Whitehead interview

[Begin Tape 2, Side 1]
Warren: This is Mame Warren, and I’m continuing with James Whitehead on the 3rd of
October.
Whitehead: And she’s worn out from all this talk.
Warren: No, I’m not, I’m getting more excited.
Whitehead: Anyway, so I sat there and listened to him, and then he started talking
about all of this porcelain. I didn’t know what Chinese export meant, I didn’t know
what [unclear] meant, I didn’t know what—oh, I may have known what Mycin was, but
all of these other names were as foreign to me as if I were in another world. And

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suddenly, and finally my eyes adjusted to the surroundings, and I was in a room—
really, this is pretty close to the size of the room, it was not quite this wide. I’m in this
chair and he’s on a daybed over there. There’s a grand piano between the foot of his
daybed, with the keyboard pushed against the front window, nobody could get to it to
play, and there was an old black-and-white television set sitting on it and a telephone,
and those were the only two things in the room that indicated that he was in the
twentieth century. There was a light bulb hanging from a wire in the center of the room
and there was one little table lamp, and there I was sitting with this man I’d never seen
before. There was a desk next to me, a fold top—what are those things? At an angle
that you open up.

         But anyway, and there was a chest of drawers. But by his bed was the telephone,
and then the bookcase/secretary that’s over in the Morris House. I could see in the next
little room was what had been a dining room was a hospital bed all piled with books
and so forth and a dining room table with medicines and open cereal box, and that’s all
I could see.

         But as he talked on about Washington and Lee he said, "I made reservations for
lunch at Carr’s [phonetic]." Well, that didn’t mean anything to me, but I was so happy
to think that we were going to get out of there and I said, "Fine."

         So we go outside, and parked at the sidewalk where the cab had been, it was this
long black Cadillac sedan, almost like a limousine. Joe, the handyman, had opened the
doors for us. We got in and he put a lap robe on us. This was the only sign of affluence
that I had seen. We get in there, got in the car, and he said, "I’ve invited Anita Hinkley
to have lunch with us."

         He, in the meantime, had told me that Miss Reeves was sorry that she couldn’t
join us because she had not been well and was in a nursing home, but he expected her
home any day.

         So I said, "I’m sorry she can’t be there, too."

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         So we get in this car, drive back to one of these great streets and turn in an alley,
and there we’re in the back of one of these mansions, and coming out of the back door
of this mansion was Mrs. Hinkley. She was tall, had to be six feet tall, all in black with a
cape all the way to the ground and a walking stick, a lady now in her eighties.

         Joe, the handyman, goes and meets her and brings her out to the car, and we’re
introduced and she says, "Oh, I love Washington and Lee." Said, "My daughter was
there for your Fancy Dress Ball once and we stayed at the"—she remembered every
detail of Fancy Dress Ball. That made it easier, made you feel so good.

         We go to Carr’s Tea Room and they talk about porcelain and art. She was a
[unclear]. I listened to them and I knew nothing about what they were saying. It was a
little lady’s lunch, it was little tiny serving, and I was hungry.

         But anyway, what was so great, when this car pulled in in the back and Joe gets
out of the car and goes over and picks her up and brings her back, and she gets in the
car and the three of us are sitting in the back seat, all of sudden, without even starting
the car, the car makes a 180 degree turn. I’d wondered how we were ever going to get
out of that crowded back lot. It was on a turntable, and I found out just recently, within
the last month, that those were used for carriages back when people had carriages and
horses, that was the way they turned the carriages around. But I thought, my Lord,
what kind of place is this to have that? I was more impressed with that than I was
impressed with any porcelain.

         So after lunch, we go back to her house and she shows me through these great
rooms. Her family had been in the house for three generations, and it was a mixture of
all the periods from Queen Anne, Chippendale, Federal, right on up to the present day.
But it was great. So it was enjoyable meeting her.

         Then we go back, get in the car, and it turns again on this thing; I’m so excited
about that. Go back and the car pulls up in front of the house next door to Mr. Reeves’,
which is a brick house, the one you’ve seen in pictures. And that’s when he said,

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"Would you like to see our little museum?" And he opens that door, and it was so dark
and so cold, there was no light, heat, or anything in that building. They had lived in it
when they first married and then filled it up and had to move next door, and then he
kept putting stuff in it, or they kept putting stuff in it.

         There was not an aisle. I had to step over pieces of ceramics on the floor and
around furniture. He kept talking about all these things that I didn’t know what he was
talking about. It was so dark in there, he carried a little flashlight. He takes an Oriental,
what would it have been, a hanging off the wall, and behind that wall was a steel door
like you’d find in a bank, and he evidently had to use a combination to open it up, and
here when he opened it up, we were standing right there, out rushes this pent-up, I
don’t know what it would have been called, atmosphere of something that has been
cold and damp for fifteen years, just suddenly rushes out, you know, so happy to
escape being in that vault. It was a vault, and the vault was about again, the half of it
that we looked into was about half of the size of this room. Then there was another steel
door that went into that room.

         But the first steel door he opened made this groaning, terrible noise, and it was
just like it was in great pain. Then behind that were two more little steel doors, metal
doors, that he had to open. He put his flashlight in there and here was this table stacked
high with dishes. He said, "That’s a plate that belonged to George Washington, that’s
the set that belonged to Paul Revere," and he kept doing that. He said, "Don’t you want
to go in and see them?"

         And I thought, "I’ve never seen this man until today. All he has to do is for me to
get in there and slam that door and nobody will ever know what ever became of Jim
Whitehead." [Laughter] So I said, "Oh, thank you," and I put one foot inside the vault
and then kept my hand on the steel lock on the outside, and he explained, then closed it
up and left.

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         But that house had not been touched in eighteen years except to add to it. So that
was an experience.

         Going into the room, I noticed on the wall a painting of an old lady, and I
thought that was Mrs. Reeves because Joe had whispered to me, "I don’t think she’s
coming home. She’s an old woman." And I thought, "Well, that must be a picture of
Mrs. Reeves." Then there was another one just like it in the little dining room in that
house. But it turned out to be Aunt Lizzy.

         Well, I went back and had dinner with him in this little dining room in his house,
and he pushed all of these open cereal boxes and medicine containers to one side, he
put two Willowware plates, like you get at the dime store—this is no exaggeration, I
had a jelly glass, he had a jelly glass, and he said, "Jim, Joe has prepared us some
supper," and he said, "Would you like a drink before dinner?"

         I could hardly talk because the dust from that other place was so great. I said,
"Yes, I certainly would." Well, he brings out a bottle of Manhattan mix cocktail, that
syrupy sweet stuff. He didn’t put anything in it.

         He had a problem at some time in his life, probably when he was at W&L, with
alcohol. But that’s all he had. To him, that was having a drink. He poured some in my
glass, and then we had little pieces of sliced country ham that he had left over from
Christmas, some biscuits that Joe made, and some beans, and here we were surrounded
by silver, porcelain, art, and we were eating off of dime-store plates and drinking from
jelly glasses. But that didn’t bother him in the least, he was oblivious to anything
around him. They never let anybody clean, because they were afraid they’d break
things, and they would have.

         So then I call a cab and I go back to the station, and all the way back to New York
all I did was write down phonetically what I had remembered he’d talked about that
day. Then I asked an alumnus of ours, Jim Martin, and his wife, Teen Martin, who was
on board of trustees, Jim had been a classmate, if they were ever going to be in that part

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of the country and they said, well, they were going up for their goddaughter’s wedding
in June. I said, "Would you go by and tell me if what I’ve seen has any merit or value?"
I said, "I think it’s a treasure."

         They go up and visit with him, they send me a telegram saying it is a treasure,
and it was. They recognized what they were looking at.

         So then we started working with him. The original thought would be that it was
going to be at Col Alto, you know, Col Alto, the big house here. They had an architect
here at the university, Henry Ravenhorst, draw up plans, and I sent those plans to him,
and for almost three years he worked with placing every object where he thought it
would go. It added years to his life, there’s no question in my mind about that.

         Then one day I got a call from his lawyer, saying Mr. Reeves was in the hospital,
he had a stroke, and then a few hours later he’d died. He said, "Mrs. Reeves would like
to have you come to the funeral," and we went up and we met her then after three years
for the first time.
Warren: That was the first time you met her?
Whitehead: First time.
Warren: This was three years later.
Whitehead: Three years later at Ruth’s Nursing Home on East 4th Street in East
Providence, Rhode Island. We go in and here’s this old lady, she’s just sobbing and
crying and kept saying, "Why did he have to go first?" It was then later after a lot of
digging and the story that I found, that they’d been married in 1941 when he was thirty-
eight and she was sixty-six, and they lived to celebrate their twenty-fifth wedding
anniversary.

         She, the lady that she was, there was only one—in those days, nursing homes,
maybe they still are, were in private homes, more so than institutions as we know them
today. People would develop these in residential areas, these houses, and nurses would
care for these elderly people. She was in a room with, I think, one or two others. There

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was only one chair in the room, and she said, "Mr. Whitehead, won’t you be seated?"
She said, "Boy,"—she called him Boy—"loved Washington and Lee and he told me
about your visits. I’m so sorry that I could not be there to greet you."

         Of course, we found out why he’d never let us meet her was he was afraid she
would want to give the collection to Brown University, because she was the great-great
granddaughter of John Brown and John Brown and his brothers, Brown University was
named for.

         The Herreshoff side was that a man from Prussia came to this country in the late
1700s and married John Brown’s daughter. He was Herr Herreshoff, and that became
Herreshoff later, but he married John Brown’s daughter, Sara. It was from that union
that they had a son, and from that union there was nine children born, and they were
the great boatbuilders of Providence. Her father, Mrs. Reeves’ father, was a talented
chemist, founded the American Chemical Society, wealthy.
Warren: Did you ever talk to her about the paintings?
Whitehead: Never. I did not even know they existed. What happened was the day that
I went up and signed the papers for the porcelain that was being packed, she was going
to give it to us in her will and then she changed her mind and said that she was going to
give it to us right then, because she thought vandals—and this was at the height of the
student unrest on college campuses and especially at Brown and Rhode Island School of
Design, it was pretty big. She was afraid they would break in and just destroy it, so she
said, "I’m going to give it in my will."

         So when I went up to sign the papers, there was this van that literally stretched
from in front of the two houses. The mover, Mr. Lands, said, "Mr. Whitehead, there are
some old frames in the attic, do you want them?"

         I said, "Well, if there’s any room in the van after you put the porcelain in." She
said we could have anything that his family did not want in terms of the art. I didn’t
know, I just thought they were maybe just worthless frames. He put them in boxes.

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         That was in April now of 1967, and they come to the university, they go into Col
Alto, all of the furniture and these boxes, then the porcelain cartons went into the
Student Union Building in the basement.

         I got a call right after we’d gotten it down here from the lawyer saying, "Mrs.
Reeves would like to have the sauce book that belonged to her great-great grandmother
given to the Rhode Island School of Design."

         I said, "Oh, my God. Please ask Mrs. Reeves what room it was in." Fortunately,
every carton had said what room it had come from, but did not say the contents of it.
Well, he tells me, and it was in the little pantry. Well, in the third carton that I opened
out of two hundred, we found the sauce book.

         Then I’m walking across the campus, and I’ve never unpacked now those
paintings. Never. They’re all in those boxes. Walking across the campus, and this lady
speaks to me, she and her husband, I assumed it was her husband, said, "Mr.
Whitehead, you don’t know who we are." And I hate people who say, "You don’t know
my name, do you? You don’t remember me."

         I said, "I just have to ask you."
         She said, "I’m Mrs. Reeves’ nurse."
         And I said, "Yes, you’re Mrs.—" whatever her name was. And I said, "How’s
Mrs. Reeves?"
         She said, "Well, she’s fine. We took her to the cemetery in Boston where he is
buried, and she was able to be taken out of the car and she put six roses and six stones
on his grave."
         I said, "Well, I’m sure glad."
         They said, "How is the collection doing?"
         I said, "We’ve just finished displaying a case in Lee Chapel. Would you like to
see it?"

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         I went down and it was not Pat Hineley, but somebody took pictures for me that
could be—well, they were Polaroids, and I said, "Would you take these back to show to
Mrs. Reeves?" Because we’d promised her we’d put the most important items on view,
and that’s what we did in Lee Chapel because we had no other place to do it.

         So they go back. That was on Friday, at least they got back up there on Friday,
they show her the pictures on Saturday, and she dies on Sunday. Now, that’s May, and
not once did I ever know she was an artist. I talked to her about porcelain the whole
time, everything was about porcelain, that’s all she talked about. The only clue to the
fact that she was an artist was at the nursing home when I’d go out to see her after he
died and I’d be up there with the lawyers and so forth, Bob Huntley drew up all the
legal papers and so on, he was still in law school, she had a charm bracelet and on that
charm bracelet was an Eiffel Tower, a little Eiffel Tower. I said, "Mrs. Reeves," and by
this time I was calling her "Doll." I asked her if I could call her Doll and she said,
"Please." Everybody else called her Doll. I said, "Doll, tell me about the Eiffel Tower."

         She said, "Frances gave me that." Frances was Mr. Reeves’ niece, who was
teaching in Europe at one of the American schools, and she had brought that Eiffel
Tower charm bracelet back, and she was still wearing it. She was paralyzed on one side.
But that was the only clue until the obituary came out and it said that she’d studied
with Raphael Coline [phonetic] and John Paul Arenz [phonetic], who were just—if you
told me she studied with Mr. Hostetter and Mr. whoever, it would have meant as much
to me.

         But then one day I was over to the place, and I opened one of those boxes and
pulled out this frame. There was glass on the frame, and literally there had to be a
quarter-inch of dirt and dust on that frame over the glass. I thought I’d see a steel
engraved—I didn’t know what I was going to see. I wiped with an old green towel. I’d
wish I’d kept the green towel. I wiped it across that glass, and here was poppies and I
couldn’t believe my eyes. I’ve used the term years ago, it sounded a little silly, but it

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was, it was like an explosion of color that came out of what I thought was just going to
be absolutely nothing in terms of color. The name on it meant nothing to me, it said
Eaton, I think it said, [unclear]. Then I picked up another one and it was totally different
from that one. So I didn’t know what we had.

         I asked Marion Junkin, who was head of our art department, if he’d go over
there and take a look with me, and he did. He said, "Who did these?"

         I said, "I don’t know. I know where they were, but I don’t know who did them."
But eventually working with him, I was able to determine that she had done them all
and that she had been married for a short period, three months only, in 1910, left the
man after three months, but his name was Eaton. She didn’t like him, but she liked his
name. He was a fourth cousin, I think.

         I thought, oh, boy, now I know how to date. Anything with an E or Eaton on it
has to come up to 1911, when she had been married to him, but that didn’t work. She
had gone back and put Eaton on things she’d done when she was a teenager. So that’s
that.
Warren: Oh, we have got to continue this story.
Whitehead: No, that’s it.
Warren: I have questions. No, another time.
Whitehead: Okay.
Warren: Another time. Thank you.
[End of interview]

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