A Smoke Rise East Gate New Year

The Smoke Rise East Gate has inspired several former Smoke Rise residents to share stories.

The latest comes from John Connelly, author of several wonderful stories to this blog. John's Smoke Rise East Gate Story takes place at New Year's a long time ago and honors his father, John Connelly Sr.

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For Dad

and for those who remember him

in heaven and on earth.

There are whispers around us and in us. We’d hear them but for the din of impatient trivialities.

"Ten!... nine!... eight!... seven!"

Dad and Mom joined the countdown. The Kin-wood Inn (now Piccolo’s) was overflowing with Kinnelon and Smoke Rise neighbors eager to crow goodbye to 1962 and shout-in a new and glorious year. The room was choked with party hats, short tight-bright dresses, minks, perfume and liberal eye-makeup. Dad sported a Brooks Brothers tuxedo. These were the spoils and temptations of their modern age. Scotch Whiskey and Rye made the transition smoother and more joyous.

"Six!... five!... four!... three!..."

Couples stood each with the other in arm, free hand holding glasses high.

"Two!... one!... Happy New Year!"

With that Mr. and Mrs. Wohltmann cried out a toast in an uncharacteristically bombastic hoot, champagne corks popped and the air filled with little multi-colored streamers from a hundred party poppers. A reflexive singing of “Auld Lang Syne” followed like the expected response at church: May the Lord be with you….”and with your spirit.” Mom, being from Scotland, delighted the crowd by singing in the tongue of her homeland:

“We twa hay rin aboot the braes, 

an pood the gowans fyn; 

Bit weev wandert monae a weery fet, 

sin ald lang syn!”

The old gave way to the new with the oldest of traditions. Mom whispered “I love you” to Dad and the crowd celebrated together the passage to a new age.

The party would go past 2 am. Dad, being Irish, felt compelled to be among the last to leave.

Stepping into the cool evening air he realized, for the first time, just how drunk he was. Struggling to focus, he fumbled with the keys, opened the door for Mom and then slumped into the driver’s seat. Back then, drunk or not, a man drove home. Besides, it wasn’t far. We lived on Orchard Road, just up the road, through the East Gate. It was just a few miles away. Head on the steering wheel he could see his shoes. They were covered in cold mud. He’d stepped in a puddle on the way to the car. “Jasus, Mary and Joseph” he mumbled to himself. Fortunately his tuxedo was unsullied.

It was a warmer New Years than normal. Still cold, mind you, but just above freezing. Mounds of blackened snow lined the streets and walkways, and mud was in abundance. The stars twinkled above as only they do in winter.

Mom asked if Dad could drive and he slurred, “Sure enough, my dear, sound as a pound…..I’ll be just followin’ the lines….,” and starting up, he inched out onto Stone House Road, made a right, and crept along, door slightly open, looking down at the lines. He could hear the crackle of the tires against the wet pavement beneath. The cool blast of air kept him awake.

“Just gotta’ keep followin’ the lines my dear…”

Dad had learned early on to follow the lines.

As a young Irish boy he’d sit at his kitchen table in the ironbound section of Newark. His house so small its address was 33 1/3rd Johnson St. They’d squeezed three homes onto one lot. From that table he’d watch the lines around his mother’s crystal-blue eyes as she examined his tea leaves and smiled.

“Ye have no worries, Johnnie. Just be rememberin’ Jasus and the Holy Saints in all ye do.”

She’d add with wink and a whisper, “and dun be thinkin’ too much of yeself.”

At St. Columba Catholic school he learned to stay in line from the boxing Joey Nuncio got in the ear from Sister Ida. He’d stepped a bit too far to one side waiting in line for the water fountain. His ear bright red and so hot to the touch that the kids had to take turns feeling it. He’d learned, too, from Father Duffy who had reminded him to live a life of quiet piety. An altar boy, he’d rung the bell at the wrong time during Mass and was ordered to report to the rectory. The lines of the priest’s eyes were deep as he smiled and pointed to his long white “alb”, or outer priestly garment, and whispered to Dad , “A spot on the alb is seen afar, Johnnie. So dun be shamin’ the good Lord.” These the whispers of a generation.

And so in line Dad took the Holy Body of Christ Communion, and in line he signed up to fight the Germans. He’d waited his turn in line to bail out of a burning plane over Germany and fell to the earth in one heavenly line of white parachutes, only to end up lined against a wall with his crewmates and shipped to a concentration camp. In line they’d entered the boxcar, in line they’d been run up a muddy hill to the camp, crazed dogs lunging at their legs.

There would be lines for eating, and lines for washing and lines that if you crossed you’d get a bullet in the ear. Lines to march in for months around Germany then lines to board ships for home and lines to welcome him back in the States. He’d learned to trust the lines and that night he’d do the same; just a lot slower.

Ten miles an hour, I think. Maybe less.

He’d been the son; the Christian; the soldier. His mother would be proud, he thought. He’d remembered Jesus and the Holy Saints and had never spotted his alb. The lines went by, one by one….slowly. He stayed in line.

But, he was now 38 years old. A successful developer, he’d moved his wife and five children to Smoke Rise. Neighborhoods now existed thanks to him. A hundred families slept this night warm in the homes he’d imagined and created with his Italian partners. It felt good, this moment….line…….line……….line………to be him.

Approaching the gate, he pulled over and stumbled out. Back then the East Gate was closed and locked at midnight. After that hour everyone had to enter Smoke Rise through the North Gate. A thick metal chain was thrown through the East Gate bars and clasped shut with a large lock. The gatekeeper would go to bed. But Dad had charmed a spare key out of one of the gatekeepers and routinely would let himself in at all hours.

He struggled with the freezing lock, harrumphing in the cold night air. Mom was asleep.

“Come on!” he grumbled. The key wasn’t working. Perhaps it was his cold hands, perhaps the alcohol or something else, but the lock did not cooperate. He stood still grasping the metal gate and tried to steady himself. Something about the cold, seeing his breath perhaps, took him back to Stalag Luft IV and he remembered “Big Stoop.”

It had been a crisp winter night like this when Big Stoop, a German prison guard, made Dad and his comrades line up and strip naked under the glare of prison lights. While the prisoners quivered unprotected from the night air, Big Stoop rummaged through the pockets of their discarded clothing and collected the photos of the mothers, wives and girlfriends back home; then rubbed them to his genitals and howled.

When Big Stoop noticed one prisoner had forgotten to remove his hat, he struck him violently to the ground and crushing the man’s throat under his boot screamed out “Respect! Respect!” until the breath of the GI was no longer visible in the cold night air. If you got out of line, Big Stoop would box you in the ear with such force that he punctured many an eardrum. Dad avoided Big Stoop.

When the camp was liberated, Big Stoop’s body was found in a field, his head on a stake. Big Stoop thought too much of himself, Dad thought. He’d forgotten the Holy Saints.

Just then a light went on in the gatehouse.

“Who’s out there?” 

“Never mind, I have a key. I won’t be more than a minute.”

“Who is that? What are you doing there?”

“Blah, blah, blah” Dad mumbled, his mind dulled with drink.

After a minute or so, the gatekeeper stood on the stone porch bathed in yellow light and called out, “You have to come up here immediately. There’s someone who wants to talk to you!”

“Jasus”, Dad thought. He straightened up, suddenly sobered by the gatekeeper’s command. He stepped up the old stone steps and made the little right turn into the gatehouse. The gatekeeper stood indignant and condescending.

“There!” the keeper said, pointing to a phone off the hook and sitting on a nightstand, “HE wants to talk to you.”

The gatekeeper was dressed in a tattered robe like some common shepherd Dad had seen in one of his childhood catechism books. Dad stood in tuxedo and topcoat. For just that instant Dad stared disdainfully at him. The Keep glared back indignantly. After all, Dad had interrupted his slumber.

“Hello?” Dad said.

“Who is this?” a voice demanded.

Dad, usually the jolly fellow was now  irritated.

“Who is this?” Dad demanded in return. The gatekeeper began to soften. His face smiling slightly as shock came over him.

“This is Gene Tuite!! Gene Tuite!! I ask again, who is this?”

Gene Tuite was about 20 years older than Dad. He’d been one of the first members of Smoke Rise and was now the leader of a “new” old guard, having had it accrue to him and them with the death of the Kinneys; he was now a self appointed ruler of the world behind the gates. But it was the start of a new year and the stars twinkled.

Dad hesitated, and then spoke up.

 “This is John Connelly. What’s it to ya?” 

The gatekeeper was now alive with delight. He was grinning broadly and wildly shaking his fists as if to say “Atta boy Johnnie, give it right back to him!!” Emboldened by the support Dad laid it on thicker. The gatekeeper’s mouth hung agape. He was watching the very power of the heavens being shaken; the ruler of the world being cast out.

Tuite demanded “Where did you get that key?”

“None of your business!” Dad barked. The gateman was beside himself.

“You give that key to the Keeper at once!”

“I will NOT! Goodnight to you sir!” 

With that, Dad hung up forcefully, now surprisingly clear-headed. The room was still but Dad knew in that instant that everything had changed. He had arrived. He’d stood up to the baddest, most powerful man in Smoke Rise. He was his equal. Maybe, like a favored son he was his better. He’d been the poorest kid in school, unable to muster the dime required for school books. He’d lost his dad while in eighth grade, was boxed about by every nun from 1st to 12th grade, was the youngest of 8 surviving children, lost two brothers and a sister to childhood diseases, collected scrap metal and cardboard, giving the proceeds to his mother. He’d survived anti-aircraft flak and Big Stoop, married a Scottish beauty, started a business and moved his family to Smoke Rise. He stood straight. The gatekeeper stepped aside to let him pass.

“Goodnight to you sir” the keeper said with a slight bow. 

“And goodnight to you” Dad countered like some imagined Lord from the Old Country.

Dad stepped onto the porch. It was his moment. He’d followed the lines and had arrived. He could be forgiven, he thought, for thinking just a bit of himself in that instant. Surely mother would approve. This new world, America, had been kind to the Irish. He, like fellow Irish immigrant Francis Kinney, had risen in the less than two decades since the war above his peers his ancestors and his circumstances. He stood for a second, elevated there, bathed in soft yellow light. He smiled the wry smile of a monarch.

The cool air embraced him. His soft blue eyes looked out at his new Ford LTD. He saw his lovely wife, her tan cheek against the window. He thought of his 5 children asleep at home in their beds. He thought of his business partners; his bank account. Proudly he stepped straight forward into the night …..

…..and, “wwwhhhhhhhhh!” a whoosh of cool air passed over his ears like a long cold whisper.

He’d forgotten that Kinney had not built that blasted stoop in a straight line, but rather, curved it around to the left. He fell forward slowly in the dark, then downward. Past howling Joey Nuncio and whispering Father Duffy, smiling in his white alb. Past red-faced, fist-clenched Sister Ida and Big Stoop, lunging dogs and soup lines, scrap yards and tea leaves. Through streaming lines of multi-colored paper and tight-bright dresses, past lines of Scottish verse and lined crystal-blue eyes, Jesus, the Holy Saints and little ringing bells until he landed, face flat, in a small lake of mud and snow and ice.

Rising slowly, he surveyed the cold thick mud from nose to toes.

“Jasus, Mary and Joseph!” he whimpered. Then, after a moment of frustration, he suddenly laughed to himself as he pictured his mother’s wink and listened afresh to the wisdom in her whisper.

Unlocking the gate, driving past and relocking it, cold and looking as any penniless old-world beggar, he once more slowly followed the lines.

Once more they got him home.

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Note: John Connelly Sr. lived with his family in Smoke Rise from 1962 to 1980. He is 86 years old now and lives in Jacksonville, Florida with his second wife Winona, having lost Jeanne in 1988. His war experiences were recently written about on a front page story in the Jacksonville Florida Times Union  in  Jacksonville veteran's story is different from all the others and also Jacksonville man integral part in establishing museum in town where he was a POW.

Photo from John Connelly: Dad is front row, second from the left.

Thank you, John, for this amazing story.

Image credit: photo taken of amazing watercolor of East Gate from Kinnelon Library's 2011 CLL Art Exhibit.

"The Place" - Smoke Rise 1965

John Connelly shares with us an intense story from 1965 in Smoke Rise. It's a beautiful story about a nearly forgotten time in the familiar place of Smoke Rise. However, it refers to politics and death and may be considered too unpleasant to read.

Proceed at your own risk.
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“At the cost of your youngest child its gates will be lifted.” 
Joshua 6:26

 The long cold winter of 1965 gave way finally to warm and lazy days which drew me and my sisters to the Smoke Rise beach. The thick ice upon which Richard Wohltmann and I had walked to the chapel months earlier had long since melted revealing the dark green waters of Lake Kinnelon shimmering with yellow highlights.

Speckled across the beach were various colored blankets and beach towels hosting hair-perfect lipsticked ladies chatting about current events. Their rhinestone sunglasses and beach hats softened the afternoon sun. The air was familiar with the smell of wet bathing suits, suntan oils, perfume and burgers grilling at the food stand. My friends and I dug in the sand lost in dreams of worlds far away. My sisters sat in their new bikinis playing a recently learned game of Bridge; their skin pale and marble next to their bronze-colored Italian friends. Each fascinated by the other.

Muffled sounds of life blended together; splashing, laughing, coughing, the tapping of a metal clasp against the flag pole in the breeze. Mothers called out, “Come eat!” while children cried back “Watch this Mom!” Here and there little battery powered radios were all tuned to AM 77 WABC. A favorite song played over and over during the day, “Do the Mouse.” It was from the popular “Soupy Sales” show. There wasn’t a kid on the beach who didn’t watch it. It still makes me smile. [Here's a link on YouTube to Soupy Sales with Pookie and White Fang.]

Between songs WABC’s popular DJ, Cousin Brucie, would deliver up his characteristically enthusiastic phrase:

“Is this The Place? Gotta’ be the place! ‘Cause there’s no other place….a’like this place!” 

He was so right. This was the place. There was no other quite like it.

Spread before us was our world - The Lake. On the left, the boat docks with little boys standing at the ends casting their fishing rods, the chapel behind in the distance. In front the roped-in swimming area and lifeguard stand, a tanned young man sitting watchfully. Little brightly colored sailboats drifted in the background. Moving to the right, was the rotunda, crowned by serious looking adults in long pants, socks and dress shirts. These new masters had replaced the Kinneys for dominion over this special land. They sat on beach chairs smoking cigars and surveying the scene.

Further to the right of the rotunda, however, was an area of the beach that was more menacing somehow. It was a stretch of beach that everyone just sort of knew should be avoided. I can recall stepping into the waters there just once. The water seemed darker and when I took a small step in, the thick organic muck at the bottom seemed to grab my foot and hold it there. I shivered and pulled back. Everyone somehow knew to avoid this section of beach. Few sat over there. Only the “edgy” or the outcast would even consider it.

Cloistered within our gated womb one could be forgiven for not noticing the great changes going on in the world outside. 1964 had just seen the passage of a landmark civil rights bill in the US which rendered discrimination illegal. But that kind of sweeping change doesn’t come easy and during 1966 and ‘67 violent race riots broke out in hundreds of American cities. But that was far away and it was well outside of our gates.

However, my father’s world, the place where he worked, was outside the gates.

Dad was in Real Estate and development from the 1950s through 2005. He spoke of times that today seem unimaginable. A time, for example, when Italians were not permitted to buy a home in any of the Northern NJ lake communities. High Crest Lake, Fayson Lakes, Lindy Lake, Packanack Lake and all the rest were off-limits. He used to tell me about the little man who developed and sold Packanack Lake. The man used to call my Dad several times a year to remind him to tell his 85 sales agents, many of whom were Italians-Americans, not to show Packanack Lake property to any “undesirables”, including fellow Italians.

In ways similar to those of gated communities all over America at the time, a review board would determine who “qualified” to move in. To their credit, unlike the other surrounding lake communities, the Smoke Rise Lake Community had begun to allow Italians in a few years before my Dad and Mom sat before them in 1962. Dad told me what that process was like: You’d be offered drinks to loosen you up and then you’d have a casual chat with the six board members. The goal was to suss out whom you were and if you “fit.” A few weeks after your meeting, a letter from the board would arrive advising you whether you’d been approved by the board or not. Mom and Dad, of Irish and Scottish descent, made the grade, though it did come with one string attached: So afraid of my Dad’s Real Estate juggernaut at the time and fearing potential competition, they put a capricious deed restriction on our home on Orchard Road that prevented Dad from practicing Real Estate within Smoke Rise. I suppose they could do anything they wanted back then. To his credit, my Dad honored the agreement long after such restrictions were deemed illegal. “A man’s only as good as his word, son” he’d say when I quizzed him about it.

In 1964 a young man named Milton Supman got a job in New York and went before the Smoke Rise review board. He had arrived from California and wanted to raise his family in a safe place.

He was sent a letter a few weeks later advising him he’d been turned down; they didn’t need to give you a reason back then. He moved elsewhere offering no struggle. The children of Smoke Rise, hearing later about the denial, were crushed. You see, Milton Supman, the man deemed “unsuitable” was better known by his stage name, Soupy Sales. We could watch his antics on TV, but he couldn’t join us at The Place.

There was another couple back then who decided to go down swinging. We tried to avoid the North Gate during this time because every weekend for about six months they stood there with picket signs accusing the board of unfair treatment. As kids we slid down in the backseat to not make eye contact with such nasty business. They finally gave up and moved on without further disruption.

Time passed and by the mid 60s the civil rights movement was in full force not only in America, but globally. Spain allowed the first native Jewish child to be born there in 500 years, on January 2nd, 1966, for example. But, it was little Suburban Wayne New Jersey that would electrify the country when an insignificant school board election was suddenly the focus of the nations press.

The election was being held to fill 3 vacant seats. Two of the five running were Jewish, Mr. Mandall and Mr. Kraus. A week before the election, the school board’s vice president was quoted in the paper as saying:

"Most Jewish people are liberals, especially when it comes to spending for education. If Kraus and Mandell are elected and Lafer [another Jewish board member] is in for two more years, that means a three to six vote [on the nine member board]. It would only take two more votes for a majority and Wayne would be in real financial trouble. Two more votes and we may lose what is left of the Christ in Christmas celebrations in our schools. Think of it!”

Wayne was now in the national spotlight and camera crews and reporters came out in droves to cover the election results of this obscure school board election just south of Smoke Rise! Despite condemnation of his remarks from all possible official quarters, Mandall and Kraus were defeated in a record turnout by a margin of 2 to 1.

It was in this time and climate that another family went before the Smoke Rise review board. I would prefer to not use their names, though old-time residents will remember. Like Mr. Supman, this couple was Jewish. If approved, they would be the first in Smoke Rise.

They too received a letter a few weeks later advising them that they’d been denied. But, this was now a few years later than Mr. Supman’s denial and much had changed. For example, the NJ courts had ruled in 1966 that Packanack Lake could no longer restrict its buyers to just “White Protestants.”

The couple decided to take on the review board. A battle ensued that dragged on. A lawsuit was threatened. The battle became well known among the Smoke Rise elite of the day and I imagine many an afternoon tea at the Village Inn was punctuated with talk of the matter. As was the cigar talk of the rotunda.

After a great and spirited battle, the couple prevailed and they moved into Smoke Rise that spring. They had won a victory that would forever change Smoke Rise. The gates triumphantly rose for them to enter. Vans brought furniture and a child’s toys could be seen on their well tended lawn. The weather turned sultry and the young wife took her infant daughter to the beach and they set up their blankets on that far side, near the dark waters.

Youth is a time of “firsts” and that day was to be one for me. It was the first time I was to hear a mother’s plaintive wail over a lost child. I can look back now on others; a mother after an earthquake in Turkey stumbling through ruble, a mother in Samoa whose child died in her arms from fever, a mother whose son was found dead from suicide. Such sounds are unforgettable, but as I said, this would be my first.

It began slowly. “Where’s my daughter?”

The woman, that newest member of our community, ran about the rotunda several times growing increasingly frantic.

“WHERE’S MY DAUGHTER!”

 Radios were turned off. People were on their feet. Sudden movement was occurring everywhere. People were offering to help look for the little girl. Searchers scattered in all directions. Maintenance workers dropped their shovels. The grill closed up. Everyone was now engaged in the search.

Finally, after much time had passed, the lifeguard organized a group to lock arms and enter the dark waters. They fanned out in a chain and began a slow walk deeper and deeper into the lake until one searcher shrieked and a little lifeless body was pulled from the dark and rushed to the lifeguard who began CPR on the shore.

A strange quiet had settled over us all. There was no sound other than the breathless sobs and wailing of the mother. The lifeguard worked on the child despite the obvious fact that she had been in the water for well over an hour. In the quiet of the afternoon sun, between moments of sobbing you could at times hear the “hut! hut! hut! hut! hut! hut! hut! hut!” of his heroic efforts pressing the child’s little chest.

When someone in my family died, the event was accompanied by bagpipes. The players would press hard against the wind bag of the pipes with their arms and produce sweet sounds of the “Old Country” and of “Amazing Grace.”

But, standing there as a ten year old, it struck me that the pressing on the chest of the child was producing no sound. No music. No coughing. No crying. Nothing.

Each minute passed like hours. Our group of onlookers, from cigar smokers to the maintenance workers, hair perfect ladies to sandy-stomached young boys, stood solemnly. Slowly and one by one each of us on the beach fell to our knees in exhaustion eyes fixed on the lifeguard, his brow wet with sweat, until the entire crowd assembled was kneeling together. The valiant effort to save the child was the only movement.

The lifeguard never faltered. He continued to try and resuscitate the child for the hour or more it took the ambulance to finally arrive from Chilton Hospital. Knowing it was useless, he nevertheless continued, perhaps for the mother’s sake. Finally, with sunlight fading, an ambulance came and the child was taken along with its mother and they were gone.

Months later the mother told my parents that she felt they had been cursed because they pushed so hard to get into Smoke Rise. Being a devout Jew, she was aware of the curse found in the Bible book of Joshua at the start of this story. While clearheaded counselors would protest that it was just a tragic accident, the cruel consequence of time and unforeseen circumstance, you cannot judge the tortured expressions of a person suffering such a loss.

The memory of that day overwhelmed me during this writing as though it had just occurred. We each process trauma and grief in our own ways and times, it seems.

The long summer led to fall and then winter followed turning the lake once more to glass. Then another summer and another until now 45 summers have passed since that day. There have been many other “firsts” for Smoke Rise since. That first Jewish couple, armed with the power of the courts and new laws, were the first to lift the gates for the diverse and many who now call Smoke Rise home.

As far as I know, the funeral took place outside of Smoke Rise. I don’t know how many attended or how long it took the couple to recover from their loss….if ever. I’m also unaware of any service ever being performed at the lake in the spot where the child died. No bagpipes have ever played there for her. Nor was a wreath ever placed there in her memory. I’d like to think that one may be laid there one day to both remember a little girl and lay to rest the shadows of a very different time.

But, then again, I remember that day and that moment in time when the radios were silenced, the cards were set aside, the fishing poles were let down, the cigars were extinguished, the digging was halted, the burners were turned off and the shovels were dropped. I recall a universal image; of anguish clinging to the face of a young mother, pierced though the heart, as a lifeless child was placed in her arms. That day, when the air was punctured by her sobbing and joined by the puffs of air from an unrelenting lifeguard, which blended with our own steady breaths and ascended above to God. That day, when the cigar smokers and fisher-boys, the ladies and maintenance men, the pallid and the bronze, the fry cooks, the bikini-clad and the sandy-bellied boys joined an inconsolable mother.

All kneeling. All united.

[To view the video on YouTube, click on Celtic Legends - Amazing Grace."]

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 Thank you, John, for this intensely moving story.

A History of Beatrice Kinney Via Alfred Munnings' Art

For many entering Smoke Rise through the East Gate, a scene of horseback riders greets them. John Connelly [see his previous posts] had just such an experience when he last visited Kinnelon. The result is this history of Beatrice Kinney, Francis S. Kinney's daughter, based on the artwork of Alfred Munnings, titled "The horses and their riders."

“The horses and their riders.”

Last Summer I returned to Smoke Rise through the East Gate and was comforted that one tradition still lives on. Pulling over on Perimeter Road I observed a young girl maneuvering her horse smoothly through the arena in a slow motion figure-eight. It is a tradition that has been kept alive in Smoke Rise for well over a century and goes back, I suppose, to the very founding of the world.

The horse, its weighty hooves clapping the ground in rhythmic stomps, shook its head wildly, flesh quivering with power. Snorting, nostrils flaring, eyes wild and observing yet obeying the gentlest tug of the girl's wrist, or when necessary, swift kicks or sharp verbal commands. Blue sky, green grasses and warm yellow sunlight blurred past both horse and rider as my eye followed them.

Her appearance was typically equestrian: dark hair braided tightly, black boots dipped with brown mud; black helmet and white collared shirt. She rocked in the saddle from her knees in perfect time to Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake,” chin high in the air. It was a lazy late summer day. The long song of the cicadas joined the pounding hooves. While all of Smoke Rise rested in the afternoon sun, the earth trembled from the swirling movement of this powerful pair. If Smoke Rise has a heart, the place from which its power emanates, then surely this place must be it.

My mind went back to her...

I suppose you could say Tom Kline introduced us a long time ago. She stood, that day, confident and straight-backed in a stance reminiscent of the most disciplined riders. Shoulders fixed. Her small hands held a leather strap with her finger tips. Her eyes were dark. She donned a whisper of a smile. Some faces capture the heart instantly and forever. Hers captured mine. One day, many years before, Tom had shown me her picture. That photo now rests in the L’Ecole Museum along with so many other historic photos of old Smoke Rise and Kinnelon. Her name was Beatrice Kinney.

Beatrice Kinney was born in 1883, the year her father, Francis S. Kinney, purchased Smoke Rise. The oldest records of Kinney’s Smoke Rise purchases mention little, but they do record the name of her horse: Star. It is not difficult to image her riding out to that same arena in Smoke Rise as a very young girl at the end of the 19th century. Nor to imagine the young Irish laundresses looking up from their work at 1 Robins Lane, confused by the norms of a new land as to whether to curtsy or wave as she passed along on her horse, then giggling together when she was out of sight.

By her early teens Beatrice Kinney was competing in and winning competitions in Narragansett, RI, home to prestigious riding and polo clubs. Her father, Francis Kinney, built a bungalow on his vast acreage there to host her coming-out party as was the high society custom of the day. The bungalow was a vehicle of sorts, built to transport her on a stage of his making. On this platform the refined 16 year-old daughter passed across the fault line that separated child from debutante.

It was 1899 and Beatrice Kinney was introduced to the world; a world which would undergo massive social and technological change. She would traverse the globe listing addresses such as Aiken, SC (the Hamptons of the south), Narragansett, RI, New York, NY, Paris and Pau, France near Spain. She would be carried by trains and ships and the new automobiles, but form part of the elite group that would cling to the old traditions of horses and riders. It would all be new, but it would be measured in horsepower.

Seven years later, in 1906, Beatrice wed Harry La Montagne; artist, sculptor and race horse lover. In a possible clue to her character, her wedding announcement and plans were unusually understated. As it appeared in “Society at Home and Abroad”, a social column in the New York Times:

“The wedding of Miss Beatrice Kinney, only daughter of Francis Sherwood Kinney and Henry (sic) La Montagne, will take place at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on April 30. Contrary to rumor, it will be a simple affair. Miss Kinney will have no bridesmaids and Edward La Montagne, Jr, will be best man. Miss Kinney passes her summers at Narragansett.”

The column was filled with news of the Vanderbilts and Astors, the upcoming soirees, the polo matches and incorrigible bachelors. Aiken was lively and gay. Open dancing was once again all the rage among the uber-wealthy. The writer of the article was entertained by the ever changing social trends of high society, comparing them to the 40s and 50s New York (that’s 1840s and 50s.)  Reading the column fills one with both a sense of awe and amusement. Six years later, almost to the day, John Jacob Astor and his new wife would be heading home from England to their equestrian estate near Beatrice’s in Aiken.  He never arrived, dying instead, one of many unfortunate victims of the Titanic’s sinking.

In 1908, upon the death of her father Francis Kinney, her brothers Warren and Morris each inherited about $750,000, but the remainder of the estate, estimated at between twelve and fifteen million dollars ($150 million in today’s dollars), is believed to have gone to Beatrice.

Thirty nine years later in 1947, she moved the Madonna from the Smoke Rise chapel to Aiken, SC and then quietly passed away childless the following year in New York. While her husband’s death in 1959 was accompanied by a grand and detailed obituary, Beatrice’s said only:

“La Montagne, Beatrice, beloved wife of Harry La Montagne and sister of Warren Kinney of Morristown N.J. after a long illness. Resting at Funeral Church, 81 St and Madison Ave. Funeral private. Paris papers please copy.”

I have followed Beatrice my whole life. As a child, I swam where she swam, warmed by the summer sun on the same rocks where she warmed. Boated the same waters, walked the same paths and ambled around the stables where she housed and cared for her horses. I’ve stood outside her homes in New York and Aiken. I’ve paused in the doorways of the train stations that she would have passed through and sat in the pews where she worshiped.

Despite all this, I know little about her. She remains a glorious enigma. Like flashes of faint meteors in the darkest August sky, just fragmentary bits of light about her life can be seen. Shooting stars will always remind me of her. How delightful that much of what we can learn about her, we learn from an artist. His name was Alfred Munnings. To learn about Beatrice, you must learn something about Alfred.

Alfred Munnings was born a miller’s son in 1878 in a rural area outside of London. Horses were a part of country life and Alfred was entranced by them. The young artist was moved to draw them incessantly. His parents encouraged their son, buying him a toy horse at age 4 to study and sketch. He would relate in his memoirs years later that that horse, and every horse he’d ever seen or owned, captivated him. He was to see a great many horses in his life.

His playful childhood ended abruptly at age 14 when his father committed him to a six year apprenticeship of hard work many miles from home. After 10 hour work days, he would walk to art classes, studying till 9 in the evening. In 1899, the year Beatrice Kinney was introduced in Narragansett, Munnings was elected to the Royal Institute of Painters and two of his works were accepted by the Royal Academy.

When he was twenty, Munnings attempted to begin life as a professional artist, but tragedy struck. Lifting a puppy over a briar patch, a branch swung back and struck him, blinding him in one eye. When the bandages were removed, his vision and depth perception were permanently damaged. While it would plague him for the rest of his life, he nevertheless returned to painting -- stroking his brush in the air as he drew closer and closer to the canvas due to his loss of depth perception.

In 1910 he met and fell in love with a fellow artist named Florence Carter-Wood, nicknamed “Blote”. They married in 1912. The paintings of her during that period which reflect both his love of her and the impressionist influence on his work are touching. The one pictured below (which sold in 2000 for $600,000) entrances the eye with the swirls of color and light in the background - like visual music or poetry.

A troubled soul, while she and Munnings were on their honeymoon, Blote attempted suicide. After that, Munnings, required to travel for business, entrusted her to a young aristocrat named Gilbert Evans. An improper relationship developed between them. Jean Goodman, a friend of Blote’s, wrote: “She had also been entertained by Gilbert Evans, who took her for long walks…They made a handsome couple: he unfailingly sensitive and gentlemanly, in contrast to her unpredictable husband….”

Evans, contemplating the hopelessness of their situation and being after all a British gentleman, joined an army unit and left for Africa. Blote took her life soon after, leaving Munnings devastated. Evans never mentioned her again, perhaps because, as Faulkner wrote, “A gentleman can live through anything.” Except, perhaps, a war.

As the Great War began in 1914, filled with nationalist fervor Munnings tried to enlist but was turned down because of his poor eyesight. Instead, in 1917, he took a job processing horses for transport to France for the war effort. There, day after day, he watched the horses assembled and driven up ramps to the darkest cargo holds of the waiting ships. They came from all over the world to fight at the front. It has been estimated that 500,000 horses were taken from Britain alone; a whole generation of young horses were lost in the war.

But, as Robert Graves would later write, “goodbye to all that.”

War is hell, especially for horses which make large and easy targets. 3 million horses died in The Great War, spilling their blood and falling alongside men, driven on and killed by superior beings.

In 1918 Munnings got a break. He was given a chance to paint a Canadian Cavalry officer named Jack Seely on his horse, Warrior. Warrior had been in the war since it began in 1914, miraculously surviving despite all odds. This horse and rider had been forged as one. Soon after, Seely and Warrior would lead an assault in what was to be the final Cavalry charge in history. Though a quarter of the men and half the horses would die in the attempt, Seely and Warrior survived.

This iconic masterpiece showcased Munning’s mastery at capturing both horse and rider. He was to become, after the war, the darling of aristocrats eager to be immortalized along with their mounts. Faulkner aptly writes of this innate desire:

Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist's way of scribbling "Kilroy was here" on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.

Like horse and rider, Munnings and aristocrats would merge. Among them Beatrice and Harry La Montagne.

His bed and boarding paid, Munnings passed back and forth among the wealthy. Leaving his home in England and his second wife, he lived for extended periods among them on the Continent, capturing thousands of images of them and their horses at play. They posed in their saddles, sporting their red riding jackets and galloping in fox hunts. Proud of the superbly handsome horses for whom they showed great care. Set against the backdrops of mountain ranges and tempestuous European skies. He could transport them in a way that no other could; from wealthy but transient passersby, to immortal beings.

While in Pau in the Pyrenees, Baron Robert Rothschild commissioned him to paint Beatrice on horseback. Since this piece has remained in a private collection, no public images exist, however, two others do. One is an impressionistic masterpiece of one of Beatrice’s noble hunters, “Bittersweet”. Note the almost Van Gogh-like background as well as the multi-colors in the horse's flesh:

The second painting, Beatrice with the Pyrenees Mountains in the background, captures the grandeur of the setting and the affected nobility of Mrs. La Montagne; shoulders back, chin high in the air, leather straps gently in hand standing as master of her world, flanked that day by four worthy attendants.

Munnings wrote of his time with the La Montagnes:

'But to my arrival at Pau - at the Villa Regina, occupied by the La Montagnes. It was Mrs. La Montagne that I went to paint; a good-looking, smart American woman who made short visits to London merely to have her habits cut by Busvines, of world-wide fame. This well-turned-out lady was supplied by her devoted husband with superb horses. She was not one of the hard-riding brigade, but she certainly was a horsewoman, and rode for safety in what was a trappy country….. The distant snow-covered mountains, with the plain of Tarbes in between, could be the only background for Mrs. La Montagne on her horse...La Montagne cheered at the sight of the portrait of his wife in a silk hat and habit, on a bay horse, distant snow-clad mountains and all' (A.J. Munnings, Second Burst, Bungay, 1951, pp. 100-1).

Outside of these paintings and her inclusion in Munnings' memoirs, references to Beatrice are spotty at best and, frankly, contradictory. She appears at once noble and pretentious; awe inspiring and amusing; self absorbed and benevolent. Brief mention of her is often in connection with riding competitions or afternoon tea parties. She and Harry listed, too, as owners of winning horses such as the famous racehorse, Conniver, for which the Conniver Stakes are named.

But before her death it appears she gave much of her fortune away, such as a gift to Columbia University of $500,000 for future generations. And with that, Beatrice Kinney La Montagne, the first daughter of Smoke Rise, debutante, horse lover and philanthropist fades into obscurity.

Being the son of immigrants, my search for Beatrice leaves me filled with mixed emotions. My own grandmother was forced to leave family and country. Her transport was the lowest holds of the freighter “Columbia,” built by fellow Irish laborers. Alone on her 16th birthday and bound for America she would be compelled to work as a laundress for the New York elite. Washing clothes, floors and rich young faces she’d send most of the money earned to her parents back home saving her siblings from certain starvation and death. She too was an artist, but undiscovered. Earning a few extra pennies or dollars with pencil sketches of the children or a family pet she sent most of the proceeds home to an “Old Country” and family she would never again see.

And I am torn as to whether she was in fact horse or rider, the lines of which can become quite blurred in a world of such ultimate interconnectedness. She, a wandering Celtic teen of whom little is likewise known, transported across oceans, benefactor of her home and people, and willing groomer of finer beings.
Beatrice lived at a time of great change, but she and her aristocratic friends managed in their own way to preserve something glorious of the old world; something of its traditions and refinements. Among these a love of horses still evidenced in splendid races and tournaments.

My search for her always ends in the same place: the “L” shaped portion of earth that runs the straight line from 1 Robins Lane to the stables and across to the Village Inn. This place inhabited once by both her and the Irish Laundresses who tended to her and her family’s grooming. Her spirit still lives on in the red-cheeked grins of Smoke Rise daughters galloping with snowy backdrops, they and their horses’ warm breath mixing and rising to heaven.

If you sit there in the darkness alone under the August sky, you might actually catch a glimpse of a young girl. Who exactly, I’m not sure. On moonless nights she appears when a certain mist rises from the earth, or a passing car illuminates her from behind. My family has seen her. You may one day, as well, if you chance to look. Or you may just marvel at the momentary and many streaks of light that fill the August night sky and think of her, as I have often done.

That summer day last year, finally desiring to get a closer look at the girl and the horse described in the beginning of my story, I drove my convertible partly onto the grass nearer to the railing and reached over to grab a pencil and a sheet of paper. My grandmother could not leave her descendants fine houses or money, but she passed on a lasting gift of pencil quick sketching, a love of music, and of wee faerie folk.

“Excuse me!” came a commanding voice. “Excuse me!”

It felt as if my head had been snapped back unexpectedly. I looked to see the young girl sitting high atop her horse now next to the railing.

“Who are you?” came her sharp chilling question.

“Why, I was….just admiring your riding and your fine horse” I stammered.

“You’re not allowed to park there. That area is not for cars.”

“I’m sorry, it’s just that I …..I used to live here and sit in this very spot and admire the horses many years ago……”

The glare of the teenager repelled like a fierce Cavalry assault until she pulled her horse into a slow back-up and returned to her chin-high endless figure-eight. Setting down the paper, I started the car and, putting it into reverse suddenly stopped and smiled to myself.

It all at once occurred to me that there are some traditions that, unlike high society dances, will probably never change….nor end; the horses and their riders, artists and aristocrats.

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Thank you, John.

Amazing to realize how much we owe Alfred Munnings for this history of Beatrice Kinney! I will forever think of her when I see young horse-back riders in Smoke Rise.

Photo Credits: John Connelly and websites linked to above

Night: Gustave Dore, Francis Kinney & Kinnelon III

This story from John J. Connelly is titled Night. It started with Gustave Doré Captures Soul, Memories & Coincidence. It continued with Gustave Doré, His Art, His Times. This is the third and final part.

Night - Part III

Francis S. Kinney Brings Gustave Doré To Kinnelon

It is no secret that Francis Kinney was a true American magnate who traveled to Europe on many occasions. Like many industrialists of his generation, he had an eye for art. We have only recently discovered that he was quite taken by the bronze works of Doré.

While researching the life of Beatrice Kinney, Tom Kline discovered that St. Hubert’s chapel once housed a full-sized sculpture of the Madonna and Child. He emailed me photos of the masterpiece and I was thrilled as I imagined the huge bronze standing on the pedestal under the stained glass window. But when he mentioned that the artist was Gustave Doré, I was stunned. This was the same creator of the “Poem of the Vine” which had entranced me just a few months before.

Doré had made his entrance.

Tom went on to discover that Kinney had purchased other Dorés. The rock with the enigmatic “Night” carved into it, had in fact once served as a pedestal for another Doré. He even managed to find a nearly 100 year old picture of “Night.” She was a sensuous slender bronze girl. Her gentle sloping “S” shaped naked form high atop the rock had once overlooked Lake Kinnelon.

But that’s not all.

When Tom was younger, he befriended a group of older women who lived in Butler and who had worked for the Kinneys at the turn of the century. They confirmed to Tom that Smoke Rise once was home to quite a collection of bronzes. They were plentiful on the lawns and grounds. Given that we now know that Kinney prized Doré's art particularly, it is quite possible Smoke Rise was once home to one of the largest collections of his bronzes in the world.

But, what happened to them?

In one of life’s little ironies, the ladies of Butler claimed that the good people of Kinnelon began to whisper disdainfully about Kinney’s “Lawn ornaments.” It seems that during the First World War “Lawn ornaments” were thought to be Germanic in nature and at their urging the priceless bronze works of art were gathered up and sent to foundries to be melted down for the war effort.

Gone forever, Doré’s masterpieces would never again adorn the hillsides and rock formations of Smoke Rise.

Ironic that Doré, the fierce French ultra-nationalist who devoted his youth to the denigration of the German nation, would have his works of art melted for scrap because they seemed too “Germanic” to the good people of 1917 Northern New Jersey.

Or perhaps someone thought it fitting that his work should go into the making of shell casings which bombed the German people.

The life-sized Doré bronze Madonna and Child that once stood in the St. Hubert’s chapel survived, safely hidden in the chapel itself.

Bequeathed to Beatrice after the death of her father, Francis, in 1923 it remained in situ until the madness of another World War ended, at which time Beatrice, for reasons unexplained, quietly removed the Madonna and entrusted it to a church in Aiken, South Carolina.

I think I know why.

Doré lived to see a darkness overtake his homeland that must have been unimaginably painful for an artist to witness. A dark gloom born out of nationalism, militarism and hubris. A dense fog that would eventually expand and consume the entirety of the world, bringing shadow and misery on a scale never before seen.

As the British statesman Edward Grey observed at the start of the First World War, “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”

With the outbreak of the First World War, the Belle Epoque in Europe was over as was the Gilded Age in the United States. In its place a dark night that would cast its shadow over the whole world, including one wondrous village in New Jersey called Smoke Rise.

Yes, I think I know why Beatrice removed the Madonna.

The lessons and questions of our lives are at times easily learned and answered, as was the lesson of September 1970. Others, like the lessons of 1870, seem to perplex well into old age.

Perhaps Horace’s words apply best to Doré when he said "Exegi monumentum aere perennius” or “I have erected a monument more lasting than bronze.” Perhaps.

But, I finally understand a riddle which perplexed us as kids: The meaning of the single enigmatic word carved into a lonely stone in the middle of a forest near a lake.

A chill will always accompany my memory of that single word:

Night.


Thank you, John.

Night: Gustave Doré, Francis Kinney & Kinnelon II

This story titled Night and written by John Connelly started with Gustave Doré Captures Soul, Memories & Coincidence. It is about Gustave Doré, Francis Kinney and Kinnelon.

Night - Part II

Gustave Doré, His Art, His Times

In 1870, France had become pompous, ostentatious and decadent. About 60 years earlier, under Napoleon Bonaparte, France had terrified all of Europe leaving 3 million soldiers and 1 million civilians dead and many of its cities in ruins. While French militarism had earned the detestation of continental Europe, memories of the Grande Armée and its many conquests still filled the hearts of French nationalists, Doré being one.

As Germany made attempts to unify its republic, France balked, threatening war. Doré, a French ultra-nationalist, went about plying his art to stir up the populace.

Doré’s pencil sketches and brilliant oil paintings of 1869 and 1870 all spewed onto the French people patriotic images of Lady Liberty leading armies against a dark and sinister looking Hun, portrayed as a bloodthirsty black eagle.

In “The Marseillaise” of 1870, a robed woman crying out advances across a battle field leading an enthusiastic regiment of French stick-wielding young boys as she holds a sword of victory high in the air.

Journalists of the time were unimpressed with Doré's idealism.

One wrote regarding a Doré painting, “It is odd in that it presents quite effectively the romantic concepts of tumultuous and picturesque scenic effects upon which we have subsisted since 1792 (the time of Napoleon). One does not have the slightest inkling of the mechanistic, grasping, regimented nature of the battle to come. One is surrounded by a circus-like atmosphere.” He went on to call it naïve and clumsy art.

The king of France, Napoleon III, had quite a different view, hailing Doré’s genius and embracing fully his art. It fit well the political climate of the day, and resonated with the public’s imagination and fascination with war. In piece after piece, Doré fueled rage at the Prussians and stirred the French to war.

Finally, Doré and the people of France got their wish when France declared war on Germany July 19th, 1870.

Six months later France was in ruins. Approximately 80,000 soldiers and 700,000 civilians were dead. Prussia annexed the Alsace and Lorraine provinces and established a united Germany. The French government collapsed, and a brief but bloody civil war was fought in Paris that claimed between 10,000 and 30,000 Parisians, until finally a new government was established and heavy war reparations were imposed on a humiliated French people.

Doré witnessed much drama and episodes of ruin during the war and subsequent siege of Paris. Touching are the paintings of this period, for example, “The Overturned Cradle”, which depic ts a young mother in that terrible instant of time when she discovers her baby has been killed by a German shell that has torn open the wall of her home. His drawings and oils from this period reflect his profoundly devastated emotional state as he experienced the full brunt of the political and social rupture of war.

Doré, wrote to a friend, “Ah! Both of our heads were filled with too extravagant dreams! My drawing has no longer any reason to exist; I give it to you. Keep it in remembrance of our vanished hopes.”

He further wrote, “Our poor capital is in flames; its palaces destroyed – its finest streets, and all that make it beautiful. As I write, I have before me immense volumes of smoke, rising to the heavens. In the whole history of the world, I don’t think there is a parallel instance of so sanguinary a drama, and of such ruin.”

Emile Zola in his book The Debacle, personifies the French nation with a young woman searching for her brother in the aftermath of the war. As she looks upon a Paris in flames she laments: “The thought of fire devouring human lives, the sight of this blazing city on the horizon, throwing up the hellish glare of cities accursed and destroyed, made her cry out in spite of herself. She clasped her hands together and asked: ‘What have we done, oh God, to be punished like this?’”

While Germany had won the war and initially enjoyed the support of Europe, Doré’s striking images created a new and disturbing portrait of Germany. Whereas France had previously viewed Germany as a land of poets and dreamers, stark Doré’s paintings had cemented an image in the popular mindset of many across Europe of France as a “defiled maiden”, and Germany as a cruel and rapacious beast that would forever more have its way with her.

Germany had “won”, but his face was forever altered.

Though Doré would not live to see it, Alsace and Lorraine would change hands 4 times over the next 75 years, and France and Germany would eventually draw the whole world into conflicts which would claim over 100 million lives, most of them civilians.

The war over, Doré left off patriotic images and turned with renewed vigor to the painting of religious images instead. The 1870s saw multitudes of paintings depicting scenes from the Bible such as Entry of Christ into Jerusalem, 1876, Dream of Pilate’s wife, 1874, The Mocking of Christ, 1879, and scores more. His oils, sketches and illustrations depicted powerfully moving religious scenes. So moving, in fact, that during the 1870s Doré was selected to illustrate various noted English translations of the Bible which so stirred the imagination that Doré became literally the most well known artist in the world. It has been said that his images “took the English speaking world by storm”, as evidenced by mention of the Doré Bible in “Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain.

By the 1880s Doré’s illustrated Bible was THE sought after Bible in America. It would fire the imagination of an entire generation of Americans, including a young man in Pompton Lakes, NJ by the name of Cecil B. DeMille whose “most fingered book” is said to have been his Doré Bible and who would go on to create religious movies in Hollywood based on Doré’s dramatic images and which would influence millions.

In addition to his religious images, Doré produced other moving works of art, including, from about 1877, bronze sculptures. The sculptures could not have been produced without all of the turmoil and anguish that preceded them, and Doré instilled them with his essential experience. Gustave Doré died in 1883, the year Francis Kinney purchased Smoke Rise.

These events bring us to Francis Kinney, Gustave Doré and Smoke Rise.

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Next: Francis S. Kinney Encounters Gustave Doré






NOTE: The image of Night above comes courtesy of Tom Kline. The Doré Bible image comes courtesy of John Connelly. Neither can be used or reproduced without permission and attribution.

Night: Gustave Doré, Francis Kinney & Kinnelon I

There's something about Kinnelon and Smoke Rise that leads to unusual coincidences and serendipitous connections. I've noticed it happening as a result of this blog. Case in point is this tale from John Connelly titled "Night." It weaves together discoveries I've shared with you here about Gustave Doré, with perspectives on Kinnelon and Francis S. Kinney. The story is in three parts.

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Night - Part I

Gustave Doré Captures Soul, Memories & Coincidence

In the end we are the sum of our choices, our memories, and coincidence.

September 1970 was my freshman year at Kinnelon High School. Kids from varied backgrounds met uneasily in the hallways, chatted outside waiting for school buses, exchanged glances in libraries and dressed together awkwardly in heavy green outfits in gym locker rooms. Some would forge strong and lasting bonds of friendship. Others would discover new and menacing enemies. My friend found both.

It would be difficult to recall the offense that started it all. But, by October of that year, a simmering rivalry had developed. Over the year, it worsened. Conversation could quickly turn to the enemy; his smug demeanor, irritating smirk or clearly intentional effrontery.

“Did you catch that?” my friend would say. “The impudence! The cad! This calls for a calculated response!” These comments often followed by a Snidely Whiplash sort of hand wringing gesture and evil grin. It was all such good fun!

Or so I thought.

By spring tempers reached a boiling point. War plans were being drawn up. The enemy would be confronted at a time and place of my friend's choosing and the score would be settled firmly and finally. As my friend was bigger and stronger than his wiry opponent, a quick and glorious victory was assured. Days passed.

Then war!

As a crowd of kids marched towards the auditorium, a quip from the enemy ignited an instant and savage response. The others and I stepped back stunned. A circle of onlookers formed. In the center my friend, still holding his books with his left arm, unleashed a ferocious volley of right-handed punches on the smaller enemy. A year’s worth of anger was spilling out in one glorious paroxysm of rage. My friend was the clear winner….until the little guy, falling back, feebly threw one lucky left hook and caught my friend’s nose, laying it quite literally over onto its side.

The little guy ran off defeated. My friend stood beaming, blood everywhere and his face, well, his face forever altered. Tell me, how does one “congratulate” such a “winner?”

It was to be the first and last violent episode of my High School years. Though just children we’d grasped in that moment the futility of violence. There were to be no further retaliations or hostilities. Participant and observer alike “laid down their arms.”

The memory of that day returned to me this summer through strange coincidence.

In June, thousands of anxious visitors were drawn to the De Young Museum in San Francisco out of a curious interest in the past. They were there to see the treasures of the boy king, King Tutankhamun. A group of friends and I were also drawn there. As we waited on line, a curious bronze sculpture caught my eye.

“The Poem of the Vine” read the placard.

It rose about 20 feet high from a garden near the entrance to the museum. A massive vase littered with clashing images of soft naked bodies, rats, spiders, snakes, lizards, flies all interwoven by vines and ripe clusters of grapes, and everywhere little expressive cherubs, their faces each alive with emotion; praising, joyous, despondent, angry, naughty, pious, bored, hopeful, dejected, silly, tired, crying, singing. Each expression a new and different emotion. The range of human experience summed up with little cherubic faces. Above, a seated Bacchus his head thrown back in merry-making, drinks in all of it to the fullest.

I pressed my face to the cool bronze Bacchus and I joined, giddy-drunk with emotion.

“Are you coming John?” my impatient friends asked.

“Yes, of course, but this vase, this work of art. I want to….to…..dive into it!” Such is the power of great art.

While the Egyptian artifacts proved pleasant enough, it was the vase, that incredible vase, that haunted at day’s end. A simple inscription at the base identified the artist: Gustave Doré.

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Next, Part 2: Gustave Doré, His Art & His Times
After that, Part 3: Francis S. Kinney Brings Doré To Kinnelon!

Francis Kinney's Boathouse on Lake Kinnelon

Boathouse I by David French.
Were you aware that Francis S. Kinney's Kinnelon Estate included a boathouse? I recently learned about it from John Connelly who shares the following story of.... The Boathouse on Lake Kinnelon.

An immense and solitary stone sits at the end of Lake Kinnelon near the stables. Over it spills a gentle waterfall that flows easily through green fields, past 1 Robins Lane, under a stone bridge and into a quiet pool that you see on the right as you exit the East Gate. If not for this stone, Lake Kinnelon would not exist. If not for this stone, the lake would follow nature’s course and simply drain away.

I know this stone well because my journeys to St. Hubert's Chapel with Tom Kline always started there. We’d walk along a dirt road, pass the stables and then climb up the large stone. Reaching the top, the lake would come into view. Then we’d find the metal canoe that Tom hid in the tall grasses nearby. Emblazoned with his father’s initials, CHK, it served as our transport to the farthest reaches of the lake, the chapel and our childhood world of wonder.

We first took the CHK out to the Island in 1968 when Tom and I were 12 years old; Tom up front and me behind. We paddled across the still lake in the cool early hours of a clear spring day.

We passed through the cove taking note of a large wooden structure near the waterfall. It was an imposing sight rising about 2 stories high, all timber, darkened from age, and without windows. Large, dark and out of place, it was like an ark that had drifted across the lake and came to rest where it stood. Tom explained that it was a boathouse.

We journeyed to the chapel and returned, hiding the CHK in the tall grasses. I wrote earlier about that first chapel visit. The chapel was in a state of disrepair.

Upon returning, we decided to explore the boathouse.

The boathouse then was a massive rectangle shaped building approximately 40 feet long and about 20 feet wide. The building was about 15 feet from the waterfall and the sound of the falls was omnipresent. Whereas the chapel had been planted in a quiet lake setting where time is marked by imperceptible breezes, squawks of geese and changing seasons, by contrast, the boathouse was set near the waterfall amid the constant din of falling water. Like an hourglass noisily marking time.

There was a door on one side and we peeked in. There, suspended from ancient rafters, the longboats still hung in mid-air. There were between six and eight of them: long narrow wooden boats hanging in the darkness. Oars and accessories were fastened along the walls. Little bits of light streamed through the roof boards. Outside there was the sounds of life; birds and falling water. Inside, just darkness and silence.

My mind went back to a story Mr. Nevius had told me about the Smoke Rise of old.

Mr. Nevius was in his eighties back in 1968. This old man lived on Orchard Road and I worked for him. My job was simple: Twice a year, in spring and autumn, I’d go to his house, go down into his basement, and turn one knob that was at the far end of tight crawl space. I’m not sure what that knob did. I never asked. I’d just turn the knob and he’d pat me on the head and hand over a $5 bill. Great work if you could get it!

Most of the time, he’d then thank me and I’d go home. But, now and again he’d want to talk a little. One time, in particular, stands out in my mind.

Sitting down at this kitchen table he asked me to imagine Smoke Rise before all the roads were in. He said to imagine the dirt roads coming up through Kinnelon with important people riding in horse drawn carriages dressed in their finest clothes from far off cities on the way to visit the Kinney estate.

“This road, John Jay, Orchard Road, why, it was once an actual orchard! Then, they put in this street, named it Orchard Road, and now there are only houses. No trace left of the orchard, I’m afraid.”

His expression drifted off.

“When they got to the Kinney home, they’d stay awhile. Sundays they’d get into little rowboats and attend mass. The priest was from St. Anthony’s in Butler. Sometimes he’d come up the night before to dine and stay overnight at the mansion”, he said.

“Then, after Mass, all dressed in fine clothes, they’d assemble along the shorelines to watch hulking young men race in long wooden boats.”

“Who would?” I asked.

“Why, socialites and politicians, priests and businessmen. These were grand affairs. The Kinney’s, on Sundays, would also allow many of the workers to watch, too. Quietly and in the background, of course, but they were there. Among them was Stable Girl.”

“Stable girl?”

“I’ll tell you about her when you’re older” he said. He kept his promise.

I used to ask my Dad who Mr. Nevius was. He said he didn’t know exactly. All he knew was that he’d moved to Smoke Rise late in life from somewhere else, perhaps from far away. He was the local tax collector. He died in the early 1970s. That’s all I know about him outside of his stories. Stories of boating and Stable Girl.

Here were the boats, hanging from rafters in the darkness, suspended in mid-air exactly where they had been placed so many years before. I imagined it was with great excitement and laughter that they had one day been put in place. Set there, perhaps before the two great wars and the intervening depression. There was no laughter now, only silence, shadow and two wide-eyed boys peering into the darkest interior, the very soul, of the building.

Mr. Nevius had described a dance of sorts between the chapel and the boat races. A social interplay that began in reverent repose in the mornings and ending in excited hoots, cheering on straining young boys as they one by one raced to and circled the chapel as if to capture her attention. But, as we stood there back in 1968, both the chapel and the boathouse lay in neglect.

History makes clear that the chapel was vandalized in the 1950s by young boys. But, let the record also clearly state that it was the young boys of the 60s that saved her. Principally an extraordinary young solitary visionary named Tom Kline who fought back against the ravages of time and preserved part of the Smoke Rise legacy for future generations of young boys.

With each passing week, month and year a thousand trips were made on the CHK, and a thousand returns to the tall grasses by the great stone. With the passing of time the chapel came back to life, but the boathouse slowly crumbled. Inch by inch the structure slowly laid the longboats to the earth then fell over them into one confused pile of long boards. Marked by the pounding of the waterfall, time ran out for the boathouse. He was to have no savior.

On my last trip back to Smoke Rise, all that was left of the structure was an almost imperceptible pile of rotting boards next to the waterfall. That’s all that’s left of a once magnificent boathouse full of wooden longboats.

I’ve often thought of Mr. Nevius over the years; the turning of the knob, the distant look in his eyes, the tales of aristocrats cheering on the hopeful straining boys of summer. It was the turn of the century and, for Smoke Rise, its “Belle Epoque.” I can see in my mind, thanks to him, a world of long ago. A world of the privileged few and the nameless laborers who brought the mansion, the carriage house, the stables, the tower, the bridges, the walls, the Inn, and the gates and the boathouse to life, and by doing so brought a place of wonder and magic into being.

I see, too, a world of Italian craftsman who brought their stone-working skills to America to construct the chapel. They brought along a charming young daughter, as well. She is known to me only as “Stable Girl.”

But, that’s a story for another day…

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John sent me the following links to images that capture the boathouse he remembers.

+ This one of the Ullswater Boathouse is close to what he remembers, minus the deck and the stone exterior.

+ The Lowestoft Rowing Club boathouse is very similar, except it's smaller and has a white door, which Kinney's didn't. But the old wood look is very similar.

+The Ottawa River Boathouse captures the immense nature of the Kinney original.

+ This image of the interior of the Israeli Boathouse gives a sense of what the interior would have looked like. Of course much darker and the boats were all wood.

Thank you, John, for sharing this magnificent vision of another time and place with a Boathouse on Lake Kinnelon!

Added 8/3/09: Please note that, per John's location of the boathouse next to the waterfall, the boathouse was on then, and what is now still, private Talbot property.

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