Her father John E. Milholland
Inez at Vassar
Inez Leads Washington March, 1913
Her husband Eugen Jan Boissevain - His second wife Edna St. Vincent Millay
Dr. Du Bois and Mrs. Ovington (NAACP founders included John E. Milholland, Inez's father)
Roberta Wallace plays Inez Milholland part in 1998
Seneca Falls Convention, 1848
INEZ MILHOLLAND BOISSEVAIN – Stories of an American suffragette, who led the 1913 Washington march, championing the black Delta Sigma Theta Sorority. Her death in 1916 galvanized the National Woman's Party, which launched picketing of Wilson's White House. After arrests of the picketers, and a hunger strike and maltreatment of the prisoners (force-feeding), public opinion changed. Wilson did too, and the 19th Amendment became law in 1920.
Sunday, June 14, 2015
EUGEN BIO | Links
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| Eugen Jan Boissevain (L) and Edna St. Vincent Millay on board transatlantic ship. |
2. Eugen Jan Boissevain
3. Boissevain's First Wife Inez Milholland - New book about her - Her father John E. Milholland
4. Between Marriages - Eugen Boissevain, Max Eastman and the Pinchot Family (Nina Burleigh)
5. Boissevain's Second Wife Edna St. Vincent Millay
6. Great Literary Husbands: Woolf, Boissevain Constant Husband
© John Tepper Marlin 2013-2015. For permissions or other information, contact the author at john@cityeconomist.com.
Saturday, June 13, 2015
MILLAY | Rx for Melancholy [1]
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| Eugen Boissevain and his second wife (1923- 1949), Edna St. Vincent Millay, aboard a trans-Atlantic ship. |
The memory is a couple of years old but was just posted on Jennifer Pastiloff's Manifest-Station blog.
http://themanifeststation.net/2015/05/31/gone-to-feed-the-roses/
Roses are red, storm clouds are grey.
When you are mournful, turn to Millay.
See also Edna St. Vincent Millay's birthday.
June 13 - Birthday of W. B. Yeats, 150 Years Ago
This day was born in 1865 Irish poet William Butler Yeats, in Sandymount, Dublin. He was a favorite poet of my mother and her grandfather was one of the first people to introduce Yeats to a Dutch audience.
Yeats' parents moved to London when he was two years old, but he spent time in Sligo with his grandparents. My mother, Hilda van Stockum, also visited Sligo a lot because her family vacationed there. She enjoyed bring her six children to Sligo and pointing out Benbulbin to us, noting that Yeats had written a poem about it and that it was now called "Yeats Country".
Yeats studied art in Dublin and then returned to London, where he met other writers like George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde.
Even though he was born Protestant, he became involved in the cause of Irish nationalism, in part because in 1889 he met Maud Gonne, the "beautiful, brilliant, and fiery revolutionary" (words of Garrison Keillor).
Meeting Gonne was, Yeats said, when "the troubling of my life began." Yeats fell in love with her, founded the Irish Literary Theatre in Dublin and wrote plays for her to star in. They shared an interest in mysticism and the occult. They enjoyed what they referred to as a "metaphysical marriage."
In 1908, he wrote in a notebook: "She believed that this bond is to be recreated & to be the means of spiritual illumination between us. It is to be a bond of the spirit only." He wrote the poem "The Bronze Head" about Maud Gonne in 1938.
Yeats proposed a more conventional marriage to her on many occasions, but she turned him down. In 1916 he proposed to her 22-year-old daughter, Iseult, who also said no. In the end he married Georgina Hyde Lees.
For many years, Yeats' approach to Irish nationalism was through the country's mythology and folklore. He wanted to remind people of what pagan Ireland was like. His early poems, including The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (1889), were heavily influenced by Celtic mythology.
He published collections of traditional Irish myths, including Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry (1888) and Irish Fairy Tales (1892). Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1923, the same year that Edna St. Vincent Millay won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Millay married my mother's uncle, Eugen Boissevain.
Yeats wrote, of his medal:
Comment
Charles Boissevain in his newspaper Het Algemeen Handelsblat wrote of his travels to the West of Ireland and references much of Yeats' poetry.
Roselinde Supheert, in "Irish Patriot Aliens: The Irish Cause and the Early Perception of Yeats' Work in the Netherlands" (in Peter Liebregts and Peter van de Kamp, editors, Tumult of Images: Essays on W. B. Yeats and Politics, pp. 183-190) credits Boissevain (whom she curiously calls "de Boissevain") with introducing Yeats to the Dutch.
Boissevain's knowledge of Ireland and especially Sligo is easily explained. He married an Irish women, Heloise MacDonnell, and the MacDonnells vacationed every summer in Sligo.
Meeting Gonne was, Yeats said, when "the troubling of my life began." Yeats fell in love with her, founded the Irish Literary Theatre in Dublin and wrote plays for her to star in. They shared an interest in mysticism and the occult. They enjoyed what they referred to as a "metaphysical marriage."
In 1908, he wrote in a notebook: "She believed that this bond is to be recreated & to be the means of spiritual illumination between us. It is to be a bond of the spirit only." He wrote the poem "The Bronze Head" about Maud Gonne in 1938.
Yeats proposed a more conventional marriage to her on many occasions, but she turned him down. In 1916 he proposed to her 22-year-old daughter, Iseult, who also said no. In the end he married Georgina Hyde Lees.
For many years, Yeats' approach to Irish nationalism was through the country's mythology and folklore. He wanted to remind people of what pagan Ireland was like. His early poems, including The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (1889), were heavily influenced by Celtic mythology.
He published collections of traditional Irish myths, including Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry (1888) and Irish Fairy Tales (1892). Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1923, the same year that Edna St. Vincent Millay won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Millay married my mother's uncle, Eugen Boissevain.
Yeats wrote, of his medal:
It shows a young man listening to a Muse, who stands young and beautiful with a great lyre in her hand, and I think as I examine it, 'I was good-looking once like that young man, but my unpractised verse was full of infirmity, my Muse old as it were, and now I am old and rheumatic and nothing to look at, but my Muse is young.'In time, Yeats shed his Celtic mantle and his poems gained in power. His greatest work was written after he was 50. He also became directly involved in politics and served for six years as a senator for the Irish Free State. He remained the director of his Irish Literary Theatre - now renamed the Abbey Theatre - until his death in 1939. He died in France, with his wife and "his latest mistress" (says Keillor) at his bedside.
Comment
Charles Boissevain in his newspaper Het Algemeen Handelsblat wrote of his travels to the West of Ireland and references much of Yeats' poetry.
Roselinde Supheert, in "Irish Patriot Aliens: The Irish Cause and the Early Perception of Yeats' Work in the Netherlands" (in Peter Liebregts and Peter van de Kamp, editors, Tumult of Images: Essays on W. B. Yeats and Politics, pp. 183-190) credits Boissevain (whom she curiously calls "de Boissevain") with introducing Yeats to the Dutch.
Boissevain's knowledge of Ireland and especially Sligo is easily explained. He married an Irish women, Heloise MacDonnell, and the MacDonnells vacationed every summer in Sligo.
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
INEZ | 5A. Boissevain Suffragists in Holland [9]
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| Jan Boissevain (1836-1904) |
I received the following email from Charles Boissevain asking us to help a woman who is writing a dissertation about five relatives of the man Inez Milholland married, Eugen Boissevain.
They are the daughters of Jan Boissevain (1836-1904), who may be found in the "Blue Book" - Nederlands Patriciaat 1988, on p. 52.
Jan's daughters would be first cousins of the children of Charles Boissevain (1842-1927) who include Eugen and his four brothers and six sisters, including my grandmother Olga Boissevain.
Besides the five Jantje sisters, the Charletjes include three women in-laws who are world-famous in suffragist history:
Marie Pijnappel, the first female member of the Dutch Parliament, who was married to Charles E. H. ("Charles Eh Hah") Boissevain.
Inez Milholland Boissevain, who is the subject of this blogsite, the first wife of Eugen Boissevain.
Edna St. Vincent Millay, who was the second wife of Eugen Boissevain.
They are the daughters of Jan Boissevain (1836-1904), who may be found in the "Blue Book" - Nederlands Patriciaat 1988, on p. 52.
Jan's daughters would be first cousins of the children of Charles Boissevain (1842-1927) who include Eugen and his four brothers and six sisters, including my grandmother Olga Boissevain.
Dear Descendants of Jan Boissevain (1836 - 1904) and Other Interested People:
A lady at the Dutch University of Groningen, Mrs. Esmeralda Tijhoff, is writing a most interesting Ph.D. dissertation about the five daughters of Jan Boissevain.
Jan and his wife Petronella Gerharda Johanna Brugmans (1838 - 1905) had five daughters and four sons. The five daughters were, each in her own way, active in developing citizenship for women and in advocating for women's rights.
A dissertation like this is rare and an honor for "The Five Sisters Boissevain''.
Jan Boissevain's daughters were:
> Elisabeth Antonia, 1864 - 1904. She was married to Jan Gunning, 1859 - 1951. She died half a year after the birth of their only child, Jan Gunning jr. There are still some descendants alive.
> Helena Mensina (Heleen), 1867 - 1946. Not married. Dedicated her life to the translation of books by Plato into Dutch.
> Anna Maria, 1872 - 1924. Married to Gideon Mari Den Tex. Their son was Jan den Tex, honorary doctor of Utrecht University. No children.
> Petronella Johanna (Nella), 1873 - 1970. Married to Adriaan Floris (Aat) van Hall. Mother of ten children. Two of them well-known: Gijs van Hall, mayor of Amsterdam and Walraven van Hall, one of the most famous Resistance heroes during W.W. 2. He was shot by the Germans not long before the end of the war. Read about their lives via Google. [Aat's brother Jan van Hall, married Nella's cousin Hester Boissevain, further cementing the connections between the two families. The two families vacationed together in Drafna, about which I have written on another post. - JTM]
> Dr. Maria (Mia), 1878 - 1959. Not married. She was very active in organizing all sorts of women activities, also international ones. It is possible that descendants of Jan and Nella (or others !) know more. Especially descendants of the brothers of these Five Sisters Boissevain.
Please let me know.The descendants of Jan Boissevain are called the Jantjes in Dutch. The descendants of his brother Charles are called the Charletjes.
Charles Boissevain (1934, Nederlands Patriciaat p. 75). ch.boissevain@online.nl.
Besides the five Jantje sisters, the Charletjes include three women in-laws who are world-famous in suffragist history:
Marie Pijnappel, the first female member of the Dutch Parliament, who was married to Charles E. H. ("Charles Eh Hah") Boissevain.
Inez Milholland Boissevain, who is the subject of this blogsite, the first wife of Eugen Boissevain.
Edna St. Vincent Millay, who was the second wife of Eugen Boissevain.
Sunday, February 22, 2015
BIRTH | Feb. 22–Edna St. Vincent Millay (Updated Feb. 22, 2016)
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| Edna St. Vincent Millay |
She was America's favorite poet during an era when a poet was considered absolutely one of the best things you could be.
She made a living out of being a poet, the only woman in 20th century USA who did.
Her Life
One of three daughters of a divorced nurse, Millay learned independence and self-reliance early, and transmitted those qualities to her poetry. She began publishing poetry in high school. In 1912, the year she turned 20, her poem “Renascence” appeared in a literary review and drew the attention of a benefactor who made it possible for Millay to attend Vassar. The year she graduated, in 1917, her first volume of poetry, Renascence and Other Poems, appeared.
Millay moved to New York City, where she was one of the shining lights in Greenwich Village. One of the first women to write shamelessly about her lovers, Millay had numerous affairs–with younger poets or with other writers like Edmund Wilson–before and after her marriage. In 1920, her famous poem “First Fig” includes the lines:
My candle burns at both ends, It will not last the night.Millay’s frenetic life style, fueled by alcohol and an addiction to morphine that followed her hospitalization, wore her out. She traveled to Europe for a long rest in 1921. In 1923 she published The Harp Weaver and Other Poems, for which she became the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
But ah my foes, and oh, my foes, It gives a lovely light.
Her Husband
That year she met for the second time my great-uncle Eugen at a party in Harmon-on-Hudson (on the first occasion Edna was with her sister Norma and Eugen was not impressed with Norma). They married when she was 31. He gave up his active role in the family coffee-importing business business to devote himself to Millay as her business manager, butler and nurse.
They (he) bought a 600-acre farm in Austerlitz, N.Y., which they called Steepletop. I have visited it. There Millay continued to write verse and plays and the libretto for an opera that was performed to rave reviews in New York City. She was arrested and jailed for supporting Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, anarchists condemned to death for murder. In the 1930s, she wrote anti-Nazi poetry for newspapers, as well as radio plays and speeches. She had a nervous breakdown in 1944 and did not write for two years after it. Eugen died in 1949. Edna had another nervous breakdown and died at 58, either from a heart attack or from falling down a flight of stairs the following year; she was discovered by the local postmistress.
Her Poetry
In the second half of the 20th century, she went out of favor in some university poetry programs because she is considered "too easy" for university study. But I can provide two answers to that put-down.
First. Dorothy Parker said: "Beautiful as she was, Miss Millay did a great deal of harm with her double-burning candles. She made poetry seem so easy that we could all do it. But, of course, we couldn’t." The full quote is here.
Second. The Dad Poet (David J. Bauman) has written a wonderful exegesis of Millay's poetry, after a birthday weekend in honor of Millay two years ago. He observes that for much of Millay's poetry, the easy reading is often the wrong reading.
Even the short poem for which she is most famous, "I burn my candle at both ends...", presents more than one meaning. In one succinct nugget it displays the battle between her rational understanding of her situation and her inability to do anything about it.
- She lives an impassioned life.
- She knows the consequences - her life will be shortened.
- But she is deaf to the worries of her friends and complaints of her enemies.
- She will persist in her passion because she is like a moth, and must go to the flame.
Edna the Queen Bee of Ragged Island
Edna met her husband Eugen's first wife Inez when she came to speak at Vassar as an alumna. In 1928 she dedicated to Inez a poem she had written previously, in 1923, after her marriage and operation. I am a fan of Eugen as well as his very-different and both-wonderful wives.
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| Edna and Eugen - Anemone and The Rock. |
Eugen's first wife Inez Milholland died tragically in 1916 and he threw himself into his business importing coffee from Java with his two Dutch brothers Robert and Jan.
It was a good time to buy and sell coffee from Java, and for a while the Boissevain brothers had special access because Java was a Dutch colony through WW2. Eugen became a wealthy man in the interwar years and was able to retire soon after he married.
He wanted to look after Edna, who was constantly sick, and help her manage her literary affairs in a way that would capitalize on her fame and generate income for them both. This became important after 1929) She is said to have been the only female in the 20th century to have made a living from her poetry, the other poet to have done so being W. H. Auden. All the other poets had day jobs to put food on the table.
Ten years after they were married, they purchased Ragged Island in Casco Bay, Maine. In a previous century it was called Cold Arse Island. My mother, Eugen's niece, had good information about Eugen's activities because Eugen's sister Olga, my Granny, was living with us in Washington, D.C. at the time.
Edna decided that she should be the Queen Bee of Ragged Island, the only female allowed. She told Eugen that he was not to invite any other woman, or allow any other woman, to come on the island. My mother told me that Eugen asked Edna:
"Even Norma?"Norma was Edna's sister, younger by one year. She did not have Edna's talents, or even the talents of their younger sister Kathleen, but she envied Edna's fame and many friends. Kathleen, who had literary aspirations along Edna's lines, was four years younger than Edna and shared a portion of Edna's literary capability. She was also apparently was less of a clinging vine to Edna than Norma. It was about Kathleen that Edna wrote her famous letter to her mother Cora in which she said that if her sister wanted to publish a book of her poetry, she knew what she was getting in for. Kathleen was a grownup and could do as she damned pleased, she said, foolhardy though it might seem to her mother. Kathleen sadly died at 47 in 1943, seven years before her Edna. Her literary papers are available in four parts at the New York Public Library; in a word, she did not come close to Edna's success. Norma's triumph was to outlive them both.
Edna answered Eugen:
"Especially Norma!"(My mother told me that Eugen was asked frequently to protect Edna from Norma's threatened visits to Steepletop. Norma surely resented Eugen's being the gatekeeper and on the maps of the Austerlitz "Millay Estate", which Norma occupied after Eugen died in 1949 and Edna in 1950, there is no mention of Eugen. The place where Eugen is buried, next to Edna, was labeled on the maps "The Millay Graves". I hope that the Millay Colony has rectified this erasure of the name of Edna's husband, caretaker and patron. In fairness to Norma, there were many others who resented Eugen. No less a person than Edmund Wilson, in his book on The Twenties, cannot conceal his astonishment that he would be rejected by Edna as spouse material in favor of Eugen, whom he describes as "a Dutch importer". I had the privilege of meeting Mr. Wilson when he was living in Cambridge, Mass. in the early 1960s with Mary McCarthy.)
Ragged Island today is not inhabited, at least year round. It provides a home for nesting seabirds, including the eider duck, black guillemot, greater black-backed gull, herring gull and osprey. It was the subject of a well-regarded 1914 watercolor by John Marin in which the island and the water are juxtaposed in an innovative way that is described as creating "vertigo".
The island when purchased was described as occupying 85 acres. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Coastal Wetlands Conservation Grant program in 2008 awarded a $323,000 Coastal Wetland grant to secure seabird-nesting protection of the 77-acre (310,000 square meters) natural area. So the island has eroded, or the area was measured differently the second time.
John Felstiner wrote about Steepletop and Ragged Island in The American Poetry Review Vol. 36, No. 3 (May-June 2007), 45-48. "There, there where those black spruces crowd": To Steepletop and Ragged Island with Edna St. Vincent Millay. My wife Alice and I have on our bucket list visiting Ragged Island and other haunts of young Edna, and her mother and sisters.
Inez Milholland Blog Up to 5,000 Page Views
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| Inez and Eugen. |
Today, on the birthday of Edna St. Vincent Millay, this blogsite passed 5,000 page views.
I started it in 2013 and have recently been adding more on Eugen and his second wife Millay.
There are many posts as well at www.boissevain.us. I don't keep track of the page views there.
Here are the most-read posts. Thank you for reading.
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