbs indoors. There were also all sorts of advertisements from many wholesale stores and businesses, many of which sold their wares through the elite department store called John Wanamaker. That store and its sister department store, Strawbridge and Clothier, were both located on Market Street in downtown Philadelphia, just a few blocks from City Hall, where Billy Penn stares out over the city through eyes shaded from the harsh city lights by the brim of his great wide Quaker hat.
Below is an ad for ‘Skoonas’, the new paper cup sold for soda, as well as an ad for the largest manufacturers of commercial motor vehicles in America in 1917.
But the magic that I derived from that little book had nothing to do with advertisements, as innocuous as they were so long ago. I was riveted to the daily writings of 12 year old Mary Elizabeth Althouse, daughter of Elmer and Margaret Althouse of Sellersville, Pa.
Many years passed after the first reading of Mary’s diary, and I somehow managed to totally forget about it until we moved to Florida in Thanksgiving 2004. As the moving truck pulled out of the driveway, I was suddenly faced with the daunting prospect of trying to find a new home for dozens of boxes of books that towered towards the high ceilings of my new home.
My books have always been like special friends to me, a part of my life that I wanted to keep close by me forever and ever.
My last home had floor to ceiling bookcases in almost every room of that very large house, so finding a comfy spot for each and every book I’ve ever owned was never a problem. But as I stared in frustration at the dozens of precious books that would need to be donated to a library for lack of space, my eyes suddenly caught upon that old musty red book that I had forgotten about over the years.
That is how I picked up little Mary’s story once again and began to read through those pages with a brand new set of eyes and emotions.
For me, the most fascinating aspect of the experience was in reading about how a 12-year-old child spent her days back in 1917.
I found it utterly amazing that she invariably ended up in bed at around 11:30PM or 12 AM every night after a day that was chock full of activities that didn’t include TV, the Internet, movies, organized team sports for girls, or visits to the King of Prussia mall! I’d certainly have thought that kids back then were in bed by 8 o’clock out of sheer boredom!
Mary warmed my heart because she seemed to have been an old-fashioned girl much like another Mary I knew all too well-me- very studious, musical and creative. I changed my name to Maryanne when I was about 20 because I didn't want to deal with the enormity of having the same name as the mother of God, but my birth name is actually Mary. (I blame that one on the nuns who taught me, who always told me how lucky I was to have been named after the Virgin Mother;0) )
Anyhow, her time was totally filled with school, studies, music lessons, church activities, tatting, embroidering, painting, drawing, a scrapbook, a stamp collection, crocheting, making a pocketbook for mama, candy for friends and playing rook with her brother Sam when he came home from his college (Cornell?) in Ithaca.
As I devoured each day of her life in the year 1917 for additional clues about her life I was struck by the following observation.
This child was obviously from a somewhat privileged family, since the family’s frequent jaunts to the theatre in Philadelphia and shopping outings to Allentown were unusual in an era where auto trips were likely a luxury. Yet, beyond those hints of a refined lifestyle, there was much within the scope of her daily activities that painted a picture of a child who was not merely cultured and well-educated, but who also had to contribute to household chores that included lawn mowing, flower planting, ironing clothes and baking goodies for the preacher’s new tenants, as well as going with mama to visit the sick and elderly and orphans.
This demonstrated to me that a privileged child need not be just an entitled child, as much of today’s affluent kids seem to be.
I also observed that Mary wrote almost nothing about her own feelings, thoughts and opinions. Her entry on Thursday, January 4th, 1917 surprised me:
Fair weather today. Went to school. Took my music lesson after school. Mrs. Krug was here for supper. Cousin Helen’s baby suffocated. Spent the evening at home, crocheting and studying. Retired at half past ten.How strange that she didn’t comment about her feelings regarding the death of the baby! Was it because a woman’s thoughts and opinions meant so little in those days? She recorded the ritualistic performance of her daily mundane feminine tasks of sewing, tatting, baking, etc. with a conscientiousness that would be unusual in a twelve-year-old today. Yet she failed to express one iota of sadness or concern about her second cousin’s untimely death!
Why???????????
Fascinated by the fact that Mary would be over 100 years old if she were still alive today, I began doing research on Mary and her family on the Internet, hoping to discover more clues about her history.
At first I’d awaken at 3 in the morning thinking about her and wondering what type of adulthood she’d had, whether she’d married or become a spinster, and if she had had any children of her own. Suddenly I became determined to find out all that I could about her ancestors and possible survivors and I searched Online for clues regarding her past and her ancestry.
I became somewhat haunted at night by visions of Mary Althouse. Perhaps the essence of her gentle spirit is with me even now, showing me aspects of a much more tranquil and peaceful era of living, in spite of the world war that was quickly gathering momentum within the States at the time, and which she mentioned ever so casually toward the end of her diary. The peacefulness of her lifestyle was evident despite a lack of creature comforts like microwaves and automatic washing machines, and IPODS, and electric mixers for those cookie bakes that Mary had regularly with Cora, whomever she was….
To conclude, as I discover more about Mary, I shall continue to share what I have come to discover.
Postscript: Sadly, I reached a conclusion in regard to discovering whether Mary had any surviving ancestors. I discovered that she married a man named Lloyd Goman in 1931.
They had a child in 1940, and named her Diana Lee. The little girl died 2 years later. Her brother Samuel also married but had no children. There are no ancestors of close descent that I can discover. The entire family is buried in St. Michael’s cemetery in Sellersville, Pa.
I went back to Sellersville in the winter of 2005 to the cemetery. My husband and I walked for at least an hour in the bitter cold wind, searching for Mary's grave. Finally, when we were just about to give up we found the graves of Mary and her family, including the tiny child that passed away. It was a sobering moment- the cold chilling us to the bone and the beautiful steeple of St. Michael's church rising majestically from the twilight on the hillside behind the cemetery.
The past can teach us many lessons, but do we ever learn? Increasingly I worry about the children of today, and my own children's generation. Let us hope that they will learn some lessons from history so that they can live peaceful, happy lives.
"Strasbourg Bridge Petunias", 14x18, oil on canvas-$1000 plus $15 s/h
