By Skip Moskey

Terrace Garden, Rome by John Elliott. ca. 1897. Oil on canvas.
Private Collection.

On January 31st, 1896, Larz Anderson, then serving as first secretary of the American Embassy in Rome, wrote to his mother that he had dined the night before at the home of Maud and John Elliott.  There were two other Americans at the dinner, a Mrs. Horowitz of Baltimore and a Miss Perkins of Boston. “A most pleasant evening,” Larz reported.

The Elliotts lived on the entire top floor of the Palazzo Rusticucci.  Built in 1584 and first occupied by Cardinal Girolamo Rusticucci, the palazzo was within sight of St. Peter’s Basilica. (After years of neglect and decay, the palazzo was torn down and rebuilt as a replica of the original in 1940.)

The Palazzo Rusticucci, Via della Conciliazione, Rome (photographed in 1936), above; its proximity to St. Peter’s Church, and as it appears today, below.

Maud Howe Elliott, the daughter of Julia Ward Howe, later recalled that she and her husband had introduced the two young people to each other that evening on the palazzo’s rooftop terrace.  Though we have no textual account of Larz and Isabel’s first meeting,  there is a visual record.  When Isabel published her 1922 roman-à-clef Polly the Pagan about the European adventures of an American heiress in the 1890s, she had endpapers designed that captured the moment of their first meeting that January in Rome.

“The first meeting.”  John Elliot, lighting a cigarette; Larz, gazing upon Isabel; Isabel, pretending not to notice.
(Endpapers, Polly the Pagan by Isabel Anderson, 1922)
Note:  Although the original event took place in 1896, Larz, John, and Isabel are presented in this print in 1920s attire.

In Maud’s memoir about her life in Rome, Roma Beata: Letters from the Eternal City (1909), she described the terrace in great detail:

The terrace, or house-top, is a flat roof; it covers the whole length and breadth of the apartment, and belongs exclusively to it.  A parapet three feet high runs around it; at one end is a small room with a second smaller terrace on its roof, reached by a flight of stone steps; at the other end is a high wall with a little open belfry on top.  The view is sublime; you look down into the Square of St. Peter’s with the Egyptian obelisk in the middle, Bernini’s great colonnades on either side, the Church of St. Peter’s at the end… (p. 8)

Maud clearly loved the terrace, and once called it the “crown and glory of our home.”

Pencil Sketch of the Palazzo‘s Terrace
(Frontispiece, Beata Roma, 1909)

The terrace had an important place in the history of the Anglo-American artistic and literary community in Rome.  Maud’s husband John was an important late-19th and early 20th century Scottish-American artist.  Their circle of friends in Rome included many of the creative luminaries of their era.  It was on the terrace of the Palazzo Rusticucci, for example, that Maud and John introduced the Anglo-American writer Henry James to the the American-Norwegian sculptor Hendrik Christian Andersen. James fell under Hendrik’s spell, and remained enchanted by him for the rest of his life.

Larz Anderson later asked John Elliott to paint a picture of the terrace for him as a souvenir of, as Maud wrote, the “happy hours” they had spent there. “This picture now hangs at their [Brookline] country home,” she noted in her 1930 biography of her husband, who had died in 1925.

But there the mystery of the painting’s history begins.  When Isabel Anderson died in 1948, the painting did not appear in the voluminous and carefully documented inventory of the Anderson mansion in Brookline, nor did it appear in any of the extensive photographs of the interior of the mansion taken in 1949 before the Town of Brookline took possession of the estate.  I knew of the existence of the painting from the research I had done for my biography of the couple, Larz and Isabel Anderson: Wealth and Celebrity in the Gilded Age, but I was unable to locate the work or any images of it.  I came to the conclusion that either Isabel had given it away before her death to one of her servants, as she did with other of her valuables; or, it had been stolen from the mansion after Isabel’s death before the contents were sold by her executors. (Rumors about this still circulate in Brookline.) Either way, I was sure I would never see the painting that meant so much to Larz and Isabel – and to me as their biographer.

As my book was going to press (I was probably already reading second proofs), I made one last attempt to locate the painting.  I had mentioned the painting in a footnote, but noted only that its whereabouts was unknown.  I began Googling terms that might describe the painting as I imagined it to be: Terrace – Rome – Painting – John Elliott – Palazzo.  I knew from Maud’s many written descriptions of the terrace that there were potted flowering plants.  I Googled – terrace – flowers – potted flowers – Rome – garden.  Within minutes, this webpage popped up.  There, I saw that the October 2012 Skinner (Boston) auction of European furniture and decorative arts included an item described as: “Lot 639B Anglo/American School, 19th Century A Terrace Garden, Possibly Rome,” whose catalog entry included this notation:

Initialed “…E.” l.r., inscribed in pencil “Return to Mrs. Anderson, Weld, Jamaica Plains [sic]” on the stretcher. […] Also inscribed “Elliot” on the stretcher, and titled indistinctly “Terrace…” possibly “Terrace Rome” or “Terrace Berne.”

I had found the painting.

The canvas stretcher, with pencil notation Return to Mrs. Anderson, Weld, Jamaica Plains [sic].

From the Skinner sale I was able to trace the painting to a subsequent online auction hosted by 1stdibs.com but without a record of its sale price. This time, however, the painting was correctly attributed to John Elliott.

1stdibs.com did not return my email or call requesting that they forward a message from me to whomever had bought the painting.  I put all that I knew about the whereabouts of the painting into footnote 3 of chapter 4, and left it at that.

In 2016, one of those happy coincidences that every author dreams about happened.  My book was published in April that year, coinciding with the Society of the Cincinnati’s year of programs and events celebrating the life and accomplishments of Isabel Anderson.  My Anderson House lecture on Larz and Isabel was scheduled as the concluding event to an exhibition called “The Adventurous Life of Isabel Anderson” (March 24–September 18, 2016).

I had no idea what awaited me when I went to visit the exhibition shortly after it opened.  There, in the room of Anderson House that had once been Larz’s billiards room, I came face-to-face with the object that I had long admired and wished to see: Garden Terrace, Rome (as it has been named by its current owners in New York City).

I was a very happy biographer that day!

Anderson biographer, Skip Moskey, standing in front of Garden Terrace, Rome by John Elliott.

Books, Gardens & Horticulture, Italy August 25, 2017 skipmoskey

By Skip Moskey

Edith Wharton, ca. 1889

Edith Wharton is known in American cultural history primarily as the author of Gilded Age novels that for a century have captivated and entertained readers.  Her works The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, and Ethan Frome have been adapted as films that have brought her work to even larger audiences.  In recent years, her letters have been published, so if you’ve read all her novels and short stories and are hankering for more Wharton, try The Letters of Edith Wharton, edited by R.W.B. Lewis, and My Dear Governess: The Letters of Edith Wharton to Anna Bahlmann (both of which are on my nightstand!).

But Mrs. Wharton wrote two other important nonfiction books that made lasting contributions to defining good taste in American domestic architecture, interior design, and landscape architecture: Italian Villas and their Gardens (1905), illustrated by Maxfield Parrish; and The Decoration of Houses (1898), co-authored with Ogden Codman, Jr.  If you are an aficionado of Gilded Age design, furniture, and gardens – and are looking for new Wharton material to read – both of these books are widely available from internet booksellers in original and reprint editions. (A future post will address The Decoration of Houses.)

The Boboli Gardens (Florence) by Maxfield Parrish, one of the many beautiful illustrations in Italian Villas and their Gardens.

In my view, Italian Villas and their Gardens is Mrs. Wharton’s most beautiful book, not only because of the wonderful illustrations of Italian villas, gardens, and garden architecture, but also because of the book’s elegant typography and Mrs. Wharton’s elegant prose.  For example, in introducing her readers to the Boboli garden, pictured above, she writes:

The plan of the Boboli garden is not only magnificent in itself, but interesting as one of the rare examples, in Tuscany of a Renaissance garden still undisturbed in its main outlines. (Italian Villas, p. 25)

The Villa Medici, shown below, is perhaps one of my own favorite Renaissance Italian villas, and though I have not visited it (yet), reading Mrs. Wharton’s description of one’s first experience of the villa makes me feel as though I have been there.  “It is safe to say,” she writes, “that no one enters the grounds of the Villa Medici without being soothed and charmed by that garden-magic which is the peculiar quality of some of the old Italian pleasances.” (p. 93)

The Villa Medici (Rome), now the Académie de France à Rome (Academy of France in Rome), painting by Maxfield Parrish, from Italian Villas and their Gardens.  Click on Académie de France for a splendid aerial tour of the villa and its gardens.

By Skip Moskey

Larz Anderson, ca. 1888. Probably taken around the time of his graduation from Harvard College. (Source: Anderson Collection, Society of the Cincinnati)

[For almost three years after his 1888 graduation from Harvard, Larz Anderson (1866-1937) did all that he could to avoid the issue of work and career.  Between the summer of 1888 and the fall of 1889, he traveled around the world on his father’s dime.  When he returned, he resisted his father’s attempts to get him started in a business career in New York City, and then when he agreed to his father’s suggestion that he pursue a career in the law, he dropped out of Harvard Law School in spring 1891 after only two semesters. His father again stepped in and this time used his government connections to obtain a job for Larz as a junior diplomat at the American Legation in London.  What follows is based on Larz’s own account of this first Thanksgiving abroad, in 1891, which he celebrated with the noted American historian Henry Adams.  When this excerpt from Larz and Isabel Anderson: Wealth and Celebrity in the Gilded Age opens, Larz and Henry had just seen each other in Paris the previous month, and were reunited when Henry unexpectedly came to London.] 

A few weeks after Larz returned to his post from Paris, Adams arrived in London, and the two men again spent time together. Larz’s duties at the legation included entertaining American dignitaries in London, but the fifty-three-year-old Adams was not just anyone to Larz. Henry was one of his father’s best friends and had known both his grandfather Larz Anderson I and his great-uncle Major Robert Anderson. The twenty-five-year-old Larz had more than an official obligation to Adams. He also had a profoundly personal duty to be as hospitable and helpful to his family’s famous friend as he could be.

38 Clarges Street, London, as it appears today. When Larz lived here from 1891-1894, it was a private home that rented rooms to gentlemen. Larz occupied the rooms on the second floor at the front of the house. Henry Adams also lived here in January 1892.

Larz wrote home about many of his engagements with Adams. The first report was about their dinner together on Thanksgiving night at the Bristol Hotel, and old, family-style hotel that had been established in 1866 when two townhouses were conjoined.  The hotel’s manager Ignacio Lersundi, a Spaniard, gave “one of the best, if not the best, table-d’hôte dinners obtainable in the English capital,” as one Gilded Age travel guidebook put it.

Larz reciprocated by inviting Adams to a private Thanksgiving dinner-for-two the next evening in his rooms on Clarges Street. Larz wrote excitedly to his parents about both dinners: “Mr. Henry Adams is coming to dine with me. Now I am anticipating this with much pleasure—for last evening Mr. Adams and I had a night of it; he was just as anxious to go to it and have a good time as any young man, and infinitely more amusing and interesting—I dined with him well at the Bristol and it was one o’clock before I got home.”

“A little fat Norfolk turkey.” Larz specified this kind of turkey for his little Thanksgiving dinner with Henry Adams in his rooms on Clarges Street,  November 27, 1891. (Photo via cornwallturkeys.com)

The dinner on Clarges Street was not impromptu. Larz went to great lengths to make the dinner as authentically American as possible. He purchased a “little fat Norfolk turkey” that his landlady, Mrs. Mace, roasted, stuffed with chestnuts, and served with cranberry sauce, along with “some other courses.” The Thanksgiving plans had obviously been in play for at least a few days, with enough time for Larz to make arrangements for the special meal.

[After Thanksgiving, Henry Adams returned to Paris, where he spent Christmas with his “BFF” Elizabeth Sherman Cameron before returning to London in early January 1892.  On this visit, he took his own set of rooms at 38 Clarges Street, where he lived in domestic happiness with Larz Anderson for the next month.] 

Henry Adams (1838-1918) ca. 1880. Adams was a classmate of Nicholas L. Anderson, Larz’s father, and had known Larz as a teenager and young adult.

After returning to London, Adams was more than delighted to now be rooming with his young diplomat friend. Henry’s letters to Elizabeth Cameron were filled with effusive expressions of affection for Larz. On his first day back in London, January 11, 1892, he wrote to her, “I am here at last, in Clarges St., and Larz Anderson for companion. After my long solitude I love him like the sun and moon and planets and Sirius on top of all.”

Henry and Larz quickly developed an easy domesticity that included having breakfast together every day and Henry seeing Larz off to work. One morning Larz directed his landlady to bake American-style cornbread for their breakfast as a special treat for Henry. On January 15, Adams wrote to Lizzie, “Now that breakfast is finished and Larz gone to see how his chief is, I sit down to read your news,” and on January 21, “A lovely dark day, black as night, and full of refined feeling. Larz and I have breakfasted, and he has gone to his diplomatic duties.”

[Eventually, Henry slipped out of London while Larz was on a vacation in southern France that had been planned for him by his bosses at the American legation. It is possible they were uncomfortable with Henry’s cohabitation with Larz, and the amount of time the two spent together. After Henry left London, Larz and Henry would never see each other again. Indeed, Larz may have eventually become uncomfortable with Henry’s attentions.] 

If Adams was infatuated with Larz in London, years later Larz was infuriated with Adams. When The Education of Henry Adams was commercially published after Adams’s death in 1918, Larz wrote angrily on the flyleaf of his own copy: “The insincerity of the man and his work is proved by the fact that he doesn’t mention his wife or his marriage both of which meant much in his life!” Larz almost certainly figured out Henry Adams was in some way in love with him in London in 1891–1892 and could find no way to express his chagrin other than to excoriate Adams for excising his marriage and his wife from his autobiography.

[For more about “The Henry Adams Interlude” and the rest of the story of the fascinating lives and lifestyle of Larz and Isabel Anderson, please click here.]

“The insincerity of the man and his work is proved by the fact that he doesn’t mention his wife or his marriage both of which meant much in his life!” Larz Anderson’s inscription on the flyleaf of his personal copy of “The Education of Henry Adams,” ca. 1918. (Source: Photo by Skip Moskey.)

My thanks to everyone who responded so favorably to the first installment of Anderson Architectural Antecedants about the English homes of William Waldorf Astor.  

In what I hope will become an ongoing and perhaps weekly feature, today I present Wrest Park in Silsoe, Bedforshire, England.  At the time of the Andersons’ visit in early December 1911, it was the country home of the American Ambassador to the Court of St James, Whitelaw Reid, who Larz had first met in 1891.  What follows is Larz Anderson’s own account of their visit to one of England’s most magnificent country homes. 

“Wrest Park is a very beautiful, great English country place, and we walked all about it this morning, while it looked its loveliest. The gardens, by Le Notre, of two hundred years ago, are its crowning glory — parterres of geometrical design, and terraces that lead off into the vistas through the woods, with basins of artificial water and pavilions reflected into them at the end. To one side an orangery is approached by terraced steps, behind which an astonishing yew hedge encloses a tangle of garden.”

The Orangery

“Isabel and I walked on over a Chinese bridge that crossed the still water, through the gates into the park, and traversed the long smooth paths that railed across the smooth green lawn beneath the great gnarled trees, with quantities of deer browsing about, and sheep, and black cattle.”

Chinese Bridge

“The house itself, while simple in general proportions, is rich in rococo decoration which isn’t overdone, however, and inside there is a good deal of gilding, but rich and restrained. […] Our bedrooms have the most interesting and beautiful Chinese wall paper I have ever seen . . . and the full length portraits in the great double staircase hall are impressive and splendid.”

“I may say in parenthesis that it is poorly lighted and badly heated and that I think English house-parties most over-rated entertainment – but it is proving interesting to dear Isabel – even down to the detail that the valets and maids all go to their dinner in full evening dress!  –– But I am homesick for my simple life at home.”

The guest list for the weekend hunting- and house-party included:
Charles Henry Brent, Missionary Bishop (Episcopalian) of the Philippines Lady Rennell Rodd (Lilias Georgina Guthrie), wife of the British ambassador to Rome

Marquis Imperiali, Italian ambassador to the Court of St James

William Phillips, first secretary of the American Embassy in London
Elliott Bacon, son of American ambassador to France, Robert Bacon

Click here to order on Amazon.

What others are saying about the book: 

“This first-ever book on Larz and Isabel Anderson is a good read. The story is told through rich material drawn from the couple’s own letters and diaries, and those of their contemporaries. The weaving together of various sources to create an even biographical tapestry is not an idle challenge. Congratulations to the author on this accomplishment.” – White House historian William Seale, author of The Imperial Season: America’s Capital in the Time of the First Ambassadors, 1893-1918

“This book is a notable addition to our general historical understanding of the Gilded Age, and more importantly, I would argue, a corrective to existing perceptions of Gilded Age women like Isabel Anderson.” – Art historian Isabel L. Taube, Ph.D., author of Impressions of Interiors: Gilded Age Paintings by Walter Gay.

“Like Ragtime, Larz and Isabel Anderson boasts an amazing cast of characters from Matthew Arnold to Henry Adams to Elsie de Wolfe – only in this case, it’s all true. Meticulously researched, this is the account of two Americans who had the money to do whatever they wanted and did, at a time when the American elite was not only its most creative but so small that everyone knew one another.” – American novelist Andrew Holleran, author of Grief.

Larz and Isabel Anderson: Wealth and Celebrity in the Gilded Age by Stephen T. Moskey

340 pages, illustrated, indexed

The lives and stories of many Gilded Age personalities weave their way in and out of the great narrative of the Andersons’ lives told in my biography of the couple: Larz and Isabel Anderson: Wealth and Celebrity in the Gilded Age.  One of the most interesting people I came across while writing the book was John Gardner Coolidge (1863-1936), one of Larz Anderson’s best friends.

Born on the Fourth of July, and descended from great American families on both his mother’s and his father’s side, John was a Gilded Age dilettante. He collected, he travelled, and he wrote, and for a brief time, he served under President Theodore Roosevelt as U.S. minister to Nicaragua. His appointment there was terminated after William Howard Taft won the presidential election, with Roosevelt’s blessing, in November 1908.

When Larz stopped in Japan in 1888 on his east-to-west journey around the world, he lived with John at his little Japanese-style house in the Kojimachi district (麹町) of Tokyo. Through John, Larz met many people who would influence his appreciation of Japanese culture, especially landscape and garden design. John’s memoir, Random Letters from Many Countries (1924) was one of the sources I discovered in my research about Larz’s first visit to Japan.

In 1914, when war broke out in Europe, John was one of hundreds of elite American men, many of them graduates of Harvard, who volunteered for service in France as medics, ambulance drivers, and in other support services.  His book about his experiences, A War Diary in Paris, 1914-1917, provides a detailed account of his time in France and is still a good read, especially in 2017, the centennial of America’s entry into the war.

John died in Boston in 1936. He is buried in the Coolidge family plot in the historic Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, MA. His gravestone is inscribed with a scriptural passage that alludes to John’s respect and appreciation for what was in the Gilded Age known as “the Orient.” The Latin word oriens means both “dawn” and “east.”

O Oriens, splendor lucis aeternae, et sol iustitiae: veni, et illumina sedentes in tenebris et umbra mortis. (O dawn of the east, brightness of light eternal, and sun of justice: come, and enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.) –Luke 1:78, 79; Malachi 4:2

Media sources:
John Gardner Coolidge, Tokyo, 1880
Gravestone of John Gardner Coolidge, 1937 Stevens-Coolidge Place Collection, via Digital Commonwealth (CC BY-NC-ND).

“O Oriens” from Liber Usualis, public domain via wdtprs.com.

In June 1907, while cruising along the mid-Atlantic coast aboard their houseboat the Roxana, Larz and Isabel Anderson invited several friends to join them for a dinner party at sea.

The cook prepared a mouth-watering menu that proved the Roxana’s catering standards equal to those of an Anderson kitchen on terra firma. The summery menu included a frothy cold consommé, ramekin of poached egg with a cheese crust, buttered lobster in wine sauce, veal cutlets, asparagus with cream sauce, punch sorbet, and a cake named after Joan of Arc.  The Andersons liked sweet white wines from France and Germany – Sauternes, Chablis, White Bordeaux, and Rieslings – any of which would have paired well with the menu that evening.

The dinner was served on the Andersons’ Meakin English china in the Bleu de Roi (King’s Blue) pattern, emblazoned with the signal of the Black Horse Line, the clipper ship company that had once belonged to Isabel’s grandfather. One saucer and one dessert plate are all that have survived, along with a lobster fork and a demitasse coffee spoon.

Bon voyage!  Bon appétit!

For more information about the Anderson biography, please click on this link: Larz and Isabel Anderson: Wealth and Celebrity in the Gilded Age.

Anderson Plate Service: Private Collection
Photographs are a Copyright (c) by Skip Moskey.
(Digimarc® Guardian for Images)

As someone who researches a wide variety of topics related to the intersection of art, architecture, and society during America’s Gilded Age, I have come across something that has confused and perplexed the small community of people who read, write, and think about such things. And that is whether the Bar Harbor “cottage” of George Washington Vanderbilt (1862–1914) was named Point d’Acadie or Pointe d’Acadie. Let’s establish at the outset that Vanderbilt himself, along with his landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, referred to the property as Point d’Acadie in letters and other documents (see examples below). But many other writers, historical organizations, bloggers, and researchers have variously used point, pointe, or both! I decided to spend a little time researching and thinking about this, and what you are reading today is a blog that has taken nearly three years to complete (with a few interruptions and sidetracks along the way).

A circa 1910 postcard showing a view of Point d’Acadie during the time that Mr. Vanderbilt established his summer residence there. Note that the spelling on the card, produced during Vanderbilt’s lifetime, is Point d’Acadie. (Source: Maine Historical Society. Item 18647.)

STATUS OF FRENCH AMONG AMERICAN ELITES DURING THE GILDED AGE

During America’s Gilded Age, it was de rigeur for American elites to speak, read, and write French fluently. Home schooling of elite children by private tutors included the French language as one of the “required” subjects. Many elite children and teens of the Gilded Age, like George himself, traveled with their parents throughout Europe and spent long sojourns in Paris, then as now a city hugely popular with American travelers. George’s knowledge of French was excellent and he would have understood the difference in meaning between the two words, point and pointe.

Letter from George Washington Vanderbilt to the firm of F.L. Olmsted & Co., dated February 11, 1890, referring to the Maine property as “Point d’Acadie.” (Source: Library of Congress, Frederick Law Olmsted Papers. Image courtesy of Ted Glasgow.)

Based on my analysis of the meanings and usages of the French words point and pointe in both Middle French and Modern French, along with period archival documents and published photographs, I conclude that Vanderbilt’s original name for his property in Maine was Point d’Acadie and that it is correctly spelled without “e”.

When the George Vanderbilt property in Bar Harbor was put up for sale after his death in 1914, the property was referred to as “Vanderbilt Cottage or Point d’Acadie.” (Source: Ted Glasgow)

AS A LIBRARIAN ONCE TOLD ME: LOOK IT UP!

First, let’s look at the words themselves and their definitions, for they are each separate and distinct words in Modern French. The irrefutable source for analyzing the meaning and history of the words Point and Pointe is none other than the most authoritative source on the history and usage of the French language, the Academie Française in Paris, and its Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française.

In Middle French, the form of the language spoken and written from around 1330 to around 1500, the two words have different meanings:

• Point  (masculine) is defined as “lieu donné, lieu précis” (a given area, a specific area).
• Pointe (feminine) is defined as “extrémité pointue ou objet pointu,” (pointed extremity or pointed object).

The first page of an early edition of the dictionary of the French Academy. (Source: Académie Française, Paris)

The definitions of point and pointe given in the Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française, 9th edition, show that these distinctive meanings have continued into Modern French.  My summary of each of the Académie Française definitions (in bold) is followed by the complete definition in French as it appears in the dictionary of the French Academy. 

Point (masculine) most often has a spatial or geographic sense including lookouts, panoramas, and belvederes.

Académie Française definition of Point:  Le point culminant d’une chaîne de montagnes, où elle atteint sa plus haute altitude. Le point sublime d’une gorge, d’un canyon, qui, du fait de sa situation élevée, offre la vue la plus étendue. Point de vue, endroit à partir duquel on observe un paysage, une scène, belvédère ; lieu qui offre un panorama et, par méton., ce panorama lui-même. 

[Sample usages:]  Selon le point de vue que l’on adopte, cette place paraît ronde ou ovale. Ce beffroi est un bon point de vue pour découvrir la ville. Venez admirer le point de vue. 

Pointe (feminine) most often has the sense of a pointed object, like a sword or a knife.  Indeed, it appears frequently in military terminology to refer to weapons and other military devices with pointed tips and shapes.  Pointe can also be used in specialized contexts to refer to the meaning or solution of an epigram, especially when this is naughty: the last word of the epigram that provides its solution is called the pointe. This is analogous to the English phrase “the point of the joke.”

Académie Française definition of Pointe:  Extrémité piquante, aiguë d’un objet quelconque. Pointe acérée. La pointe d’une épine, d’une arête, d’une épée. Aiguiser, émousser la pointe d’un couteau. Les pointes d’un compas. Casque à pointe, orné à sa cime d’une pièce d’acier effilée, qui fut en usage dans l’armée prussienne puis allemande jusqu’à la Première Guerre mondiale.

[Sample usages :]  Coup de pointe, attaque portée avec le bout du fleuret, de l’épée ou du sabre. À la pointe de l’épée, les armes à la main, de vive force et, fig., avec panache. Emporter un succès à la pointe de l’épée. Fig. Des pointes d’épingle, des détails infimes, des vétilles. • Fig. Trait d’esprit qui, à l’image de la flèche, touche au vif l’auditeur, soit pour le blesser, soit pour le délecter (on dit aussi Pique). Une pointe assassine. Ne parler que par pointes. Lancer, décocher des pointes brillantes. Spécialt. La pointe d’une épigramme, saillie, souvent méchante, réservée au dernier mot ou au dernier hémistiche de cette forme poétique. Art de la pointe, art de parler et d’écrire par pointes (agudeza, en espagnol ; acutezza, en italien), condamné par Boileau évoquant les « faux brillants du Tasse », qui a trouvé au XVIIe siècle hors de France, parmi les jésuites, de brillants théoriciens comme Baltasar Gracian et Emmanuele Tesauro. • Titre célèbre : La Pointe ou l’art du génie, de Baltasar Gracian (1648). 

Frederick Law Olmsted’s plan for the entrance to the Point d’Acadie property, clearly showing the correct spelling Point. (Source: Frederick Law Olmsted Archives, National Park Service, Brookline, Mass. Image Courtesy of Ted Glasgow.)

To put this all together succinctly (and in English!), the very different meanings of Point d’Acadie versus Pointe d’Acadie can be summarized as follows:

Point d’Acadie could be translated into English as: The Acadian View, The Acadian Panorama, Acadian Vista, or Acadian Belvedere, with core meanings that include such spatial concepts as wide view, outlook, and the actual process of seeing or looking.

Pointe d’Acadie could be translated as: The Acadian Arm or The Tip of Acadia, with core meanings that include such shapes as prong, tine, or spike in a static state that contrasts with the implied process state of viewing inherent in point.

Vanderbilt could have correctly chosen one or the other (but not both!) to name his property on Bar Harbor’s Ogden Point, but I believe he chose to focus the name on the magnificent and east-facing panorama seen from the property, not the shape of the land itself.

This 1910 postcard titled “Point d’Acadie, from Eagle Cliff” (showing the Vanderbilt property in the distance) shows that Mr. Vanderbilt could have just as well named his property Pointe d’Acadie thereby making an explicit reference to the prong-shaped spit of land jutting out into the coastal waters. Instead, he focused the name of the estate on the water views and marine panoramas visible from the estate. (Source: Maine Historical Society, Item 18646.)

MODERN USE OF POINT D’ACADIE IN AMERICAN SCHOLARSHIP

There are many modern-day instances of the consistent use of Point d’Acadie in American scholarship on architectural history. For example:

Charles Capen McLaughlin and David Schuyer, et al., eds., The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted: The Last Great Projects, 1890-1895, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015, uses the spelling Point d’Acadie in its critical apparatus, notes, and analysis.

As someone who researches a wide variety of topics related to the intersection of art, architecture, and society during America’s Gilded Age, I have come across something that has confused and perplexed the small community of people who read, write, and think about such things. And that is whether the Bar Harbor “cottage” of George Washington Vanderbilt (1862–1914) was named Point d’Acadie or Pointe d’Acadie. Let’s establish at the outset that Vanderbilt himself, along with his landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, referred to the property as Point d’Acadie in letters and other documents (see examples below). But many other writers, historical organizations, bloggers, and researchers have variously used point, pointe, or both! I decided to spend a little time researching and thinking about this, and what you are reading today is a blog that has taken nearly three years to complete (with a few interruptions and sidetracks along the way).

A circa 1910 postcard showing a view of Point d’Acadie during the time that Mr. Vanderbilt established his summer residence there. Note that the spelling on the card, produced during Vanderbilt’s lifetime, is Point d’Acadie. (Source: Maine Historical Society. Item 18647.)

STATUS OF FRENCH AMONG AMERICAN ELITES DURING THE GILDED AGE

During America’s Gilded Age, it was de rigeur for American elites to speak, read, and write French fluently. Home schooling of elite children by private tutors included the French language as one of the “required” subjects. Many elite children and teens of the Gilded Age, like George himself, traveled with their parents throughout Europe and spent long sojourns in Paris, then as now a city hugely popular with American travelers. George’s knowledge of French was excellent and he would have understood the difference in meaning between the two words, point and pointe.

Letter from George Washington Vanderbilt to the firm of F.L. Olmsted & Co., dated February 11, 1890, referring to the Maine property as “Point d’Acadie.” (Source: Library of Congress, Frederick Law Olmsted Papers. Image courtesy of Ted Glasgow.)

Based on my analysis of the meanings and usages of the French words point and pointe in both Middle French and Modern French, along with period archival documents and published photographs, I conclude that Vanderbilt’s original name for his property in Maine was Point d’Acadie and that it is correctly spelled without “e”.

When the George Vanderbilt property in Bar Harbor was put up for sale after his death in 1914, the property was referred to as “Vanderbilt Cottage or Point d’Acadie.” (Source: Ted Glasgow)

AS A LIBRARIAN ONCE TOLD ME: LOOK IT UP!

First, let’s look at the words themselves and their definitions, for they are each separate and distinct words in Modern French. The irrefutable source for analyzing the meaning and history of the words Point and Pointe is none other than the most authoritative source on the history and usage of the French language, the Academie Française in Paris, and its Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française.

In Middle French, the form of the language spoken and written from around 1330 to around 1500, the two words have different meanings:

• Point  (masculine) is defined as “lieu donné, lieu précis” (a given area, a specific area).
• Pointe (feminine) is defined as “extrémité pointue ou objet pointu,” (pointed extremity or pointed object).

The first page of an early edition of the dictionary of the French Academy. (Source: Académie Française, Paris)

The definitions of point and pointe given in the Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française, 9th edition, show that these distinctive meanings have continued into Modern French.  My summary of each of the Académie Française definitions (in bold) is followed by the complete definition in French as it appears in the dictionary of the French Academy. 

Point (masculine) most often has a spatial or geographic sense including lookouts, panoramas, and belvederes.

Académie Française definition of Point:  Le point culminant d’une chaîne de montagnes, où elle atteint sa plus haute altitude. Le point sublime d’une gorge, d’un canyon, qui, du fait de sa situation élevée, offre la vue la plus étendue. Point de vue, endroit à partir duquel on observe un paysage, une scène, belvédère ; lieu qui offre un panorama et, par méton., ce panorama lui-même. 

[Sample usages:]  Selon le point de vue que l’on adopte, cette place paraît ronde ou ovale. Ce beffroi est un bon point de vue pour découvrir la ville. Venez admirer le point de vue. 

Pointe (feminine) most often has the sense of a pointed object, like a sword or a knife.  Indeed, it appears frequently in military terminology to refer to weapons and other military devices with pointed tips and shapes.  Pointe can also be used in specialized contexts to refer to the meaning or solution of an epigram, especially when this is naughty: the last word of the epigram that provides its solution is called the pointe. This is analogous to the English phrase “the point of the joke.”

Académie Française definition of Pointe:  Extrémité piquante, aiguë d’un objet quelconque. Pointe acérée. La pointe d’une épine, d’une arête, d’une épée. Aiguiser, émousser la pointe d’un couteau. Les pointes d’un compas. Casque à pointe, orné à sa cime d’une pièce d’acier effilée, qui fut en usage dans l’armée prussienne puis allemande jusqu’à la Première Guerre mondiale.

[Sample usages :]  Coup de pointe, attaque portée avec le bout du fleuret, de l’épée ou du sabre. À la pointe de l’épée, les armes à la main, de vive force et, fig., avec panache. Emporter un succès à la pointe de l’épée. Fig. Des pointes d’épingle, des détails infimes, des vétilles. • Fig. Trait d’esprit qui, à l’image de la flèche, touche au vif l’auditeur, soit pour le blesser, soit pour le délecter (on dit aussi Pique). Une pointe assassine. Ne parler que par pointes. Lancer, décocher des pointes brillantes. Spécialt. La pointe d’une épigramme, saillie, souvent méchante, réservée au dernier mot ou au dernier hémistiche de cette forme poétique. Art de la pointe, art de parler et d’écrire par pointes (agudeza, en espagnol ; acutezza, en italien), condamné par Boileau évoquant les « faux brillants du Tasse », qui a trouvé au XVIIe siècle hors de France, parmi les jésuites, de brillants théoriciens comme Baltasar Gracian et Emmanuele Tesauro. • Titre célèbre : La Pointe ou l’art du génie, de Baltasar Gracian (1648). 

Frederick Law Olmsted’s plan for the entrance to the Point d’Acadie property, clearly showing the correct spelling Point. (Source: Frederick Law Olmsted Archives, National Park Service, Brookline, Mass. Image Courtesy of Ted Glasgow.)

To put this all together succinctly (and in English!), the very different meanings of Point d’Acadie versus Pointe d’Acadie can be summarized as follows:

Point d’Acadie could be translated into English as: The Acadian View, The Acadian Panorama, Acadian Vista, or Acadian Belvedere, with core meanings that include such spatial concepts as wide view, outlook, and the actual process of seeing or looking.

Pointe d’Acadie could be translated as: The Acadian Arm or The Tip of Acadia, with core meanings that include such shapes as prong, tine, or spike in a static state that contrasts with the implied process state of viewing inherent in point.

Vanderbilt could have correctly chosen one or the other (but not both!) to name his property on Bar Harbor’s Ogden Point, but I believe he chose to focus the name on the magnificent and east-facing panorama seen from the property, not the shape of the land itself.

This 1910 postcard titled “Point d’Acadie, from Eagle Cliff” (showing the Vanderbilt property in the distance) shows that Mr. Vanderbilt could have just as well named his property Pointe d’Acadie thereby making an explicit reference to the prong-shaped spit of land jutting out into the coastal waters. Instead, he focused the name of the estate on the water views and marine panoramas visible from the estate. (Source: Maine Historical Society, Item 18646.)

MODERN USE OF POINT D’ACADIE IN AMERICAN SCHOLARSHIP

There are many modern-day instances of the consistent use of Point d’Acadie in American scholarship on architectural history. For example:

Charles Capen McLaughlin and David Schuyer, et al., eds., The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted: The Last Great Projects, 1890-1895, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015, uses the spelling Point d’Acadie in its critical apparatus, notes, and analysis.

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