(sturgis8.jpg)
More on: http://www.harvard-magazine.com/issues/so97/vita.html
See note for achievements of these 3 generations of Bigelows with MA
general Hosptial.
See "Forge" Apr 1999, Vol. 28, No. 2,p. 28.
Article written by Thomas LaMarre for "Money Talk", a copyrighted
production
of the American Numismatic Association, 818 N.Cascade Av., Colorado
Spgs,CO
80903,e-mail ana@money.org, contributed by Phillip Bigelow, Bellingham,
WA.
Related "Forge" articles:
Vol. 20, No.3, Jul. 1991,
Vol.21, No.2, Apr 1992,
Vol.22,No.1,Feb 1993.
The secretary of the Harvard class of 1871
once wrote to William Sturgis Bigelow requesting some news, "or a
story." Bigelow replied, "Story? God bless you, I have none to tell,
sir. Since '81 I have spent about seven years in Japan, when [sic] I
saw a great many folks of
high and low degree, got together some things of various sorts for the
Boston
Museum of Fine Arts...and learned a little about Eastern philosophy and
religion. I have neither wife nor children, written no books, received
no special
honors and I belong only to the regular clubs and societies."
This extraordinary understatement combined
Buddhist self-abnegation with the inner confidence of an affluent,
private, and talented Boston Brahmin. In fact, those "things of various
sorts"--numbering, according to one estimate, 26,000 pieces of
painting, sculpture, ceramics, and manuscripts--formed the heart of one
of the world's greatest museum collections.
As to the Eastern philosophy, he studied and
then embraced Buddhism, as did his friend Ernest Fenollosa, A.B. 1874.
Bigelow's 1908 Ingersoll Lecture at Harvard explained "Buddhism and
Immortality" in scholarly detail, and was later published.
Bigelow was truthful in saying he had no wife
or children, but not in denying that he had written books or received
honors. Japan awarded him the Imperial Order of the Rising Sun, with
the rank of Commander, the highest distinction bestowed in that country
on persons not in official life (he wears it in the charcoal portrait
above, drawn by his friend John Singer Sargent).
Bigelow was profoundly affected by the death of
his mother when he was three. (His Ingersoll
Lecture states that "Maternal love is the source
of all human virtues.") His father, the renowned surgeon Henry Jacob
Bigelow, was
something of a martinet, and young William was evidently something of a
rebel:
his
report card from the Private Latin School in 1865 rated him
twenty-second academically
in a class of 55, but fifty-fourth in "conduct."
After graduating from Harvard Medical School in 1874, Bigelow went
to Europe.
He
stayed five years, studying in Vienna, Strasbourg, and finally in Paris
under Pasteur. He
brought back to Boston the new research on bacteria, and established
privately one of
this country's first laboratories in that field. This displeased his
father,who
wanted the line of distinguished Bigelow surgeons at Harvard and
Massachusetts General
Hospital to continue. William was duly appointed surgeon to outpatients
at the MGH. "Few men,"
wrote medical historian John F. Fulton, "could have less taste for
surgery than the
sensitive Bigelow, and it was not long before he gave up all thoughts
of practice."
In 1881, believing that the world was moving too fast and that much
of life in Boston
was ugly, he went to Japan, following Edward S. Morse and Ernest
Fenollosa, who were
among the first Americans to study Japanese culture. He later called
the cruise to Japan
the turning point of his life. During his prolonged stay he studied,
traveled, and collected the
treasures that the Japanese were discarding in their rush to become
Westernized.
After returning to Boston in 1889, Bigelow devoted much of his time to
the study of art
and Asian religions. He also entertained lavishly at his home at 56
Beacon Street, often
welcoming such College friends as George and Henry Cabot Lodge, Brooks
and Henry
Adams, and Theodore Roosevelt, who regularly made Bigelow's home his
Boston
headquarters. He became an active trustee of the Museum of Fine Arts
and continued to
collect paintings, often consulting with Isabella Stewart Gardner.
Reportedly somewhat
reserved in his dealings with the opposite sex, he once wrote to her
coyly, in the third
person: "She is very attractive." At his favorite spot in America,
however, a summer
house on tiny Tuckernuck Island, off the shores of Nantucket, he
entertained men only,
and his guests wore pajamas, or nothing at all, until dinnertime, when
formal dress was
required. A staff of servants provided food and fine wines; the library
contained
3,000
volumes,"spiced with racy French and German magazines," one chronicler
reported.
Henry Adams described Bigelow's retreat as "a scene of medieval
splendor"; George
Santayana, A.B. 1886, may have modeled Dr. Peter Alden, the father of
the protagonist
in The Last Puritan, after Bigelow.
The Boston Evening Transcript, the unofficial gazette of Boston's
Brahmins, ran two
bold headlines on October 6, 1926. One told of Babe Ruth's still
unexcelled feat of hitting
three home runs in a World Series game, but the larger headline
reported the death of
William Sturgis Bigelow. His funeral, at Trinity Church, was conducted
by his classmate
William Lawrence, the former Episcopal bishop of Massachusetts. His
ashes were
divided. Half were interred in Mount Auburn Cemetery, which had been
envisioned by
his grandfather Jacob Bigelow as a spiritually uplifting as well as
"hygienic" burial site.
But the rest were buried by a Buddhist temple, overlooking Bigelow's
favorite lake in
Japan.
Sources:
Bigelow Society,The Bigelow Family Genealogy, Vol II, pg 114;
Howe, Bigelow Family of America;
FORGE, The Bigelow Society Quarterly. Vol.6, No.2, pg 23-24
Encyclopedia of American Biography;
records of Mt. Auburn cemetery, Cambridge.
FORGE, The Bigelow Society Quarterly. Vol.6, No.2, pages 23 and
24, has an interesting article on William S. 8, Henry Jacob 7 and the
grandfather Jacob 6
- all learned
physicians/Surgeons and the dedication of the upper eight stories of
the
thirteen story Massachussette General Hospital building to these three
generations
of doctors.
From Guy Bigelow:
Referring to the book that was published by "Bob Vila's This Old House
- 1981" following the TV program which covered the remodeling of Dr.
Henry J. Bigelow's home in Newton, I find no specific address given for
the property. It was, however, located on the top of Oak Hill which is
a high point in the Newton area. Current maps of the area around Newton
show a residential subdivision approximately 3 miles south and a bit
east of Newton, city center. This may be the area where the old Bigelow
house is located. More specific information might be obtained by
contacting the Newton Historical Preservation Association or the Newton
Chamber of Commerce. I have no information on contacting either of
these organizations but you might search on the internet. Guy Bigelow
Note:
Tuesday 06/10/2003 7:29:55pm
Name: Isabel Bigelow
E-Mail: isabelbigelow@hotmail.com
Comments:
I am interested in William Sturgis Bigelow. Don't know if I am
related but searching him got me to this page
.
(/rod2005b/sturgis1.jpg)
(/rod2005b/sturgis2.jpg)
From: http://www.yesterdaysisland.com/05_articles/satire/tucker.html
Part I
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
by James Everett Grieder
There’s a stretch of coastline on Tuckernuck Island that has the unique
distinction of being named for a person. Most places on the
island
are distinguished somewhat more pragmatically: North Pond, East Pond,
South
and North Shores; Bigelow’s Bluff alone is a namesake. Never mind
the
fact that the particular spot so named is by now far out to sea —
wherever
that part of the shore terminates it will always be named after one of
the
most remarkable men to ever grace the island: William Sturgis Bigelow.
Born on April 4, 1850, William Sturgis Bigelow was the son Henry Jacob
Bigelow and grandson of Jacob Bigelow, neither of whom were slouches in
the “remarkable men” department themselves: Jacob Bigelow was a
physician at Massachusetts General Hospital for twenty years (there’s a
wing named after him), established Mount Auburn Cemetery (which served
as a model of sanitation for many later burial grounds) and, while at
Harvard University teaching science, coined the term “technology”; his
son, Henry, studied medicine under his father at
Harvard, eventually becoming a professor there as well as chief of
surgery at Massachusetts General. Perhaps his most far-reaching
achievement was to sponsor the first public demonstration of the
efficacy of anaesthesia in surgery (the artist Robert Hinkley captured
the moment in his painting, “The First Operation with Ether” – Bigelow
is the third man from the right, with his hand on his chest).
Plainly, Bigelow had some big surgical gloves to fill. Scion of
the Scollay and Sturgis families as well as the Bigelows, Boston
Brahmins all, great things were expected of young William, and he did
indeed achieve greatness of a sort, although perhaps not the kind that
his dour martinet of a father might have intended. William’s
mother died when he was three years old,
an event that would have a profound effect on the sensitive young
man. An indifferent student, Bigelow’s report card in 1865 notes
that he fell in
the middle of his class academically but was next to last in “conduct.”
Nevertheless,
Bigelow managed to graduate from Harvard Medical School in 1874 and
immediately
embarked for Europe for additional study, as his father had done during
his
days as a newly-minted student. While in Paris, Bigelow studied
under
Louis Pasteur, eventually returning to the United States with the
latest
research in the newly-created field of bacteriology; Bigelow would go
on
to privately fund one of the first laboratories in that field.
Upon his return to Boston in the early 1880s, Bigelow appeared to be on
track for a distinguished career in medicine, following in the
footsteps
of his venerated father and grandfather. In the winter of
1881-82,
however, Bigelow’s life took a quite unexpected turn; he attended a
series
of lectures by Edward Morse, a professor of Comparative Anatomy and
Zoology
at Bowdoin College. A few years previously Morse had been invited
to
the Imperial University of Tokyo in order to organize a department of
zoology;
during a return trip to the United States, he gave a series of lectures
on
Japan at the Lowell Institute in Boston. These lectures
captivated
the interest of many of Boston’s intelligentsia, including William
Sturgis
Bigelow, no doubt to the great alarm of William’s father Henry.
Later that year, after declaring his belief that the world was moving
too fast and that much of life in Boston was “ugly,” Bigelow announced
his plan to travel to Japan with Edward Morse and Ernest Fenollosa, a
young Harvard Divinity student that Morse had recruited during an early
trip to Boston. William, sensitive as he was, was never cut out to be a
surgeon, and he probably would have left his pre-determined career path
anyway. Entranced by the Japanese aesthetic and supportive of
Fenollosa's efforts to conserve Japanese
ancient temples and monuments, Bigelow determined that he had to see
them
for himself. One cringes to imagine the scene at the breakfast
table
when young William conveyed the news to his father — glacial doesn’t
begin
to describe it. William’s financial future was secure, however —
he
had inherited a massive fortune from his mother, who had been heir to
the
extremely wealthy Sturgis family of Barnstable on Cape Cod.
Bigelow and Fenollosa became quite close. Both men were ardent
Japanophiles and amassed enormous collections: Fenollosa specialized in
Chinese and Japanese paintings, while Bigelow purchased literally tens
of thousands of pieces of
lacquer ware, swords, statues, and wood block prints. However,
theirs was more than simply the self-aggrandizing purchases of the
mega-rich; they truly saw themselves as saving important pieces of
Japan’s past, at a time when few others took notice, including many
Japanese themselves: at the time the island nation was rushing to
modernize itself in the face of Western imperial
power, and the old ways were deemed unimportant and not worth
saving. In 1885, both Fenollosa and Bigelow converted to
Buddhism, studying with a
Tendai Buddhist master and dressing in Japanese robes (again, one can’t
help
but wonder what that first trip home to the Bigelow family’s townhouse
on
Beacon Hill must have been like).
Over the next few years Fenollosa and Bigelow played host to a number
of Bostonians who, fired in part by Morse’s lectures, visited Japan,
eager to gain some insights into Buddhism. Among their
distinguished guests were
Isabella Stewart Gardner (an important art collector in her own right,
whose
home later became the Gardner Museum) and the author Henry Adams, who
had
traveled to Japan with his friend, the painter John La Farge.
Adams was seeking escape in the Far East from the intense grief he felt
over the recent suicide of his wife Clover. A short (further)
digression away from the shore of Tuckernuck is necessary to detail the
short unhappy life of Clover, which is intimately connected to that of
Bigelow.
Clover’s real name was Marian Sturgis Hooper; she was William’s first
cousin. Clover’s mother, Ellen Sturgis Hooper, was a poet and a
member of the Transcendental Club (her sister, Susan Sturgis Bigelow,
William’s mother, was also a member). Ralph Waldo Emerson
regularly solicited poetry from her for his periodical The Dial, and
Thoreau included the end of Hooper’s “The Wood-Fire” in the chapter
“House-Warming” in Walden. Ellen Sturgis Hooper often hosted
gatherings of like-minded individuals at her home, where it would not
have been unusual to see such luminaries as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver
Wendell Holmes, and Henry James. Quite an inspiring home for a
sensitive young girl, or so it would seem; sadly, Clover’s family had a
tragic thread of mental
illness and suicide that ran through the generations. Clover was
present
when her aunt (William’s mother), Susan Sturgis Bigelow, died,
allegedly
from arsenic poisoning at her own hand, although tuberculosis was the
polite
reason given. In 1887, Clover’s sister Ellen walked into an
oncoming
train, and in 1901 her brother Edward leaped from the third floor of
his
home, surviving briefly before eventually succumbing to pneumonia.
Clover was five when her mother died of tuberculosis; she was extremely
close to her father, Dr. Robert Hooper. Both Clover and her
sister
Ellen often accompanied their father on visits to Worcester Asylum for
the
mentally ill, where they witnessed the dreadful effects of mental
illness
and the almost medieval state of psychiatric treatment at the
time.
Clover was deeply affected by the horrors of such confinement, and her
surviving letters make it quite clear that she regarded suicide as
preferable. On learning of the suicide of William Morris Hunt,
who had painted a portrait of Henry Adams’ father, she wrote “He has
put an end to his wild, restless, unhappy life. Perhaps it has
saved him years of insanity which his temperament
pointed to.” These experiences left Clover a shy, retiring
nervous
girl, fearful of being separated from her father for any length of time.
See Part 2 below to find out what happens to Clover …
Tuckernuck’s Resident Millionaire Buddhist
The Story of Bigelow’s Bluff
Part 2
There’s a stretch of coastline on Tuckernuck Island that has the unique
distinction of being named for a person. Most places on the
island
are distinguished somewhat more pragmatically: North Pond, East Pond,
South
and North Shores; Bigelow’s Bluff alone is a namesake. Never mind
the
fact that the particular spot so named is by now far out to sea —
wherever
that part of the shore terminates it will always be named after one of
the
most remarkable men to ever grace the island: William Sturgis Bigelow.
Part II of this article, picks up just as William’s first cousin,
Clover, is about to marry…
Clover’s prospects brightened, however, when she met the young
Henry Adams. Adams, the grandson of John Quincy Adams and
great-grandson of
John Adams, was the heir of yet another prominent Boston Brahmin
family, and
was beginning to establish a reputation for himself as an author and
historian
in his own right. A marriage between these two was a favorable
one
socially, but, while there was apparently great fondness between them,
Clover’s
nervous disposition eventually drove Henry into a (unconsummated)
relationship
with another woman, Lizzie Cameron, the niece of William Tecumseh
Sherman.
Their letters demonstrate their great, if frustrated, passion for one
another;
if Clover had any knowledge of the long-distance love affair she made
no
mention of it. Perhaps she was too immersed in worrying for her
own
health and safety.
While honeymooning in 1872 along the Nile, Clover suffered a nervous
breakdown; this was the first time that she had been apart from her
father for any length of time. Upon her return to Boston she
discovered a passion for photography, but the limitations of her gender
at that time, combined with a lack of support from her husband,
resulted in her talents being limited to family portraits. The
death of her father in the spring of 1885 sent Clover spiraling into a
mental depression from which she did not recover. On December 6, 1885,
Henry
Adams found his wife lying on the floor, a vial of potassium cyanide —
used
to process photographs — by her side. A doctor was summoned, but
it
was too late. Clover was dead.
Adams’ trip to Japan was an attempt to dull the painful loss. His
friend John La Farge was the one who suggested the idea. La Farge
had
been a pioneer in collecting Japanese art and incorporating Japanese
effects
into his work, beginning in the 1860s (he also married Margaret Perry,
the
niece of the Commodore who had opened Japan to the West over the barrel
of
a gun). In 1869, La Farge wrote an essay on Japanese art detailing the
asymmetry and heightened color of Japanese prints, which looked empty
and unbalanced by traditional Western standards. The radical
qualities of La Farge's art in the 1860s were more subtly incorporated
into his work over the subsequent decades. Stunning examples of
La Farge’s work in stained glass (the brilliant coloring of which may
have been influenced by his interest in Japan), may still be seen at
Trinity Church in Boston, and he became increasingly involved in large
scale decorative and mural projects, both for churches and
the residences of America's newly-minted millionaires.
In 1886, La Farge was again embarking for Japan and asked his grieving
friend Henry Adams to join him; perhaps a further incentive was the
thought of seeing his late wife’s cousin. Although not as smitten
with the lure of the Orient was his companions, Adams was apparently
deeply moved by images of Kannon, the feminine Japanese embodiment of
the wisdom of compassion. When he returned to the United States,
Adams commissioned the famed sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens to create
a Kannon-inspired statue for his wife's grave
in Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington, D.C. (La Farge's painting of Kannon
by
a waterfall may have served as inspiration for the artist). That
statue
is widely considered to be Saint-Gauden’s masterpiece, and may be
viewed
to this day in Rock Creek Cemetery. If you visit, take a moment
to
remember poor Clover, please.
Bigelow returned to Boston in 1889, and devoted much of his time to the
study of art and Asian religions; following in the footsteps of Morse
he
lectured widely on Buddhism, and played a key role in developing
diplomatic
and cultural relations between the U.S. and Japan. Bigelow
donated
his collection and expertise to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts as a
trustee;
he brokered the purchase of Fenollosa’s collection through another
Harvard
doctor, Charles Goddard Weld (yes, as in former Governor Weld) and by
the1890s,
the MFA had one of, if not the pre-eminent collection of Far Eastern
art
outside of Asia. Its first curator was Fenollosa, who had
returned
from Japan with Adams and La Farge, and who was instrumental in
establishing
the collection.
A year after William Sturgis Bigelow returned from Japan, his father
died following a carriage accident. In 1906 Bigelow purchased 56
Beacon Street
in Boston, where Henry Adams, college chums George and Henry Cabot
Lodge
(cousins of the Adamses), and even Theodore Roosevelt could be found
visiting.
Roosevelt made Bigelow's home his Boston headquarters, and presumably
it
was there that Bigelow had an effect on U.S. foreign policy. No
doubt
aware that the manly Roosevelt would be less than impressed with highly
lacquered
teapots Bigelow instructed the Rough Rider in the finer points of
Japanese
culture by throwing him repeatedly using judo holds. Roosevelt
was
so impressed that he had a special Judo Room set aside in the White
House
— he also signed a treaty with Japan.
But what does all this have to do with a bit of shoreline on
Tuckernuck? I was just getting to that — you needn’t be in such a
hurry! Bigelow would often escape from the heat and noise of
Boston to his large, rambling summer “cottage” on the west end of
Tuckernuck. Perhaps one of the few
pieces of common ground shared by William and his father Henry Jacob
Bigelow,
literally, was their love for the island. Henry was an avid
gunner
and after visiting the island briefly had returned and rented a
cottage, and
then leased land, from Charles Dunham; in 1871 he had built a simple,
boxy
house on the land, even though the property wasn’t really his.
Bigelow
suffered the misfortune of hiring my grandmother’s great-grandfather,
James
Cochran Dunham, as his caretaker (my wife’s family owns “Grandfather’s
House”
on Tuckernuck — James Cochran is the eponymous grandfather, and former
owner).
Dunham contemptuously viewed the senior Bigelow as having more money
than
brains, and set out to take this “summer person” for all he could
(thankfully,
this attitude does not prevail today on Nantucket).
In 1871 Bigelow tired of the constant gouging and fired Dunham as his
caretaker. Dunham, a true Tuckernucker, was not one to let an
opportunity for a good feud to pass by, and began harassing Bigelow,
denying access across his own property to the rest of the island and
sending his sons out to chase the birds
away that Bigelow was hunting. Bigelow sued Dunham and won;
Dunham appealed
and lost, and the fine was doubled. Unable to pay, Dunham was
forced
convey half of his farm to Bigelow. Bigelow also eventually
purchased
the land he was leasing and set about enlarging the building on it in
order
to accommodate his son William, their guests and their servants; he
hired
my cousins the Smiths and the Sandsburys to do the job. As with
cousin
Clover, both Henry and William had an avid interest in photography, and
they
took many pictures of the construction of their new house, and
Tuckernuck at that time, including many members of my extended family.
In addition to his beloved photography, Bigelow kept careful track of
the almost constant erosion of Tuckernuck's north and west shores:
"...very heavy surf...6 to 10 feet cut off the bank," he wrote in
1904. "The last of
the road around Robert [King Dunham]'s lot went, leaving about a foot
to
squeeze by on.....The smallest loss in any one year since was 10 paces;
the
largest 39." In 1908: "About 70 feet of bank cut off.
Charley Brooks gives it eight years to the corner of the tennis
court. I guess six".
Bigelow entertained many of his distinguished friends at his island
retreat, including Roosevelt, Henry Adams, John La Farge, Senator Henry
Cabot Lodge, and Bishop William Lawrence, who had been John La Farge’s
sponsor at Trinity Church in Boston. To get there they took a
train from Boston to Woods Hole, followed by a three-hour trip on a
side-wheel steamer to Nantucket, a bone-jarring wagon ride to Madaket,
then a private boat jaunt to Tuckernuck itself. It was strictly a
men-only affair, and his guests wore typically wore Japanese dress, or
nothing at all, until dinnertime, when formal dress was required.
A staff of servants, including cook and butler, provided food and fine
wines; Bigelow had one room converted into a darkroom to develop
photographs, and amassed a library contained 3,000 volumes to keep his
visitors entertained when the weather turned foul. The
collection, complete with
racy French and German magazines (which probably would seem quite tame
to
us today) topped off an experience that Henry Adams described as “a
scene of medieval splendor”.
In his poem “Tuckanuck,” dedicated to "W.S.B." (William Sturgis
Bigelow), he describes the philosophy of the group:
I am content to live the patient day.
The wind, sea-laden, loiters to the land,
And on the naked heap of shining sand
Th’eternity of blue sea pales to spray.
In such a world no need for us to pray:
The holy voices of the sea and air
Are sacramental, like a peaceful prayer
Wherein the world doth dream her tears away.
We row across the waters’ fluent gold,
And age seems bless~d, for the world is old.
Softly we take from nature’s open palm
The dower of the sunset and the sky
And dream an Eastern dream, starred by the cry
Of sea-birds homing through the mighty calm.
These halcyon days were soon to end, however; in the late summer
of 1909, George Cabot Lodge fell ill while visiting Tuckernuck, and
before medical aid could reach him, he died. He was only 35 years
old. Henry Cabot Lodge never returned to Tuckernuck and his
friend’s death affected Bigelow
deeply. For several years he stayed away from his beloved island,
finally
returning after a three year absence — but the original spirit of joie
de
vivre had vanished. "It is inexpressibly sad here, since 'Bay'
(Lodge)
left,” he wrote later that year..
In 1926, at the age of 76, William Sturgis Bigelow died. His body
was laid in state in his Buddhist robes in his home at 56 Beacon Street
in
Back Bay; his funeral at Trinity Church was conducted by his classmate
and
friend William Lawrence, the former Episcopal bishop of
Massachusetts.
Bigelow’s ashes were divided: half were interred in Mount Auburn
Cemetery,
the cemetery founded by his grandfather, while the other half were
buried
near Homyoin Temple in Japan, the site of his Buddhist initiation,
overlooking
Bigelow's favorite lake. In his will Bigelow left a fund to
Harvard
University for the advancement of Buddhist studies, but his
accomplishments
can never be measured by money alone. According to one estimate,
Bigelow
left 26,000 pieces of painting, sculpture, ceramics, and manuscripts to
the
Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and is responsible as much as anyone for
bringing the Eastern aesthetic to America. Through his tireless
work he influenced creative souls as diverse as Ezra Pound and Frank
Lloyd Wright, and through them countless others. Boston may have
lost a fine doctor, but the world
gained so much more in return.
There is a further, personal postscript to this story. Bigelow
did make an exception to his “no women” policy – in 1898 he offered his
Tuckernuck estate to his niece Mabel Hooper (Clover’s surviving sister)
who had married John Louis Bancel La Farge, for their honeymoon.
They fell in love with
the island, and their descendants remain there still. John Louis
also
met and befriended my great-great-grandfather, Erastus Chapel, of whom
he
said “everything about him is round, his legs, his belly, his arms and
his
shoulders, his head...and to top all, his little white hat”— the apple
doesn’t
fall far from the tree, apparently, that being a fair description of
this
author. Erastus had purchased a lot from William Sturgis Bigelow
in
1893 (part of the old Dunham property won in the lawsuit — what’s more,
Erastus
married James Cochrane Dunham’s niece), and built a house there.
John
Louis also mentions that Erastus was quite close to his son, whom he
referred
to as “the boy,” even when the “boy” was forty years old; that boy was
James
Everett Chapel, whom I am named for, and who is the former owner of the
house
at 31 Union Street where I now reside with my family (the house now
belongs
to my great-aunt, Mary Chapel Humphrey, and her children).
As William had feared, erosion eventually claimed the Bigelow estate on
the west end of Tuckernuck, including the house in 1944. Before
that
occurred, Mabel arranged to have Bigelow’s old library transported from
the
west end to the east, where she had bought some property was building a
new
house, designed by her son Louis, who was an architect. In 1939
Mabel
hired my great-grandfather, along with several other men, to move the
building for her. They placed it on long timbers resting on wagon
wheels, and over the course of a month moved it to the east end of the
island. That
library building was incorporated into the new house, and remains there
to
this day.
The La Farge family also sold a piece of the same Dunham property to
James Everett Chapel, and it is on a portion of that property that my
family’s house,
the Pond House, still stands. When I look out of the kitchen
window
of our little house, I can see Bigelow’s Bluff; nothing physical
remains to
note the passage of this remarkable man, but his contribution to art
and to
history, and the strong bonds of friendship between his family and mine
that
remain to this day, provide a greater monument than any house or statue
ever
could.
I am deeply indebted to the patient research found in Wayman Coffin’s
book Tuckernuck Island, as well as the stories told to me over the
years by my grandmother, Ruth Chapel Grieder, for much of the
Tuckernuck information found
here. For more information on Bigelow, La Farge and Boston’s
Japanese
connection please check out The Great Wave : Gilded Age Misfits,
Japanese
Eccentrics, and the Opening of Old Japan, by Christopher Benfey.
Tuckernuck:
Bigelow & His Tuckernuck Retreat
by Frances Kartunen
Tuckernuck School c. 1930s with 3 young girls and a teacher
courtesy Nantucket Historical Assn
Off Smith’s Point, the extreme western tip of
Nantucket,
lie two small islands, Tuckernuck and Muskeget. Tuckernuck, the
nearer
of the two, is plainly visible from anywhere along Nantucket’s North
Shore,
from Jetties Beach to Madaket. Its Algonquin name is said to mean “loaf
of
bread.” Tiny, low-lying Muskeget is best seen from the air.
Both islands are off-limits to visitors, fiercely protected by their
residents.
In the case of Muskeget, the defenders are gray seals that have
established
a large breeding colony on the island. Tuckernuck’s defenders are
its
property owners, who occupy the island’s scattering of houses.
There
is no public land on the island, not even the beaches.
The fact that one needs an invitation to visit
Tuckernuck
has endowed the place with mystique. Most people who have lived
their
entire lives on Nantucket have never set foot on its shores, and those
who
have treasure the experience inordinately. People who have
inherited
property there constitute a minor aristocracy.
Tiny as Tuckernuck is, it is no stranger to
factionalism.
Wampanoags from both Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard traditionally
retired
to the island for fall duck hunting, and they also buried their dead
there.
Then, starting in the late 1600s, English settlers let livestock loose
on
the island. For a while in the early 1700s a little gang of
Wampanoag
sheep rustlers preyed on the introduced animals, but in a short time
the
Wampanoags’ traditional hunting land had been lost to the English, who
took
the island over for farming.
Bigelow House on Tuckernuck.
courtesy Nantucket Historical Assn
By 1800 Tuckernuck was sustaining forty cows, while
between
eight hundred and a thousand sheep were cropping the fragile vegetation
to
the roots. Environmental degradation and rising sea levels have
since
joined forces to markedly reduce the area of Tuckernuck, and in the
process
to expose ancient burials that were intended for eternity.
There are no longer any year-round Tuckernuck
residents,
but until the twentieth century old settler families such as the
Tuckernuck
Dunhams and Coffins subsisted by farming, hunting, and fishing, while
their
children received basic education in the Tuckernuck School. Old
Tuckernuckers
were a close-knit society of cousins.
Enter yet a new group. Seasonal hunting
remained
excellent on both Tuckernuck and Muskeget, and in the late 1800s groups
of
recreational hunters from the mainland acquired land for
themselves.
Gradually their hunting camps and blinds evolved into retreats for
Boston
Brahmins and their friends. This was a privileged male society,
as
different as could be from the farm folk they were moving in on.
Each
side regarded the other as exotic.
At the beginning of the 1880s Henry Jacob
Bigelow,
son of Jacob Bigelow—botanist, surgeon, and Harvard Medical
School
professor—had a house built for himself on the western shore of
Tuckernuck.
A physician like his father, Henry Jacob was a surgeon and a pioneer in
the
use of surgical anesthetic. It was taken for granted that
medicine
would be the family profession, passed on from generation to
generation.
Henry had just one child, a son named William Sturgis Bigelow.
William’s
mother died when he was still a child, and although he pleased his
father
by becoming a crack shot who could drop birds out of the sky with the
best
of them, his nature rebelled against the practice of medicine.
Having
earned a medical degree, he took off on an extended tour of Europe, not
returning
to Boston till he was 29. Two years later he escaped again by
accompanying
Harvard professor Edward S. Morse to Japan. Staying on for eight
years,
William Sturgis Bigelow studied Japanese culture, collected Japanese
art,
converted to Buddhism, and was decorated by the Emperor of Japan with
the
Order of the Rising Sun.
William Bigelow’s library on Tuckernuck,
courtesy Nantucket Historical Assn
By now it was clear that this Bigelow would never
practice
medicine, nor would he give his father a grandson to carry on the
family
name and profession. Instead, he became a lecturer on Buddhism
and
Japanese culture at Harvard and cultivated a circle of men
friends.
Among them were Brooks Adams; Henry Adams, who married Bigelow’s first
cousin;
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and his son, who was known as “Bey” Lodge;
John
LaFarge; and Theodore Roosevelt. Edith Wharton would have liked
to
be part of their group, but finding herself excluded, she contented
herself
with sniping from the sidelines. Of Bigelow she remarked acidly
that
‘his erudition far exceeded his mental capacity.”
All the men in Bigelow’s circle dabbled in
Buddhism,
and much of the dabbling took place during summers at the Bigelow house
on
Tuckernuck. There Bigelow amassed a library of three thousand
volumes,
many in French and German, and some reportedly racy. Some were
rare
old volumes, and some were publications by Bigleows of past
generations.
Part of the collection dealt with the spiritual and the occult, and
also
included were French cartoon books poking fun at human nature.
Visitors
to Bigelow’s Tuckernuck retreat were welcome to spend the day
discussing
metaphysics in their pajamas, while Bigelow himself favored his
Japanese
kimono. For breaks from intellectualizing, there was a waterside
tennis
court and a Japanese bath. Women were absolutely banned, and
skinny-dipping
was encouraged. From sweltering mid-summer Washington, D.C.
Senator
Lodge wrote of his impending visit to Tuckernuck, “Surf, Sir! And sun,
Sir!
And Nakedness! Oh Lord, how I want to get my clothes off!”
Bigelow’s only house rule was that his guests had
to
dress for dinner. He set a good table with excellent food (often
fresh-caught
bluefish) and fine wine.
During these summers, Bigelow kept a journal that
he
called "Notes on the Universe and Kindred Topics as Seen from
Tuckernuck.”
Then a pair of misfortunes cast a shadow over Bigelow’s off-shore
idyll.
A friend named Trumbell Stickney died suddenly on the eve of a trip to
the
island, and in the summer of 1909, Bey Lodge suffered a seizure and
died
on Tuckernuck. Both were young men in their thirties. As
Bigelow
brooded over these losses, the encroaching sea took a bite out of the
corner
of his tennis court. Sensing that his house was now haunted,
Bigelow
abandoned Tuckernuck.
Upon his death, fifteen years after that of Bey
Lodge,
Bigelow was cremated. Half of his ashes were interred in the
Mount
Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, and the other half were carried to Japan
and
interred by a Buddhist temple in Kyoto. His superb art collection
became
a cornerstone of the Asian collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
The eroding shore continued to creep ever closer to
the
Bigelow house on Tuckernuck, and at the end of the 1930s it was partly
demolished
and partly moved to the other side of the island, where it was
incorporated
into the LaFarge family house. The rarest and best of Bigelow’s
books
had been taken to the mainland, but the rest remain on Tuckernuck with
the
LaFarge family.
Bigelow’s Tuckernuck journal is now part of the
manuscript
collection of the Nantucket Historical Association.
From: Professor Grzegorz RACKI <
grzegorz.racki@us.edu.pl >
Because of my historical/geological research, I would be grateful for your help in the query referred directly to the XIX century Bigelow family from Boston. There are two quotes of totally forgotten scientific paper:
rodbigelow@netzero.net
