m 3 1430 04b3?35? ^ Digitized by the Internet Archive 2012 with funding from in LYRASIS Members and Sloan Foundation http://archive.org/details/humaniti1999mary UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND ' I.Hill Maryland HUMANITIES UN.VERS 19«W J fEB STATEDOCUWtU UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND i FEB 1 9 1999 COLLcGt PARK LIBRARIES GO66IP . . . To Our Readers Gossip whirls around us every day. From high level gossip about princes and presidents to neighborhood gossip about comings and goings, gossip does not seem to be diminishing as our technological expertise grows. Now it is the Drudge Report, and its imitators, that bring us gossip at the click of a mouse. Fortunately, the humanities encompass an analysis of all the cultural components that make us human, so this issue ofour magazine examines the role of gossip in Maryland's past. As several of our authors point out, gossip has and does serve a purpose in our everyday lives. In the opening essay, Max — — Frankel argues that gossip which largely focuses on sex and violence is deeply rooted in human genetic programming to survive and reproduce. In examining a number ofseventeenth-century Maryland court cases, Mary Beth Norton finds that gossip was impor- — — tant in determining reputation either financial or sexual, depending on gender in a community. Not only was gossip integral evidence in court, but the decisions themselves often ratified the collective judgement of the community, arrived at through the exchange ofgossip. Beatriz Betancourt Hardy's piece on the short, but eventful, Maryland residence ofThomas Macnemara adds yet another dimension to gossip. Accused of numerous crimes, the subject of scurrilous gossip, and the recipient of reprimands for his insolent behavior, he nevertheless was a successful lawyer who managed to be elected mayor ofAnnapolis and clerk of the Lower House ofthe Maryland Assembly. Betsy Patterson Bonaparte's life was the scandalous story ofMaryland's nineteenth century. Her short marriage to Jerome Bonaparte and her subsequent success in raising his child and amassing a fortune paint a stunning picture of the character of this woman. HelenJean Burn's article reveals this story of international politics, war, young love, and vengeful relatives. Finally, D. Randall Beirne's examination ofthe life ofWallis Warfield Simpson shows that gossip was still alive and well in twentieth-century Maryland. The story traces Wallis's life from the "genteel poverty" of her childhood through her marriage and domination of the Duke ofWindsor. We would like to thank all ofour authors for their contributions in bringing to light this informative and often amusing side ofMaryland's history and culture. Barbara Wells Sarudy ExecutiveDirector CoverPhoto: The Duke and Duchess ofWindsoratBlakeford on theEastern Shore in 1959. Courtesy ofthe Maryland Historical Society. Contents Gossip Dishing Darwinian Dirt 2 By Max :rankel l Gossip, Gossipers, and Gossiping in Early Maryland 4 By Mary Beth Norton MARYLAND HUMANITIES "A most Turbulent and Seditious person" 8 By Beatriz Betancourt Hardy COUNCIL The Nineteenth Century's Hottest Story 12 By HelenJean Burn The Humanities include: Archaeology Gossip and Mrs. Simpson 17 Art criticism By D. Randall Beirne Comparative religion Ethics History Jurisprudence Humanities in Maryland Language Literature Call for Millennium Speakers 21 Philosophy Related social sciences Calendar ofHumanities Events 22 Maryland's Best Kept Humanities Secrets: The Charles Carroll House ofAnnapolis 28 An Interview with Rhoda M. Dorsey 29 Maryland HUMANITIES MarylandHumanities is published four times Council Staff a year inJanuary, March, September, and November. It is a publication of theMary- Barbara Wells Sarudy, Executive Director land Humanities Council, an independent, Judy D. Dobbs, Deputy Director for Programs nonprofit, tax-exempt organization. Our Stephen G. Hardy, Deputy Director for Administration offices are located at 601 North Howard Polly P. Weber, PublicAffairs Officer Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21201-4585. BelvaJ. Scott, Program Specialist Issue number 72. All statements made are Robert I. Cottom, Magazine Production Editor the opinions of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those ofthe Council. Council programs receive major support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, with additional funding from the Maryland Division of Historical and Cultural Programs, corporations, founda- tions, and individuals. . Dishing Darwinian Dirt Gossip is not our fall from grace. It's part of our program for survival. By Max Frankel All this spicy stuff, why do we relish adulterer; he thought the attacks on Leaked or leached, true or false, it so? Why do we say we don't really his wife killed her. People mocked gossip seems to fill some basic care, then beg the media for more Martin Van Buren for wearing human needs. Collins speculates that and more? corsets. Henry Clay, the always also- sharing it makes people feel impor- dItayi.s nAomtereixcacatnlsycaotnasstuembeodrntryueestaenrd- raannd, nwiagshtssaiwdhtoorisnpge.ndDadnaiyeslgWaembbsltienrg toafnvti.r—tItuea.lsIot craeanffriegrimsstetrhesiurpoprwenssseednse was called a drunken boor and fears ofadultery, miscegenation, false tales about their politicians long before they had tabloid papers or groper ofthe clerks. Abe Lincoln alcoholism. It can—arm the weak trash-talk television. Aspersions on joined a long list ofcandidates against the strong servants against whispered to be secretly "Negro." masters, women against men, the "character" were invented by the ruled against the rulers. Founding Fathers, and theirs dwarf Collins found that the whole coun- the worst that has been said of try knew the joke that dramatized And most gossip is fun, a universal Clinton so far. Woodrow Wilson's multiple dalli- entertainment. When politics was ances: when he proposed to Edith America's principal entertainment, in Alexander Hamilton had to publish a Gait in the White House, she was so our first century, politicians were its vivid account of an adulterous affair to prove that the hush money he was excited she fell out ofbed. And main celebrities. Then came the paying the woman was not an Collins was charmed to discover that camera and the movies, radio and embezzlement. And he eventually Warren Harding's handlers felt television, creating not just new compelled to send Carrie Phillips media of amusement but new paid with his life in a duel after (and her husband) to "investigate the celebrities whose words and images many newspapers reported his silk trade" in the Far East until after defined our culture. As Neal Gabler private remarks about the "despi- the 1920 election; they paid them summarizes this century's cultural cable" Aaron Burr. ThomasJefferson $2,000 a month for silence during wars in his biography of Walter is still dogged by the campaign Harding's term, providentially Winchell: "Traditionalists believed rumor that he was sleeping with one shortened by death to 30 months. that certain things just weren't done of his slaves; Alan Brinkley has called Not long after, Nan Britton cashed in by decent people, including decent that election "probably the ugliest in on the claim that Harding "intro- journalists. Revealing romances, American history." duced me to the one place" they divorces, ant.i.c.ipated births, illnesses, — — In Scorpion Tongues, an entertaining could "share kisses safely" a small financial exigencies all ofwhich — history of political gossip, Gail closet beside the Oval Office. They Walter did whether ethical or not, Collins of The New York Times also trysted in the yacht and the was unseemly, ungentlemanly. . . concentrates on the years after 1820, home of the publisher of The Wash- Walter's defense of gossip wasn't . . . when the popular vote (at least of ington Post, whose wife was assured an issue of First Amendment protec- white males) began to count and set by a long-suffering Mrs. Harding that tions or the unimpeded flow of tongues aflutter. People jeered she could keep the President in line information. It was personal and AndrewJackson as a bully and because "I have something on him." intuitive: him against them, outsid- absurd. Television, admittedly, labors available) and who is under tin- ers against insiders, democrats hard to prove him right. But I prefer protect—ion ofa jealous spouse or against cultural royalists." the Darwinian view of the human fiimily allgive obvious strategit The populists won out, of course. phissycphreofoofufenrdedanbdywSittetvyenHoPiwnkteherMiinnd athdevasnotciaagleseqiunivtahleegntamoefsinosfidleifre . . . The politicians came to need the Works. trading. media more than they needed political parties. They had to court Pinker sets out to prove that the And why does the best gossip, like celebrity again even at the risk of human mind does not enter blankly the best movie plots and the finest notoriety. Franklin Roosevelt used into any culture. It has been de- literature, focus on violence and sex? not only the radio but also seduced signed by natural selection to solve Because, Pinker says, the human Walter Winchell into supporting the the kinds of problems that our mind was programmed long ago to New Deal. Dwight Eisenhower hired remotest ancestors —faced in their fixate on two goals: to survive and to Hollywood's Robert Montgomery to foraging way of life "in particular reproduce. teach him television acting. Ronald understanding and outmaneuvering Obviously, as we can all see, hear, Reagan completed the merger ofour objects, animals, plants and other read and write, when sex and sur- celebrity cultures and prepared the people." And 540 pages later, Pinker vival come into conflict, we inherit way for Bill Clinton's saxophone. arrives at the evolutionary value of the best of all possible worlds. Over the same decades, Confidential gossip: magazine grew into TheNational Copyright © 1998 by theNew York Times Enquirer, "Person to Person" was Ghousmsaipnissocaieftaiveosribteecpaaussteikmneoiwnlealdlge Co. Reprinted bypermission. transformed into "Hard Copy," and ispower. Knowingwho needs a favor The New York Times learned to cover and who is in aposition to offerone, Presidential sex on page 1 and to who is trustworthy and who is a liar, analyze celebrity on Op-Ed. who is available (orsoon to become These traditionalists survive, of course. They share Neil Postman's thesis, in his provocative Amusing Ourselves to Death, that our passage Max Frankel writes a bi-weekly column on commu- from Typographic America to Tele- nications for the New York Times Magazine. He is a vised America amounts to a fall from former executive editor of the Times and has also grace. He contends that written been editor of the paper's editorial pages. Mr. discourse under "the governance of Frankel holds a BA and MA in American govern- the printing press" was generally ment from Columbia University, and won a coherent, serious, and rational Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for his reporting of President whereas oral culture, under televi- Nixon's visit to China the previous year. sion, has become shriveled and — and Gossip, Gossipers, Gossiping in Early Maryland By Mary Beth Norton In September 1659, a authorities sought to planter explained to quash rumors about Maryland governorJosias officials or their policies. Fendall why he could not Often evidence ofgossip attend a county court can be teased out of the meeting. "God willing," he records, for though it was wrote, "I intend to gett my nowhere formally dis- yowng sonne baptized, All cussed it was clearly the Company & Gossips present in the background. being allready invited." What follows is a sampling of seventeenth-century The planter's use of the termgossips sent me Maryland gossip. scrambling for the Oxford Rumors. In February 1661, English Dictionary. "Gossip" CaptainJames Langworth, evolved from the eleventh- a justice of the Charles century English word County Court, disclosed to godsib, a child's sponsor at his fellow magistrates that a christening (godparent). he had been "credibly — The planter employed it in informed" a phrase that archaic sense, but suggesting that the case before English people first itselfwas based on gos- — came to North America, sip that oneJohn gossip had acquired two Tompkinson had "uttered other meanings: "a divers Reproachfull words woman's female friend much tending to the invited to be present at a disturbance of the Peace of birth" (thus a childbirth this Province." was also called agossip- A mid-eighteenth century drawingofmen drinking, smoking, Tompkinson had on ing), and a woman "who eating, and undoubtablygossipingat a social club meeting. February 2 reported to delights in idle talk; a Records ofthe Tuesday Club, MS 854, courtesy oftheMaryland three other men that newsmonger, a tattler." Historical Society. "thear wear thirty ofthe By the early seventeenth inhabitants of this Prov- century, gossip had come ince to bee hanged" in the to mean "to talk idly, wake ofa failed rebellion. mostly about other The story, declared and spread rumors far and wide people's affairs; to go about tattling." often very quickly. Langworth, was seditious because it implied the duplicity of Governor Yet in early Maryland, as in all the Many such stories survive today Philip Calvert's recent "Pacificall colonies, gossip (despite the defini- because they appear in court records, Proclamation" promising amnesty to tion) was not idle at all. Rather, talk at a time when courts admitted the would-be rebels. Accordingly, he about other colonists served a crucial testimony that would today be urged the court to track down the function in a barely literate world deemed hearsay. Sometimes, when a story's origins. with no local newspapers. Maryland- slanderous story prompted one ers assessed the character of their When the justices did so, person to sue another for defama- fellows, exchanged news and tales of tion, gossip itselfbecame the subject Tompkinson was cleared of responsi- misdeeds and strange happenings, bility, for Samuel Palmer and Daniel of legal action. At other times, the