Launched in 2005, WellesleyWeston Magazine is a quarterly publication tailored to Wellesley and Weston residents and edited to enrich the experience of living in two of Massachusetts' most desirable communities.
Issue link: https://wellesleywestonmagazine.epubxp.com/i/256387
in…The minister [probably Arthur Lee Kinsolving, Trinity's rector] was just grand. I don't believe I have ever seen one who struck me so from the moment he began to speak. He was quite young, 35 at the most, and he spoke so well and so sincerely, not the least bit preachy…Before we left we saw the really elite of Boston coming to Trinity, the men all in tall silk hats, tailed coats, gardenias and canes. I never had seen a man in a high hat going to church before. < 3 / 27 / 32 > Even an ordinary life will sometimes brush the extraordinary. In Mary Jane's case, she unknowingly witnessed 20th century icons-to-be in performance: This afternoon we went to hear a poet, Stephen Vincent Benét, read some from his book "John Brown's Body" on the Civil War. He had the puniest most listless voice. It certainly took away rather than added to the beauty of his work – which is rather lovely. < 11 / 10 / 31 > I went to hear Carl Sandburg yesterday. Simply mobs were there. I liked him but not as much as I expected. Instead of reading his poems he talked a long time on poetry in general, read one or two poems I didn't know of, and then played on his guitar and sang old folk songs, which he collects as a sort of hobby [Sandburg's "American Songbag"]. His comments were terribly clever—much more enter- taining than the songs. < 12 / 4 / 30 > And we learn of a rarity at Symphony Hall: a program change by leg- endary BSO conductor Serge Koussevitzky to honor Thomas Edison three days after his death on October 18, 1931. Many alive at the time had seen electric light replace gaslight, and Edison was a national hero: Last night we went to the Boston Symphony Concert. It was won- derful. I'd never heard a Symphony Orchestra before. They played Beethoven's Third Symphony in memory of Edison. I guess it must have been a favorite of his as they changed the original program to play that [alternatively, because the Eroica is dedicated "to the memory of a great man" and includes a funeral march.] The con- ductor, Koussevitzky, conducts with his whole body – arms, fingers, and even his mouth. < 10 / 22 / 31 > In the end, though, it is not the engaging historical moments that remain most with the reader years after Mary Jane, herself, has passed on. What lingers is the poignancy of an intimate mother-daughter connection still holding fast through the prism of time. Dearest Mother, This is one of the most exquisitely lovely places to sit I ever have been in. The water laps up against the stones. It's just sunny and shady enough. The view out over the lake is marvelous – with the feathery light green trees and the dark pines, then the Hunnewell Gardens so formal and odd, with pink and scarlet azalea or rhodo- dendron growing among the trees. I wish you were here. < 5 / 21 / 32, from Lake Waban's Lucy Plympton stone seat) 76 W e l l e s l e y W e s t o n M a g a z i n e | s p r i n g 2 0 1 4 DIANE SPEARE TRIANT is a writer in Wellesley Hills. After college, Mary Jane Hayes Hicks became a librarian, wife, and mother, passing away in 1983. The Lucy Plympton Seat on Lake Waban was a favorite spot for Mary Jane to write letters and is still popular with the students Letters from Wellesley D I A N E S P E A R E T R I A N T 068-076_WWMa14_Letters from Wellesley_v4_WellesleyWeston Magazine 2/1/14 4:05 PM Page 76