The Lois Wilson Story

by William G Borchert

  The Spelmans were all New Englanders at the root and quite religious. Born in Granville, Massachusetts, Matilda’s father, William Chapman Spelman was, as were his father and grandfather, a Congregationalist. The Hoyts, her mother’s family, were a well-known Lutheran clan from Manchester, Vermont. The money was on the Spelman side. In fact, Laura Spelman, a close cousin, was married to John D. Rockefeller, Sr.

  Lois recalled her aunt Eliza Spelman taking her for a visit one day to Laura’s home in Pocantico Hills, New York, a sprawling estate of lawns and gardens that surrounded their enormous mansion. Though very young at the time, Lois remembered John D. standing near the huge fireplace in his living room of green and gold, smiling at her.

  Also a financier, William Spelman moved to New York City to advance his career. He and his wife, Sarah, bought a large home on Willow Street in Brooklyn, where Matilda was born.

  Matilda loved the arts, studying drama and literature at school. She was also a member of the school’s choral group and had a very lovely voice. Later on, as a mother herself, Matilda would gather her children together just before bedtime and read stories, recite poetry, or sing them lullabies. Such times were among Lois’s favorite memories.

  Clark and Matilda married in 1888. They leased the house at 182 Clinton Street and turned one of the back rooms into a medical office. He worked diligently, and she handled all the business affairs including billing patients. They were a well-matched pair. While Clark was extremely self-disciplined and expected others to be the same, especially his children, Matilda was softer, kinder, and more loving and forgiving—traits Lois would inherit.

  Lois was their first child, born on March 4, 1891, pink, bright-eyed, and healthy. Then came Rogers, Barbara, Katherine, Lyman, and Matilda. There was great heartbreak in the Burnham household, however, when young Matilda, always sickly since her difficult birth, died before her first birthday. Lois couldn’t understand why an innocent little baby had to die, and was forced to accept her mother’s explanation that it was simply “God’s will.”

  But the young girl would have difficulty for many years accepting God’s will whenever it didn’t agree with hers, always feeling that somehow, some way, she could change things with her own will. As she often shared later on, this brought her much pain and confusion until she was finally able to see she was actually powerless over many things in her life and that acceptance was the true key to serenity.

  After attending kindergarten, Lois was placed in a Quaker school called Friends School. Her father had checked out a whole list of private schools and found this to be one of the finest.

  There was a quiet and lovely little girl sitting next to Lois that first day in class named Elise Valentine. They would sit next to each other for the next twelve years, right through Friends School and Packer Collegiate Institute.

  Lois and Elise shared much of their lives with each other growing up and had quite a bit in common. They both played on the basketball team at Packer Collegiate. They both wore middy blouses and bloomers in the gym and ribbon bows at the end of their long braids, although Lois alternated between blue and yellow and Elise always wore white.

  Many afternoons on the way home from school, they walked to-gether to the foot of Montague Street on the Heights above New York Harbor. It was and still is a spectacular sight. There, Lois often recalled, they would share their dreams as they watched the large ships steam past the Statue of Liberty and the setting sun cast its beautiful streaks of color across the shimmering water.

  And there was something else they both had very much in common. At Packer, an all-girls school, they frequently looked down their noses and laughed whenever one of their classmates ogled the boys from neighboring Polytechnic Institute as they passed by. You see, Lois and Elise had already attended school with boys at Friends, a coeducational facility. They thought they knew a great deal about the opposite sex. Parading around with a rather superior attitude, they’d smugly tell the other girls, “Most boys are clumsy and stupid and nothing to get excited about.” But that came from their experience with “little boys.”

  Later Lois chuckled when she recalled how quickly that superior attitude vanished when they had their first real encounter with “bigger boys.” She and Elise were crossing the Packer campus one day when out of nowhere, two high school seniors from Polytechnic approached and began making “passes.” The two sophomores giggled at first—that is, until the boys stopped and stood directly in front of them, blocking their path. They insisted they wouldn’t move until the girls agreed to join them for a soda at the local ice cream parlor.

  Lois and Elise clasped hands, glanced nervously at each other, then turned and dashed back inside the school building, leaving the young men standing there nonplussed. They waited inside the school until they were certain their admirers had gone.

  As Lois often explained to the more liberated young women she came to know later on in life, the customs and mores regarding the opposite sex were a whole lot different in 1910 than today, regardless of one’s superior attitude. And there was always that fear of being branded “a scarlet woman” if one succumbed to a young man’s charms too soon—certainly not upon their first encounter.4

  While Lois thought she knew her close friend quite well, there was always something just a bit mysterious, a bit strange. Elise spent much time at the Burnham house, but Lois spent little time at the Valentine house. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to. She was seldom invited.

  Elise seemed comfortable and at ease with Mrs. Burnham, although somewhat shy and timid in the presence of the more forceful Dr. Burnham. But Lois barely knew Mrs. Valentine and had never met Elise’s father at all. She had no idea until years later that her dear friend’s father was an “inebriate,” the kindest term they used back then for a boozer, and that Elise tried not to let on how it affected her.

  They remained close friends over the years, through thick and thin as Lois would say, until that awful day in the summer of 1929 when they found themselves deeply split by the disease of alcoholism. It affected each of them in her own way. It would wash away all understanding and keep them apart for many years after that.5

  Sundays were always special at the Burnham household. After proudly showing off his family at the church service, Dr. Burnham would invite the minister and other guests back to their home on Clinton Street to dine and discuss religion and world affairs. As the guests gathered, the two subjects never seemed to clash until the good doctor began serving the fine wines and alcoholic beverages given to him by his grateful patients, who Lois referred to as “GP’s.” But before the verbal exchanges got too hot and heavy, Matilda always knew when to call everyone into her large formal dining room for a sumptuous meal.

  Before eating, it was the Burnhams’ custom to stand around the table holding hands while the minister or sometimes the doctor himself offered a blessing to the Lord for His generosity. Some of the less religious guests were not used to holding hands—particularly one man with another. They might self-consciously fidget and squirm. Young Lois always found it hard to keep from laughing out loud watching the faces of those guests turn red. But then moments later she would feel guilty, remembering that her mother always told her to be especially kind to people on Sundays because that’s the Lord’s day.

  On those Sundays when the minister couldn’t attend, the family took long walks together or drove around the burgeoning community of Brooklyn in their large, new, yellow-wheeled horse-drawn carriage.

  Often they stopped off and visited some relatives, such as Lois’s great-aunt Emma who lived on Fort Greene Place with her sister, Anne, a spinster. Now an aging widow, Aunt Emma had long white curls dangling down from under a baggy lace cap, Lois remembered. She thought they looked a bit funny. All the aunts ever seemed to talk about whenever they visited was how seasick they had been as they traveled from England on a great sailing vessel, and how difficult it was to st
art a new life in a new and completely different land.

  It all sounded very exciting to Lois at the time, and she often wondered why her aunts seemed so sorrowful. Many times she left their house with a sense of deep sadness, believing that her aunts felt useless and alone. But one day she would understand better, because she would feel the same way.

  A few years after Lois was born, her father reluctantly acceded to his wife’s wishes that he take some time off to vacation with her elderly father in Manchester, Vermont. William Spelman’s wife had passed away a few years earlier, and he was living in their large home all by himself. The trip that summer turned into an instant love affair between Clark and the Green Mountain State.

  A great believer that most infirmities can be overcome by fresh air, a good diet, spartan discipline, and a strenuous outdoor life, he found Vermont the perfect place to enforce this regimen on himself and his growing family. Returning to Brooklyn, he preached Vermont to all his patients, his neighbors, and his friends. Lois remembered his soliloquy well: “The air is cleaner, the sky bluer, the flowers prettier, the mountains taller, the birds happier and the maple trees produce the finest and purest syrup in the whole wide world.”6

  Before long, the family was spending the entire summer in Manchester. Soon some of Dr. Burnham’s patients were making the trek north to check things out for themselves, and in no time they became “summer people”—the term the natives politely applied to their temporary visitors. Before long even the “locals”—the year-round residents—began coming to him with their ailments, impressed by his knowledge of homeopathic medicine.

  Matilda’s father especially loved having the children around. Since he was now older and more feeble, he offered to sell his house and all its beautiful antique furnishings to his son-in-law at a very attractive price. Clark wasted no time in accepting the offer. He took out a large mortgage in order to buy the Clinton Street house at the same time, eliminating the costly rental there.

  With his interest and involvement in the Green Mountain State growing along with his roster of patients, the doctor and his family started living from May to November at their “summer home.” Since Lois and Rogers were now in school back in Brooklyn, Matilda had their teachers give her their spring and fall lessons so she could tutor them herself. Lois remembered how attentive her mother was to make sure they studied and understood everything she taught them.

  The young girl was gifted at an early age with the ability to read and comprehend a growing vocabulary. Before too many years, she was reading Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, Sir Walter Scott, Jane Austen, Louisa May Alcott, Bret Harte, and Rudyard Kipling. She was expe-riencing flights of fancy and derring-do one day and human tragedy coupled with world events the next. It was quite a challenging, liberal education, and she enjoyed every moment of it.

  That was something Dr. Burnham insisted upon: that each of his children receive a demanding education in order to develop not only a strong inner character but also the knowledge, intellect, and judgment to meet the world head on. And, being a gynecologist, he made sure all of them—his daughters in particular—were well educated on the subject of sex and where it fit into the overall context of their moral upbringing.

  Moreover, unlike many parents in the Victorian era, Clark and Matilda Burnham were openly affectionate with each other in front of their children. This not only attested to the deep love they had for each other, but enabled their children to see that love between a man and a woman was natural and virtuous.

  To round out her education, Lois took dancing and music lessons when she was back home in Brooklyn Heights and, upon returning to Vermont, she was frequently called upon to entertain summer guests, both dancing for them and playing the piano.

  The doctor and his wife quickly became enmeshed in Manchester society, hosting and attending parties, serving on club committees, having prominent guests to their home. And the Burnham children were part of it. Clark made sure his flock was a shining example of what the best children should be like, and his wife went along with his wishes. In fact, they both took great pride in their children’s appearance—robust, polite, and well-groomed. There was that distinctive style in dress and manner that never failed to produce flattering comments from the Burnhams’ wealthy neighbors and the elite summer crowd from Brooklyn Heights.

  But now with four children and another on the way, Matilda’s never-ending social activities were beginning to wear on her. She never complained, but her husband could see it. That’s when he found the perfect solution.

  Clark had become enamored with a charming, roomy cottage on Emerald Lake in East Dorset, Vermont, about twenty miles away. It would put enough distance between them and Manchester so they could politely ease out of many of their social commitments while still maintaining contact with his patients and their many friends. Matilda loved the idea, so Clark rented out the Manchester house and purchased not only the charming cottage but also two nearby bungalows. And the trip between East Dorset and Manchester would be much easier now, since he had traded in his old buckboard for a brand-new Pierce Arrow with running boards, a rear trunk, and teak-spoked wheels.

  Lois absolutely loved the move to Emerald Lake. She was “almost nine” at the time and recalled later how it was like “getting out of a tight-fitting girdle and into a loose pair of bloomers.”7 She became a tomboy, fishing and swimming, climbing trees, catching frogs, and picking beautiful ripe berries along the lake for her mother’s pies.

  She enjoyed waking early in the morning, sitting on the dock, and staring into the mist rising from the clear, deep green water. Emerald Lake was only about a mile wide and a mile long, but for young Lois it went on forever. It lay between two mountain ranges, the Taconic and the Green Mountains. The Taconic was known for its exquisite marble deposits. It was the chemical dust from the old quarries running down the mountain streams and into the lake that gave it its deep green color and eventually its name. But the mines had long since been shut and the lake was now pristine.

  It was on one of those quiet, peaceful mornings as young Lois sat on the dock that the silence was suddenly shattered by agonizing screams coming from the cottage. Afraid to go in, she stood frozen, simply staring and listening.

  Finally, when she made her way to the kitchen door, she saw her baby sister, Barbara, who had just turned two, lying on the floor surrounded by her parents and Annie, the cook, whose hands were wrapped in a wet towel. Annie was weeping hysterically while Dr. Burnham and his wife kept laying more wet towels across Barbara’s face and arms as the child twisted and screeched unmercifully. Lois soon learned that unbeknownst to Annie, her sister had been playing with stick matches under the kitchen table. She had set fire to her lace dress and it scorched her terribly. Had the poor Irish cook not been there to douse the flames with kitchen towels, burning herself in the process, little Barbara would have died.

  Lois remembered her mother describing to her one day the shocking number of skin grafts that were required to cover the burns on her little sister’s face and body, grafts that enabled her to recover from the ordeal remarkably well. But the story that impressed Lois the most concerned her father who, at one critical moment and without any anesthetic, sliced skin from his own leg to graft onto his daughter’s face. It was difficult to believe, Lois would explain, unless you knew Clark Burnham and the feelings he still had deep inside about not being able to help his younger brother Charley.

  After that, Lois said, her father always called Barbara “his special little girl” because part of her had literally once been part of him. That gave Lois and her sister Katherine a twinge of jealousy now and then.

  Matilda’s father, just before he died, gave the family a beautiful white skiff with mast and sail. Being the oldest child, Lois quickly learned to master the craft and often was out on the lake from sunup until sundown. She loved being challenged by the wind as it whipped the waters into white
-crested waves. Lois had inherited her father’s courage, his sense of adventure, and his passion to enjoy nature and the beauty of life to the fullest.

  And when the waters were calm, she set her sail and glided serenely over the lake, leaning back to watch the clouds move slowly across the sun and to wonder what might lie above and beyond them. As she grew older, she yearned to know more about the universe and its Creator. She would “talk to Him” rather than recite those formal prayers she learned in church. But somehow she could never quite reach “Him” in a personal way, no matter how hard she tried. It would take time and a great deal of inner struggle, but it did happen one day.8

  In the meantime, Lois immersed herself in the shimmering green waters of Emerald Lake, totally unaware that in a few short years on this very lake she would collide with a young man who would change her life in more ways than she could have possibly imagined.

  3

  Love Almost at First Sight

  BACK IN THE EARLY 1900S, THE SOCIAL CONVENTIONS FOR young ladies were quite restrictive, nothing like today’s rather liberated standards. “Spooning,” for example, which later became “necking,” “petting,” and even “foreplay” to some, was considered most improper and was frowned upon before couples became formally engaged. And sex itself—even the mere discussion of it, in many cases—was left for after the wedding vows and for the highly anticipated, often tense, climactic honeymoon night.

  While young men knew how they were expected to comport themselves when wooing a young lady, testosterone was just as potent then as now. Many, therefore, challenged convention whenever the opportunity presented itself. That’s one reason why even in the best of families, daughters were chaperoned on dates and vigilantly watched when entertaining a young gentleman caller at home.