The former estate of John and Lydia Morris is run as a public arboretum, one of the finest in North America.
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Morris is the commonest Philadelphia name in the Social Register, derived largely from two unrelated Colonial families. In addition to their city mansions, both families had country estates. The country estate once belonging to the Revolutionary banker Robert Morris was Lemon Hill, just next to the Art Museum, where Fairmount Park begins. But way up at the far end of the Park, beyond Chestnut Hill, was Compton, the summer house of John and his sister Lydia Morris. This Morris family had made a fortune in iron and steel manufacture and were firmly Quaker. Both John Morris and his sister were interested in botany and had evidently decided to leave Compton to the Philadelphia Museum of Art as a public arboretum. John died first, leaving final decisions to Lydia. As the story is now related, Lydia had a heated discussion with Fiske Kimball, at the end of which the Art Museum deal was off. She turned to her neighbor Thomas Sovereign Gates for advice, and the arboretum is now spoken of as the Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania. It is also the official arboretum of the State of Pennsylvania. To be precise, the Morris Arboretum is a free-standing trust administered by the University, with the effect that five trustees provide legal assurance that the property will be managed in a way the Morrises would have wished. In Quaker parlance, Lydia possessed "steely meekness."
A public arboretum is sort of an outdoor museum of trees, bushes, and flowers, with an indirect consequence that many museum visitors take home ideas for their own gardens. Local commercial nurseries tend to learn here what is popular and what grows well in the region, so there emerges an informal collective vision of what is fashionable, scalable, and growable, with the many gardeners in the region interacting in a huge botanical conversation. The Morris Arboretum and two or three others like it go a step further. There are two regions of the world, Anatolia and China-Korea-Japan, with much the same latitude and climate as the East Coast of America. Expeditions have gone back and forth between these regions for a century, transporting novel and particularly hardy or disease-resistant specimens. An especially useful feature is that Japan and parts of Korea were never covered with glaciers, hence have many species found nowhere else in the temperate zone. Hybrids are developed among similar species found on different continents, and variants are found which particularly attract or repel the insects characteristic of each region. The Morris Arboretum is thus at the center of a worldwide mixture of horticulture and stylish outdoor fashion, affecting millions of home gardeners who may never have heard of the place.
MEETING OF THE SHAKSPERE SOCIETY OF PHILADELPHIA AT THE FRANKLIN INN CLUB, JANUARY 23, 2008:
Dean Wagner in the chair. Other members present Ake, Bartlett, Binnion, Bornemann, Bovaird, Di Stefano, Fallon, Fisher, Griffin, Hopkinson, King, Mabry, Madeira, O'Malley, Peck, Pope, and Warden. We welcomed Mr. Madeira's guest Jacob Eden. Jacob was enthusiastic about his annual visits to the Oregon Shakspere Festival in Ashland (an appealing small town in the foothills of the mountains near the California border). The Secretary spent a week there with a lively Yale group last summer and strongly concurs with Jacob's praise of Ashland productions of plays both Bardish and contemporary.
Rudi has advised the Dean that the price of dinner must rise by three dollars a meal henceforth. It is our first increase in price in three years.
The April 23 annual meeting and dinner of the Society, hosted by Messrs. Cheston, Ingersoll, and Wheeler, will be held at Guildford.
Professor Fallon recently was elected Milton Scholar of the Year for 2007 by the August Milton Society of America. Well done, thou good and faithful servant! The Vice Dean reported that the Modern Language Association, that huge confraternity of academic students of Eng. Lit. held a session during its annual meeting in late December entitled, in classic MLA style, "Epistemology of Crux." (Can't Letterman do something with that phrase?) It focused on subtle (tortured?) interpretations of Hamlet's confrontation with Gertrude in the Closet Scene, including discussions of flamboyant bedroom shenanigans in film versions.
Dr. Fallon reminded us of the Dean's long list of references to nature in King Lear. In Act Four, Lear shows himself more sensitive to the natural world. This affinity with nature is linked to the old man's demand for justice. Lear enters early in 4.6, after a long absence from the stage (at just about the same time in the dramatic action as Hamlet's extended absence after his departure for England). He is mentally unbalanced and crowned with wildflowers. The Vice Dean thinks of Lear as talking truth, good sense, now that he is unhinged; his speech is "stripped of superficiality."
In 4.6, Lear raves at length about justice, his most frequent theme. The Vice Dean referred to the king's new compassion for the common man: the moral education of Lear continues. But Lear is also angry at the sexual corruption of judges, and (satirically?) denounces restrictions on the reign of riotous appetite, which, he proclaims, dominates all women. He is callous to the blinded Gloucester, but he speaks some of the play's most memorable phrases to the despairing duke: "Thou must be patient:/ We came crying hither'. When we are born, we cry that we are come/ To this great stage of fools." Then Lear fantasizes a jihad against his "son-in-laws": "Then kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!" And a minute later, he runs from the stage as if taking part in a children's game.
The Vice Dean wondered to what degree we now feel sympathy for Lear, still not exactly a warm, fuzzy fellow. A member was unmoved: the old autocrat caused his own problems, however villainous his enemies.
As if in the echo of the king's bloodthirsty thoughts, Oswald now appears lusting for the blood of poor Gloucester, a murder that would win the servant reward from Goneril. Edgar confronts him, speaking like an unlettered West Country bumpkin; he is disdainfully cursed by the snobbish Oswald. Edgar then kills this tool of villainy and defends his vulnerable old father. We note the parallel and contrast with Cordelia's attempts to defend Lear.
The Vice Dean returned to the topic of justice in the play. Goneril and Regan have not broken the law, however strongly we condemn their callousness towards their father and their mutual hatred as they lust after Edmund. And then there are Edmund and Cornwall: BAD! Lear memorably pictures justice rendered in courts of law as a fraud, as judges eagerly seek money and sex in return for favorable verdicts. We recall Angelo's sexual demands on Isabella in order to save her randy brother's life. Lear & surge to condemn and even kill those he finds morally at fault reminded a member of the old man's horrifying attacks on Cordelia in the play's opening scenes. And we recall his later savage condemnations of his "unnatural" older daughters in later scenes.
Dr. Fallon emphasized the similar roles of Cordelia and Edgar in this fourth act. A Gentleman refers to Cordelia in religious terms: she "redeems nature from the general curse" of sinfulness so dramatically demonstrated in Lear's elder daughters. She, of course, is killed trying to defend her father. Edgar risks his life in combat with Oswald, as he has risked it in helping Gloucester after the duke's condemnation by Cornwall, Goneril, Regan, and Edmund. Meanwhile, Edmund hopes for his father's death and plays Goneril and Regan against each other.
WE MEET NEXT ON FEBRUARY 6 AND WILL RECOMMENCE OUR STUDY OF KING LEAR WITH DISCUSSION OF THE WONDERFUL SEVENTH SCENE OF ACT FOUR.
Respectfully submitted Robert G. Peck Secretary
MEETING OF THE SHAKSPERE SOCIETY OF PHILADELPHIA AT THE FRANKLIN INN CLUB, DECEMBER 12, 2001:
Dean Wagner in the chair. Other members present Ake, Bartlett, Binnion, Bornemann, Cheston, Di Stefano, Dobson, Dunn, Dupee, Fallon, Griffin, Hopkinson, Madeira, O' Malley, Peck, Rivinus. Guest: J. Goldstein.
We were very happy to welcome to our midst the president of the Franklin Inn Club, Jonathan Goldstein, who read the words of the Bard with vigor and commented crisply and thoughtfully on the fifth act of Antony and Cleopatra. He welcomed us and assured us of the members' pleasure at our regular use of their clubhouse. Jonathan has found a number of old Shakespeare texts in the library of the Franklin Inn Club that evidently have been left here at various times by members of the Society, and he has kindly donated or sent back to their place of origin these copies of the Bard's plays.
A member pointed out to us that beginning on December 23, thee will be versions of some of Shakspere's most famous plays presented on TV on the ITV cable network. The descriptions in print of the plots of these versions look like a bad joke, but if they arouse serious interest in the work of the Bard among a few of the young who might see these telecasts, Honi Soit qui mal y sense.
Mr. Griffin told us that he had recently had lunch with his Princeton classmate, our great good friend, and fellow member Roland Frye and that the Vice Dean emeritus had announced that he was "alive and well and living in Strafford." Secretary for Meetings Mr. Di Stefano asked that all those who had changed addresses recently would let him know promptly.
A member told us of his visit to a recent production of Macbeth at the Shakspere theater at the Folger Library (the scholar J.Q. Adams' version of the Globe in smaller dimensions, designed a half-century ago), with Huey Long's Louisiana as the setting, and the witches as political appointees assigned the task of vote counting. No report of hanging chads was forthcoming. Another member saw a recent production of Hamlet at the Shakspere Theater of Washington, enjoyed the work of Wallace Acton as Hamlet, but commented on the jarring nature of the introduction of modern rifles and soldiers' helmets adorning the armies in the battle scenes at the end of the play.
We commenced our reading of Antony and Cleopatra at the beginning of the long final scene, Act Five, Scene Two. Cleopatra confronts Caesar and negotiates to save her life. She first speaks to her courtiers about her readiness to kill herself rather than be humiliated, to do that great deed "which shackles accidents and bolts up change," in her wonderfully eloquent summary of the Roman stoic philosophy which guided Brutus and Cassius at the end of their lives. Antony, we were reminded, had told her that she should trust only Proculeius, but he in fact betrays her. Dolabella is her only trustworthy friend among the Romans, as in Plutarch, Shakspere's source. Cleopatra wants the throne of Egypt to descend to her sons; Caesar agrees, but in fact, Dolabella tells her, he intends to lead her captive to Rome to show off in a triumphal procession. We wonder if she will be able to kill herself before this humiliation which she has feared occurs.
A member commented on the jarring combination in Cleo. of eloquent nobility and her attempts to cling to Egyptian treasure for herself or her children. Members remarked on her usual duplicity here, wanting to keep power and to please others. She sees that Caesar is lying and trying to exploit her. Another member declared that Cleopatra never struggled with a moral question, in contrast to Antony, a more impressive figure.
Cleopatra prepares herself for death in a scene with a bizarrely comic element, the clown who brings her the poison asp that kills her. The Vice Dean commented on the appropriateness of a comic touch at this point, since her death is also her victory over Caesar. But of course cheek by jowl with farce we find some of the most gloriously moving language ever written in English. Iras tells the Queen, "Finish, good lady; the bright day is done,/And we are for the dark." Does any other minor character in Shakspere speak so eloquently in so few words? Cleo. thinks with vivid disgust of an adolescent boy (which, in fact, the actor of this part was in 1607) parodying her in the Roman theater: "I shall see/Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness/ I' the posture of a whore." When she is ready to face death, she declares herself "marble-constant, now the fleeting moon/Is no planet of mine." She dresses ceremonially for death: "Give me my robe, put on my crown: I have/Immortal longings in me. husband, I come/ Now to that name my courage prove my title! In a wonderful coup de theatre underlined by the Vice Dean, her companion Charmian reaches over to straighten Cleopatra's crown as she dies: "Now boast thee, death, in thy possession lies/ A lass unparallel'd. Your crown's awry:/I' ll mend it, and go play."
Cleopatra is eloquent and brave at the end, but she betrays Antony perhaps three times earlier in the play. Members puzzled over her motives: to keep Antony's love and also protect her power, and her sons' a chance to inherit power? Does love of Antony or of self dominate her? A member had the good luck to see Anthony Hopkins and Judi Dench perform the parts of A and C in England in 1987. "They bring out the worst in each other," this member thinks of A and C, and Antony is the more important of the two, but both are sympathetic to the audience in contrast to the obnoxious, egotistical prig Caesar! A and C, others concluded, must be seen as a pair, not separated so that one can be blamed more than the other for the fall of both.
We turned to a few comments on our next play for study, Measure for Measure. A member recalled that Roland Frye had worked on the play when writing his doctoral thesis, after discovering that in a copy of the First Folio in the library of the Escorial in Spain, a part of the text of the play had been excised by a reader evidently appalled that the Duke would have the effrontery to take on a disguise and play the false part of a Catholic priest.
The Vice Dean reminded us that Measure for Measure is not a love story but an "Un-love story" where political power is the chief focus: corrupt authority both denies love and tries to force sexual compliance by threat.
Our next meeting will be January 9, 2002. We will begin our reading of Measure for Measure at that time.
Respectfully submitted, Robert G. Peck, Secretary for Minutes
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777 East Park Drive, P.O. Box 8375
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George R. Fisher, III M.D.
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November 10, 1989
George R. Fisher III, M.D.
829 Spruce Street
Philadelphia, PA 19107
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Originally the "lower counties" of Pennsylvania, and thus one of three Quaker colonies founded by William Penn, Delaware has developed its own set of traditions and history.
Start in Philadelphia, take two days to tour around Delaware Bay. Down the New Jersey side to Cape May, ferry over to Lewes, tour up to Dover and New Castle, visit Winterthur, Longwood Gardens, Brandywine Battlefield and art museum, then back to Philadelphia. Try it!
Millions of eye patients have been asked to read the passage from Franklin's autobiography, "I walked up Market Street, etc." which is commonly printed on eye-test cards. Here's your chance to do it.
In 1751, the Pennsylvania Hospital at 8th and Spruce was 'way out in the country. Now it is in the center of a city, but the area still remains dominated by medical institutions.
Grievances provoking the American Revolutionary War left many Philadelphians unprovoked. Loyalists often fled to Canada, especially Kingston, Ontario. Decades later the flow of dissidents reversed, Canadian anti-royalists taking refuge south of the border.