I grew up in a massive Victorian house built in 1878. It was located in upstate New York – a small hamlet with its ties firmly rooted in Victorian history. Having spent my youth there had a profound effect on me, ultimately inspiring him to write Boston Proper.
When my parents bought this huge old house, it was completely trashed. Although I don’t know how much they paid, I’m sure it couldn’t have been very much. They were in the business of buying low then restoring old homes and flipping them. One problem. My mother fell in love with this particular Victorian Era house. There was to be no flipping. My parents seemed to have a wonderful balance in their marriage. But when my mother wanted something, my father knew it was better to just let her have it.
To me, it was just another old house. It was drafty, cold, cracked walls, with creaky wood floors. As small boys, my brother Jim and I were sure it was haunted.
One day, two men showed up at one of two front entrances. (Huh? – I know! Two front entrances? I thought it was weird, too.) Anyway, they had an original copy of a book written by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly. I don’t recall which book. What I do recall is that this book had a great deal of historical detail about the house we were living in. My mother was in Heaven. She loved that kind of stuff. She opened the double doors wide and invited the two men in.
As my mother showed these two men around the entire house, they regaled her with all the information they had gleaned about the house, including what information they found in Shelley’s book. I was fascinated. Evidently, a single man built the house back in 1854. He and his two daughters occupied the house until his death in 1897. The daughters then sold the house and moved into the hamlet of Wolcott seven miles away.
As we walked with the two men, one explained that the builder of the house and his daughters operated an underground railroad to aid slaves who were fleeing the deep south. According to the other man, Canada was a haven for a slave on the run. Our house was one stop on their desperate journey to freedom.
As we entered the winter kitchen which was just off the summer kitchen. (Huh? – I know! Two kitchens?) Anyway, in the winter kitchen, there was a back stair leading to the maid’s quarters above. (Ooh la la. They had maids.) Anyway, in one of the maids’ rooms, there was this little window with a door on it. When you opened the door there were jail cell bars that looked into another room. According to the men’s research, the window with bars was only there to throw off anyone “looking to make trouble.” I never did understand how a simple window with bars would keep fleeing slaves from being caught.
Now, to access the rooms where slaves were supposedly kept, there were narrow stairs just off the summer kitchen. There were two rooms up there. I found it odd that neither of the two rooms showed any indication of ever having locks. So, if the father and daughters were trying to fool someone into believing that they locked up their slaves each night, it didn’t make sense. I asked the two men. Neither had an answer.
The men were particularly interested in the dumbwaiter that traveled up from the dining room to my parent’s master suite above. I always thought it was odd that the dumbwaiter was so large. (As an aside, unbeknownst to my mother, my brother Jim and I had gotten in it one day when my parents weren’t home. My oldest brother Rich tried his best to hoist us both up to my parent’s room. Halfway up the vertical tunnel, the rope broke and we slammed back down to the first level.) Anyway, one of the visitors said that they believed that beneath the dumbwaiter was a trapped door that led to a secret underground passageway that extended some distance from the house. They asked my mother if they could bring in a team and disassemble the dumbwaiter so they could have a look-see. I looked up at my mom’s face and watched it change from delight to disapproval. “No,” she said.
Later, I asked her why she didn’t want to find out what was down there. She just shook her head and didn’t answer. She was a superstitious woman. I guessed that had something to do with her answer. She never did tell me why. To be honest, one day when she wasn’t home I did try to jimmy the wooden box up so I could use a flashlight to see what was down there. One try with a screwdriver and I marred the wood badly. I slid the door closed and walked away hoping that my mother would never notice. She did. And she was pissed. And she knew who the culprit was.
The visitors seemed happy that they had gotten what they had come for and left with a hearty thank you. I went to my room and thought about what they had told my mother. I was enraptured. It was like I was living in the Victorian Era. Before our visitors, it was just an old creaky house. Afterward, I knew something of the people who not only lived there but who build the house and used it to do good despite the fact that it was dangerous. I was hooked. Since that experience, I felt a special connection to that period in time and I started reading everything I could. To date, it’s my favorite backdrop for my writing.