Where Aunt Mabel Lived

WHEN OUR DAY WAS FAIR
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

Bertha Mabel Lindsey (1880 - 1968)

The Voice

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.

Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!

Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?

Thus I; faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
And the woman calling.

By Thomas Hardy

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Now, try reading this beautiful poem again,
this time replacing the word woman
with the word house:

"House much missed, how you call to me, call to me . . .
And the house calling."

Based on addresses and return addresses from old letters and envelopes, my cousin Linda F. D. and I have been tracking down the various apartments and houses inhabited by our Great-Aunt Mabel throughout the years.

1.
This seems to be one of earliest:
2704 Peery Avenue, built 1912
(the right - hand side is 2704)

2.
This is the return address on a stack of letters
that Mabel has written to her younger brother Paul
(my grandfather) when he was stationed in China in 1923:
107 Altman Building
I'm not sure if this would have been Mabel's residence;
it could have been the location of her Beauty Salon.

The Altman is just around the corner
from the big National Fidelity Life Building
shown on the stationery of Mabel's husband:

All of the World War I corespondence
concerning the death of Mabel's brother Sam
was sent to 1005 Walnut Street:

3.
Great-Grandmother Sarah Elisabeth Hartman Lindsey
used this return address in the 1920s:
3426 E 62nd Street

Mabel's youngest sister, my Great-Aunt Gail
standing in front of #3426 -- early 1920s

#3426 Today

4.
At some point, possibly after Sarah's death in 1937,
Mabel & Jack moved to 4288 E 54th Street
Here is my Grandfather Paul Lindsey, Mabel's younger brother,
visiting them in 1944:

#4288 Today

5.

Based on a postmark, Mabel was living here in June 1967
— one year after my Grandpa Paul took me to visit her,
probably at this address:
4511 Independence Avenue, Apartment 1

Google Maps indicates that in the early 2000s the building was still all red brick (as shown above), which is how it must have looked when I visited. I wish I could remember being there, but the memory is just too hazy, beyond being on the train, riding an escalator for the first time when we got to Union Station, and getting on a bus to take us to Mabel’s. I was 9 years old.

Trying to piece it all together, Cousin Linda recalls "a narrow steep interior stair up to Aunt Mabel's apartment which was at the top to the right. She always had fudge for me. I can remember visiting her many times, and I know she lived with us for awhile."
#4511 Today

I have spent many hours pouring over the details, re-reading the letters, obsessing about all these old addresses, and wishing that we could travel back in time for a day or so! Independence Avenue seems an odd location for Mabel to end up for those last few years of her life, although Peery Avenue and even 1005 Walnut Street are not that far apart — and all on the north side; whereas the two big craftsman houses on 62nd and 54th were both far south, near Swope Park.

Trying to analyze Mabel's trajectory around the city, I hear the voice of Thomas Hardy's poem, the voice of the woman much missed -- so many women: Sarah, Mabel, Beatrice, Virginia, Gail. And the voice of the houses themselves, "Saying that now you are not as you were."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One of the best old house poems ever:

To My Old Addresses

Help! Get out of here! Go walking!
Forty-six (I think) Commerce Street, New York City
The Quai des Brumes nine thousand four hundred twenty-six, Paris
Georgia Tech University Department of Analogues
Jesus Freak Avenue No. 2, in Clattery, Michigan
George Washington Model Airplane School, Bisbee, Arizona
Wonderland, the stone font, Grimm’s Fairy Tales
Forty-eight Greenwich Avenue the landlady has a dog
She lets run loose in the courtyard seven
Charles Street which Stefan Volpe sublet to me
Hotel Des Fleurus in Paris, Via Convincularia in Rome
Where the motorcycles speed
Twelve Hamley Road in Southwest London O
My old addresses! O my addresses! Are you addresses still?
Or has the hand of Time roughed over you
And buffered and stuffed you with peels of lemons, limes, and shells
From old institutes? If I address you
It is mostly to know if you are well.
I am all right but I think I will never find
Sustenance as I found in you, oh old addresses
Numbers that sink into my soul
Forty-eight, nineteen, twenty-three, O worlds in which I was alive!

Kenneth Koch (1925 - 2002)

Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, May 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blogs ~ The Great Aunts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Death I Recant

DEATH SHALL DIE
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

Cemetery near Rosslyn Chapel
Chapel Loan, Roslin, Midlothian, Scotland
7 miles (approx) south of Edinburgh City Center
RE Da Vinci Code ~ Dan Brown
[@Instatoon]

John Donne's best - known and most - memorized poem,
Holy Sonnet #10:

"DEATH, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die."
John Donne (1572–1631)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here is Watts a century after Donne,
repeating the hopeful mantra that "death shall die":

"His own soft hand shall wipe the tears
From every weeping eye,
And pains, and groans, and griefs, and fears,
And death itself, shall die."
Isaac Watts (1674 – 1748)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And John Henry Cardinal Newman
a century after Watts:

"Farewell, but not for ever! brother dear,
Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow;
Swiftly shall pass thy night of trial here,
And I will come and wake thee on the morrow."
John Henry Newman (1801 - 1890)
from The Dream of Gerontius (1865)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Not long after the defiant words of Sonnet #10, in another poem, Donne sadly conceded that Death is more powerful than he had previously stated. When his literary acquaintance Cecily Bulstrod (1584 – 1609) died young and tragically from a misdiagnosed internal illness, Donne took back his earlier words. Rather than being "slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men," Death now precedes creation and is stronger than good, stronger than evil. This Death will never die:

Elegy on Mistress Boulstred

DEATH I recant, and say unsaid by me,
Whate’er hath slipp’d, that might diminish thee.
Spiritual treason, atheism ’tis to say
That any can thy summons disobey.
The earth’s face is but thy table; there are set
Plants, cattle, men, dishes for death to eat.
In a rude hunger now he millions draws
Into his bloody, or plaguy, or starved jaws. . . .

O strong and long-lived death, how cam'st thou in?
And how without creation didst begin?
Thou hast, and shalt see dead, before thou diest,
All the four monarchies, and antichrist.

How could I think thee nothing, that see now
In all this All nothing else is, but thou?
Our births and lives, vices and virtues, be
Wasteful consumptions, and degrees of thee.
For we, to live, our bellows wear and breath,
Nor are we mortal, dying, dead, but death. . . .
[See below for entire poem]

From dust thou art, from breath thou art,
and to thin air thou shalt return.

Passing by the Cemetery
~ in my carriage ~ but "could not stop for death."
Rural Indiana, between Indianapolis & Lafayette

More about Donne by Katherine Rundell
John Donne: poet of love ~ poet of death
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, April 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blogs ~ see also: "Belief . . . Disbelief
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading ~ "Death Awaits, Books Await"
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Elegy on Mistress Boulstred
Death I recant, and say, unsaid by me
Whate'er hath slipped, that might diminish thee.
Spiritual treason, atheism 'tis, to say,
That any can thy summons disobey.
Th' earth's race is but thy table; there are set
Plants, cattle, men, dishes for Death to eat.
In a rude hunger now he millions draws
Into his bloody, or plaguey, or starved jaws.
Now he will seem to spare, and doth more waste,
Eating the best first, well preserved to last.
Now wantonly he spoils, and eats us not,
But breaks off friends, and lets us piecemeal rot.
Nor will this earth serve him; he sinks the deep
Where harmless fish monastic silence keep,
Who (were Death dead) by roes of living sand,
Might sponge that element, and make it land.
He rounds the air, and breaks the hymnic notes
In birds', heaven's choristers, organic throats,
Which (if they did not die) might seem to be
A tenth rank in the heavenly hierarchy.

O strong and long-lived death, how cam'st thou in?
And how without creation didst begin?
Thou hast, and shalt see dead, before thou diest,
All the four monarchies, and antichrist.

How could I think thee nothing, that see now
In all this all, nothing else is, but thou.
Our births and lives, vices, and virtues, be
Wasteful consumptions, and degrees of thee.
For, we to live, our bellows wear, and breath,
Nor are we mortal, dying, dead, but death.

And though thou be'st, O mighty bird of prey,
So much reclaimed by God, that thou must lay
All that thou kill'st at his feet, yet doth he
Reserve but few, and leaves the most to thee.
And of those few, now thou hast overthrown
One whom thy blow makes, not ours, nor thine own.
She was more storeys high: hopeless to come
To her soul, thou hast offered at her lower room.
Her soul and body was a king and court:
But thou hast both of captain missed and fort.
As houses fall not, though the king remove,
Bodies of saints rest for their souls above.
Death gets 'twixt souls and bodies such a place
As sin insinuates 'twixt just men and grace,
Both work a separation, no divorce.
Her soul is gone to usher up her corse,
Which shall be almost another soul, for there
Bodies are purer, than best souls are here.
Because in her, her virtues did outgo
Her years, wouldst thou, O emulous death, do so?
And kill her young to thy loss? must the cost
Of beauty, and wit, apt to do harm, be lost?
What though thou found'st her proof 'gainst sins of youth?
Oh, every age a diverse sin pursueth.
Thou shouldst have stayed, and taken better hold,
Shortly ambitious, covetous, when old,
She might have proved: and such devotion
Might once have strayed to superstition.
If all her virtues must have grown, yet might
Abundant virtue have bred a proud delight.
Had she persevered just, there would have been
Some that would sin, mis-thinking she did sin.
Such as would call her friendship, love, and feign
To sociableness, a name profane;
Or sin, by tempting, or, not daring that,
By wishing, though they never told her what.
Thus mightst thou have slain more souls, hadst thou not crossed
Thyself, and to triumph, thine army lost.
Yet though these ways be lost, thou hast left one,
Which is, immoderate grief that she is gone.
But we may 'scape that sin, yet weep as much,
Our tears are due, because we are not such.
Some tears, that knot of friends, her death must cost,
Because the chain is broke, though no link lost.

~ John Donne