From the archives: Uncommon calibre

I'm glad I took the time to read a little more about Helen Hartman Gemmill after yesterday's post. She was indeed a "woman of uncommon calibre."

I realized that Gemmill was the woman who wrote E.L.: The Bread Box Papers, a book I've been itching to get my hands on since I first saw it at the Doylestown Historical Society a few months ago.

In 1980, a staff member at Fonthill noticed a breadbox on the floor of a tower room not open to the public. Inside were Mercer family papers, including about 200 letters, some 10 pages long, penned by Elizabeth Chapman Lawrence, aunt and benefactor of Henry Chapman Mercer.

Prior to Gemmill's research, almost all that was known about Elizabeth Lawrence — or E.L., as she signed her letters — was that her nephew Henry was devoted to her and dedicated an elaborate tiled ceiling in her memory at his home, Fonthill.

The letters were written in tiny script and, infuriatingly, were incredibly difficult to decipher wince E.L. saved on stationary by writing first from top to bottom, then turning the paper 90 degrees and covering the same sheet again from side to side. Regardless, The breadbox discovery opened a new world of insight to E.L.
Elizabeth told of her visits to Queen Victoria — whom she called "that little dumpy red-faced staring queen" — of fishing trips with Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, of the lavish private homes of England. She often came across as a woman preoccupied with clothes and parties; flirty; sometimes cruel. She scoffed at Abraham Lincoln, writing, "What can you expect of a pig but a grunt?"

Gemmill also found a photograph album and a family scrapbook, where flowers Elizabeth had picked in Italy were still perfectly pressed between the pages.

After seven years of research, Gemmill had enough information to complete the 288-page biography of Elizabeth Lawrence Chapman, profusely illustrated with old photographs and documents, and with an introduction by James A. Michener, Doylestown's favorite hometown hero.

I'm actually pretty surprised The Intelligencer library doesn't have its own copy of The Breadbox Papers (unless someone couldn't resist, and absconded with it, which I could hardly blame them for).

Maybe I'll get one for Christmas.