Victorian Christmas at the Bradley Home

Thanks to the decorative efforts of many volunteers and the brilliant leadership of the Midland County Historical Society and Midland Center for the Arts, many Midlanders experienced a Victorian Christmas at the Bradley Home's Alight a Night. In addition to the usual Christian festivities of Christmas, Nativity scene, etc., the Bradley Home Christmas display signifies a middle class stability in Midland which gave our town its historic and contemporary bourgeois character. My readers may remember Titanic expert Floyd Andrick, who volunteered as our polite butler. I welcomed guests into the Receiving Parlor, while an associate Jake Huss opened up the Formal Parlor (Drawing Room) with Midland Symphony Orchestra cellist Linda Murray playing Christmas music on her original cello from the 1720s. Carolers, blacksmiths, and other ladies and gentlemen brought the house to life. Here is the Midland Daily News article, and below is a generalized rendering of my informal oral introduction to the house and family:


"Come into the Parlor, and welcome to another Bradley Home Christmas! It is now one hundred and thirty eight years since the construction of this house in 1874, and since then there have been many wonderful Christmases here. By 1916, Midland was known as the "city of homes," and this home was the best one of all because it was tied to the very essence of Midland itself. On this wall, we have featured John and Amanda Larkin. John founded the city of Midland when he set up a logging mill here for the logging industry. Midland is potentially important to loggers because three rivers intersect here (the Chippewa, Tittabawassee, and Pine), and rivers are the highways for loggers. They float their logs down these rivers and at intersections they will pull them up and have them cut. So John is here ready for them when that happens.

Their daughter, May Larkin meets an adventurous young man by the name of Benjamin Bradley. Now Benjamin moves up to Midland in 1866, after searving in the Civil War [dear readers, please forgive my nomenclature. In Midland, it is "safe" to call it the Civil War, though I should certainly have called it the War Between the States in a general setting] and going on a gold rush in Colorado. So he's a very adventurous and risky man, but he falls in love with May Larkin. They get married in 1869, and in 1870, they have their one and only daughter B. May (B. stands for "Baby," sort of like a "Jr."). By 1874, because Benjamin has married into a very notible Midland family, he begins construction on this home to show a sense of stability and wealth for the community. His own fortunes fluxuate a lot (he's very risky and invests in the Mexican Silver Expedition, not a good idea), but he always has to display an aura, or expession, or feeling of stability.

You can just imagine what Christmas would have looked like. It would have been a time to show off the home. So what we have here is all the Christmases that the Bradley family might have celebrated combined into one. Christmas decorating would have started in July, with drying out some of the greenery to be set up later. The family gathered in the room around, what one American author Washington Irving called, "the paternal hearth, that rallying-place of the affections, there to grow young and loving again among the endearing mementoes of childhood." The Christmas Tree would have been lit only on Christmas Eve with real candles, and maybe a bucket of sand nearby just in case of a fire. Before rapping paper became popular, they hid surprises in the tree. Maybe a trumpet... or Grandpa John gets a new walking stick [pull gifts from tree]. B. May was very fortunate for her era, and would have revived gifts like a rocking horse and a doll [show expensive gifts]. And then there was the games. Here is the most fantastic game of all, Spider Web [made from a web of ribbons suspended on the chandelier and ceiling]. You find your tag, follow your ribbon with your eyes all the way around the room... it changes colors and altitude... until you find a gift tied at the end... This game is the bean game. You dig in [a bowl with a silver spoon] and you have one chance to get something [candy]...

[If visitors stay longer] The restoration of this home began in 1969. The priests [of Saint Bridget's Catholic Church] used it as a rectory from the 1910s to 1969. It was falling apart and the church wanted rid of it. A Delta political science professor saw it and thought what a great opportunity to restore some local Midland history. The Midland County Historical Society acquired it, and we moved it out here in December 1969 (we had to cut several power cables to get it here). Then in 1970, the real work of restoration began..."

Merry Christmas

Commemorating the Titanic: A Tale of Two Evenings

Per Scriptum E. Wesley Reynolds

Soli Deo Gloria

A Formal Lecture and Reception Afterward

Mr. Floyd Andrick, one of the most gentlemanly Christians I have the pleasure to know is the chairman for the Midland Historical Society and subsequently a native of Midland (MI) all his life, a nationally renowned authority on the Titanic, and someone who I may providentially with all sincerity call a good friend. He knew fourteen Titanic survivors, and beginning in the 1980s, organized some of the last survivor reunions, uniting Titanic passengers who had believed each-other dead for decades. No one can help confiding in his gentle, soft-spoken disposition, making him the natural person for being the last individual on earth to coordinate the task of seeing the final curtain fall on an age of memories. All of his close survivor friends are now dead, even his perhaps closest friend Eva Hart. Being universally a man of his word, he decided to follow through on his commitment to give commemorative lectures in Midland on April 12^th and Bay City afterward, rather than accept his invitation to the centennial commemorative cruise tracing the path of the Titanic across the Atlantic. I first met Mr. Andrick this past Christmas season, as we both led Bradley Home tours (click on my Victorian sidebar picture), and soon discovered that he was a Christian of the utmost moral character, a diligent businessman who manages his own affairs and the affairs of the Historical Society impeccably, and on the whole, someone inviting enough to make an acquaintance. He has toured the world giving lectures on the Titanic, was a personal friend to Dr. Robert Ballard, and introduced Dr. Ballard's presentation to a survivor reunion just after Dr. Ballard's all famous 1985 rediscovery expedition of the Titanic wreck.

This past Thursday’s lecture marked the day of the Titanic's departure. Mr. Andrick's lecture was extraordinary and extremely personal, as he based most of it off of survivor memories. I will not here burden my readers with a redelivering of his address, but if my readers desire certain questions answered on any point of the Titanic, I shall attempt to recall his answers and place them in the “comments” section of this post. One point of interest may be necessary to recount, as I rather harshly and too carelessly dismissed it in my last post (my feeling of guilt being only protracted by my post's contrast to Mr. Andrick's polite presentation): class. Mr. Andrick did argue that class distinctions were made following the immediate disaster, and that the officers did not bother to go down below to sufficiently warn the 3^rd class passengers of the wreck because of the fear of panic and rushing the lifeboats. However, I do not for a moment believe that Mr. Andrick would subscribe to the line of historiography that uses such a decision to deconstruct the heroic legacy of women and children first. This tale of tragedy and heroism has inspired Mr. Andrick since the age of six, when his grandmother who used to tell him notable stories from the past related the particulars of how a ship left Ireland and smashed into an iceberg in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, plunging a number of victims equivalent to the then population of Midland into a watery grave. Mr. Andrick has since added to his childlike curiosity an inexhaustible knowledge of the dimensions, figures, and statistics surrounding the Titanic disaster. He gave the entire lecture by memory. I would rather have been no where else on the planet, for unless one meets Dr. Ballard, Mr. Andrick remains in my estimation the authority on the Titanic.

I went to the lecture on Thursday evening in my celluloid winged collar, three piece suit, watch-chains, Victorian watch, governor's walking-stick, and top hat. I wished to commemorate it as formally and authentically as possible within the constraints of my immediate resources. We all were issued replica tickets aboard the Titanic with authentic passenger names, and were advised to check the roster to see if our passenger survived (above is a scan of my ticket). As is apparent, my passenger was a man by the name of Mr. William Alexander, and third class passenger, and a victim to the sea and ice of that cold night one hundred years ago.

Titanic Era Waltz: A Musical Evening

Midland Symphony Orchestra

Yesterday evening, I attended a gorgeous symphony at the Midland Center for the Arts with the Midland Symphony Orchestra. The theme was waltz music, and among the selections, the orchestra played a waltz by Richard Strauss from 1911, one year prior to the Titanic disaster. As I listened to the music, I could not help remembering the bravery of the Titanic bands, feeling the power of Edwardian high culture, and lamenting the close of an era that marked the greatest influence of the Western world in the history of the earth. Ironically, another theme was modernity. The program ran as follows:

Walton: Scapino: A Comedy Overture

Walton: Violin Concerto

Strauss: Rosenkavalier Suite

Ravel: La Valse

All these composers have been considered modernists, but Strauss also lived with enough connections to nineteenth century music to also be classified as Romantic in my opinion. The Titanic stood in the twilight of the old order of the West and the modern “additions and alterations of latter days.” The selections represented both “sides” of the Edwardian “coin.” One of the greatest violinists of our day, Elissa Lee Koljonen performed the Violin Concerto with an ability that perhaps surpassed my personal exposure to violinists. Mischal Santora of the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra served as our guest conductor for the night, giving an authoritative yet elegant luster to our already very talented local orchestra. His delicate style did not compromise precession for art. His right hand bent in elliptical concentric paths that set the orchestra in excellent timing. Fluctuations in tempo during the waltz portion of Strauss' Rosenkavalier accentuated the side-to-side motion of the Waltz dance rhythm. Surely, some of the performers could not have forgotten the profound shadow of history over last evening, and played a final commemorative overture to “the dying before the Gate!”