A Cup of Kindness

 

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Happy New Year, dear readers. 

Auld Lang Syne means “in old times,” to the Scots people. Robert Burns was trying to keep his beloved Celtic language alive when he popularized it. He described Auld Lang Syne as ‘an old song, of the olden times, and which has never been in print, nor even in manuscript until I took it down from an old man’s singing.’  

The town of Bedford Falls sang it at the end of It's a Wonderful Life, when a happy George Bailey finally realizes that his life has been a worthwhile struggle. We sing it at the dawn of a new year, to mark the passage of time. To grieve a little while we promise to do a little better, love a little stronger, be a little kinder. What words could be more poignant as we enter the third year of a global pandemic?

The words say, “We’ll take a cup o’ Kindness yet." That refers to the old tradition of toasting: raising a glass, a “cup o’ kindness,” but I am always moved by the notion of kindness in a cup overflowing, bestowed on each other at the start of each year. 

Kindness. A whole cup of it, I wish to you this new year of 2022, my friends, and beyond.

The Lennon-McCartney of the 18th Century

 

Mozart's Wife

 

The tenor, Michael Kelly, wrote a memoir which remains interesting to anyone searching for Mozart stories, particularly about the Marriage of Figaro. (The Austrian Emperor and therefore everyone else in Vienna referred to Kelly as "Ochelli" because "The names of all Irishmen begins with an 'O". Therefore, OChelli he was--in Vienna.)  Lesson #1--never correct the Emperor of Austria if you would like to keep your job at the royal opera house...
 

From the tenor Michael Kelly’s "Reminiscences," published 1826 :

 

“I remember the first rehearsal of the full band, Mozart was on the stage with his crimson pelisse and gold-laced cocked hat, giving the time of the music to the orchestra. Figaro’s son, “Non piu andrai, farballone amoroso…” Bennuci gave with the greatest animation and power of voice.

 

I was standing next to Mozart, who, sotto voce, was repeating, “Bravo! Bravo! Bennuci!” and when Bennuci came to the fine passage, “Cherubino, alla vittoria, alla Gloria militar” which he gave out with Stentorian lungs, the effect was electricity itself, for the whole of the performers on the stage and those in the orchestra, as if actuated by one feeling of delight, vociferated Bravo! Bravo! Maestro! Viva, viva grande Mozart! Those in the orchestra I thought would never have ceased applauding, by beating the bows of their violins against the music desks. The little man acknowledged, by repeated obeisances, his thanks for the distinguished mark of enthusiastic applause bestowed upon him…” 

 

No more, you amorous butterfly,

Will you go fluttering round by night and day,

Disturbing the peace of every maid,

You pocket Narcissus, you Adonis of love,

No more will you have those fine feathers,

That light and dashing cap,

Those curls, those airs and graces,

That rosy womanish cheek.

You’ll be among warriors, by Bacchus!

Long moustaches, knapsack tightly on,

Musket on your shoulder, saber at your side,

Head erect and bold of visage,

A great helmet, waving plumes,

Lots of honor, little money,

And instead of the fandango,

Marching through the mud.

Over mountains, through valleys,

In snow and days of listless heat,

To the sound of blunderbusses,

Shells and cannons

Whose shots shall make your ears sing

On every note.

Cherubino, onto victory,

Onto Military Glory!

 

(Cherubino, alla vittoria, alla Gloria militar!)

 

This is one of the most famous (and fun!) arias in all of opera. Set to Mozart’s most stirring martial music, it is mockingly sung to Cherubino, the teen would-be lady-killer, by the older servant,  wily Figaro. The Count who rules them all has just caught the boy hanging around once too often, first with his wife, and just now with Susanna, the pretty maid whom the Count is hot to seduce. As Cherubino is his ward and of noble blood, he can’t just murder him, (much as he'd like to,) so he's ordered him into the army.

 

The military is still the classic solution for boys who suffer from a chronic overload of testosterone and who are causing problems around your house—or on the street. Written in the late 18^th Century, when war still had a cloud of romance hanging round it—no machine guns, tanks, drones or poison gas just yet—it’s straight on the mark. “Glory” is meant ironically. Figaro is sobering the boy up, saying that soldiering means real danger, exhaustion and suffering. So get ready, kid!

 

It’s a nice example of DaPonte’s nuanced writing, words that inspired Mozart to write his most famous scores. Figaro first sings mocking praises—“Pocket Narcissus” has to be one of the best put-downs ever. Then he gets tougher. There will be no further perfumed romps in My Lady’s chambers. Your new bosom companions, my son, will be hardened soldiers--and your 60 lb. knapsack. No more dances, only marching, almost always in the worst weather.  In the 18^th Century, too, armies were often chronically without pay, not only because of the usual bad planning, but because wrecking havoc on civilians was (and, heck, still is) traditionally part of the game. DaPonte and Mozart, both freelance artists, know only too well that honor without the cash to back it up was a hollow thing indeed.

 

For the coup de grace, Figaro describes the pain which bombs and gunshots will cause your ears. It’s a misery particularly singled out by DaPonte and Mozart for Cherubino, a musical boy who writes beautiful love songs for all his girlfriends.

 

No more honey-dripping for you, Punk! From now on, your ears will “sing” to you of war! 

 ~~Juliet Waldron

Take a little walk into my 18th Century world:

http://amzn.to/1UDoLAi    and

http://www.julietwaldron.com

 

 

And because it's Nanina Gottlieb's birthday today and because she too--aged 11--sang in this opera:

 

Nanina's Mozart story

The Schuyler Sisters

A Master Passion

 

Seen from a certain angle, the Schuyler girls were fairy tale princesses. They had white wigs, French dresses and a daddy who owned most of upstate New York. They had other identities, too, as frontier girls, occasionally in peril because their father’s kingdom really was land which had once belonged to the first people who'd come here. This backstory is a familiar feature of the early days of America, how plantations--that obscuring euphemism--took root, their aim to "tame"  (harvest) all they could get from a bountiful "wilderness.” 

That's not the foreground of my stories. The girls are. They drew my  interest particularly because I'm deprived--an only child. I've had to research the experience of siblings. As I read about the life that these girls lived, I realized that Margaret, Elizabeth and Angelica literally grew up together. Dutch ladies they were, but you could almost call them "Irish triplets", these same sex sibs born bam-bam-bam in 1756, 1757, and 1758. How could they not be emotionally entwined?

Back to the fairy tale idea. As it happened, these Schuyler girls each grew up and each one married a handsome prince.

Margaret was the youngest and the last to be married. She chose a life in the old-time Hudson Valley Dutch style, which, by that time, was already passing away. She married a van Rensselaer—her cousin, a boy she’d known all her life, whose family owned "the other half of upstate."  Land was the basis for her husband's wealth, though this, i8n the next generation would prove impossible to keep.  It was a safe and well-nigh predictable marriage--even though her father was, as usual, incensed because it began with an elopement--so romantic it was almost de rigueur for any spirited 18th century lady of fashion.
 

 Margaret Schuyler van Rensselaer

Elizabeth, the middle sister, married a wanderer, a fortune-seeker, a self-taught knight in shining armor who sometimes, like Sir Lancelot, went completely mad. Her life overflowed with drama, and she was nowhere near as materially comfortable or secure as the other two sisters, but she always knew who she was: her husband's "Queen Bess." She bore eight children and raised every one in a time where this wasn't a given. She lived almost until the Civil War, still standing by her man and his reputation fifty years after death had parted them.
 

 Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton "Betsy"

 

Angelica was, by all accounts, "the fairest of them all." She picked for herself a dashing lord of the material world, a buccaneer with a credible alias as an English gentleman. Her daring husband knew how to conduct a lady out an upstairs window and down a ladder in the middle of the night, away to a forbidden marriage. After the romance was over, he became a businessman with the stamina to write insurance all day and gamble all night. With his position and money, he took Angelica to London, and to Paris where her wit and beauty enchanted royals as well as the brilliant and the notorious.

Angelica Schuyler Church

 

Of these ladies, I’d imagine that only Betsy would ever have stood before a blackened, cavernous fireplace with a stick of wood or a ladle in hand, directing the business of her kitchen. The complex odors of a wood fire, which seem to us moderns like camping, would have filled the room and saturated clothing. Mrs. Hamilton wouldn't have worn her good dresses down in the cookshop, barely even for a visit. A certain amount of greasy smoke would have been everywhere, necessitating a spring cleaning that ended with a white washing. There was little of the new stove technology in her world, except, perhaps, in the better city homes she shared with her husband in Philadelphia and New York.

 

Like the English great houses, these early American “mansions” would not have been in a rush to modernize. The best they could do was to create a wing to house a kitchen, often a one story addition to the back of the house. In the cities, the kitchen would be down stairs--way downstairs!

There were plenty of hands—labor both slave and free—and plenty of fuel, for the menfolk are busy chopping down the great northeastern boreal forest, consuming it for building and energy, for shipping and industry. She might not have dirtied her hands scrubbing the floors, but she’d know how it should be done, and she wouldn’t hesitate to explain it to you while you worked on your knees before her. She wasn’t retiring, although she probably wasn’t taller than five feet. Nothing shy about this lady within the confines of her home; she was a Leo and a Schuyler, too, after all.

 

The Grange, NY, NY

Alexander Hamilton's final home

Upon which he spent entirely too much money.

 
Theirs is a delightful family/historical story, three women living through such a profound transition. I only wonder that it hasn't been retold more. It's been an honor and a delight to attempt to try.

 

 

 

~~Juliet Waldron

http://www.julietwaldron.com

https://www.facebook.com/jwhistfic

 

ANOTHER WIFE'S STORY

 Schuyler Mansion Historic Site

Alexander Hamilton has been my hero since I was a ten year old, which means I’ve been imagining him for a long time. When I decided to finally write “his” book, I’d just finished a novel about Wolfgang A. Mozart, as told by his wife. It would be a familiar approach, I thought, to tell the Hamilton story from the same womanly angle.  Or, so I thought—until I realized I didn’t know much about Alexander’s wife, Betsy.

Was she just another Colonial Dame? Well, Not exactly. The big house in Albany where Elizabeth Schuyler had been brought up was “American with a difference.” 

Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton by Ralph Earle

Historical fiction readers are familiar with the customs of the Scots, Irish and English immigrants. But New York school children—me among them—also learned about the Dutch, who had given place names all along the Hudson and founded NYC,  as well as inspiring Washington Irving to write his winking ghost story: “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Although Betsy’s father, Major General Philip Schuyler, successfully “English-ified” himself, she probably learned Dutch at her Daddy’s knee. (During the Revolution, she and Baron von Steuben would find it their common language.) Hamilton’s wife, my novel’s heroine, had been born and raised folkways which retained some notable differences from those of her downstate predominantly English neighbors. 

Miss Schuyler’s female Dutch ancestors enjoyed rights greater than those of any other European women. They were full legal persons, a position American women would not enjoy again until the early 20^th century. They could own property and conduct business, enter into contracts and buy and sell for their own profit. Some of the richest families in old New York could trace their fortune back to the business savvy of one of these “She Merchants.” In Holland, and, briefly, in later New Amsterdam (now NYC) a woman could chose a unique form of marriage which kept her financial dealings and property separate from her husband’s.  Although these exceptional rights withered after the English took over the colony in 1664, there remained a certain independence and self-reliance in these Dutch women.

Even the wealthiest ladies were inclined to hands-on. They were taught how to cook and garden, how to spin, to keep fowl, to weave and sew—as well as keep household accounts.  An old family friend, James McHenry, wrote tellingly to Hamilton: “Your wife…has as much merit as your Treasurer as you have as Treasurer of the wealth of the United States.” It was no secret who kept afloat the daily affairs of this often-preoccupied Founding Father.

Dutch women were also not so quick to hand their babies—messy, inconvenient creatures—off to servants or slaves for nursing and day care. Despite the then commonly fatal water-borne and childhood diseases, Mrs. Hamilton bore eight children and raised every one of them to adulthood, something of a feat in those times.

The more I learned about her, the more she impressed me, this quiet, domestic woman behind the man. Betsy lived to be 97. Almost to her last breath, she performed her duties as co-founder of the first New York City orphanage, a cause dear to her heart.

She  also remained determined that ‘Justice shall be done to the memory of my Hamilton.’” In this aim, she never wavered, preserving his papers and facing down important men who had been Hamilton’s political enemies with calm dignity.  

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~Learn more about Elizabeth’s life and the “odd destiny” of her beloved Alexander--orphan, immigrant, genius, and nation builder, in A Master Passion~~

In print and “e” @

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Sources:

Jean Zimmerman’s The Women of the House, Mariner Books, 2007

David Fischer Hackett’s Albion’s Seed, Oxford University Press, 1989

Washington Irving’s Knickerbocker’s History of New York, GP Putnam & Sons, 1894

Mary Elizabeth Springer, Elizabeth Schuyler, A Story of Old New York, 1903