MRS. FIELDS MUST HAVE SERVED A FEW COOKIES

John Singer Sargent's portrait of Annie Fields

 I recently acquired a biography of James T. Fields, the Boston publisher who printed the works of most of America’s great writers of the 19^th Century. The fly-leaf of the book states that his second wife, Annie Adams Fields, was Boston’s greatest hostess of the day.

It occurred to me that perhaps the currently popular “Mrs. Fields’ Cookies” might have originated from this famous hostess (after all, Dolley Madison has cakes named after her because of her renown as a hostess, so this idea wasn’t so far-fetched). I looked it up, but there is no relation. The “Mrs. Fields” of cookie fame is a contemporary American woman by the name of Fields, who started her chocolate-chip cookie business in 1977.

But the 19^th Century Mrs. Fields is an interesting person in her own right. Born in Boston on June 6, 1834, she married James Thomas Fields, a widower, in 1854. The match was quite suitable – she had literary interests and skills to match those of her husband, whose firm – Ticknor and Fields – was the most distinguished publisher’s imprint in America. Fields consulted with his wife about the selection of works that he was considering for publication; he valued her judgment and was concerned with her point of view, as representative of that of the American woman. A deep love and respect grew between Annie and her romantic “Jamie.”

James T. Fields

James, who was also editor of The Atlantic Monthly for some time, wooed authors from all over the country, and Annie entertained them in their home. Annie not only nurtured these literary figures for intellectual benefit, but she also provided considerable support to those with talent. Her encouragement meant much to those who received it.

James, whose firm associated with Boston’s Old Corner Bookstore which came to be known by its patrons as “Parnassus Corner,” established close business relationships with the likes of Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Whittier, James Russell Lowell, Emerson, Thoreau, Julia Ward Howe, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Bret Harte. Business is often sealed with bonhomie, and these people regularly engaged in social intercourse at the Fields’ home on Charles Street, known for the finest in hospitality.

Ticknor and Fields also published internationally famous authors, and these writers attended Annie’s soirees and salons as well. Among them were Tennyson, Browning, Kingsley, Charles Reade, Thackeray, and Dickens.

A party at the Fields’ house must have been quite an affair. Imagine a parlor game of charades with the likes of Dickens and Hawthorne!

Old Corner Bookstore in Boston

Annie’s ability was not limited to hospitality. She was interested in women’s issues. She was a writer, a philanthropist, and a social reformer. She supported abolition and the women’s right to vote movement. She held that “women’s emancipation” could be achieved in a context of traditional women’s roles and cultural femininity. She compiled a biography of Harriet Beecher Stowe despite the controversy over the “the little woman who wrote the book that started this great [civil] war” (as Lincoln greeted Stowe in 1862). She founded the Holly Tree Inns, coffeehouses which served affordable, nutritious meals, and the Lincoln Street Home which provided safe, inexpensive lodging for single working women. 

Of her writing: she wrote poetry and plays, and edited collections of letters and diaries.  She is currently best known for her short biographical sketches, considered sharp and decisive portraits, of leading literary figures from both sides of the Atlantic.

After James died in 1881, Annie remained active in the literary world. During her husband’s life, she had become good friends with Sarah Orne Jewett of South Berwick, Maine, whose works James had published. Jewett had become her closest friend, and the two of them lived together until Sarah’s death in 1909.

Annie Adams Fields died on January 5, 1915.

SOURCES

“Parnassus Corner: A Life of James T. Fields, Publisher to the Victorians,” W. S. Tryon (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company) 1963.

Wikipedia: Annie Adams Fields http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Adams_Fields

Matt & Andrei Koymasky: The Living Room: Biographies http://andrejkoymasky.com/liv/fam/biof1/fields01.html

American Literary Blog: Birth of Annie Adams Fields http://americanliteraryblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/birth-of-annie-adams-fields.html

IMAGES

Painting of Annie Adams Fields by John Singer Sargent, Boston Athenaeum Fine Arts Collection

Old Corner Bookstore, location of Ticknor & Fields, courtesy of Wikipedia

Wikimedia: James T. Fields http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:James_T_Fields_albumen.jpg

“OLD IRONSIDES” A REBEL SHIP? - May 8, 1861

George Smith Blake

When the Civil War erupted in April 1861, Captain George S. Blake studied the position of the U.S. Naval Academy (USNA) in Annapolis, MD, and quickly realized that the school was indefensible should the rebels attack it.

According to a New York Times article “Early Days of the War,” published on January 13, 1897, USNA Superintendent Blake wrote to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, pointing out the weaknesses of the school’s position. Maryland, wavering over secession, had a strong pro-South population; ripples of unrest throughout Maryland became quite strong after Fort Sumter had surrendered; rebel sympathizers in Annapolis began to proclaim publicly that the USS Constitution (then a training ship at the academy) should be the first ship of war to hoist the flag of the Confederacy; the only forces Blake had at command were his students, most of whom were little boys, and many of whom were citizens of the seceded states. To add to Blake’s problems, the telegraph office was operated by rebel-friendly hands, compromising Blake’s communications with Welles; everything sent by wire was reported to a local secession committee.

Blake proposed that should the USNA come under attack, he would render useless the guns onshore, destroy any ammunition that he couldn’t take with him, embark the students on the USS Constitution, and either defend the ship in the harbor or sail to Philadelphia or New York.

Welles responded shortly with a missive to “defend the Constitution at all hazards. If it cannot be done, destroy her.” The rebel navy was new and small, and such a prize as "Old Ironsides," old but quite seaworthy, would be quite a feather in the Confederate Navy’s cap.

US Naval Academy, Annapolis, 1853

Blake received orders on April 27, 1861, to transfer the academy to Newport, RI. Immediately, the whole school set about to load "Old Ironsides" with the “library, instruments, philosophical apparatus, the naval trophies in the lyceum, and other property.” The students, instructors, and staff stowed their personal gear, and the old War of 1812 frigate sailed away. On May 8, 1861, the famous vessel cruised into Newport Harbor, RI, where she remained for the duration of the war. On May 13, Captain Blake reported the successful transfer of the school to Secretary Welles.

Early on during her Newport residence, "Old Ironsides" served not only as a training ship but as mess hall, classrooms, and housing for the students. As the war progressed, the Navy soon recognized that onshore housing and facilities were necessary, and Blake was instructed to organize this.  Soon, various hotels were leased to serve as administrative offices, classrooms, and quarters for some of the students.  Those students (upperclassmen) lucky enough to live onshore referred to their quarters as “Paradise” and those unlucky enough (underclassmen) to remain on board the school ships referred to their quarters as “Purgatory.”

John Pentangelo, in his Civil War Navy Sesquicentennial blog, offers a first-person account by Park Benjamin of the Class of 1867 of living conditions in Purgatory: “Nothing could be more desolate than the outlook to the ‘plebe’ whose first experience brought him to these school-ships. During the day he sat and studied at one of the desks, long rows of which extended up and down the gun-deck, and occasionally marched ashore to the windy recitation rooms, where he contracted bad colds along with knowledge of arithmetic. The commissary department was always more or less out of gear, and the meals eaten in the blackness of the berth-deck by the light of a few ill-smelling oil lamps were wretched.”

USS Constitution - sail plan

One of the other school ships was The America, the first America’s Cup winner.

Although the USNA returned to Annapolis in August 1865, the Navy had spent enough time in Newport to realize the value of the place for maritime activity. The Navy subsequently located a torpedo-testing laboratory on Goat Island in the harbor, and built the Naval Training Station in Newport.  The Naval War College was established there as well. For decades, Newport was a major port for Navy ships.

SOURCES

The Civil War Navy Sesquicentennial Blog - “Annapolis Comes to Newport,” by John Pentangelo, May 6, 2011  http://civilwarnavy150.blogspot.com/2011/05/annapolis-comes-to-newport.html

12 Meter Charters, Newport, RI  http://www.12metercharters.com/newportsailing.asp

“Early Days of the War: Removal of Naval Academy from Annapolis,” New York Times, January 13, 1897.

United States Naval Academy: Naval Academy Band: History   http://www.usna.edu/USNABand/history.htm

CNIC//Naval Station Newport: History  http://www.cnic.navy.mil/Newport/About/History/index.htm

PHOTOS

George S. Blake: http://navy.togetherweserved.com/usn/servlet/tws.webapp.WebApp?cmd=ShadowBoxProfile&type=Person&ID=550497

US Naval Academy lithograph: “View of the Naval Academy,” New York Illustrated News, March 1853.

USS Constitution sail plan: Department of the Navy http://www.history.navy.mil/danfs/c13/constitution.htm

BIRTH OF GAS TURBINE INVENTOR – April 20, 1860

Charles Gordon Curtis  (1860-1953)

Charles Curtis crosses our path again, but this is not the Native American Vice President I wrote about last month.  This time, it’s Charles Gordon Curtis, who must have been camera-shy, for I find only a couple of photographs of him available online.

Charles Gordon Curtis was born in Boston, MA, on April 20, 1860. He received a degree in civil engineering in 1881 from Columbia University. He then received a law degree in 1883 from the New York Law School, after which he spent 8 years in patent law. His engineering interests superseded his law interests in 1891, when he left his law practice and organized the C&C Electrical Motor Company which manufactured electric motors and fans.

He was intrigued by steam power, and began studying the steam turbine design developed by Swedish engineer Gustav de Laval in 1882, as well as those of A. C. E. Rateau (French), and Charles A. Parsons (British). Curtis saw limitations in previous designs, primarily in velocity compounding, which was the loss in speed (and therefore power) of the steam as it passed from inlet to outlet, reducing the machine’s efficiency. Curtis believed that he could develop a model to circumvent this problem. He patented his idea in 1896, but then had to find some big financial backing to develop the machine. After refusals from several companies, Curtis finally received interest in 1897 from Edwin W. Rice, then vice-president of manufacturing and engineering for General Electric Company (an up-and-coming company that was incorporated only five years earlier). In the agreement between Curtis and G. E., Curtis received the facilities, resources, and staff to develop his steam turbine, and G. E. had the rights to manufacture it.

It took several models, several tests, and several years, with setbacks and failures typical to product development, before the first practical, commercially viable Curtis steam turbine came off the production line in 1901, under the supervision of William Le Roy Emmet, a newly assigned production engineer previously in charge of G.E.’s Lighting Department.

US Patent Office - Patent No. 635,919

First, the Curtis 500-kW turbine was produced, followed by the Curtis 1500-kW, 5000-kW, and 15,000-kW turbines. Emmet developed and produced several models, many of which were still in use at various facilities throughout the country as late as 1990. The most efficient models were vertical, requiring one-tenth the space and weighing one-eighth as much as machines they replaced. Because these steam turbines generated tremendous power in a small space, they shoved into obsolescence the commonly used reciprocating steam engines previously available. They were foremost in stimulating the growth of modern electrical generation in large central stations nationwide.

Meanwhile, having met his commitment to G. E., Curtis went his way, and began work on the natural gas-powered turbine, which he patented in 1899 (Patent No. US 635,919). This was the first gas turbine design in the country, and Curtis soon had an efficient, functioning machine commercially available. (Only two gas turbine designs around the world preceded his, one in 1791 in England, and one in 1872 in Germany. Neither was developed into a successful machine.) Over the next thirty years, he continued to apply improvements to this generator, as well as to the steam turbine. He is also credited for developing the propulsion mechanism used for certain naval torpedoes, and held many patents for diesel-engine improvements.

Curtis consulted with many inventors and engineers of his day, including Thomas A. Edison and Hungarian-born mechanical engineer Paul Henry Schweitzer, who taught engineering at Pennsylvania State College from 1923 to 1980.

The website for The American Society of Mechanical Engineers states: “In 1910 [Curtis] was awarded the Rumford Premium by the American Academy for Arts & Sciences, for his improvement of the steam turbine. He received the first annual award from ASME’s Gas Turbine Power Division in 1948. In 1950 he received the Holley Medal from ASME, also for his gas turbine work.”

Curtis died at age 92 on March 10, 1953, in Central Islip, a community on Long Island, NY. (There is no information readily available online as to whether or not he left any family behind.)

SOURCES

Brittanica Online http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/147170/Charles-Gordon-Curtis

Answers.com: Charles Gordon Curtis  http://www.answers.com/topic/charles-gordon-curtis#ixzz1sEOyp3yB

Wikipedia: Gas Turbine  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_turbine#cite_note-2

ASME American Society of Mechanical Engineers: Charles Gordon Curtis: http://www.asme.org/about-asme/history/biographies/a-d-biographies/curtis,-charles-gordon

“The First 500-Kilowatt Curtis Vertical Steam Turbine, An International Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark,” July 23, 1990, Indianapolis Power & Light Company, E. W. Stout Generating Station, Indianapolis, IN, The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 345 East 47^th Street, New York, NY 10017.

Smithsonian Institution Archives http://siarchives.si.edu/collections/

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

Patent sketch from U. S. Patent Office.