Massachusetts has far more to offer than Boston alone, says Paul Harris.
By Paul Harris
I didn’t expect to be welcomed to Massachusetts by a ghost, never mind a Jewish one.
The 130-year-old Deerfield Inn was one of the highlights of my five-day visit to Massachusetts. And there resides Herschel.
He is a naughty boy with a penchant for pinching ladies’ bottoms, turning lights on, slamming doors and pushing over staff carrying trays to the kitchen. No one knows exactly who he is or why he does it. But it is known that he haunts Room 148 at the Deerfield Inn in the village of Deerfield, part of the Connecticut River Valley.
The inn was closed for 18 months following severe flooding and reopened in April. Wallpaper was restored using the original plates that had been kept in the local museum and the result is impressive.
Staying in Deerfield and exploring parts of Massachusetts that I didn’t know, I discovered that there is much more to the state than Boston, especially in nature and literature.
I’m not naturally green-fingered but accepted an invitation to learn more about Massachusetts via a tour of its gardens. Five days later, the state, its history and attractions had come alive, thanks to flowers, trees, forests, woods and manicured lawns, with numerous impressive properties to boot.
My starting point was Concord, location of the first armed conflict with Britain and final resting place of two British soldiers who fell in action there, both of whom are commemorated by memorial stones adorned jointly by the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes.
My starting point was Concord, location of the first armed conflict with Britain and final resting place of two British soldiers who fell in action there, both of whom are commemorated by memorial stones adorned jointly by the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes.
The Concord Inn, which dates back to 1716, overlooks the town centre and itself served as an arms and provisions storehouse for local patriots. Just opposite is the town house, on whose steps Louisa May Alcott queued to become the first woman to cast a vote when new legislation was introduced in 1880. Her family lived at Orchard House for more than 40 years and she is buried in the town.
Published in 1868, Little Women is set in the Alcott family home and is loosely based on Alcott’s childhood experiences with her three sisters.
Alcott’s home, along with that of fellow authors Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ralph Waldo Emerson are open to the public. Another literary connection was Henry David Thoreau whose book, Walden, was inspired by Walden Pond, apparently still pretty much the same today as it was 150 years ago.
The leafy streets of Concord look so typically American with their traditional wooden houses, some
quite sizeable and many shaded by large oak trees.
The Minuteman National Park is a pleasant lakeside retreat dominated by the statue of a Minute Man, one of America’s most potent symbols. It was created by Daniel Chester French, then an unknown student who went on to design the statue of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. The Minute Men were so called
because they were prepared, at a moment’s notice, to defend their homes and farms against the attacking
British Redcoats.
The resulting battles of Concord and Lexington Green saw the British outnumbered four to one and driven back to Boston. The memorial to one British soldier in the National Park reads: “They came three thousand miles and died to keep the past upon its throne. Unheard beyond the ocean tide their English mother made her moan. April 19, 1775.”
It seems hardly credible today that this sleepy area was the birthplace of American independence and the scene of the beginning of the end of our interests in the New World. The region is known as New England and there’s more than a little familiarity with place names as road signs point to such towns as Gloucester, Cambridge, Braintree, Barnstable, Kingston, Plymouth, New Bedford and Weymouth. Gardens abound in Massachusetts,
serious gardens; the type that draw visitors from throughout the world.
There is an infectious enthusiasm among those who run the various projects, which rubs off very quickly on the uninitiated visitor like myself. The Garden in the Woods, in Framingham, headquarters of the New England Wild Flower Society, features rare and common native plants and was the labor of love of landscape architect Will Curtis who, in 1931, set about creating his dream garden.
A hurricane in 1938 changed its canopy but the layout is still based on the original. There, visitors can also see
invasive plants, appropriately screened by prison bars. One claim to fame of the Tower Hill Botanic Garden in Boylston, set in 132 acres, is its 119 varieties of pre-20th century apples, many of which were developed in New England.
As I sat sipping cold beer, admiring Tower Hill’s territory as far as far as the eye can see, humming birds buzzed around. But they are just one of dozens of breeds that can be spotted there. And there is the Berkshire Botanical Gardens in Stockbridge whose administration centre is situated in a 1790 farmhouse.
Among the 25 display gardens, amid 15 acres, is one specifically for children. Most of us tend to associate Edith Wharton with fiction and verse, but she was equally adept at writing about travel, architecture, gardens and interior design. She designed The Mount at Lenox, and its gardens.
The latter were based on her book, The Decoration of Houses. She lived there for 10 years from 1902 until her divorce from her husband Ted. The style is unmistakably that of a French chateau. A broad Palladian staircase sweeps down from the terrace to gardens that include a walk lined with linden trees and a walled garden. The interior has been refurnished in Wharton’s style, and it is easy to feel her presence, particularly in her private quarters and in the library, home to her own books that had been stored in Europe and were returned to
Lenox seven years ago.
The restoration has been painstaking, The Mount having been used for a period as a school. Fortunately paintings were integral to the walls and have survived. It’s hard not to be seduced into reading her works, which I was. Most are available as free downloads, incidentally, from Amazon. Visitors to Wharton’s bedroom can see randomly
dropped sheets of handwritten manuscripts, as was her wont. Despite pictures of her writing at her desk, she was at her most creative in bed on which the scattered pages were left for her publisher to collect.
At Naumkeag House in Stockbridge, there is a unique menorah with the figure of a Hasid as the shammas. No one knows precisely where it came from, although the final occupant of the property, Mabel Choate, was an intrepid traveler and brought back many curios from her trips.
She was the daughter of lawyer Joseph Choate, the American ambassador to London between 1899-1905, and his wife, Caroline. On their return from Britain, they brought with them their indispensable butler, Osborne whose 1903 knife cleaner can still be seen in his pantry. Indeed, all the furnishings, table settings and the library are precisely as they were when Mabel left it to The Trustees of Reservations in 1958. She spent 30 years designing the gardens with the renowned Boston landscape architect, Fletcher Steele.
The house itself is a superb country residence built on a site where, for a decade, the Choate family picnicked and enjoyed the fabulous sunsets. Their favorite spot was beneath a spreading oak tree and eventually Joseph bought the land with a view to building a family home on it. The story goes that he commissioned one firm of architects to design it but dismissed them when they wanted to construct it on the site of the tree. Mabel’s travels
are reflected in the gardens.
The peony terrace recalls her visit to China, as does the Chinese garden, which incorporates a temple. The gardens have commanding views of the surrounding area and it’s easy to understand how Joseph and Caroline fell in love with the location. It’s worth seeing Ashintully Gardens at Sodem Road, Tyringham, if only to make the steep trek up the hillside to the Doric columns, all that remains of the 40-room mansion that once stood there before being destroyed by fire in 1952. They stand forlornly like some ancient Greek remains, like an outpost
above the impressive Tyringham Valley.
The house was owned by the family of contemporary composer John McLennan. It was his 30-year dream to create the gardens, and visitors can enter for free. The Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield is a fascinating experience. If you’ve ever wondered about Shaker furniture, which is trendy today for its simplicity, the answers are all there. The movement has all but died out since being founded by Ann Lee, a British woman, but some of the Shakers’ innovative building design, including the technologically brilliant round barn, bear testimony
to their expertise in so many areas.
It is in Boston itself, perhaps the least likely of places, that an ambitious green project has slowly materialized. A one-and-a-half mile overpass, known for its heavy traffic and contribution to the city’s smog, was demolished in the 1980s and reconstructed underground.
In its place Bostonians now have the Rose F Kennedy Greenway, an urban park and water fountains in which young and old can frolic. It was the initiative of Senator Edward Kennedy and named after his mother who grew up in Boston. A centre for performing Jewish arts is planned when the economy improves.
Boston is Massachusetts’ main Jewish community.
Boston is Massachusetts’ main Jewish community.
The Vilna Shul, Boston’s Center for Jewish Culture, has its home the former Lithuanian Anshi Vilner synagogue building on the North Slope of city’s Beacon Hill. The Vilna Shul introduces Jewish immigration and life in Boston to tourists and hosts cultural events.
The Anshi Vilners (People of Vilnius) first met in members’ West End homes in 1893. In 1906, the Anshi Vilners bought the vacated Twelfth Baptist Church and reconstructed it as a synagogue, retaining the pews which are still there today, albeit in a new building which was built ten years later.
In 1920, there were 20 synagogues in downtown Boston — about eight eastern European synagogues in the Anshi Vilner’s West End district, eight in the North End, and four third-generation German synagogues in the South End, now the Finance and Theatre Districts. The best known West End Jew from that era is Star Trek actor
Leonard Nimoy who was born in 1931. Like most immigrant Jews the world over, they soon moved to more affluent districts and now only the Vilna Shul, which is used only for weddings and bar mitzvahs, and the nearby Boston Synagogue remain in the immediate area.
The Bee Gees sang: “Talk about the life in Massachusetts, Speak about the people I have seen. And the lights all went out in Massachusetts. And Massachusetts is one place I have seen. I will remember Massachusetts . . .” I certainly will, for all the right reasons.
Paul Harris is editor of the Jewish Telegraph Group of newspapers in the UK. He has been a travel writer for 40 years and is a member of the British Guild of Travel Writers.
Contact via email: pharris@jewishtelegraph.com