Norton, Charles Eliot Norton Norton Christianity, he was disinclined to enter any as- [q.v.], then Dexter Professor of Sacred Litera- sociations formed on denominational lines. He ture in the Harvard Divinity School, and his established and wrote for the short-lived Gen- wife, Catharine Eliot, daughter of Samuel Eliot eral Repository and Review (January 1812- of Boston. His parents made their home at OR October 1813), and contributed many reviews "Shady Hill," an estate of some fifty acres in to the Christian Examiner and several to the Cambridge, where their six children were born, North American Review. In 1833 he printed A and where Charles died. This home, with its lar Statement of Reasons for not Believing the simple but spacious and scholarly elegance, was ss., Doctrines of Trinitarians. His address in 1839, the hospitable center of the life of the Nortons. On the Latest Form of Infidelity was common- Andrews had also a summer place in fashion- ly interpreted as a reply to Emerson's famous able Newport. Charles made a retreat at the lit- Divinity School Address of the preceding year. tle town of Ashfield, in northwestern Massa- By many persons who know nothing of Nor- chusetts. Wherever domiciled he entered into ton's substantial achievements its unfortunate the life of the place and was a factor in its civic title has been remembered to the disparagement betterment. By inheritance he was endowed of his just reputation. with financial competence, scholarly tastes, and of In the field of general literature he played an a pervasive moral sense. The thoroughness of In influential part through the editing, with Charles his scholarship, and his ethical poise were ac- red Folsom, of The Select Journal of Foreign Pe- companied by personal charm, qualities which riodical Literature (4 vols., 1833-34). He also combined to make a personality of rare and en- edited Poems by Mrs. Hemans (1826-28). A during influence. volume of his own poems, Verses, was published Graduating from Harvard in 1846, at the age in the year of his death. His poetry was of a re- of nineteen, Norton spent three years with a at served and formal type, reminiscent of the eigh- Boston importing firm. To business he gave teenth century, but two of his hymns, "My God, conscientious days: his evenings were spent in on I thank thee may no thought E'er deem thy the congenial tasks of establishing night schools chastisements severe" (1809), and "Where an- for men and boys in Cambridge and helping the cient forests round us spread" (1833) are to be almost blind Francis Parkman prepare for the found in modern hymnbooks. press his Oregon Trail. In 1849, Norton went He was an independent and solitary thinker, to India as supercargo. The business instinct but his learning enabled him to speak with an of the Eliots, the ways and means of making authority possessed by few American scholars money, he had not inherited; he was interested of his generation, and his influence upon the in commerce simply as an exchange of com- literary and religious life of his time was con- modities. He spent a leisurely two years in structive and/beneficent, thanks to the clarity of Egypt, Italy, France, and England, indulging his thought and the integrity of his character. his bent in studying social conditions and mak- On May 21, 1821, he married Catharine, ing friendships. In Paris he met "the long- daughter of Samuel Eliot of Boston. They had haired and sweet-visaged" George William Cur- six children, of whom four survived infancy. tis [q.v.], fresh from his Nile experiences, and One of these, Charles Eliot Norton [q.v.], be- the two quickly began a lifelong association. In came a distinguished scholar, and another, Grace Florence he became on familiar terms with the Norton, was well-known for her work on Mon- Brownings. In England he enjoyed the Ascot taigne. Andrews Norton lived in Cambridge at races, and the literary society of the day. "Shady Hill," a mansion which he erected about Returning to Boston in 1851, Norton began the time of his marriage, and which, during the on his own account a modest business in the life of his son, became widely known as a center East India trade. This faded out in 1855, leav- of influence in art and letters. ing him free to indulge fully his propensity for [William Newell, in Christian Examiner, Nov. 1853; a literary life. He began by editing the trans- W/ Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit, vol. VIII (1865) A. P. Peabody, Harvard Reminiscences lations of the Gospels, discourses, and poems (1888), pp. 73-78; S. A. Eliot, ed., Heralds of a Lib- of his father, who had died in 1853. The doctors eral Faith (1910), vol. II New-Eng. Hist. and Geneal. ordered Norton abroad in 1855, and with no re- Reg., July 1859; Sara Norton and M. A. DeW. Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton (2 vols., 1913.).] luctance he, accompanied by his mother and H.W.F. two sisters, went to Rome. His studies, obser- NORTON, CHARLES ELIOT (Nov. 16, vations, and opinions, embodied in Notes of r827-Oct. 21, 1908), editor, author, teacher, Travel and Study in Italy (1860), came to be was born in Cambridge, Mass., the fifth child modified but never were essentially changed. and only surviving son of Andrews Norton He translated The New Life of Dante Aligheri 569 Norton Norton (1867, privately printed 1859) as a prelude to Court-jester of the century," and that like all his prose rendering of The Divine Comedy (3 great talkers, he said much for immediate effect vols., 1891-92). In Switzerland he began the and forgot it as soon as said (Letters, I, 332- intimate friendship with Ruskin, recorded in the 33). Again, Norton wrote of Carlyle: "Like Letters of John Ruskin to Charles Eliot Norton Dante, his face was black with the smoke of (2 vols., 1904). James Russell Lowell joined Hell" (Ibid., II, 147). Emerson and Norton the Nortons in Italy for mule rides, continuing directed to Harvard, Carlyle's gift of a large a companionship which widened and deepened portion of his library, as a sort of reparation with their lives, as may be read in their pub- for his attacks on the United States. In 1882, lished letters, those of Lowell in the two vol- Froude, as Carlyle's literary executor, published umes Norton edited (1894) ; Norton's in the a garbled version of the intimate journals of two volumes of his own letters. In England he Jane Welsh Carlyle, thereby creating a literary met Thackeray, and was taken into companion- sensation. "I could not have believed, even of ship with the Pre-Raphaelites (Letters, I, Froude, bad as I thought him," wrote Norton, 175). He visited his close friends, the Gaskells "a capacity for such falseness, for such betrayal and the A. H. Cloughs. of a most sacred trust, for such cynical treach- Returning in 1857, Norton wrote articles and ery to the memory of one who had put faith in reviews for the Atlantic Monthly, just estab- him" (Ibid., II, 135). The family appealed to lished with Lowell as its editor. He enjoyed Norton, and he edited Carlyle's letters, remi- companionship with its contributors-Lowell, niscences, and two notebooks, together with the Holmes, and Emerson especially. The impend- Carlyle-Emerson and the Goethe-Carlyle corre- ing Civil War engrossed him. Intimacy with spondence-in all eleven volumes (1883-91). the Middleton family of Charleston, S. C., whose Norton's work as a teacher covered the years summer home was at Bristol, R. I., gave him from 1873 to 1897, from his forty-sixth to his occasion to study slavery under its most favor- seventieth year. Called to service by his cousin, able conditions, and to convince him that bad as the youthful, innovating President Charles W. that institution was for the blacks, it was even Eliot [q.v.], Norton began at Harvard the first worse for the whites. John Brown's rash inva- continuous university instruction in the history sion of Virginia, his conviction, and his heroic of the fine arts as related to social progress, gen- death on the gallows, seemed to Norton to place eral culture, and literature (manuscript letter, Brown among the Covenanters and the Puri- Harvard Library). Eliot Norton wittily and tans, and, despite the wrongness of the means aptly called his father's courses "Lectures on adopted, to "set up a standard by which to meas- Modern Morals as Illustrated by the Art of the ure the principles of public men" (Letters, I, Ancients" (Letters, II, 8). All his gathered 201). He was undismayed by the prospect of learning, his discriminating judgment, the re- war and had no fear for the result; but he looked sults of close companionship with world-wor- forward "with the deepest sorrow and compas- thies, he lavished on the students who flocked to sion to the retribution" the South was prepar- him. The quiet, pervasive charm that had en- ing for itself (Ibid., I, 216). If his early confi- deared him to the Brownings, to Carlyle, Rus- dence in Lincoln wavered at times, he was quick kin, Emerson, Curtis, Lowell, and Longfellow to readjust his judgment. As editor of the Loyal was exercised in his crowded classroom and Publication Society broadsides, for three years was expanded in the rare companionship of his he furnished local newspapers with copies of home, where he exemplified the attributes of a the most effective editorial writings of the day. gentleman. The purchase and gift to the Har- In 1864, Lowell and Norton as editors made the vard Library of his rare books, by his students; North American Review convincingly loyal. On the creation of The Norton Fellowship in Greek May 21, 1862, Norton married Susan Ridley Studies by one of his pupils, and by another the Sedgwick, daughter of Theodore Sedgwick, 3rd, foundation of the Charles Eliot Norton Lecture- of Stockbridge and New York. After an ideal ship of Poetry are manifestations of a sway domestic life at "Shady Hill" and Ashfield, she which came to be accounted by many as the de- died in February 1872, at Dresden, Germany, termining influence in their lives. His book, while the family (which included three sons Historical Studies of Church-Building in the and three daughters) were spending five years Middle Ages (1880), is a treasure to practition- in Europe. ers of architecture as a fine art. Another book, In March 1869, Norton met Thomas Car- History of Ancient Art (1891), was prepared lyle, then seventy-four years old, at the latter's by H. F. Brown and W. H. Wiggin from his London home. Norton said Carlyle was "the lectures. 570 Norton Norton The range of Norton's activities in literature of the universe and happy in the conviction that and life was great. He edited The Poems of the chief lesson of life is that of love" (Ibid., John Donne (2 vols., 1895), The Love Poems II, 364). To him God and immortality were in- of John Donne (1905), and The Poems of Mrs. conceivable, but "the motives which impel an Anne Bradstreet (1897), as well as the Orations intelligent man to virtuous conduct, are and Addresses of George William Curtis (3 the strongest which can be addressed to a hu- vols., 1894). The Archaeological Institute of man being, because they appeal directly to the America, the American School of Classical highest qualities of his human nature" (Ibid.). Studies at Athens and in Rome, and the move- Thus to him came "a new sense of the value of ment to preserve Niagara Falls owe to him in- life to the individual, and of his infinite unim- spiration and effective support. His sympa- portance to the universe; he can be a help thies were fresh and catholic. One of the first or a harm to his fellows, and that is enough" (Putnam's Monthly, Sept. 1855) to recognize (Ibid., II, 347). His religious opinions caused Walt Whitman, as combining "the characteris- momentary hesitation as to his confirmation as tics of a Concord philosopher with those of a professor, and always colored estimates of him. New York fireman" (Letters, I, 135), he was Norton's advice to his students that they pon- equally quick to see the merits of Kipling and to der the question as to their duty to enlist for the enjoy Mr. Dooley. (See Rudyard Kipling; A Spanish-American War aroused widespread Biographical Sketch, 1899, and Atlantic Month- criticism, and the vituperations of his classmate, ly, Jan. 1897.) The Chicago Fair of 1893 was Senator G. F. Hoar, which were afterwards re- to him a foretaste of "the ideal Chicago, which gretted by the latter, also an anti-imperialist. His exists not only in the brain, but in the heart of insistence on ethos as the fundamental element some of her citizens. I have never seen Ameri- in beauty in art brought about conflict with the cans from whom one could draw happier augu- architect, Charles F. McKim, who in reality ries for the future of America, than some of practised Norton's precepts, and whose life- the men whom I saw at Chicago" (Letters, II, work in the American Academy in Rome, was 218). later united with Norton's in the School of In 1865, E. L. Godkin, F. L. Olmsted, J. M. Classical Studies in the Eternal City. At times McKim, Norton, and others founded the Nation he failed to perceive that the principles he advo- as a critical journal to maintain standards in cated were the very ones which actuated artists politics, literature and art, familiarly known as to create works he criticized. So, too, in politics "the weekly day of judgment." During forty the critic in his censures often was unmindful years of intimacy with Godkin, Norton gave to of exigencies which statesmen might guide but him active support morally, financially, and by could not control. reviews and criticisms in art and letters. Dur- Recognition of Norton's influence and serv- ing summers at Ashfield, Norton and Curtis, in ice came in honorary degrees from Cambridge 1879, started for the benefit of local charity, a and Oxford, as well as from Harvard, Yale, series of annual dinners at which Choate, How- and Columbia; also in original membership in ells, Moorfield Storey, Booker Washington, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, others advocated reform of the tariff and the and in appointment as grand officer of the Order civil service, the promotion of negro education, of the Crown of Italy for his Italian studies. and especially anti-imperialism. Stigmatized as In 1907 his eightieth birthday was marked by a mugwumps and party renegades, the speakers group of letters from friends, expressing the through the press found a nation-wide audience. esteem he had won for himself. Edith Wharton With Curtis' death and Norton's failing health sent a sonnet, appropriately entitled "High Pas- the dinners ceased in 1903. ture" (Harvard Graduates' Magazine, Dec. The breadth of Norton's intelligence, the un- 1907) ; and in 1913, G. E. Woodberry paid his flinching clearness of his reasoning, the inten- tribute in a Phi Beta Kappa poem (Ibid., Sept. sity of his moral convictions aroused antago- 1913). President Eliot put the climax to Nor- nisms which he neither sought nor avoided. ton's career in sober, prophetic words (Ibid., Companionship with Chauncey Wright, Cam- Dec. 1907, p. 222) "Thousands of Harvard bridge mathematician and philosopher, devel- students attribute to his influence lasting im- oped a philosophy of life which led him out of provements in their modes of thought, their in- the creeds of his ancestors and into a position tellectual and moral interests, and their ideas "almost solitary in my open profession of free- of success and true happiness. His work and thinking" (Ibid., II, 249), "perplexed in- his training for it were both unique, and are not deed by the mighty mystery of existence, and likely to be parallelled in the future." 571 Norton Norton [Sara Norton and M. A. DeW. Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton with Biographical Comment, movement to take Missouri out of the Union, containing a list of his writings (2 vols., 1913), a He was an outstanding member of the Missouri permanent piece of literature ; Jane Whitehill, ed., Let- constitutional convention of 1875. The consti- lers of Mrs. Gaskell and Charles Eliot Norton, 1855- 1865 (1932) : W. R. Thayer, in Harvard Grads. Mag., tution then formulated and adopted was SO per- Dec. 1908: E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, meated with his sound and statesmanlike pro Works of John Ruskin, vol. XXXV (1908), Preterita, II, chs. 2-3; Development of Harvard University, posals that it was subsequently not infrequently 1869-1929 (1930), ed. by S. E. Morison, ch. V ; Proc. denominated the "Norton Constitution." It is Am. Academy of Arts and Letters, no. IV, IQIO-II still (1934) the fundamental law of the state. (1911) E. W. Emerson and W. F. Harris, Charles Eliot Norton (1912) Barrett Wendell, in Atlantic When a vacancy occurred on the state supreme Monthly, Jan. 1909 W. D. Howells, in No. Am. Rev., bench in 1876, Gov. C. H. Hardin [q.v.] ap. Dec. 1913; Boston Evening Transcript, Oct. 20, 21, 22, 1908.] pointed Norton to fill the place. Two years later C.M. he was elected to the office for the ensuing term NORTON, ELIJAH HISE (Nov. 21, I82I- and served until Dec. 3I, 1888, when he declined Aug. 5, 1914), congressman, jurist, was born renomination. He was chief justice in 1887-88, near Russellville, Logan County, Ky. His fa- Among the scores of supreme-court decisions ther, William F. Norton, was the son of Quak- which he rendered, students of jurisprudence ers, but he became a Baptist when he, married may read with profit his citations and conclusions Mary Hise. She was of sturdy Pennsylvania in such cases as State VS. Shock (68 Missouri, German stock, was a pronounced Baptist, "loved 552), dissenting opinion; Kitchen VS. St. Louis, to talk, talked much and talked well." About 1817 Kansas City & Northern Railway Co. (69 Mis- they moved from Pennsylvania to Kentucky, souri, 224) ; St. Louis vs. St. Louis Gaslight Co. where William F. Norton engaged in farming (70 Missouri, 69) ; and The Julia Building As- and salt merchandizing. Elijah Hise Norton, sociation vs. The Bell Telephone Co. (88 Mis- their son, obtained most of his preliminary educa- souri, 258). He was an able judge, though he tion at Centre College, Danville, Ky. He then did little to construct new bases of legal reason- entered the law department of Transylvania Uni- ing or re-direct the course of legal evolution. versity, graduated in 1842, was admitted to the From 1890 until his death he lived on his large bar, and practised law at Russellville for about farm near Platte City. He was a successful two years. But the strong pioneer spirit of the farmer and business man. times soon took control of him, and in 1845 he [L. C. Krauthoff, The Supreme Court of Mo. (1891); moved west, to settle in the promising Platte R. P. C. Wilson, "Memorial Address upon Judge Elijah Hise Norton," Proc. Mo. Bar Asso., 1914 A. Purchase country of northwest Missouri. Here, Stewart, The Hist. of the Bench and Bar of Mo. (1898); at the town of Platte City, he hung his shingle Jour. and Proc. Mo. State Convention 1861 (1861); over the door of a two-room log cabin and soon Jour. Mo. Constitutional Convention of 1875 (2 vols., 1920), ed. by Isidor Loeb and F. C. Shoemaker; W. M. won recognition as a leading lawyer among a Paxton, Annals of Platte County, Mo. (1897) A Hist. dozen competitors. Upon being elected county of Northwest Mo. (1915), ed. by Walter Williams, vol. II J. C. Maple and R. P. Rider, Mo. Bapt. Biog., vol. attorney, with a salary of $100, he telt sufficiently III (1918) ; H. C. McDougal, Recollections (1910) Mo. prosperous to marry on May 28, 1850, Malinda Hist. Rev., Oct. 1914; Boonville Daily Advertiser, Jan. C. Wilson, the daughter of an older and promi- 20, 22, 1877; Jefferson Inquirer, Sept. 25, 1852; St. Joseph Gazette, Aug. 6, 1914.] H.E.N. nent lawyer of Platte City. She died in 1873, leaving a family of seven children, and on Sept. NORTON, JOHN (May 6, 1606-Apr 3, 1663), 17, 1877, he married Missouri A. (Green) Mar- Puritan clergyman, was born at Bishop's Stort- shall. ford, Hertfordshire, England, the eldest son of During the fifties Norton was looked upon as William and Alice (Browest) Norton, and the leading anti-Benton Democrat of northwest grandson of William Norton of Sharpehow, Missouri. In 1852 he was elected circuit judge Bedfordshire (New-England Historical and of the Platte Purchase district and ably fulfilled Genealogical Register July 1859, pp. 225-30). the duties of this office until 1860. He was then The boy studied under Alexander Strange of nominated and elected to the stormy Thirty- Buntingford, and at fourteen proceeded to Peter- seventh Congress (1861-63), where he took a house, Cambridge, where he received the degree decided stand in opposition to secession, although of B.A. in 1623/4 and that of M.A. in 1627 he stated that he did not favor war to prevent it. (John and A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses, He was defeated when he stood for reelection to vol. III, 1924; T. A. Walker, Admissions to Congress in 1862. As a leading delegate to the Peterhouse or S. Peter's College Cambridge, state convention of 1861 to consider the rela- 1912, 16). For a short time he was an usher tions of Missouri to the federal government, he at Stortford Grammar School and curate there. labored stubbornly and effectively against the He then became private chaplain to Sir William 572 Charles Eliot Norton - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Page 1 of 3 Charles Eliot Norton From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Charles Eliot Norton, (November 16, 1827 - Charles Eliot Norton October 21, 1908) was a leading American author, social critic, and professor of art. He was a militant idealist, a progressive social reformer, and a liberal activist whom many of his contemporaries considered the most cultivated man in the United States. [1] Contents 1 Biography 2 See also 3 References 4 Bibliography 5 External links Biography Charles Eliot Norton, circa 1903 Norton was born at Cambridge, Massachusetts. His father, Andrews Norton (1786-1853) was a Born November 16, 1827 Unitarian theologian, and Dexter professor of Cambridge, Massachusetts sacred literature at Harvard; his mother was Catherine Eliot, and Charles William Eliot, Died October 21, 1908 president of Harvard, was his cousin. Cambridge, Massachusetts Norton graduated from Harvard in 1846, and Occupation Art history professor, literary scholar started in business with an East Indian trading firm in Boston, travelling to India in 1849. After a tour in Europe, where he was influenced by John Ruskin and pre-Raphaelite painters, he returned to Boston in 1851, and devoted himself to literature and art. He translated Dante's Vita Nuova (1860 and 1867) and the Divina Commedia (1891-91-92), 3 vols.). He worked tirelessly as secretary to the Loyal Publication Society during the Civil War, communicating with newspaper editors across the country, including the journalist Jonathan Baxter Harrison who became a lifelong close friend. [2] From 1864 to 1868, he edited the highly influential magazine North American Review, in association with James Russell Lowell. In 1861 he and Lowell helped Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his translation of Dante and in the starting of the informal Dante Club. In 1862 Norton married Susan Sedgwick. In 1875 he was appointed professor of the history of art at Harvard, a chair which was created for him and which he held until retirement in 1898. The Archaeological Institute of America chose him as its first president (1879-1890). From 1856 to 1874 Norton spent much time in travel and residence on the continent of Europe and in England, and it was during this period that his friendships began with Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, Edward FitzGerald and Leslie Stephen, an intimacy which did much to bring American and English men of letters into close personal relation. Norton had a peculiar genius for friendship, and it is on his personal influence rather than on his literary productions that his claim to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Eliot_Norto: 6/1/2009 Charles Eliot Norton - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Page 2 of 3 fame rests. In 1881 he inaugurated the Dante Society, whose first presidents were Longfellow, Lowell and Norton himself. From 1882 onward he confined himself to the study of Dante, his professorial duties, and the editing and publication of the literary memorials of many of his friends. One of his many students at Harvard was James Loeb. In 1883 came the Letters of Carlyle and Emerson; in 1886, 1887 and 1888, Carlyle's Letters and Reminiscences; in 1894, the Orations and Addresses of George William Curtis and the Letters of Lowell. Norton was also made Ruskin's literary executor, and he wrote various introductions for the American "Brantwood" edition of Ruskin's works. His other publications include Notes of Travel and Study in Italy (1859), and an Historical Study of Church-building in the Middle Ages: Venice, Siena, Florence (1880). He organized exhibitions of the drawings of Turner (1874) and of Ruskin (1879), for which he compiled the catalogues. During the first years of the twentieth century, Norton spoke out in favor of legalized euthanasia. He lent his name to a movement led by Ohio socialite Anna S. Hall to pass physician-assisted suicide legislation in Ohio and Iowa. [3] Norton died at "Shady-hill", the house where he had been born, on October 21, 1908, and was buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery. He bequeathed the more valuable portion of his library to Harvard. He had the degrees of Litt.D. (Cambridge) and D.C.L. (Oxford), as well as the L.H.D. of Columbia and the LL.D. of Harvard and of Yale. Today, his name is borne by a series of lectures (Charles Eliot Norton Lectures) held annually by distinguished professors at Harvard. See also Eliot family References Grave of Charles Eliot Norton 1. Dowling (2007) 2. ^ Turner (1999) 3. ^ Appel, Jacob M. 2004. "A Duty to Kill? A Duty to Die? Rethinking the Euthanasia Controversy of 1906" in Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Volume 78, Number 3 Bibliography Dowling, Linda. Charles Eliot Norton: The Art of Reform in Nineteenth-Century America. (University of New Hampshire Press, 2007) 245pp ISBN 978-1-58465-646-3.) Turner, James C. The Liberal Education of Charles Eliot Norton. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999) This article incorporates text from the Encyclopxdia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain. External links Works by Charles Eliot Norton at Project Gutenberg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Eliot_Norton 6/1/2009 Charles Eliot Norton - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Page 3 of 3 Eliot Norton Park in Boston, MA Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Eliot_Norton" Categories: 1827 births | 1908 deaths | Harvard University alumni | Harvard University faculty | Eliot family | Euthanasia in the United States Hidden categories: Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the 1911 Encyclopxedia Britannica This page was last modified on 24 April 2009, at 17:45 (UTC). All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details.) Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a U.S. registered 501(c) (3) tax-deductible nonprofit charity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Eliot_Norton 6/1/2009 Page 1 of 2 Re: Dorr at the Mount From To "Cornelia Gilder" Date Wed, 04 Mar 2009 09:35:25 Dear Nini, Wonderful to hear from you! Sorry for the delay in responding but we've just returned from four days in Allentown (PA) where Liz's parents (ages 93 and 97) are in the final stages of their lives. db For nearly two decades they have lived in a continuing care health facility run by the Lutheran Church in America but this past weekend Liz had the daunting task (as only child) of meeting with attorneys and trust officers, invoking her power of attonrney to tranfers financial authority and bill into paying and tax payments from her dad to the Trust officers. bio I spent part of that time edirting early chapters of the Dorr biography. I've submitted the Introduction and Chapter One to the Publisher and Editor and now have a bit more than three 3/4/19 months to complete editing the first half of the book. I've also been reviewing the illustrations and might contact you later about trhe permission process for a couple of those that you used that I would like to include. I was not aware of the Sally Norton letter--and would very much appreciate the full citation! But would you please correct me if I am in error. This letter is from Edith to Sally refers to Dorr's visit to the Mount? A visit that had been preceded by Dorr's visit to Shady Hill? This letter is important because it documents a visit unknown to me and not included in the paper that I presented at The Mount. By the way, I've heard in recent days that final proofs will be sent to me and that the collection of essays from the conference will appear this Spring. Can you believe it? I had looked closely at the possibility of a Dorr-Norton family paper connection but had uncovered only correspondence with Ward family members. What interests had taken you to Yale to uncover this very helpful information for me? As I look at my notes for the summer of 1905 I see that before the arrival fo Henry James an enthusiastic Wharton pleads with Sally to come see her garden for "it is really what I thought it could never be--a mass of blooms." On the emotional flip side, Sally's father writes (June 19th) to George Dorr's uncle, Samuel G. Ward, that as he (Charles) is "soon to quit the scene, I look back over the vast stage of life on which we have played our little parts, [and] the futility of the whole drama is what strikes me most." (Letters, vol. 2). I hope you and yours are well. I've been having urinary tract problems for several months that have resisted antibiotics and anti-inflammatory drugs. Consequently, this state of affairs has kept me too house-bound for my own satisfaction. This afternoon I've off for a CAT Scan so I may know more about what is amiss later. Looking forward to hearing from you! Ron Quoting Cornelia Gilder : Hello Ron, I was at the Bienecke today looking at Edith Wharton's letters to Sally Norton and came across this reference which dates at least one visit to the Mount. You probably know this but just in case How is the book process? hope all is well with you both. NINI June 14th !905 "I was glad to hear from Mr. Dorr, who is staying with us, that he thought you looking much better when he was a Shady Hill the other day." (I can give you the reference if you need it) https://webmail.myfairpoint.net/hwebmail/mail/message.php?index=111 3/4/2009 Page 2 of 2 really what I thought it could never be--a mass of blooms." On the emotional flip side, Sally's father writes (June 19th) to George Dorr's uncle, Samuel G. Ward, that as he (Charles) is "soon to quit the scene, I look back over the vast stage of life on which we have played our little parts, [and] the futility of the whole drama is what strikes me most." (Letters, vol. 2). I hope you and yours are well. I've been having urinary tract problems for several months that have resisted antibiotics and anti-inflammatory drugs. Consequently, this state of affairs has kept me too house-bound for my own satisfaction. This afternoon I've off for a CAT -Scan so I may know more about what is amiss later. Looking forward to hearing from you! Ron Quoting Cornelia Gilder : Hello Ron, I was at the Bienecke today looking at Edith Wharton's letters to Sally Norton and came across this reference which dates at least one visit to the Mount. You probably know this but just in case... How is the book process? hope all is well with you both. NINI June 14th !905 "I was glad to hear from Mr. Dorr, who is staying with us, that he thought you looking much better when he was a Shady Hill the other day." (I can give you the reference if you need it) Hawthorne's Lenox: The Tanglewood Circle By Cornelia Brooke Gilder & Julia Conklin Peters http://www.amazon.com/Hawthornes-Lenox-Cornelia-Brooke Gilder/dp/159629406X/ Houses of the Berkshires, 1870-1930 By Richard S. Jackson Jr. & Cornelia Brooke Gilder http://www.acanthuspress.com/pc-20-8-houses-of-the-berkshires-1870-1930.am Ronald H. Epp, Ph.D. 47 Pondview Drive Merrimack, NH 03054 (603) 424-6149 eppster2@myfairpoint.net Ronald H. Epp, Ph.D. 47 Pondview Drive Merrimack, NH 03054 (603) 424-6149 eppster2@myfairpoint.net Hawthorne's Lenox: The Tanglewood Circle By Cornelia Brooke Gilder & Julia Conklin Peters http://www.amazon.com/Hawthornes-Lenox-Cornelia-Brooke-Gilder/dp/159629406X, Houses of the Berkshires, 1870-1930 By Richard S. Jackson Jr. & Cornelia Brooke Gilder http://www.acanthuspress.com/pc-20-8-houses-of-the-berkshires-1870-1930.as https://webmail.myfairpoint.net/hwebmail/mail/message.php?index=311 3/4/2009 Charles Eliot Norton Apostle of Culture in a Democracy By Kermit Vanderbilt Charles Eliot Norton in 1908 THE BELKNAP PRESS of HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts 1959 FROM BUSINESS TO SCHOLARSHIP 3 Freshman would not expect to do. It was against the grain, but it had to be done, and I stuck it out, and am not sorry now that I did so.¹ II The countinghouse belonged to the East India merchants Bullard and Lee, and during the next nine years became the proving ground for Norton's career as a businessman. The FROM BUSINESS TO SCHOLARSHIP work was frequently tedious and irksome. It required close attention to a thousand details involved in the smooth func- It is not, then, to the people that we are to look for wis- tioning of a commercial house. In addition to supervising the dom and intelligence They could not, if they would, work out on the dock, Norton handled business correspond- rescue themselves from evil; and they have no help for others. But their progress must be stimulated and guided by ence, invoices, insurance policies, the records of prices current, the few who have been blessed with the opportunities, and and kept any number of additional account books up to date. the rare genius, fitting them to lead. These practical concerns, however, did not monopolize (Norton in Considerations on Some Recent Social Theories, 1853) Norton's mind and energies. Late in 1846, he prevailed on the city of Cambridge to let him use a school on Garden Cathedrals were essentially expressions of the popular will Street twice a week during the winter. There he began even- and the popular faith. They were the work neither of eccle- siastics nor of feudal barons. They represent, in a measure, ing classes for men and boys who had been forced to go to the decline of feudalism, and the prevalence of the demo- work in order upport their families, and were unable to cratic element in society. complete their egular schooling. The school's enrollment (Norton's essay on the Duomo at and curriculum are not known. The faculty was small but Orvieto, March, 1856) impressive. Besides Norton, the teachers included John Holmes (brother of the poet), Sidney Coolidge, and Francis THE COUNTINGHOUSE - A MEANS TO AN END Child. Norton believed this to be the first night school in Cambridge and the state of Massachusetts. Whether or not AFTER his graduation from Harvard, Norton set out to it had an influence on later evening schools in America has learn the ways of the business world. The clerical back- not been established, but Norton did discover from time to ground of the Norton family had influenced his character and time that the school had achieved results. One pupil, Pat training, but he did not hear a calling to the ministry. A McCarty, a son of Irish immigrants, tended COWS by day business life may have been an unwelcome alternative, but and came to Norton's school at night. He later studied law Norton chose it and he endured it with a hereditary Yankee and became the mayor of Providence, Rhode Island. In a toughness and Puritan devotion to work. In later life, he re- letter to a Providence newspaper after his election, he called called these years and wrote: Norton's night school one of the major influences of his life and gave it credit for providing him with a start in life. The day after I spoke my Commencement part I entered a counting- Norton studied closely the conditions of the poor, both in room on a wharf in Boston, and for a couple of years used to freeze in winter and to roast in summer overseeing the warehousing of thousands America and England, and probably engaged his father in of bales of Calcutta hides; I had to run errands, to do work that even a evening discussions of local poverty and ~crime, concerns 256 BIBLIOGRAPHY BIBLIOGRAPHY 257 From My Library Walls. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., Howe, Mark A. DeWolfe, and Charles Adams. "Memoir of Charles 1945. Eliot Norton," Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, [Peabody, Josephine P.] Diary and Letters of Josephine Preston Pea- XLVIII (Oct., 1914), 57-68. body. Selected and ed. by Christina H. Baker. Boston: Houghton Howells, William D. "Charles Eliot Norton: A Reminiscence," NAR, Mifflin Co., 1925. CXCVIII (Dec., 1913), 836-838. Perry, Bliss. Walt Whitman. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1906. "Part of Which I Was," NAR, CCI (Jan., 1915), 135-141. Perry, Ralph Barton. Puritanism & Democracy. New York: Vanguard "Recollections of an Atlantic Editorship," At. Mo., C (Nov., 1907), Press, 1944. 594-606. Rossetti Papers, 1862 to 1870. A compilation by William M. Rossetti. Jones, Howard M. "The Recovery of New England," At. Mo., CLXXXV London: Sands & Co., 1903. (April, 1950), 521. Ruskin, John. Praeterita. London: George Allen, 1907. Madden, Edward H. "Charles Eliot Norton on Art and Morals," Jour- Ruskin: Rossetti: PreRaphaelitism. Ed. by William M. Rossetti. Lon- nal of the History of Ideas, XVIII (June, 1957), 430-438. don: George Allen, 1899. Mason, Daniel G. "At Harvard in the Nineties," New England Quar- Santayana, George. Character & Opinion in the United States. New terly, IX (March, 1936), 43-70. York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920. [Mill, John S.] "Letters of John Stuart Mill to Charles Eliot Norton," The Genteel Tradition at Bay. New York: Charles Scribner's Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, L (Oct., 1916), Sons, 1931. 11-25. Winds of Doctrine. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1926. Moore, Charles. "Standards of Taste," American Magazine of Art, XXI Spiller, Robert E., et al. Literary History of the United States. New (July, 1930), 365-367. York: Macmillan Co., 1948. 3 vols. More, Paul Elmer. "Cha: liot Norton," Nation, XCVII (Dec. 4, Stephens, Kate. A Curious History in Book Editing. New York: Anti- 1913), 529-532. gone Press, 1927. Norman, Henry. "The Preservation of Niagara," Nation, XXXIII Stillman, William J. The Autobiography of a Journalist. Boston: Hough- (Sept. 1, 1881), 170-171. ton Mifflin Co., 1901. 2 vols. Shaffer, Robert B. "Ruskin, Norton, and Memorial Hall," Harvard Tallmadge, Thomas E. The Story of Architecture in America. New Library Bulletin, IX (Spring, 1949), 213-231. York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1927. Smith, Henry Nash. " That Hideous Mistake of Poor Clemens's,' Villard, Oswald G. Fighting Years: Memoirs of a Liberal Editor. New Harvard Library Bulletin, IX (Spring, 1955), 145-180. York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1939. Thayer, William R. "Charles Eliot Norton," Nation, LXXXVII (Oct. Warren, Austin. New England Saints. Ann Arbor: University of Michi- 29, 1908), 403-406. gan Press, 1956. "Professor Charles Eliot Norton," 28th Annual Report of the Wilbur, Earl M. A History of Unitarianism. Cambridge, Mass.: Har- Dante Society, 1909 (Boston: Ginn & Co., 1910), pp. 1-6. vard University Press, 1952. "The Sage of Shady Hill," The Unpartizen Review, XV (Jan.- March, 1921), 76-90. ARTICLES "Two Notable Letter-Writers," The Athenaeum, No. 4492 (Nov. 29, "The Athletic Commitee," Harvard Alumni Bulletin, XIV (Jan. 3, 1913), 615-616. 1912), 196-198. Wendell, Barrett. "Charles Eliot Norton," At. Mo., CIII (Jan., 1909), "C. E. Norton on Dime Issues," Massachusetts Historical Society Pro- 82-83. ceedings, L (Feb., 1917), 196-199. Wolff, Samuel L. "Scholars," Cambridge History of American Litera- "Charles Eliot Norton," Nation, XCII (May 11, 1911), 471-472. Un- ture, IV (New York, 1921), 489. signed tribute from a former student. "Charles Eliot Norton," Time and the Hour, VII (April 2, 1898), 6-8. "For Professor Norton's Eightieth Birthday," Harvard Graduates Maga- zine, XVI (Dec., 1907), 217-230. Hall, Chadwick. "America's Conservative Revolution," Antioch Review, XV (Summer, 1955), 204-216. UPNE - Charles Eliot Norton: Linda Dowling Page 1 of 2 University of New Hampshire Press Season UPNE Charles Eliot Norton Charles Eliot Norton UPNE Home FEE The Art of Reform in Nineteenth-Century America Shipping Info Linda Dowling SHOPPING Cart Becoming Modern: New Nineteenth-Century Studies Browse Our Books University of New Hampshire Press University Press of New England shopsite 2007 248 pp. 6 X 9" HIGH New Titles SECURITY Biography & Letters / Intellectual History Oct 23 Download Selected $26.00 Paper, 978-1-58465-678-4 Add hardcover to cart Subject Brochures Linda Dewing $39.95 Cloth, 978-1-58465-646-3 MEMBER PRESSES Click for larger image Add paperback to cart SHARE 89 Brandeis Go gle Dartmouth Preview New Hampshire Northeastern From his friendships with Emerson and Carlyle to his influence on the Pre-Raphaelite and Ruskinian movements, the American man of letters Charles Eliot Norton played an important role in the cultural Tufts cross-pollination that so enriched Britain and the United States in the 19th century. Drawing on unpublished portions of his Vermont journals, Dowling shows a man bereft of religious faith struggling to develop a principled ethic of civic Distributed Presses liberalism in contrast to the predominant values of the Gilded Age. He was censured during his lifetime for his opposition to the Spanish-American War, but more than a century later he stands out as a lodestar of Author Events opposition to the excesses and coarseness characteristic of his age--and, unfortunately, of our own." Atlantic Monthly News & Reviews An impassioned reassessment of a major nineteenth-century public intellectual About UPNE Author, translator, social critic and Harvard professor of art, Charles Eliot Norton was widely regarded in his own day as the most cultivated man in America. In modern times, by contrast, he has been condemned as the supercilious representative of an embattled patrician caste. This revisionary study argues that Norton's genuine significance for American culture and politics today can only be grasped by recovering the vanished contexts in which his life and work took shape. In a wide-ranging analysis, Linda Dowling demonstrates the effects upon Norton's thought of the great transatlantic humanitarian reform movement of the 1840s, the Pre-Raphaelite and Ruskinian revolution in art and architecture of the 1850s and the surging liberal optimism that emerged from the Civil War. Drawing on numerous deleted passages from Norton's manuscript journals, Dowling probes beneath the imperturbable mask of the public Norton, bringing to light the elusive private man. Returning from Europe in 1873, bereft of his wife and stripped of his religious belief, Norton was compelled to confront the painful contradictions within his own liberal political faith. In a land given to celebrating freedom of speech, Norton would become a speaker subjected to physical threats for opposing the Spanish-American War. Among a people given to glorying in its superiority to other civilizations, he would become a social critic reviled for arguing that the nation was failing to live up to its own most cherished ideals. It would be Norton's misfortune, shared with others of his generation, to watch the golden promise of a victorious war for the Union fade into the unrepentant cynicism of the Gilded Age. Yet Norton's militant idealism and heroic citizenship, Dowling argues, survive now as a vital parable for American civic liberalism in the present day. Reviews: The structure of [Dowling's] concise, lucid introduction to Norton's remarkably multifaceted career reinforces an implicit argument of the book: that Norton is a figure who deserves the attention of nonspecialists Dowling's arguments should prove useful in stimulating further investigation of the disputes in which she weighs in on Norton's side her slim volume more than sufficiently establishes its premise that Norton is a figure worthy of the general public's attention." -New England Quarterly http://www.upne.com/1-58465-646-8.html 10/23/2009 UPNE - Charles Eliot Norton: Linda Dowling Page 2 of 2 "Dowling's wide-ranging and learned study brilliantly analyzes the intellectual and cultural context within which Norton acted. It is based on meticulous research in Norton's manuscript journals and other archival sources, and her prose is often elegant Her biography sheds valuable light on an important and often misunderstood man who spoke eloquently and forcefully to the hopes and anxieties of Americans during the last two-thirds of the nineteenth century. Her study belongs on the shelf of everyone who seeks to understand the complex interaction between art and politics in mid- and late nineteenth-century America." -Journal of American History "Dowling clearly admires her subject for his intellect, probity, and courage, but does not overlook his shortcomings this is a solid, well-written, and important contribution to scholarship."-Choice Endorsements: "For nearly a century, the conventional wisdom has dismissed Charles Eliot Norton as a snobbish aesthete sunk in gloomy withdrawal, the epitome of bloodless elite culture at the height of the genteel tradition. But Linda Dowling's forceful and revelatory account renders all such glib caricatures untenable. She overturns the clichés, and gives us in their place a dramatically different and vastly more interesting portrait of Norton: a reform-minded democrat engaged in a lover's quarrel with America." Prof. Wilfred McClay, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, author of The Masterless: Self and Society in America "With vigorous prose and deft attention to detail, Linda Dowling restores Charles Eliot Norton to his rightful place as one of the leading figures in the great nineteenth century tradition of civic republican thought. Dowling's book brilliantly evokes the mind and spirit of a man who dared to believe that art and politics might have something to do with one another."-Jackson Lears, editor, Raritan Click here for TABLE OF CONTENTS LINDA DOWLING is the author of five books, including The Vulgarization of Art: The Victorians and Aesthetic Democracy (1996), Hellenism and Homosexuality in Victorian Oxford (1994), and Language and Decadence in the Victorian Fin de Siècle (1986). U.P.N.E Secure on-line ordering! Fri. 16 Oct 2009 15:07:15-0500 http://www.upne.com/1-58465-646-8.html 10/23/2009