Bertie Vamps Bar Harbor For a rich little princess from Albany, the summer of '92 was a time of discovery, and the extravagantly uninhibited world of Bar Harbor was the place to be. By Nan Lincoln. 50 DOWN EAST I Tis a warm summer evening in 1892. nies. Ladies in wide-brimmed, flower- 1892. Bertie, a dark-haired, pixieish The bluish glow of the gas-lit street festooned hats take in hand the hems of girl with merry brown eyes, had, that lamps illuminates a steady proces- their bustled gowns as they step off the same spring, been presented at the sion of couples promenading arm and curb to cross the broad avenue of hard- court of Queen Victoria for her social arm along the wide granite sidewalks of packed dirt. Their gentlemen escorts ex- debut. Like scores of others who ar- Main Street. As they approach the cen- tend a restraining hand as teams of per- rived daily in Bar Harbor by ferry that ter of town, a brass band can be heard fectly groomed horses prance by, pull- summer, she was a pedigreed Ameri- playing a waltz from the wraparound ing buckboard wagons, four-wheeled can princess looking for fun, excite- piazza of the Grand Central Hotel - a phaetons, and dainty two-seater hansom ment, and romance - and she'd come five-story, 300-room affair towering over carriages. The creak of leather harnesses to the one place in America that could the entire first block of Mount Desert and muffled clop of hooves mingle with virtually guarantee all three. Street. the music and the giddy laughter of care- Seven years before, when the Pruyn Unconsciously the strollers fall in free vacationers, intoxicated by the magic family first decided to spend a summer in step with the steady oom-pah-pah of the of a midsummer night in Bar Harbor a Bar Harbor rather than their customary tuba. The music sweeps them under the hundred years ago. Newport, Rhode Island, the then-twelve- scalloped awnings of sweet shops, flo- Miss Huybertie ("Bertie") Pruyn, year-old Bertie had not been pleased. In rists, dressmakers, and fine linen stores; the eighteen-year-old daughter of John her diary, excerpts from which were later past the gold-lettered windows of fancy V. L. Pruyn (pronounced "prine"), a published in her memoirs, she lamented, grocers, and the stately brick edifices of wealthy railroad magnate from Albany, "[We are] to go to a place called Mount prosperous banks and real estate compa- New York, was in town that summer of Dessert - like what we eat. It is very far As steamers ferried visitors to the island town renowned for its huge hotels, palatial cottages, and glittering social whirl, local papers vied to report the names of all the notable arrivals. POST POFFICE. away. It takes a lot of time to get there and porticoes, and flag-bearing spires. A fel- when you do - all you see are big rocks Whether arriving by steamboat low passenger might have pointed out the and pines and there is a hotel there called or by train across the bay at Mount gabled rooftops of Stanwood, the summer the fish pond but they fish for people I Desert Ferry in Hancock home of James G. Blaine, who, just a few do not understand it. They drive in buck- (below), cottagers of the day were years ago, had been narrowly defeated in boards and go to meals in other houses typically met in Bar Harbor by members his campaign for the presidency of the from where they sleep and eat pies for of their own domestic staffs who had United States - and in 1892 would be breakfast every day. I would like some of preceded them to open the great again. Perhaps she also caught a glimpse of those, but it is 2 cold for bathing. I would summer houses. Landaus with liveried the polished granite pillars of Mizzentop, not like that and guess Newport is much drivers (above) were preferred for owned by the son of Cyrus McCormick, better." errands around town. whose invention of a mechanical reaper The overnight train trip from Albany to allowed his son to fill his thirty-room "cot- Mount Desert Ferry, at Hancock Point, did tage" with paintings by Gainsborough, nothing to improve little Miss Turner, and Joshua Reynolds. Pruyn's outlook. In her journal she Ah, yes, Bertie Pruyn would complained of the jolting, dusty soon discover there was more to ride and having nothing to bathe this place than rocks, cold water, withexceptabottle of mineral water and trees. In fact, she might at first and a small towel. have been struck by the similarity in Surely though, once Bertie style, if not tone and topography, to stepped down from the train at Newport - that other East Coast Hancock and walked along the pier bastion of opulent overstatement. toward the awaiting ferryboat, her heart would have been softened by B UT it would be the differ- the sight of the mountains of Mount ences between Bar Harbor Desert Island rising out of the sea in and all of the other popular the distance like some storybook watering places in turn-of-the-cen- domain come to life. The sound of tury America that Bertie would the surf, pounding against the gran- come to appreciate as she grew into ite-bound shore, must have stirred young womanhood. her in a way the sandy beaches of Perhaps because it was such an Newport could never approach. arduous trip to reach this neck of the Imagine Bertie's growing de- woods, those who toughed it out light as the ferry neared the island considered themselves a breed apart and she could behold the summer from the rest of their class who homes strung out along its shore- settled for the more accessible plea- line like fat baroque pearls or sures of the Berkshires, the White perched on the craggy shoulders of and Green mountains, or even the the mountains like fairy-tale castles coast of southern Maine. These pio- complete with stone turrets, arched neering Bar Harbor rusticators 52 DOWN EAST Photographs courtesy Bar Harbor Historical Society formed a bond of trust and like-mindedness the "Fish Pond" mentioned in Bertie unknown in other American enclaves of At the posh Kebo Valley Club, Pruyn's diary, her corsetted bosom would high society. This sense of "being among gymkhanas of all sorts - from carriage have seethed with indignation. friends" apparently allowed them to lower parades to table tennis tournaments This "Fish Pond" was actually the their guards with one another and create a (above) - -filled the summer calendar. lobby of the mammoth 400-room Rodick social scene SO open and liberal it could be Even more exclusive was the House, a hotel that loomed six stories over favorably compared to the flamboyant Eu- Reading Room (below), an imposing Main Street. By the 1890s, the Rodick - ropean playgrounds of the upper crust. Bar shorefront social club favored and for that matter the dozen or SO other Harbor in the nineties earned its nickname, by the likes of J.P. Morgan, gargantuan inns thrown up in the previous Little Paris. whose 350-foot steam yacht was decade - were visibly in decline. But the The entries in Bertie Pruyn's diary and anchored just offshore. Rodick's lobby, even worn and seedy- later memoirs, which are filled with ac- looking, still had a deliciously notorious counts of unchaperoned high jinks and reputation as the place where "unchap- vigorous outdoor recreation - all eroned, easy-going Philadelphia of which would have been virtu- girls showed slow-going Boston ally forbidden to a young lady of boys how to flirt." After meeting at her social stratum in a more con- such a place as the Fish Pond, a ventional environment - bear young couple might go for a stroll clear evidence that she and the down Main Street, take a leisurely other young women of her set thor- paddle in a rented canoe, or just sit oughly delighted in the laissez- holding hands on the boulders along faire atmosphere, even as it scan- the newly completed shorepath, a dalized the gentry back home. One mile-long boardwalk along the east- Boston matriarch refused for many ern shore of town. This activity, years to accompany her husband called "rocking," was popular with to Bar Harbor, decrying it as a the younger set, but much frowned "wild place where girls from New upon as unseemly by many of the York and Philadelphia walked up residents of the shorepath cottages. mountains swinging their arms." Not by Bertie Pruyn, though. In She was absolutely right. the summer of '92 her family was renting a shorepath cottage called T HE town's increasing popu- Edgemere, owned by a crusty old larity as asetting forromance widow named Fanny E. Musgrove. novels in which minor Eu- Bertie wrote that the feature she ropean princes ardently wooed liked best of all about Edgemere wealthy young ladies would have was a four-story granite tower Mrs. done little to alter the matriarch's Musgrove had erected at the edge of conviction that Bar Harbor was a the shorepath. Bertie and her friend, Down East Gomorrah. And had Harriet Corning, enjoyed taking af- she known about the goings-on at ternoon tea in the tower and spying 1992 ANNUAL 53 on the steady parade of fashionably dressed editor gushed, "Bar Harbor was designed ladies and gents - mostly hotel guests- by the Great Architect as a summer resort passing below or "rocking" on the flat and it is our duty to cater to it, promote it, granite ledges. and bring it to the attention of the world." Edgemere itself was a great, rambling, Both local weekly newspapers, The shingled pile with a descending series of Bar Harbor Record and The Bar Harbor rooflines, open porches, and balconies, Herald, did their bit by vying to see who punctuated by a round gingerbread turret. could cover in greatest detail last night's The estate boasted its own bowling green dinner parties and yesterday's new arriv- on a wide apron of a lawn that sloped als. In early spring a small box on the front gently toward the shore. While it was no page heralded the arrival of the first in- palace like some of the newer ex- trepid summer folk. By July this travaganzas being built or renovat- registry of hotel guests and cottag- ed nearby, Edgemere with its doz- ers in residence would all but fill ens of rooms was spacious enough the entire front page. The names for the Pruyns, their steady stream read like the social registers of New of house guests, and their large York, Boston, Philadelphia, and retinue of servants imported from Washington, D.C., with a few Albany for the summer. Their staff, midwestern industrialists thrown: in. like all such domestics, was lodged Inside, popular columns advised in quarters SO cramped and spare, readers on new trends in fashion they were probably the only sum- and jewelry - little gold tennis mer residents in Bar Harbor who rackets with silver balls were highly truly earned the title "rusticators." regarded in '92 - or the latest Throughout town, such well- escapades of the European royal trained teams of domestic help were families. Readers could learn, for a vital component of the cottagers' instance, that the Russian czar had lifestyle. Usually a pared-down se- recently been taking violin lessons, lection of the family's regular win- with some degree of musical suc- ter staff, it was their function to cess. Posh New York hotels ran make the transition from winter advertisements alongside notices home to summer home as smooth for psychic readers and local livery as humanly possible. Atypical sum- stables. mer cottage staff included cooks, If the native islanders resented housekeepers, nannies, head groom this pandering to tastes and lifestyles (some families also brought their far removed from their own, there incarriage horses), head gardener is little record of it. In fact, the local (usually trained in Europe), valets, residents appear to have been just and butlers. These were the people who Heiress to a New York railroad as interested in hearing about high society kept the pleasure domes in good working fortune, Bertie Pruyn (shown in the off-season, since the papers contin- order while their masters and mistresses here with her Russian poodle Fromo) ued to provide a surfeit of such tantalizing were busy at play. never forgot the unfettered frivolity of tidbits year round. Years later, the locals, her summers in Bar Harbor. As Mrs. their children, and grandchildren would D ESPITE the influx of outside work- Charles Hamlin, she became a speak with pride of the services they per- ers, there was still plenty of work prominent Albany matron, but even at formed in those fabulous homes. For them, for local people and plenty of money the age of ninety she continued to too, it seems, the 1890s were a golden era to pay for it. Additional help had to be delight in the antics of her well-heeled a time when serving the rich and famous hired each season to fill the ranks of such neighbors, chronicling them in gilded their own lives. menials as under-gardeners. The head gar- the local newspaper. dener for Mrs. Louise DeKoven Bowen, at Baymeath, in Hulls Cove, regularly took B AR Harbor's reputation as a sophis- ticated resort for cosmopolitan soci- on nine or ten assistants to tend such un- ety attracted international figures as likely Maine transplants as oranges and well as people like the Pruyns of Albany. It date palms in vaulted greenhouses. Laun- became a virtual summertime Embassy dry workers, kitchen help, and stable boys Row for political and foreign dignitaries were also needed as boat crews; Marjorie escaping the heat of Washington, D.C. Post Davies, wife of the U.S. ambassador In nearby Hulls Cove, the elite Pot and to Russia, required at least fifty able-bod- Kettle Club was established as an infor- ied seamen to manage her 400-foot, four- mal, if exclusive, gathering place for vaca- masted yacht Sea Cloud. tioning nabobs of the first rank. Here Just about every native resident, from Vanderbilts hobnobbed with Rockefellers the local bankers to the shopkeepers, farm- and Astors relatively unassuming club- ers, fishermen, seamstresses, carpenters, house where visiting U.S. Presidents and and schoolchildren, had a stake in making foreign chiefs of state considered it an each season carefree and memorable for honor to be included on the guest list. their illustrious guests. As one newspaper (Continued on page 80) 54 DOWN EAST Bertie Vamps Bar Harbor (Continued from page 54) Although the Turkish minister evidently first by the ostentation. Later she decided managed to impress some of his guests, that since her hosts were such lovely, Marian Peabody, one of the young Suzy Sturgis was not one of them, no doubt unpretentious people on the whole, the Boston socialites on the scene in '92, to her parents' great relief. golden table service must not have been recalled a rather melancholy encounter selected to show off their great wealth but with a pair of foreign dignitaries and Lady Randolph Spencer Churchill, C ANOEING was one of the most rather because it was SO much easier than popular activities for courting silver to keep clean in the summer. illustrious parents of the even more illus- couples in those golden days; the Occasionally these soirees were held trious-to-be Winston Churchill. In her Canoe Club had more than 300 members. aboard yachts. When the weather turned memoirs she recounted how she and her Even strait-laced matriarchs approved of chilly, it wasn't uncommon for mink coats father were invited by Amory Gardner this activity for their sons and daughters to be passed out to all the ladies present. for a day sail on his yacht, the Mayflower, since the instability of the crafts dictated J.P. Morgan reportedly handed out gold- with a number of other guests, including that the paddlers stay at opposite ends of tipped canes and other such favors at par- the Churchills. Years later, Mrs. Peabody the vessel. The tragic drowning of one ties aboard his 350-foot yacht Corsair. still remembered how hand- Morgan regularly spent much of some was Lord Randolph's the summer living on board the wife, the former New York Corsair, which he moored off beauty, Jenny Jerome, and how Bar Island after steaming into sickly Lord Randolph ap- the harbor at the head of the New peared. His health had failed York Yacht Club's annual cruise. him in the midst of his brilliant Bertie Pruyn often traveled parliamentary career and his aboard the Corsair as a mem- American wife, familiar with ber of a party of fellow Episco- the curative effects of Maine palians that Morgan ferried air, had persuaded him to visit around to Northeast Harbor Mount Desert Island in a final Bar Harbor's demure and book- attempt to regain his strength. ish sister summer community He would die three years later. to attend the dramatic Sun- Cool ocean air and drafts of day sermons preached by balsam pine were not the only Bishop Doane at St. Mary's by- restoratives born on the winds the-Sea. En route to their desti- of Mount Desert Island. Love Steamboats and yachts filled Bar Harbor in the nineties, but it nation the sea-going churchgo- was in the air as well. As the was the canoes (lower right) available for hire at the town ers would round Schooner Head romance novels suggested, Bar landing that were popular with courting couples of the day. and steam past Chatwold, one Harbor was the perfect setting of the grandest Bar Harbor cot- for young people with old names to find young pair of canoers a few years back tages of all. Chatwold sported a multitude mates with new money or other advanta- served as a stern reminder to any wooers of bedroom suites, a stable of twenty-six geous combinations of wealth and status. tempted to set aside their paddles. horses, greenhouses, and heated swim- During the summer of '92, the belle of Bar There was, it seems, something for ming pool. Later, the eccentric owner Harbor was the beautiful debutante, Suzy everyone in Bar Harbor. For the horsey set publishing tycoon Joseph Pulitzer, would Sturgis. According to Bertie Pruyn's diary, there were carriage parades down Main build an insulated granite structure, often Suzy's beauty attracted the amorous atten- Street. The horses and phaetons were done called his "tower of silence," designed to tion of an intriguing foreigner-about-town, up from head to toe to wheel hubs in shut out the distracting noises of the the Turkish minister, Mavroyeni Bey. The flowers and ribbons, and their lady drivers workaday world. be-fezzed Turk was SO besotted that he wore matching outfits. These processions Most of Pulitzer's circle, however, did promised to give up all his other wives if would end with a horse show and races at not need stone towers to seal themselves the lovely Miss Sturgis would have him. the Kebo Club, a posh country club just on off from the unpleasant realities of life. Bertie found the situation terribly roman- the outskirts of town, where members also Even beyond the glorious nineties, wealth tic, and wistfully remarked that she wished played tennis, golf, cutthroat croquet, or and social status proved a far better insula- someone would like her "in that way." participated in weekly gymkhanas featur- tor than Maine granite. Eventually, how- In a last-ditch effort to impress the ing sack races, egg tosses, and tug-of-war ever, the turbulent events of the twentieth young socialite, the Turk hosted the party matches. For those of a more dramatic century broached the walls of privilege. of the season at the Canoe Club on Bar bent, someone was always organizing an First the Great War and later the Great Island, a small woodsy islet lying a short evening of tableau vivant - still-life Depression darkened the glittering social boat hop from the Bar Harbor shore. Bertie scenes from popular and poetry reen- scene. And by the time of the Great Fire of and her family were among the hundreds acted by the costumed gentry in candlelit 1947, many of the vast summer cottages of guests who were ferried out by launch. gardens and pillared pergolas. that succumbed SO easily to the devouring In her diary she describes it as "a gorgeous And, of course, there were dinner par- flames had already long stood empty and affair." The little island was ringed with ties just about any evening in some great neglected. The greatera of Bar Harbor was Chinese paper lanterns, and French fire- dining hall where fifty people could sit for as remote as those golden summer days works exploded over and under the water. a seven-course feast served on gilded and nights - when Bertie Pruyn and her "We'd never seen underwater ones be- dishes with place settings of gold and gold- friends whirled through the giddy rounds fore," she writes. "They spurted around rimmed crystal. One guest at such a dinner of parades and parties held in rustic palaces and under the rocks in a fascinating way." party remarked that she was shocked at ablaze with shimmering light. 80 DOWN EAST