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Lady Blanche Forsakes Her English Manor for True Love in the White Mountains

One rainy day in the autumn of 1875, a writer named A.A. Smith met Lady Blanche Murphy, the daughter of an earl, on a sidewalk in North Conway, N.H.

She was a “graceful little figure wrapped in a gray waterproof walking with a quick elastic step, the fresh rosy face fair as a flower framed in thick golden brown hair,” he wrote.

Lady Blanche Murphy, courtesy Bartlett Historical Society

Lady Blanche was also a writer. She wrote magazine stories for money because her father had disowned her for marrying a commoner. Her husband found a job in New Hampshire, which is how she ended up on a North Conway sidewalk. Eventually, Lady Blanche would buy a rustic cottage near the shadow of Humphreys Ledge in nearby Bartlett.

The year before she died, she would publish an essay about the first-ever Christmas tree in her adopted town.

Lady Blanche

Lady Blanche was born on March 25, 1845, the eldest of the five children of Charles George Noel. Her father served as a member of Parliament and high sheriff of Rutland. Then in 1866 he succeeded his father as Earl of Gainsborough and entered the House of Lords.

Her mother, the former Lady Ida Hay, was the daughter of an illegitimate daughter of King William IV and his Irish mistress. That didn’t bother Queen Victoria, his niece. The queen agreed to be Lady Blanche’s godmother.

Exton Hall

Her birthday fell on Lady Day. Roman Catholics celebrate it as the Feast of the Annunciation, when the Angel Gabriel told Mary she would give birth to Jesus Christ. Her parents gave her the name of Lady Blanche Elizabeth Mary Annunciata Noel.

Before her fifth birthday, her parents publicly announced their conversion to Roman Catholicism on New Year’s Day in 1850. They belonged to the Tractarian movement, which held the Church of England had grown “too plain.” The Tractarians wanted to include liturgy and ceremony from the Middle Ages into the Anglican Church.

Growing Up

Her parents had her privately tutored at home, a baronial mansion called Exton Hall. She learned Italian, French, German and Spanish, and some Latin and Greek. She also traveled through Italy and Germany, trips that she would later describe in magazines when she needed money.

Cardinal Henry Edward Manning met her in her eighteenth year and described his impressions in a letter to her father. “I thought her quick, observant and thoughtful, and in character decided and independent beyond her years,” he wrote. He noted that she had visited Rome and talked about Garibaldi. “[But] she was too truly Christian and Catholic to sympathize in anything opposed either to the faith or to the Holy See.”

Cardinal Manning

Then, in a prescient observation, the cardinal wrote, “Though she had been born and brought up with all the surroundings of the world, and with all the relations and associations which draw other minds under its influence, she seemed to me not only to be unattracted by such influences, but to be repelled by them. I thought I saw a reaction against them and a decided tendency to break through the conventionalities of her life.”

Thomas Murphy

Lady Blanche’s parents hired a handsome young Irishman named Thomas Murphy to tutor their children in music. He played the organ in the Exton Hall chapel, where the family attended daily Mass. Blanche sang in the choir.

A.A. Smith later described Thomas Murphy as a fine musician. “[H]e is sympathetic, cordial, warm hearted in his manners, well educated.”

Americans would find nothing strange, wrote Smith, “that in the hours spent singing together after matins or vespers in the chapel, the glad young voices pouring through the chapel windows, making the old woods ring, the young enthusiastic Lady Blanche and the impulsive young organist fell in love with each other.”

Her father, dismayed and furious when he finally found out, forbade them to wed. The daughter of an earl did not marry a commoner in 1870.

Elopement

Lady Blanche and her unacceptable boyfriend eloped to London in March 1870. After their wedding they sailed for the United States on the Plymouth Rock, landing in New York.

Isaac Hecker

Disinherited and unemployed, the newlyweds tried to find work. According to the story, they had no money, and when they hadn’t eaten for 24 hours Lady Blanche sold her earrings for a loaf of bread. She said it was the best meal she ever had.

While in New York, Lady Blanche met Father Isaac Hecker. An activist priest, he had founded the Catholic World publication as well as the Paulist Fathers, a religious society of men.

Hecker put them in touch with employers, Thomas with the Kearsarge School for Boys in North Conway and Lady Blanche with magazine publishers. They took their sparse belongings to New Hampshire and boarded with the founder of the Kearsarge School. Thomas taught French and music, and he may have worked as an organist at the local Catholic Church.

Lady Blanche wrote for Father Hecker’s magazine, Catholic World. She also wrote essays on English high life and the English nobility for the Galaxy. Harper’s and the Atlantic Monthly published her work, and she drew on her familiarity with Europe to write travel pieces for Lippincott’s.

Lady Blanche also stayed in touch with her family. Soon word got out that the unassuming wife of the schoolteacher received letters addressed to “Lady Blanche.”

Bartlett, N.H.

The story goes that Lady Blanche came into some money and bought a house and a small farm in Bartlett, N.H., a town in the Mount Washington Valley. Either her father relented and sent her an annuity, or an aunt had left her some money.

Bartlett Haystack Mountain

The Murphys did not live together in the house for long. Lady Blanche died after a short illness on March 21, 1881, only 36 years old.

Three days after she died, Bishop James Healey said a Gregorian funeral Mass for her in Portland. Her body was then shipped to England, according to the New York Times.

“Her remains will find a last earthly place in the family’s vault on the estate of her father in Exon [sic], England, and will be placed by the side of her mother, who died many years ago,” the Times reported.

Thomas Murphy moved to a boardinghouse, but kept the farm. He eventually found his way to Boston, where he died. He is buried in Calvary Cemetery.

First Christmas Tree

Just before Lady Blanche died she had written a description of the Mount Washington Valley’s first Christmas tree. It appeared in the March 1881 edition of the London Graphic.

Lady Blanche described the valley as “a backwoods (where) the necessities of cold weather stifle the chance of keeping up the etiquette of civilized life.”

Just before Christmas in 1880, she wrote, “a few of the more travelled individuals in the neighborhood had the bright idea of having a Christmas tree, a novelty in this district where the children had never seen one.”

As an English Catholic, Lady Blanche noted the “puritanical seriousness” of a meeting in a neighbor’s house, held to discuss the tree. “To an outsider, this particular Christmas meeting would have suggested a funeral,” she wrote.

They decided in favor of a tree “to give the children a little amusement” and named a committee of four to set it up.

“[A]n American feature of Christmas trees, which I believe is not known in England, is the ‘Santa Claus’ who distributes the gifts and is required to make jokes and have ready ‘smart’ sayings fitted to the occasion,” she wrote. “We had to choose one among the committee to undertake this part.”

The local men trekked through deep snow to cut down a suitable tree, which they set up in the schoolhouse, she wrote.

The Gods Deliver Lady Blanche

“The men did little but that, and the women spent their spare time popping corn and stringing it bead-like (a very pretty decoration, as the grains of “popcorn” take all sorts of surprising shapes when held over the hot coals) … and otherwise arranging presents.”

Candles and lanterns illuminated the little schoolhouse, and a local woman spelled out in evergreens, “A merry Christmas to all.”

Because the tree was too tall for the room, they stuck the top into a stovepipe hole in the ceiling. “On a bristling crown of stout nails round the hole … hang some of the abundant gifts and ornaments,” wrote Lady Blanche.

The novelty of the tree attracted a crowd. “About 60 more people than the place was built to hold (for a host of strangers beyond the district insisted on coming to witness our modest efforts).

Then the adults called on some children to recite little pieces and sing hymns. Lady Blanche didn’t think much of the practice, calling it ” a foolish habit much in favor in the United States — the gods deliver Englishmen from it.”

In the end, though, she wrote that the Christmas tree did what it was supposed to. “The children were delighted, the tree was a success, and many of the grown people, who also had never seen one, were immensely pleased.”

That Christmas, Lady Blanche had given presents to all her neighbors. When she died, the man who worked for them on the farm was said to have wept like a child.

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Images: Haystack By Ken Gallager – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=92244583. This story was updated in 2022.

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The Mysterious 1852 Voyage of the Arabian, the Fastest Clipper Ship in Maine

In 1852 James Hinds, a ship builder in Calais, Maine, launched the fastest clipper ship ever built in the state.

He’d built the ship on spec for a New York investor who had passed through Calais and been impressed by Hinds’ skills. On launch, the ship measured 125 feet long and 29 feet across. Hinds designed it to be 12 feet tall, but expanded it to 16 feet at the owner’s request so it could carry more cargo.

That would become a point of pride for the shipbuilder, who insisted he never knew what the ship’s intended cargo would be.

The ship caused quite a stir in Calais. Thomas V. Briggs, a young man from a local shipbuilding family, watched the Arabian’s launch with awe .

The Arabian never returned to Calais, and Briggs would wonder for years what happened to her. It would take more than 50 years for him to find out and tell the world.

Fastest Clipper Ship

The clipper ship made New York in four days, and the pilot who took it up the Hudson River declared he had never seen a ship so fast. It was the heyday of the clipper ship, and as the Arabian speedily sailed into New York Harbor she attracted a lot of attention.

Clipper barque Spirit of the Age

Visitors came and examined the Arabian’s log book, and the owner declared he’d sell the vessel for the astronomical price of $20,000.

A Spanish investor then began a game of cat and mouse with the Arabian’s owners. He wanted the clipper ship, he insisted, but not at that price. But when the boat’s owners left New York for Boston, the would-be buyer panicked and sent word he would meet the price.

From New York, the Arabian got a new crew and captain, and then she sailed for Cardenas in Cuba. One of the original crewman stayed with the ship, however. When Thomas Briggs found him, he divulged what had become of the Arabian.

To Cuba and Beyond

In Cardenas, the ship was fitted with an additional deck, and now had two levels below deck to haul cargo. Each level had only about two feet of headroom. Such decks were designed for one kind of cargo: slaves.

Renamed the Caribee, the ship made quick work of the crossing to Africa, but almost didn’t carry out its mission. In the slave markets in Gobon, Ambriz and Guinea the captain found few slaves to be had.

Slave market in Zanzibar, 1860, by Edwin Stocqueler

Frustrated but undeterred, the captain pointed the empty Caribee back across the Atlantic toward Brazil, where he knew of a small island town off the coast of Para. There he anchored and went ashore.

The captain told the villagers he had a proposition. His ship was loaded with raw materials. If they would put themselves to work building cabinets, harvesting coffee, fruit and lumber, he would buy all they could produce and sell it abroad. He would become their exclusive trading gateway to the world.

After several days, the captain put his real plans into action. He invited the townspeople aboard the Caribee, drugged them with punch and chained them below decks. In all, he captured 800 to 1,200 people of the village and took them aboard the Caribee for Cuba.

The Clipper Ship vs. The British Navy

By 1852 the British Navy actively patrolled the waters of the Atlantic trying to stop the slave trade. But the captain of the Caribee gambled that even the speedy British Navy was no match for his ship.

HMS Black Joke, a British slave patrol ship, fires on the Spanish slave ship El Almirante. Painting by Nicholas Matthews Condy.

After seven days sailing, just two days out from Cardenas, a British ship spotted the slave ship. At first the Caribee tried to avoid the British vessel, but the British gave chase. On the second day of the chase, as the British ship drew near, the Caribee’s crew fired her cannon at the British ship, damaging her sails and a mast.

Then, with the British vessel paused to make repairs, the Caribee made a desperate run for Cardenas. Arriving at 10 o’clock at night, the captain and the ship’s owner moved quickly to unload the slaves and bring them ashore.

A painting c.1830 by Johann Moritz Rugendas showing a scene below deck of a slave ship.

The Story of the Arabian

Fifty-six years later, Thomas Briggs published the story in Harper’s Magazine:

As fast as they were landed they were hurried off in gangs to various plantations in the interior. Those who were weak and feeble were placed in mule and donkey carts and followed. In a little more than three hours they were all out, and soon the last gang was sent off; and now the guns, ivory, arms, charts, men’s chests, and whatever could be got out easily and at once were put on board the lighters, a few sails cut from their lashings, cable shipped, the bark taken in tow by several boats, borne out to the bar, and set on fire in several places.

Very soon she was a solid mass of flame from jibboom to taffrail, from truck to keelson, and a dense black cloud of smoke rolled over the town. Soon after daybreak the brig appeared in the offing. Her commander at once took in the situation, and presently his departure. All that remained of the famous slaver Caribbee was a smoking, blackened hulk.

And so after that single voyage came the ignominious end of the grand Arabian, the fastest clipper ship ever built in Maine, or so they said.

The last owners of the vessel, Briggs estimated, made $1 million from the sale of the slaves.

This story about the clipper ship Arabian was updated in 2022.

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Mabel Osgood Wright: The Bird Woman of Fairfield, Connecticut

Mabel Osgood Wright loved nature and wanted to study science at Cornell University, but her father thought her ambition unseemly. It was the 1870s, after all, and she was a proper young daughter of a well-to-do minister. Her father wanted her to get married instead. So on Sept. 25, 1884, Mabel married James Osborne Wright, an English antiquarian bookseller.

Mabel Osgood Wright on her porch at Mosswood

It didn’t turn out badly for her. She had a happy marriage. She also carved out a career as a pioneering nature writer, educator and bird conservationist. During her lifetime she would write 25 novel and nature books, nurturing America’s passion for birds along the way.

Mabel Osgood Wright

Mabel Osgood was born Jan. 26, 1859 in New York City, the third daughter of Unitarian minister Samuel Osgood. He was an accomplished writer himself, having written more than 70 well-regarded essays for Harper’s. He counted among his friends William Cullen Bryant, Oliver Wendell Holmes and J. P. Morgan.

Samuel Osgood had built an 18-room summer home in Fairfield, Conn., called Mosswood, surrounded by eight acres of gardens and walkways. When he died in 1880, Mabel Osgood Wright and her husband spent their summers at there.

Mabel Osgood Wright

From the bucolic setting of Mosswood, she began to preach that gardening is not just home adornment. One could appreciate and conserve nature in one’s own back yard, she argued. Even small suburban landscapes can be treated as natural spaces.

Her husband discouraged her from writing, so she wrote a series of nature essays anonymously for the Evening Post and the New York Times. When she finally admitted she wrote them, James Wright helped her publish them. They appeared in a book called, The Friendship of Nature, a New England Chronicle of Birds and Flowers. The book follows the progress of seasons around Mosswood. Oliver Wendell Holmes gave it high praise, and it sold well at a time when few books on nature existed for popular audiences. Its success led her publisher to request she write a field book on birds.

Birdcraft

Mabel Osgood Wright spent the next two years in the American Museum of Natural History’s ornithology department. Then she wrote the first accessible bird manual, called Birdcraft: A Field Book of Two Hundred Song, Game, and Water Birds. It included quality illustrations by John James Audubon and Louis Agassiz Fuertes, then emerging as a topnotch ornithological artist. The publisher reprinted the book nine times between 1895 and 1936.

Illustration of a Chestnut-backed chickadee by Louis Agassiz Fuertes

In 1898, Mabel Osgood Wright became president of the Audubon Society of Connecticut. It happened by accident. The Fairfield chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution held a class in Parliamentary Law, and taught an exercise in the technique of forming a society. The name ‘Audubon Society’ was chosen, and it was such a good name the women voted to make it permanent. Its mission was to challenge overzealous hunters and the fashion industry, which was slaughtering birds for their feathers to adorn large hats.

The next year, Mabel became assistant editor of the Bird Lore journal, now Audubon magazine. She would then serve as president of the Connecticut Audubon Society for 26 years, later becoming a director of the National Association of Audubon Societies, now the Audubon Society.

Children’s Books

Around that time she came upon two boys who happily showed her a large jar filled with robin’s eggs they’d stolen from nests. She decided to turn her attention to writing for children. She wrote a book with ornithologist Elliott Coues, again with illustrations by Fuertes. They called it Citizen bird: scenes from bird-life in plain English for beginners. The Library of Congress cites it as a milestone in the conservation movement.

Exterior of the Connecticut Audubon Society Birdcraft Museum & Sanctuary in Fairfield, Conn.

The book, according to the library, brought together the talents of the greatest American ornithologist, a pioneering editor and an artist second only to Audubon. “Directed at the general public, especially children, and written in an entertaining and fanciful fiction style, the work imparts solid scientific knowledge while inculcating conservation values.”

She also wrote semi-autobiographical fiction, known as her “Barbara books.” Her alter-ago, “Barbara,” lives in the country with her husband, “Evan,” and they visit with their eccentric friends. The books comment on changing social mores and use servants for comic relief.

In 1914, Mabel Osgood Wright established Birdcraft , a small bird sanctuary, near her home in Fairfield. It is the oldest bird sanctuary in the United States and a National Historic Landmark. The Connecticut Audubon Society now maintains Birdcraft as a nature center.

James Wright died suddenly in 1920, and Mabel continued her writing and gardening. She died July 16, 1934 at the age of 75. A condominium complex replaced Mosswood.

This story was updated in 2022. Image of Birdcraft by By Jllm06 – Own work (Original text: self-made), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14684776. White crowned pigeon By Rawpixel – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75026677.

This story last updated in 2023.

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