Denise Orme

 

Denise Orme (1884-1960) was an English turn-of-the-century musical comedy star who achieved lasting fame through her titled marriages and children.  She was born Jessie Smither, the only daughter of Alfred Smither and Jessicah Pococke, on August 25, 1884 in the Hackney district of London, which would later be the birthplace of diverse show business personalities such as Jessica Tandy, Anthony Newley, Dame Eileen Atkins, Marina Sirtis, and Idris Elba.  Her parents were musical: her father, described variously as a legal clerk, a servant, and a bartender, was also an organist and her mother, a piano teacher.

Jessie, in addition to being pretty and charming, was a talented singer and musician.  In 1899, she attended the Royal Academy of Music, where she won a violin exhibition. Later while she studying at the Royal Academy of Music, her singing attracted the attention of George Edwardes, the period’s premiere impresario of the popular theater.  He would foster her career upon the musical stage.  

Jessie followed in the footsteps of her younger cousin, Ethel Rose Kendall (1890-1931) who had gone on the stage and assumed the name Eileen Orme.  She would marry into aristocracy, the Honourable Maurice Henry Nelson Hood, son and, at that time, heir of Arthur Wellington Alexander Nelson Hood, the 2nd Viscount Bridport (1839-1924), a descendent of Admiral Horatio Nelson’s brother.  Maurice predeceased his father, killed at the age of 34 in World War I at the Battle of Gallipoli.  Eileen (Ethel) was the mother of Rowland Hood (1911-1969) who became the 3rd Viscount Bridport and the 6th Duke of Bronte (a title bestowed upon Admiral Nelson by the King of Sicily, Ferdinand III in 1799).  He was a naval office and, as a politician, served in the conservative government of Neville Chamberlain, pre World War II. 

Jessie, therefore, took the stage name of Denise Orme and made her debut in 1906 in the chorus of a revival of a recent French operetta The Little Michus (Les p’tites Michu), set during the French Revolution. It was staged at Daly’s Theatre, which Edwardes had built with his now deceased partner, renowned, but notoriously tyrannical American theatre manager Augustin Daly.  Later in the run of the play, Denise assumed a principal role.  And by the end of the year, Denise Orme was starring in See See, a musical at the Prince of Wales Theatre, one of George Edwardes’ West End properties, which had hosted the first English musical comedy in 1892.  (Recently renovated, it is still in operation today).  In October of 1906, back at Daly’s Theatre, Denise had one of the major roles in The Merveilleuses, another musical set during the French Revolution, this one based on a 1873 play by Victorien Sardou, with music by Austrian Hugo Félix.  Also, at this time soprano Orme was among the artists who contributed to a 1906 gramophone recording of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado.

At the turn of the century many members of the British aristocracy were dating actresses and chorus girls.  Some of the “stage-door Johnnies” famously married their show business girl friends, seldom with the approbation of society and family.  On April 24, 1907 Denise Orme secretly wed at a register office an aristocrat, The Honorable John Reginald Lopes Yarde-Buller (1873-1930).  He was the son and heir of John Yarde-Buller, the 2nd Baron Churston, and the Honourable Barbara Yelverton, daughter of the first Naval Lord, Admiral Sir Hastings Yelverton (born Hastings Henry) , and Barbara Yelverton, Baroness Grey de Ruthyn, widow of the Marquess of Hastings and famous for being a geologist and an early collector of fossils.  Denise’s husband was an officer in the British army who had seen distinguished service in the Boer War and had been an aide-de-camp to The Lord Curzon, the Viceroy of India and to Queen Victoria’s son, Prince Arthur, The Duke of Connaught.

Denise retired from the stage for a time, but after the birth of her first child, she made her return in October of 1908, appearing in George Edwardes’ musical, The Hon’ble Phil at the Hicks Theatre in London.  She did not star, but had a chance to sing and to play her violin.  The following year, she was in another George Edwardes play at the Gaiety Theatre, the highly successful Our Miss Gibbs, although she only had a supporting role in it.  The extent of Denise Orme’s further acting and singing career, if any, does not seem to be very well chronicled.

John Yarde-Buller’s father died in 1910 and he succeeded to his title, becoming the 3rd Baron Churston — with Denise now Lady or Baroness Churston.  Denise was busy as a mother.  The Churstons had six children in all, the last being born in 1918.

In the late 1920s Denise had an affair with Theodore, “Tito,” Wessel (1889-1948), a Danish businessman and diplomat, and, as a result, Baron Churston divorced her in 1928.  On October 31, 1928 Denise married Wessel in London.  She became the mother of three step-children, but also had a son with Wessel in 1930 when Denise was 46 or so.  It was her last child.  In 1934 they dissolved their marriage.

A short time after the end of her second marriage, Denise had an affair with the 9th Earl of Darnley, Esmé Ivo Bligh (1886-1955), a major in the Air Force.  Bligh was born in Australia, but had inherited an Irish title.  He had been twice divorced, the last time being in 1936.  Presumably, the affair with Denise ended when he married for a third time in 1940.

During the 1940s Denise Orme owned and managed the Beech Hill Hotel in Rushlake Green, an old, but small village in East Sussex, southern England.  In 1946, though, she married for the third time, an old friend, Edward Fitzgerald, the Duke of Leinster, Ireland’s Premier Peer of the Realm (1892-1976).  She was 62, he, 54, both having been married twice before.

The Fitzgerald family has an interesting history.  Edward’s grandfather, the 4th Duke of Leinster had 15 children by a single wife. Edward’s father, the 5th Duke, was noted as voracious stamp collector.  Edward’s older brother Maurice, the 6th Duke, never married and lived in a mental institution, dying there at the age of 35.  Edward assumed the title in 1922 when he was 30.  Before succeeding to the title, Edward, a notorious gambling addict, profligate, and ne’er-do-well, had already signed away most of his inheritance to one Sir Harry Mallaby-Deeley, a some time member of parliament.  Fitzgerald declared bankruptcy in 1936.  His first wife was a chorus girl whom he married in 1913.  She provided him with an heir, his only legitimate offspring, but they separated in 1922 and divorced in 1930.  She later committed suicide.  The second wife, whom he wed in 1932, was an American socialite.  They divorced in 1946.

Denise Orme, then a duchess, died in London in October 20, 1960 at the age of 76.  She was found having passed away in her bath.  Her widower, the Duke of Leinster, would marry a waitress in 1965.  Living in poverty, he committed suicide in 1976 by taking an overdose of barbiturates.

Denise Orme had six children by her first husband, John Yarde-Buller, 2nd Baron Churston.  Joan Barbara (1908-1997), the eldest child, was one of the much chronicled Bright Young Things, the wild-living socialites of 1920s England.  She was firstly married to Thomas Loel Guinness, from 1927 to 1936.  Guinness, descended from a brother of the famous Irish brewer, was a conservative Member of Parliament, as well as businessman, aviator, and philanthropist, and, in the 1950s, he would be the secret owner of the research vessel Calypso, which he leased (for a token franc a year) to oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau.  When Loel Guinness sued Joan  for divorce, he named Aly Khan as co-respondent.  The divorce was uncontested.

In 1936, just after her divorce from Guinness, Joan did marry Prince Aly Khan (1911-1960), a Pakistani diplomat and officer in the French Foreign Legion, but better known as an adventurer, playboy, and owner of race horses.  During the marriage, Joan Barbara converted to Islam and assumed the name Taj-ud-dawlah.  They had two sons together.  In 1957 the eldest, Prince Karim, age 20, succeeded his grandfather Aga Khan III as the Imam of Nazri Ismailis, a branch of Shia Islam, and became known as Aga Khan IV.  

Joan Barbara divorced Aly Khan in 1949 due to his extramarital affairs, particularly one with Pamela Churchill (later Harriman), the wife of Randolph Churchill, Winston’s son.  Shortly after the dissolution of their marriage, Aly Khan would wed legendary American film star Rita Hayworth.  The marriage was short-lived, though.  Even before their divorce, Aly Khan became engaged to, but, in the end, did not marry film star Gene Tierney.  

Joan Barbara would have a long friendship with the unmarried Seymour Berry, Baron and Viscount Camrose (1909-1995), military officer, Member of Parliament, and newspaper magnate.  They would eventually marry in 1886 when they were both well into their 70s.  Joan, then the Dowager Viscountess Camrose, died in 1997 at the age of 89, surviving her husband by 2 years.

Denise Orme’s eldest son, Richard (1910-1991) succeeded to his father’s title and became the 4th Baron Churston in 1930.  He served during World War II in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and achieved the rank of Lieutenant-Commander.  Among his three wives was Sandra Needham, whom he wed in 1949.  She, as actress Sandra Storme, had, in the 1930s, appeared in several British films, including one (Q-Planes) with Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier.  Two years after her death in 1979 he married, as his third and last wife, an illegitimate daughter of the 2nd Baron Rothschild.

The second son, John (1915-1962) was a soldier and married to the daughter of a minister. The second daughter and fourth child, Denise, (1916-2005) was the second wife of Robert Grosvenor, 5th Baron Ebury, Lord-in-waiting, military officer, and racing car driver who died at the age of 43 in a racing accident.

The fifth child, daughter Lydia (1917-2006), was married  twice.  Her second husband, 1947-1960, was John Russell, 13th Duke of Bedford (1917-2002), who was notorious for flouting conventions and outraging his fellow peers.  He worked as a newspaper reporter and as a farmer in South Africa.  To satisfy the $14 million dollars in death duties incurred when his father died, he opened the family home, Woburn Abbey, to the public and later put a safari park on the grounds.  He was the author of several books and appeared on television.  After he and Lydia divorced in 1960, the Duke married Nicole Milinaire (1920-2012), a heroine of the French Resistance during World War II and, during the 50s, a TV producer in France.  (She was the associate producer of the 1954 British TV series Sherlock Holmes which starred Ronald Howard and Howard Marion-Crawford).

The sixth and last child Denise had with Yarde-Buller was Primrose (1918-1970), who married William Cadogan, 7th Earl Cadogan (1914-1997), a military officer and Freemason Grand Master.  Their son, Charles Cadogan (born 1937), is considered one of the wealthiest men in England through his family estates and ownership of valuable properties in Chelsea, London.

With her second husband Theodor Wessell (1889-1948), Denise had one son, Hugo (1930-2012).  A businessman, in the 1950s he was married briefly to Danish aristocrat Nina Møller (1932- ).  After their divorce she and Frederik Floris, Baron van Pallandt (1934-1994), son of the Dutch ambassador to Denmark and a Danish countess, formed the successful musical group Nina and Frederik, a singing duo performing calypso, folk, and popular music.  Nina van Pallandt also had an acting career, starring, notably, in Robert Altman’s 1973 film The Long Goodbye.

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Florence Nightingale

              Florence Nightingale I  Acrylic on Illustration Board on Panel 20 x 16 inches

              Florence Nightingale 2  Acrylic on Illustration Board on Panel  20 x 16 inches

             Florence Nightingale 3  Acrylic on Illustration Board on Panel  20 x 16 inches

Florence Nightingale was born into a socially prominent English family on May 12, 1820 in her namesake, Florence, Italy.  Her father, born William Edward Shore, a wealthy landowner, was the heir of his mother’s uncle, Peter Nightingale, and took possession of  his estate at Lea Hurst (in Derbyshire, central England) on the condition that he assume the surname “Nightingale.”  Florence’s mother, Frances “Fanny” Smith, from a merchant family, was the daughter of William Smith, a social reformer and member of parliament who was an associate of the famed abolitionist William Wilberforce.  Florence grew up mostly on her father’s estates, Lea Hurst and Embley Park, Hampshire (in southwest England).  Florence and her sister Parthenope were tutored by their father, who had progressive ideas about the education of women — much in conflict with the prevailing views of the time.  Florence was bright, with a methodical and analytical mind.  Though possessing a quiet and complaisant personality, outwardly deferring to her controlling, society-conscious mother, she could also be willful and determined, a serious young lady bent on following her own star rather than conforming to convention.  

When she was 18, Florence became acquainted with Mary Clarke, an Englishwoman who was a famous hostess in Paris.  Eccentric and intellectual, “Clarkey”  had little use for women, especially aristocrat ladies, but she took a shine to Florence.  The two remained friends for 40 years.  Florence was probably influenced by her in her decision to reject marriage and motherhood and instead to dedicate herself to serving humanity.  Florence believed that in this regard she experienced repeated calls from Heaven.  Eventually she came to believe that these calls were urging her to become a nurse.  She was determined to follow that course, despite strong disapproval of her family.  Nurses were usually ignorant, untrained women of low class and often low morals.  For a lady to aspire to become one was, well, beyond the pale.

Charming and attractive, slender and graceful, the young Miss Nightingale did not want for suitors.  The most persistent of these was Richard Monckton Milnes.  Milnes was not only a member of parliament, but a promoter of literary figures such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Alfred Lord Tennyson, as well as a poet himself.   He also had a keen interest in parapsychology —- and pornography (!).  When, after nine years, Florence Nightingale definitively rejected him, Milnes married a baron’s daughter in 1851.  He himself was made a baron in 1863.  Milnes and Florence remained friends after his marriage and he and his wife would name one of their daughters Florence.  (The daughter would become the poet and novelist Florence Henniker).

Indeed Florence had a talent for acquiring the friendship of powerful men, many who would later exercise their influence to her benefit.  Among these was Benjamin Jowett, a scholar and Oxford don who was a translator of Plato and Thucydides.  Jowett never married and it is often surmised that he had been in love with Florence.  Another was Sidney Herbert, a politician whom Florence met in 1847 while he was on a honeymoon trip in Rome.  She befriended him and her wife.  He would become her supporter and she, his trusted adviser.  Herbert, twice a cabinet secretary, was made a peer before his death in 1861.   Herbert Sound in Antarctica is named after him.

As genteel and well-off ladies of her time often did, Florence Nightingale traveled both with her family and with friends.  She saw a great deal of the Mediterranean and the Middle East.  While she was in Athens, Greece, she rescued a young little owl (Athene noctua) from some kids that were taunting it.  Aptly naming it Athena, Florence kept the owl as a pet and often carried it about in her pocket.

In 1841 Florence visited a Lutheran institute in Kaiserwerth, Germany (near Dusseldorf on the Rhine), where deaconesses were trained not only in religion, but in nursing.  It aroused her personal interest.  When she revisited Kaiserwerth in 1850 she was so moved by what she saw there that she determined that she must become a nurse.  She stayed there for four months and underwent a course of medical training.

Returning to London, Florence found no demand for her newly acquired skills or means to fulfill her zeal for service.  Finally, though, in August of 1853 she attained a nursing position at the Institute for Care of Sick Gentlewomen in London.  Her dedication and her abilities impressed, and she was soon appointed the hospital’s  superintendent.  Florence was now able to be independent and to live comfortably, but only when her relenting father gave her a generous allowance, amounting to 500 pounds a year  — something like $65,000 in today’s money!

At this time the British Empire was involved in what would be known as the Crimean War, a bloody, ill-starred conflict that was precipitated by European concerns for the rights of Christians in the Holy Land, which was controlled by the Ottoman Turks, who were Muslims.   While France, under Napoleon III, and England, under Queen Victoria and Prime Minister Lord Palmerston, resolved differences with the Ottoman sultan, Czar Nicholas of Russia found in the situation a pretext for war.   By the fall of 1853 the Russians and the Ottomans were fighting each other in the Balkans.  France and Britain, fearing Russian expansionism and the consequences of a defeated Ottoman Empire, supported the Turks and declared war on Russia in March of 1854.

By the fall of 1854 the British were battling Russian forces  in the Crimea, a large peninsula on the northern coast of the Black Sea.  The British public were shocked when word reached home about the dreadful conditions of sick and wounded soldiers there.  Florence Nightingale felt it was her duty to do something about it.  She wanted to go there and bring a team of nurses to minister to her country’s soldiers.   Resigning her position at the institute, she gathered a group of 38 volunteer nurses that she had trained, as well as 15 nuns skilled in nursing sent to her by the Catholic Church.  Florence’s friend, Sidney Herbert, who was at that time the Secretary of War,  greased the way for her.  She was officially sanctioned by the British army and formally placed in charge of all its nurses in Turkey.

On October 21, 1854 the nurses left England on the long  journey to Turkey.  In Paris a group of five sisters from the Irish Sisters of Mercy, joined the Nightingale party.  They were led by Mother Mary Clare Moore, who became Florence’s valued colleague and lifelong friend.
 
On November 4, 1854, the Nightingale party arrived at Scutari, located in the Asian part of Istanbul.  There, some old Turkish army barracks, given over to British use, had been converted into a makeshift hospital.  The conditions there were horrendous, though.  With thousands of patients there was serious overcrowding.   The nursing staff, all male, was overworked and ineffectual.  Sanitary conditions were atrocious.  Patients went unwashed, wallowing in filth.  Wards were infested with bugs and rodents.  There were no kitchen facilities.  There were inadequate supplies of medicines.   For every soldier that died of battle wounds, nine died of disease, typhus, typhoid, cholera, dysentery, or malaria.  What was worse, the authorities seemed not to care.  But Miss Nightingale did.  With relentless determination would she apply herself to serving the wounded and sick.

During the first winter at Scutari, more than 4,000 soldiers died in the hospital.   Florence Nightingale believed that the deaths were mostly due to unsanitary living conditions, as well as inadequate nutrition and ventilation. (The germ theory of disease, a mere notion at the time, would not be widely accepted for decades).   Miss Nightingale eschewed the mostly poisonous medicines of the time and instead instituted hygienic regimens that she believed would facilitate cures.  Besides having the wards scrubbed, she mandated hand washing, which was not a common practice at the time.  She established a proper laundry and supervised the kitchens to provide nourishing and appropriate food for the patients.  In March, 1855, at her request, the British government sent a commission to improve the hospital’s ventilation and, more importantly, to flush out its sewage system, for it was found that the original barracks had been built over a cesspool.   Florence organized a veritable army of Turkish workers to replace the hospital’s lice-and-flea-infested floor.  In six month’s time these efforts reduced the death rate at Scutari dramatically.

Also, as a result of Florence Nightingale’s pleading, the British government commissioned the construction of a prefabricated hospital.  The greatest civil engineer of the time, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, quickly designed a temporary wood and canvas structure that was shipped and assembled in Turkey.  The so-called Renkioi Hospital was positioned down the coast from Scutari in an area free from malaria.  Although it did not open until October 1855 and closed in July 1856 (months after the Crimean War ended) and only treated 1300 men, it was a great success and hailed as a model hospital.  The death rate there was a tenth of that at Scutari.  It was under civilian control and, as such, not under the purview of Florence Nightingale.  She, however, praised it highly, even though she never had the opportunity to visit it.

Despite her success in treating patients and saving lives, Florence Nightingale earned the enmity of  the authorities, especially the army doctors, who did not want some outsider, especially a woman, meddling in their business, criticizing them, and showing them up.  Dr. John Hall, the Inspector-General of Hospitals and head of the Scutari hospital, found her objectionable and resented the power she had.  Dr. Duncan Menzies, the chief medical officer at Scutari, found her a nuisance as well and tried to impede her at every turn.  (Denied funds, she often used her own money to buy what she needed for her patients).   Florence  also had conflict with some Sisters of Mercy nurses that arrived unannounced and unrequested in December 1854.  Their leader, Sister Mary Francis Bridgeman, unlike Mother Mary Clare Moore, refused to acknowledge her authority or to work under a secular Protestant.
    
Miss Nightingale’s patients, though, and the soldiers in the ranks, who quickly came to hear of her, adored her.  Back in England she became a heroine, a source of national pride, a legend even.  She came to be known as “The Lady with the Lamp,’ for her habit of of patrolling the corridors of the hospital at night after all had retired, checking on each and every patient.  In his 1857 poem Santa Filomena Henry Wadsworth Longfellow famously made reference to her.  (Her lamp, unlike those depicted in artistic representations, was a rather unromantic paper concertina lantern).

On May 2, 1855, Florence Nightingale visited the hospital in Balaclava in Crimea, close to the front. She fell ill with fever almost immediately and, though, for a time, near death, she was soon out of danger.  Her complete recovery, however, took months.   Dr. John Hall took advantage of her illness to make her rival Sister Mary Francis Bridgeman the Superintendent of the Balaclava General Hospital in October.   In April of 1856 a recovered Miss Nightingale regained management of the hospital, after which a disgruntled Bridgeman and her nurses returned to England.   The Crimean War had ended in February of 1856, not really a victory for England and her allies, but definitely a defeat for Russia.

Florence Nightingale returned home to England in the summer of 1856.  She was greeted with a hero’s welcome and found herself a national heroine, her name and deeds known to every Englishman.  To honor her, Queen Victoria presented her with a brooch designed by her husband Prince Albert.   Mostly Florence was embarrassed by the adulation.

While Florence was still in Turkey, Sidney Herbert helped establish the Nightingale Fund, which would finance the Nightingale Training School at St. Thomas’ Hospital established in 1860.  (It is now part of King’s College London).   The creation of nursing as a profession, a respected career, is due primarily to Florence Nightingale.  Her students and those she mentored became the elite of the profession.

After she came back from Crimea,  Florence was afflicted with chronic brucellosis which caused spondylitis, an inflammation of the neck and spine.  For the next 37 years she was home bound and mostly bedridden.  But she continued her work and received visitors, prominent ones even, from her bed. She became the world’s foremost authority on nursing and sanitation.  Armies and governments consulted her.  Her sister Parthenope, who once deplored her wanting to be a nurse, acted as her manager.

In later years Florence slowed down, losing her sight and her mental faculties.  She peacefully passed away on August 13, 1910, 90 years old.  In accordance with her wishes, a national funeral was forgone.  There was merely a modest funeral service when Florence Nightingale was  interred in her family plot in Hampshire.  She was the recipient of numerous honors, including, in 1907, the Order of Merit, bestowed upon her by King Edward VII.  In 1915 the Crimean War Memorial, originally erected in Waterloo Place, London, in 1861 was  expanded to include a statue of Florence Nightingale and her friend Sidney Herbert.  There is also the Florence Nightingale Museum in the grounds of St. Thomas’ Hospital near the south end of Westminster Bridge in London, across the Thames from Big Ben.   
 
In addition to her contributions to nursing Florence Nightingale also pioneered the use of statistics, especially the use of graphics such as the pie chart.  She was the first woman to be admitted to the Royal Statistical Society.  A prolific writer, Florence Nightingale’s most well-received book was Notes on Nursing, published in 1860.  It was translated into several languages and tens of thousands of copies were sold, although Florence probably received little money from it.   A large number of other books and pamphlets were self published.  There was a large amount of private correspondence and travel notes, as well as professional papers and addresses and even a novel, Cassandra.

Florence Nightingale belonged to the Church of England her whole life, although she entertained views inconsistent with orthodoxy and was critical of organized religion in general.  She was certainly a Universalist, that is, a believer in the eventual redemption of all souls.  Her private writings reveal that she was also something of a closet mystic with a healthy respect for religions other than Christianity.  There is no doubt she regarded her service to humanity as service to God.  And, like a nun similarly dedicated, she remained chaste and unmarried throughout her life.

Florence Nightingale has been depicted many times in film.  She was played by Kay Francis in The White Angel (1936), by Dame Anna Neagle in the 1951 British film The Lady with a Lamp, and by Laura Fraser in the 2008 TV movie Florence Nightingale.  Actress Helena Bonham Carter is Florence Nightingale’s first cousin, several times removed (through Florence’s mother, whose sister married politician John Bonham-Carter).

 

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King David

 

King David  16 x 20 inches, Acrylic on cradled panel, 2020

King  David (1040 - 970 BC ?)  David is one of the most important and most vividly portrayed figure in the Old Testament of the Bible, which presents him as the perfect monarch, heroic and pious, despite his character flaws and crimes. 

According to the Bible, David was the eighth and youngest son of Jesse, a shepherd from the tribe of Judah who lived in Bethlehem, a small village 5 miles south of Jerusalem.  Jesse was the grandson of Ruth, a Moabite woman whose story is told in a book of the Bible.  David grew up as a shepherd and became known for his skill as a player of the lyre (kinnor). 

At this time, the late 11th Century BC, Saul ruled as the first king of a united Judah and Israel.  Samuel, a military leader as well as a prophet, had formerly led Israel during the time when they were occupied by the Philistines, a Canaanite tribe that dwelled along the shores of the Mediterranean.  At the behest of the people, Samuel installed Saul as king.  Saul, though,  presumably aroused the displeasure of Jehovah, the Hebrew god, by failing to totally liquidate the Amalekites, long Israel’s arch-enemy.  Samuel, therefore, repudiated him.  He went to Bethlehem where he anointed a ten-year old shepherd boy, David, as king.  David, though, merely continued as a shepherd, until Saul summoned him to court to perform for him as a musician. 

When war broke out again between Israel and the Philistines, it was agreed that it should be settled by single combat.  The Philistines chose as their champion the giant warrior Goliath, whom no one among the Israelites dared challenge.  Although only 15 years old, David volunteered to fight Goliath.  He knocked Goliath out by hitting him with a stone hurled by a sling and then killed him with his own sword.  David became a hero.  King Saul eventually placed him in command of his army and allowed him marry one of his daughters.   David also made friends with Jonathan, Saul’s eldest son and successor.

Jealous of David’s popularity, Saul conspired to kill him.  Jonathan tipped off David as to his father’s plans.
David went into hiding and sought refuge first with the priest Ahimelech, who fed him with showbread from the temple and presented him with Goliath’s sword.  (For this, Ahimelech was executed by Saul, but his son Abiamar would later become high priest).   David failed in his attempts to find sanctuary with the kings of Philistine and Moab.  In the hometown of Goliath he could only save his life by pretending to be insane.  David eventually he made up with Saul, who conceded that David would one day be king.  

But Saul continued to persecute David so that he went to Philistine to serve its king.  As a military commander, he fought against not Philistia’s enemies, but against tribes of nomads who were harassing the people of Judah.  To curry their favor, turned over the spoils of war to the people of Judah.  When war resumed between Israel and the Philistines, David, of questionable loyalties, did not participate.  In battle both King Saul and  Jonathan were killed.

David left Philistia and was made king of the southern land of Judah.  He moved to its capital in Hebron and set up court there. The northern land of Israel was then ruled by Saul’s only surviving son, Ishbaal (or Ish-Boshet), supported by Abner,  Saul’s cousin and the former commander of his armies.  The two nations would engage in warfare until a falling out between Abner and Ishbaal.  Abner made peace with David, but Joab, David’s nephew and captain of his army, treacherously killed Abner in revenge for Abner’s slaying of his brother.  Ishbaal was then assassinated.  This left the field open for David to assume the throne of Israel and restore the United Monarchy.  David was 30 years old.

King David captured the Canaanite town of Jerusalem and made it his capital.  He brought there what is usually known as the Ark of the Covenant, a gold sheathed wooden chest that contained various objects sacred to the Israelite people, including stone tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments, a pot of manna, and the rod of Aaron.  It was housed in a tabernacle, a tented sanctuary.  David desired to build a temple for Jehovah, but he was dissuaded from doing so by Nathan, the court prophet.  It would be left for his successor, Solomon, to build the First Temple of Jehovah.

David made war with most of his neighbors, the Philistines, Moabites, Edomites, Arameans, Amalekites, and Ammonites.  Victorious, he exacted tribute from them and established what would be a modest empire.  He solidified his power with numerous marriages with daughters of foreign leaders.

When he was in his 50s, David conducted an adulterous affair with Bathsheba, the beautiful wife of Uriah, one of his captains, after he saw her bathing on her rooftop.  When a child was expected, David tried to persuade Uriah, a military commander, to make a conjugal visit to his wife so that he, the husband, might be credited as the father.  This failed and so King David arranged for Uriah, a zealous soldier, to be killed in battle.  This incident and other court intrigues earned the rebuke of Nathan and turned the people against David.

Absalom, David’s favorite son, had good looks and charm and despite a lavish lifestyle, was very popular with the people.  He loved his sister Tamar and was outraged when their half-brother Amnon raped her.  He nursed his desire for revenge for two years.  Then, at a feast arranged by him  for his brothers, he had a drunken Amnon killed.  Afterwards he waas forced to flee from Jerusalem, and it was three years before he was restored to his father’s good graces.  Solomon, Bathsheba’s son, was then seen as David’s successor.  

Absalom remained dissatisfied with his father’s rule and made it known to all he would be a far superior judge and king.  He gathered enough support for his claim to the throne to mount a revolt.  He occupied the former capital of Hebron and showed his contempt for the king by having sex with his father’s concubines.  Next, he entered Jerusalem and, with the connivance of David’s advisors, assumed the throne.  King David fled across the River Jordan with what loyal forces remained.  Absalom was swayed by his father’s spies to delay attacking David and when he did, he was soundly defeated by David’s forces.  Against David’s orders,  Joab killed Absalom. 

David mourned greatly for his disloyal son, but was restored as king.  Later, when in his dotage, he would be challenged by  another of his sons, Adonijah. With support from Joab and Abiathar, the high priest, Adonijah was able to usurp the throne.  The prophet Nathan and David’s wife Bathsheba got David to agree to crown Solomon as co-regent.  The move gained wide support and put an end to the revolt.  Adonijah backed away from his claim and acknowledged Solomon as heir to the throne. 

Upon the death of Kind David at the age of 70 in 970 BC, the 20-year old Solomon would succeed him.  Solomon would be known for his wisdom, his wealth, his harem, his authorship of several books of the Bible, included Song of Songs  and Proverbs, and, later, his skill at magic.   He would rule the United Kingdom until his passing in 931 BC.  His son and successor, Rehoboam, could not prevent his domain from breaking up into two kingdoms, Israel in the north, and Judah in the south.  David’s descendants would continue to rule in Judah.

David was known from his adolescence as a musician.  He is reputed to be the author of about half of the poems (song lyrics) included in the Book of Psalms.  It cannot, however, be confirmed that he wrote the psalms himself, or if they were written for him, or if he merely compiled them, or if they were just attributed to him after his death.  Many of the psalms, though, refer to events in David’s life.

The Bible gives some description of David’s appearance.  He was handsome, possessed beautiful eyes, was not very tall, and had red hair.  (David is referred as being admoniy, “red”, but it is unclear whether this refers to his complexion or to the color of  his hair.  It seems much more probable that red hair would be noted as an identifying feature rather than a ruddy complexion, not likely to be much noticed with the beard he must have worn.  Many disagree, asserting the impossibility of a Hebrew from the Middle East being a redhead.  Red hair, though, can be found among all races, not just among those of Celtic and Nordic derivation.  Genghis Khan bragged about having red hair.  Alexander the Great had hair the color of a lion’s mane and Cleopatra may have been a ginger as well.  Pharaoh Ramses the Great of Egypt definitely had red hair: this has been determined by recent examination of his mummy.  Among modern Jews, red hair is not all that uncommon).

Historical evidence of David’s existence, is scant, if not non-existent, and the sole source of information about his life and reign are books of the Bible, particularly Samuel I  and II, Kings I, and Chronicles I.   Consequently, most historians dispute his existence or relegate him to the status of a legendary, even mythical figure.  He may have been but a nomadic chieftain or, if a king, on a far less grand scale than portrayed.  This is confirmed by archaeology that tells us Judah was sparsely populated in David’s time and could hardly have been a co-equal kingdom with the more developed northern country.  Notwithstanding its later glory, Jerusalem, in the 10th Century BC, was probably just a small town and unfit to be the capital of a kingdom.

David, however, is a central figure and a revered ideal in Judaism, a major prophet in Islam, and an ancestor of Jesus, the author of Christianity.  One of the most famous figures of antiquity, he has been the subject of many works of art and literature, including the famous statue of David by Michelangelo.  There have also been many popular movies and television shows about David, eg. the 1951 film David and Bathsheba, starring Gregory Peck, as well as portrayals by actors such as Jeff Chandler, Richard Gere, Keith Michell, and Max von Sydow, among others.

Portrait of Jules Verne

Jules Verne  18 x 24 inches, Acrylic 2019

Jules Verne (1828 - 1905) was a renown French author who is best known in the English-speaking world as the originator of science fiction novel.  Jules was born in the city of Nantes in western France on the Loire River, 30 miles from the Atlantic coast.  His father was an attorney and his mother came from a family of shipowners and was partly of Scottish descent.  Jules’ teacher at boarding school was the wife of a sea captain who had been lost at sea, but who, she believed, had been cast upon a desert island and would eventually return.  Young Jules was intrigued by this story; he would never forget it and would use the theme of the castaway in many of his stories.  He would be fascinated by the ships that plied the Loire and sailed out to sea.  There is a story that he tried to run away from home to be a cabin boy on a ship bound for the Indies, but the tale is probably apocryphal.

When he finished his schooling, mostly in a religious seminary which he hated, Jules Verne was resolved to become an author, maybe another Victor Hugo, France’s greatest literary figure and the author of The Hunchback of Notre Dame  and Les Miserables.  His father took a dim view of his ambitions and insisted that he, as the eldest son, follow in his footsteps as a man of law.  In 1847 Jules was sent to Paris to study law and also to put some distance between Jules and his cousin Caroline, for whom he professed love.  Caroline married an older man, while Jules, keeping his mind on his studies, passed his first-year exams.  Back in Nantes his studies were interrupted when he fell in love again, this time with a young lady named Herminie.  His love for her was intense, and she was the inspiration for the poetry he wrote at the time.  His feelings may have been returned, but Herminie’s parents disapproved of Verne, a poor law student, and married their daughter off to an older, wealthy landowner.  Young Verne was devastated by the turn of events and his disappointment in love haunted his future life and writings.

When he returned to Paris to complete his studies, the government was in turmoil and there were barricades in the streets.  The Revolution of 1948 eventually resulted in the establishment of Second Republic and the presidency of Louis Napoleon (who would make himself Emperor in 1851).  Verne, though, generally stayed out involvement in politics.

At this time he was plagued by medical concerns, stomach cramps and facial paralysis caused, we now suspect, from middle ear inflammation, perhaps Bell’s palsy.   Verne, an ardent pacifist, was luckily spared being drafted into the armed force.  The law student spent a lot of his time attending literary salons and writing plays, as well as doing research at the Bibliothèque national de France, the national library.  He was able to meet the great writer Alexandre Dumas and became friends with his son Alexandre Dumas, fils, who had already written his famous novel  La Dames aux Camélias (Camille).  The two collaborated on a play that was produced in June 1850.

Verne received his law degree in January 1851, but was much more interesting in pursuing a literary career.  Through the younger Dumas, Verne became secretary of the Théâtre Lyrique and helped write many of the operas that were performed there.  He also found an outlet for his short stories.  He was able to make the acquaintance of Pitre-Chevalier, a writer also from Nantes who was editor of Musée des families, a magazine devoted to popular science.  In the summer of 1851 he published two of Verne’s stories, The First Ships of the Mexican Navy, written in the style of James Fenimore Cooper, whom he admired, and A Voyage in a Balloon, an adventure tale with science elements.  This second story, which drew upon Verne’s knowledge of geography and history and love of detailed research, revealed his niche as a writer.

Verne’s father, who did not countenance Jules’ literary career, insisted that he come home and commence a career in law.  In January 1852 he offered his son his own law practice, but Jules adamantly refused to accept it, telling his father that he knew his own mind and that his future lay in writing.  During the early 1850s Verne continued to write plays, although most of them were never performed.  He wrote stories and articles for Musée des families, but after a quarrel with Pitre-Chevalier he did not contribute to the magazine until after his death in 1863.

In May 1856 Jules Verne traveled to Amiens (75 miles north of Paris) to attend the wedding of an old friend from Nantes and ended up staying with the bride’s family.  He was well received by them. The bride’s brother offered him a chance to go into business with a broker and work on the Paris Bourse, the stock exchange.  He accepted readily, not only because it allowed him to make some real money, because it gave him an opportunity to be near his new beloved, the bride’s sister, Honorine de Viane Morel, a 26-year old widow with two children. A broker, Verne was now a respectable businessman with a regular income; even his father approved of his situation.  And he was able to court Madame Morel, with the result that they were married in January 1857.

Verne left his position at the Théâtre Lyrique, but he continued to write and research — in his spare hours.  For the first time he had the opportunity to travel outside of France.  Aristide Hignard, a composer from Nante who had been his neighbor during his early years in Paris and with whom he had collaborated, took him along on two sea voyages paid for by his brother.  Verne went to Liverpool and Scotland from Bordeaux in 1858 and traveled to Sweden and Norway in 1861.  Verne, who always made the most of his experiences, was very impressed by what he saw and would draw upon it in writing his novels.

Jules’ long-held idea was to develop a new genre of fiction, the Roman de la Science, the science-fiction novel, with an emphasis on travel.  He had finished one novel along this line, Voyage en Ballon, and was able to show it to a publisher, Pierre-Jules Hetzel.  Hetzel, a cabinet minister during the Second Republic had published the greats, Balzac, Hugo, Zola,  Presently he was putting together a magazine that would be called Le magasin d’éducation et de récréation, directed toward families and featuring stories that would foster scientific education.  Verne was exactly the kind of writer he was looking for.  With revisions suggested by Hetzel, Jules Verne’s first novel, Three Weeks in a Balloon, concerning three Englishmen who travel explore Africa in a hydrogen balloon, was published on January 31, 1863.  The book was highly successful and made Verne’s fortune.

Verne and Hetzel had a good working relationship, at least at first, and were bound to each other with a long-time contract.  Verne was obligated to submit three volumes each year, which Hetzel would purchase outright.  They would be presented to the public in serial form, to be published in the biweekly Le magasin d’éducation et de récréation.  After completion of the serial, the story would be published in book form, usually in three formats, an inexpensive volume without illustrations, a small volume with some illustrations, and a deluxe edition, large and with many illustrations.  These would ideally come out at the end of the year so that they could be bought as Christmas presents.

Jules Verne saw his science fiction novels (and science fiction fantasies) as part of a series he called Voyages extraordinaires.  (There would eventually be 54 of them!)  He tackled the subject matter of the genre with a boundless ambition.  Among his most famous novels are, in addition to the aforementioned Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863) was Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), From the Earth to the Moon (1865),  In Search of the Castaways (1867), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea  (1870), Around the World in Eighty Days (1873),  The Mysterious Island (1875),  Michael Strogoff (1876), and Robur the Conqueror (1886) and its sequel Master of the World (1904)  There were many more, lesser known works; Verne’s output continued to his death in 1905.  Only one early story, Paris in the Twentieth Century, was rejected by Hetzel who deemed it too pessimistic.  It was eventually published in 1994 and revealed Verne’s prescience in seeing how future man would rely inordinately upon technology in his everyday life.  In his published novels Jules Verne predicted inventions such as the submarine, air and even space travel. 

Verne also adapted some of his stories to the stage.  The play Around the World in Eighty Days was particularly successful and from it Verne earned more money than from his novels, despite their wide popularity.

Verne’s most famous character, save perhaps for Phileas Fogg, the hero of Around the World in Eighty Days, was Captain Nemo, who appeared in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea  and The Mysterious Island.  A scientific  genius, Nemo constructs a submarine, the Nautilus, with which he sails the seas sinking ships to avenge slave-trading, militarism, and imperialism.  An enigmatic Indian prince, Captain Nemo was first conceived by Verne as an anti-Russian Pole, but he reluctantly altered the character to appease his publisher Hetzel, whose interference, at this point, was not appreciated and often ignored.

Wealthy and famous, Jules Verne was able to satisfy his childhood ambition to take sea voyages.  Beginning in 1867, he purchased a series of yachts (all called Saint-Michel).  Although his permanent residence was Amiens, he spent a lot of time on his yachts and did much of his writing while at sea.  He sailed up and down the Atlantic coasts of France and England and, in Saint-Michel III, a steam yacht with a crew of 10, he ventured into the Mediterranean and to Scotland. 

Jules Verne was honored by being made a Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur in 1870 and in 1892 was promoted to Officier de la Légion d’honneur.  However, it was a source of disappointment to him that he was never inducted into the Académie Française, as a writer of his stature would have expected.  The snub was calculated.  While he had his admirers, such as George Sand, many literary figures, Émile Zola for instance, dismissed Verne as merely a popular author.  His novels were not “literature.”  He wrote genre fiction and his popularity with the masses meant that his work could not possess any real merit.

As he grew older, Jules’ books became somewhat darker in tone.  He had abandoned the Catholicism he grew up with; he remained a deist, but not a Christian.  His relationship with his son was troubling.  Michel was a disappointment: against his father’s wishes he married an actress, then had children by an underage mistress.  (And naturally he was always in debt and wanting money).   Later in life,  Jules and Michel reconciled.  Causing even more trouble for him was his mentally deranged nephew, Gaston, who, in 1886, confronted Verne with a pistol and shot him in the left leg, causing him to limp for the rest of his life. 

Jules Verne, in addition to the limp, suffered from various health problems that were not effectively addressed or treated.  He had chronic digestive problems, high-blood pressure, and Type 2 diabetes.  He succumbed to these ailments and died on March 24, 1905.  He was 77.

Jules’ son Michel managed his father’s literary legacy after his death and arranged for the publication of Verne’s unpublished works.  Michel, however, made many alterations in the stories, even to the extent of rewriting them.  He had not been the only one to distort his father’s work.  Verne’s books were extensively translated in his lifetime and afterwards.  Many of the translations, though, were inaccurate or abridged.  Some changed character names and even modified the stories.  In English-speaking countries, where Verne was regarded as an author for children, shortened and simplified translations were the rule.  Even in France, after his death, unabridged editions of Verne’s novels became rare.

Verne’s literary reputation rose decades after his death when scholars began approaching Verne’s work with a fresh eye.  In 1935 Société Jules-Verne was founded.  The  Voyages extraordinaires were becoming literature, worthy of academic study.  Faithful, full-lengthed editions of his novels were reappearing.  By the 1960s and 70s Jules Verne had attained a cult status.  In the United States interest in Verne was piqued after the release in 1954 of a film version of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea produced by Walt Disney and starring Kirk Douglas and James Mason as Captain Nemo.  In the next few years several films loosely based on Verne’s stories followed, among them a lavish star-studded Around the World in Eighty Days, produced by Mike Todd, Twentieth-Century Fox’s Journey to the Center of the Earth also with James Mason, From the Earth to the Moon with Joseph Cotten and George Sanders, The Mysterious Island with monsters devised by technical effects master Ray Harryhausen and with Herbert Lom playing Captain Nemo, and Master of the World starring Vincent Price.  Hollywood has remained enamored with Jules Verne and now versions of his famous stories are constantly appearing.  It is through the media of film that he is best known today.  He is admired less as a literary stylist than as an uncannily accurate prophet of future technology.

Portrait of Lady Franklin

Lady Franklin  20 x 16 inches, Acrylic on cradled panel, 2019

Lady Franklin (1791- 1875) was, famously, the wife and widow of Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin.  She was born Jane Griffin, daughter of John Griffin, a wealthy silk manufacturer who would become the governor of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, one of London’s traditional guilds.  Both John and his wife Jane Guillemard, who died when she was three, had Huguenot ancestry.  Young Jane grew up comfortably in Bloomsbury, London.   When she was 12, she attended a boarding school for ladies in Chelsea.  Intelligent and well-behaved, she was an excellent student, even if she sported a mischievous streak that belied her serious demeanor.  Her greatest education was in traveling  abroad, as was the custom among the wealthy.  Jane, with her father and sisters, journeyed extensively throughout western Europe.   Restless and curious, she developed a virtual passion for travel, exploration, and adventure.

At an early age Jane Griffin showed evidence of a strong, resolute, and disciplined character.   She shunned the traditional and expected activities of the fair sex, like needlework, housekeeping, teas and balls, reading romantic novels, and gossiping.  She preferred hiking, mountain climbing, sailing.  She rigorously devoted herself to reading, studying, and attending lectures.  She took notes on everything she experienced, kept diaries and journals, and wrote copious letters. 

Although she avoided the societal obligation to marry and have children, she might have done so.  A striking, petite, blue-eyed brunette beauty with a lovely complexion she must have caught many an eye, but she obviously was much too much for the average man.  She did develop romantic interests in two scientific gentlemen, one, a medical student, the other, the noted London physician Peter Mark Roget, who is best known for the thesaurus that bears his name.  Nothing, though, came of her interests.  Nevertheless, at a time of her life when marriage was no longer expected, she felicitously  found her soul mate.  It came about thus.  A friend of hers was poetess Eleanor Anne Porden, a remarkable woman who in 1822 had published a two-volume epic poem, Coeur de Lion or The Third Crusade.  Although in poor health, the 28-year old Eleanor got married to Arctic explorer Captain John Franklin in August of 1823.  An explorer, Franklin seemed romantic to her and when they met in 1818, he inspired her poem, The Arctic Expeditions.  She had his child, but, shortly after her husband had set off on another expedition to the Arctic, she succumbed to tuberculosis and died on February 22, 1825.  

When the widowed Franklin came back from the Arctic he struck up a friendship with Jane.  Despite his adventurous profession, Franklin was a rather dull, dour, humorless fellow.  Short, portly, and balding, he was not exactly dashing.   Realizing, though, that they were kindred spirits and that their disparate personalities complemented each other, Jane and John fell in love.  On November 5, 1828 they were wed.  Jane was 36, John was 42.  Franklin had agreed to allow his first wife to continue her literary career.  And so it was understood that Jane would not be relegated to a drab domestic existence, but allowed her own pursuits.

John Franklin, born in Lincolnshire in 1786, had entered the Royal Navy as a boy.  He had gone on an exploratory voyage to Australia and had participated in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 and the Battle of New Orleans in 1815.  He would reach the rank of captain.  He had commanded a ship in an 1818 expedition that attempted to reach the North Pole.  He led two land expeditions (1819-1822 and 1825-1827) that explored northwest Canada.  These perilous ventures added a great deal to geographic knowledge of the area and made him something of a national hero.

During the early part of their marriage, the Franklins spent much time apart.  John, now Sir John — for he had been knighted in 1829 — was serving in the Mediterranean as commander of the H.M.S. Rainbow, a small 28-gun warship.  Jane, now Lady Franklin, spent a great deal of her time traveling, through Spain, Turkey, Greece, Syria, Egypt, and Palestine.  Such travel at that time entailed considerable hardship, if not danger, but also furnished much in the way of adventure and a chance to acquire knowledge not otherwise attainable.

When Sir John returned to England in 1833, he lobbied for some significant post, ideally the command of an Arctic expedition.  The government, though, at that time was no longer sponsoring polar voyages and had given up on what was seen as a vain quest for the Northwest Passage.  Instead, Sir John Franklin was given the governorship of Van Diemen’s Land, an island off the coast of southern Australia and  now known as Tasmania.  This was no plush assignment.  The island was mostly a hell hole, a refuge for convicts and paupers.

When the Franklins reached Tasmania in 1836, they immediately tried to ameliorate conditions there.  Lady Franklin was tireless in her efforts to help the female convicts and to improve relations with the aborigines.  She tried to provide education and culture for the residents and, in a word, to civilize the place.  Lady Franklin even had ambitions of setting up a university.  Many of her humanitarian efforts, however, were greeted with indifference.  She had built a classical temple to serve as a museum for Hobart (the capital), but it was a hundred years before the building was used for anything more than a storage shed for apples.  

During her years in Australia, Lady Franklin took time to travel and explore.   She journeyed through areas of Tasmania that no white woman had gone before.  Mount Wellington, Tasmania’ highest mountain at 4000, she climbed, the first woman to do so.  She was also the first woman to travel overland from Melbourne to Sydney, 440 miles as the crow flies.  She visited New Zealand and was inspired to study Maori language and customs.  (Her curiosity was boundless and her energy and vitality for a woman pushing 50 was extraordinary).

Sir John was popular with the people, but was considered an inept outsider by much of the colonial establishment that did not welcome Franklin’s reforms and resented Jane’s unorthodox conduct.  When Franklin had a dispute with his  colonial secretary, Captain John Montagu, and ended up dismissing him,  the establishment and the press took Montagu’s side.  Montagu, from a prominent family, returned to England and used his influence to have Franklin recalled and replaced. Thus the Franklins set sail for England in January 1844.

Back in England, Sir John felt that he had been disgraced and feared there was no means of recouping his reputation.  Yet, he was still renown as an heroic Arctic explorer.  Fortuitously, the British government, with a renewed interest in polar exploration, was planning a new expedition to complete the mapping of the Arctic coastline and perhaps at last find a Northwest Passage, a clear sea route from the Atlantic to the Pacific.  Although Franklin was not the first choice to command the expedition, he was offered the position and gratefully accepted it.  Sir John, however, was scarcely fit for the physically demanding task: he was almost sixty, overweight, and out of shape.   Yet, he had much experience — and certainly, guts.

The Franklin Expedition was to be a well-equipped venture: two ships, the HMS Terror and HMS Erebus, (both over 100 feet) and 134 hand-picked men.  There would be food for 3 years and a library of 1000 books.  The ships, state-of the art, were equipped with steam engines, a heating system, and boilers that distilled fresh water.

The expedition departed England on May 19, 1845, sailing to Aberdeen, the Orkney Islands, then to Greenland.  On July 26, 1845 the two ships were seen moored to an iceberg in Lancaster Sound (north of Baffin Island) by a whaler.  There was no further outside contact with the expedition.  It was later determined that Franklin’s expedition spent the winter of 1845-6 in the harbor of Beechey Island, northwest of Baffin Island.  In September of 1846 the Terror  and the Erebus became trapped in the ice off King William Island, which lies north of continental Canada, a considerable distance southwest from Beechey Island.  The ships never sailed again and the men of the expedition, some of whom tried to walk to safety, all perished of disease, exposure, and malnutrition.

Back in England, when two years had passed without word of the expedition, Lady Franklin lobbied the Admiralty to send a rescue party.  But since the expedition was supposed to have had a three year supply of provisions, an expedition to search for what would soon be called the Lost Franklin Expedition was not mounted until 1848.  There were several government sponsored expedition to find out what had happened to the Franklin; the Admiralty offered a 20,000 pound reward.   Over a period of decades Lady Franklin herself would inspire and even fund many expeditions to search for her husband. 

In 1850 evidence that Franklin’s expedition had wintered on Beechey Island was discovered.  There was still much hope that the members of the expedition had survived.  And there was much public interest in the expedition.  The Admiralty was so confident of Franklin’s survival that they promoted him to rear admiral.

In 1854 a Scottish explorer John Rae, while doing survey work for the Hudson Bay Company, learned from the native Inuits the fate of the Franklin Expedition.  He was told that he ships had become ice bound, and that the  crew had all died, but not before resorting to cannibalism.  When his report was made known, Rae was excoriated by the British public and by an outraged Lady Franklin.  The mere suggestion that Englishmen could possibly become cannibals was offensive in the extreme.  Later research, however, would confirm that some of Franklin’s men, those who had left the ice-bound ships, had indeed turned to cannibalism. 

In 1857 Lady Franklin sent out Irish polar explorer Francis McClintock in the ship Fox to replicate Franklin’s voyage.  He eventually reached King William Island and interviewed Inuits who confirmed what John Rae had previously learned.  Notes found there revealed that Franklin had died on June 11, 1847, before his surviving men left the ship and set out on foot.   (Therefore, Franklin would not have become a cannibal). When he returned to England in September 1859, McClintock was hailed as a hero who had at last found the Lost Franklin Expedition.  He was even knighted. 

The mystique of the Lost Franklin Expedition was not diminished and some of its mystery still remained. Expeditions would continue in the hope of finding not only the lost ships and men, but Franklin’s records.  More men were lost searching for the Lost Expedition than on the original expedition itself, but  much valued knowledge was gained of the seas and the islands of the area north of Canada.  Lady Franklin can claim credit for providing much of the impetus for Arctic exploration in the mid 19th Century.  It was she who encouraged the Americans to become involved in polar exploration. 

While Lady Franklin was obsessed with learning the fate of her husband  and devoted to preserving his memory, she continued to travel, often with her husband’s niece, who was her companion and secretary.   Probably no woman of her time traveled so extensively.  At one point she journeyed to the Shetland Islands, the northernmost part of England, just so that she could be as close as possible to her missing husband.   After she learned of her husband’s tragic death, she did not spend her widowhood in isolation and mourning.  When she died on July 18, 1875, at age 83, she was awaiting the return of another polar expedition she had helped to outfit.

Jane, Lady Franklin was probably the most famous widow in Victorian England, save for Queen Victoria herself.  The Royal Geographical Society awarded Lady Franklin its Founder’s Gold Medal  in 1860.  She was honored and remembered in Tasmania as well as in England.  While many geographical features have been named after Sir John Franklin, there is a Lady Franklin Bay on Ellesmere Island, north of Baffin Island.  The force of her indefatigable character, her brand of valiant femininity, and the depth of her wifely devotion continues to arouse admiration.

 Around 1850 a folk ballad named Lady Franklin’s Lament appeared and was quite popular in its day.  It has been recorded by several contemporary artists,  including Sinéad O’Connor and Connie Dover.  Much has been written of the Lost Franklin Expedition, and there are several biographies of Lady Franklin.  A 2018 AMC TV horror series The Terror presents a fictionalized account of the Franklin Expedition with Ciarán Hinds as John Franklin and Greta Scacchi as Lady Franklin.

Swiss painter Amélie Munier-Romilly executed a chalk portrait of  Jane Griffin when she was 24.  Another chalk drawing was made of her by Australia’s first professional artist Thomas Bock when she was 46, but Jane, camera shy, had no photo portraits taken of her.

The ships Terror and Erebus were only recently located. The submerged wreck of the Erebus, which Franklin captained,  was discovered in 2014 in Queen Maud’s Bay, west of King William Island.  The wreck of the Terror was found in 2016 off the southwest coast of King William Island, 57 miles of south of where it had been abandoned and 31 miles from the Erebus.  Artifacts have been recovered from both wrecks.  Great Britain claimed possession of the artifacts, but conferred ownership of the ships to the Canadian and Inuit governments.

In 1906 the long-sought Northwest Passage was finally traversed by sea.  Franklin’s dream was achieved by the greatest polar explorer of them all, Norwegian Roald Amundsen, who would be the first to reach the South Pole and among the first to fly over the North Pole.  Unlike Franklin and others, Amundsen used a small boat with a shallow draft and a crew of only 6 men.  But like Franklin, he was iced in on the shore of King William Island.  He remained there for two years.  Only after a third winter did he eventually reach Nome, Alaska.  From there Amundsen, alone, skied 500 miles east to Eagle, Alaska, on the Canadian border, the nearest telegraph office from which he could announce his success to the world.  He then skied the 500 miles back!  The expedition took three and half years.  The passage Amundsen had discovered was, though, too shallow and ice prone to be of commercial value.   (There is a thought that with recent warming of the polar regions an accessible Arctic passage from Atlantic to Pacific might at last become a reality).

Portrait of Chief Tecumseh

Chief Tecumseh 20 x 16 inches  Acrylic on Panel 2019

Chief Tecumseh (1768 - 1813),  one of the most celebrated Native American chiefs, was born in a Shawnee village in what is now Ohio to Pukeshinwa, a minor war chief of the Kispoko band.  Tecumseh’s name means “blazing comet”, “shooting star,” or something to that effect.  It is commonly, but erroneously believed that he was born in Chillicothe, Ohio.  It is more likely that his birthplace was Old Piqua on the Mad River in west central Ohio.

In 1774 when Tecumseh was still a small child, his father Pukeshinwa participated in the Battle of Point Pleasant, the major engagement of Lord Dunmore’s War.  Scotsman James Murray, the Earl of Dunmore was the royal governor of Virginia and hoped to extend the colony’s territory westward into the Ohio Valley.  This was permitted by a treaty recently made with the Iroquois.  But the Shawnee tribe, which actually lived in the area, was not consulted and objected to abandoning land they considered ancestral hunting grounds.  To lay claim to the territory and to protect the white settlers who had already moved there, the English/Virginians mounted an invasion.  They approached from two directions.  Lord Dunmore himself commanded the force that departed from Fort Pitt (now rechristened Fort Dunmore), located at the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers, the source of the Ohio River and the site of modern Pittsburgh.  Another force of 1000 men led by Colonel Andrew Lewis, a veteran of the earlier French and Indian War, came from the southeast and made its way down the Kanawha River, a tributary of the Ohio River flowing through the central part of what is now West Virginia.  The Shawnee found few allies in their opposition to the Virginians, but mustered a fighting force of maybe 500 men commanded by Hokoleskwa, or Cornstalk.  Cornstalk, hoping to avert the meeting of the two Virginian armies, attacked Colonel Lewis’ force before it could cross the Ohio River.  On October 10, 1774, at Point Pleasant a day-long battle consisting  mostly of hand-to-hand combat raged.  The Virginians suffered over 200 casualties, with 75 men killed, but the Shawnees were eventually driven from the field with greater losses.  Among the dead was Pukeshinwa.  Chief Cornstalk acknowledged defeat and signed a treaty ceding control of the Ohio River to the Virginians, paving the way for white settlement of Ohio and Kentucky. 

During the American Revolution Cornstalk maintained neutrality, even as many of his people sought to use the war between white men as an opportunity to exact vengeance and reclaim lost lands.  When, in the autumn of  1777, he visited Fort Randolph, now Point Pleasant, West Virginia, to parlay, he was arrested without cause or authorization by the fort’s commander.  Some soldiers in the fort, outraged by the murder of a militiaman by some unidentified Indians, brutally murdered Cornstalk, his son, and two other Shawnees.  This was a great loss not only to the Shawnee, but to the white men who had admired Cornstalk and had been impressed by his dignity, judgment, and oratorical ability.  Patrick Henry,  governor of a now independent Virginia, was outraged and put the assassins on trial.  However, their fellow soldiers would not testify against the killers and the guilty men were shamefully acquitted.

There is a legend that Point Pleasant, West Virginia, was supposedly cursed by Cornstalk before his death, though there is no contemporary account of this.  At any rate, the area has long been a place of misfortunes and disasters.  In late 1966 and throughout 1967 there were a large number of sightings of a large man-like, red-eyed anomalous flying creature dubbed the Mothman.  Never satisfactorily explained, it was seen as an omen of disaster, a harbinger of the collapse of Point Pleasant’s Silver Bridge, which spanned the Ohio River, connecting Point Pleasant WV and Gallipolis OH.  The disaster, which occurred on December 15, 1967, resulted in the death of 46 people.  It is connected by some with the Mothman appearances and the curse of Cornstalk.

It was the death of his father and the assassination of Chief Cornstalk that colored Tecumseh’s whole life and spawned his inimical attitude toward the white man.  After the death of Pukeshinwa, his wife Methoataske joined Shawnees that journeyed West to settle in Missouri.  Her son Tecumseh was left to be raised in the family of his older sister.  He was taught to be a hunter and a warrior by his older brother Chiksika.  They lived first in a village of Chillicothe (in Ohio) under Chief Blackfish, who had defied Chief Cornstalk and refused to accept the terms of the treaty he had made with the Virginians.  After the murder of Cornstalk, Blackfish had made raids upon white men living in Kentucky and had captured the famous frontiersman Daniel Boone.  Boone, though, a great hunter, was admired by the Shawnee and actually made a member of the tribe, even as he was kept a prisoner.  After a few months, Boone escaped when he found out that Blackfish was planning an attack upon Boonesborough.  (This was a village Boone had founded, one of the first permanent white settlements west of the Appalachian Mountains).  Blackfish laid siege to Boonesborough in September 1778, but despite the advantage of numbers, the siege was woefully ineffective, and he was unable to defeat Boone’s force, which consisted of only a dozen white men, but more than 400 Indian allies.   In retaliation for the attack on Boonesborough, Kentucky militiaman raided Chillicothe in spring of 1779 and left Blackfish with a leg wound that would eventually cause his death.

Subsequently, Tecumseh’s family settled in another Shawnee village, which, worse luck, was destroyed in 1780 by forces under the commander of the Kentucky militia, George Rogers Clark.  Tecumseh  was witness to the Battle of Piqua, a large Shawnee settlement of 3000 persons.  The fierce battle and the din of artillery frightened the 12-year old boy and he fled.  He would never be frightened or run away again.

The family of Tecumseh next moved to Sanding Stone, but Clark followed and attacked the village in November 1782.  Next they relocated to another Shawnee village near what is now Bellefontaine, Ohio in west central Ohio. 

At the end of the Revolutionary War many Shawnee were still determined to evict the white man from their country.  At age 15 Tecumseh joined a band of fellow Shawnee warriors who attacked flat boats proceeding down the Ohio River and became a bane to river traffic.  By 1788 Tecumseh, who began to show leadership skills, headed his own guerrilla band.  Mentored by his older brother Chiksika, he joined him in journeying south to join the Chickamauga Cherokee who were waging war against the new United States of America.  On the trip south Tecumseh fell off his horse and broke his leg.  It never mended properly and he sported a limp for the rest of his life.  During his two years with the Cherokee, Tecumseh took a wife.  She bore him a daughter, but he did not stay with them.

Tecumseh and Chiksika were a small part of a widespread uprising of Native American tribes that instigated the Northwest Indian War, lasting from 1785 to 1795.  In the treaty with Great Britain granting its independence, the United States was given sovereignty over Ohio and  Illinois, what was then called the Northwest Territory.  But its authority was not accepted by the Indian tribes.  President George Washington ordered military action to subjugate the Northwest Territory.  The native tribes, though, were able to unite as never before and were still aided by the mischief-making British who sought to undermine the new nation they had reluctantly acknowledged.  The ill-trained United States Army, a collection of ragtag militias, and its uncertain Indian allies were at first an ineffectual fighting force, but after 1792, when General “Mad” Anthony Wayne took charge of the army, the tide turned. 

In September of 1792 Tecumseh’s brother Chiksika was killed in a raid.  Tecumseh filled his place and assumed leadership of a band of Shawnee and Chickamauga raiders.  Back in Ohio, he participated in many of the battles of the Northeast Indian War, including the last one, the Battle of Fallen Timbers on August 20, 1794.   Near what is now Toledo, Ohio, United States forces under General Wayne, supported by Kentucky militiamen, 3000 men, faced warriors of the Indian confederacy and a company of British troops, about 1300 men, on land recently ravaged by a tornado.  Although the battle lasted only an hour and only about 75 men were killed, it was a decisive victory for the United States.  The subsequent Treaty of Greenville (which Tecumseh refused to sign or honor) and further treaties affirmed American control over the Northwest Territory.   Indian tribes ceded most of Ohio and areas of Indiana for what amounted to $20,000 in goods.  There was peace in the area for a time.

Tecumseh married and in 1796 had a son who would be reared by Tecumseh’s sister when the marriage failed.   Tecumseh nurtured his grievance against the white man and hoped for the opportunity to fight against them again.

It would be Tecumseh’s younger brother Lalawethika who would now have a profound impact upon his life.  Lalawethika, as a young man, was an aloof and troubled introvert, a failure and an alcoholic.  Somehow he turned his life around and became a prophet, assuming the name  Tenskwatawa, meaning “open door.”  He preached that the Indian should reject the outsiders and return to a traditional way of living, eschew the customs of the white men, their manner of dress, as well as firearms and alcohol.  No more should he give away his lands.  He also subscribed to the view of earlier Native American prophets, that if the Indian remains uncorrupted by the Europeans and their ways then the Great Spirit will send an apocalypse to wipe them out.  The Prophet Tenskwatawa set up a settlement for his followers near what is now Greenville, in southwest Ohio.  Tecumseh was skeptical at first, but joined the group when Tenskwatawa accurately predicted the solar eclipse of June 16, 1806.

Tenskwatawa, a fanatic, was a stern and brutal leader who demonized anyone who did not accept his teaching.  He caused tensions not only between the Native Americans and the white settlers, but among the Shawnee themselves.  The Shawnee chief Black Hoof, once a fierce warrior who had fought against the Americans at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, realized that it was futile to make war against the white man and that survival was contingent upon accepting his culture.  His best efforts to preserve peace, however, were being undermined by Tenskwatawa’s radicalism.  In 1808 he demanded that Tenskwatawa and his people move away.  They did and settled just north of what is now Lafayette, Indiana, at the confluence of the Wabash and Tippecanoe Rivers.  The settlement was called Prophetstown (by Europeans).  The community was a great success and attracted not only Shawnees, but members of the Delaware, the Potawatomi, and many other tribes.  Its size, 3000 inhabitants, soon became a source of alarm to the white settlers.  Of concern as well was Tecumseh himself, the obvious military leader of the community, and his professed scheme of forming a pan-Indian alliance that would expel the white man from the country.

After the governor of the Indiana Territory, William Henry Harrison, negotiated another treaty, the Treaty of Fort Wayne, that ceded more Indian land to the white man, Tecumseh was outraged, especially since this involved land belonging to tribes some of whose members were part of the Prophetstown community.  He rightly protested the methods of negotiation: Indian representatives were often plied with alcohol before treaty talks and were frequently personally bribed.  He regarded signers of the treaty as traitors to their race and excoriated them.  Using his considerable skills as an orator, Tecumseh sought to persuade his fellow Indians to acknowledge that they were a single people, not just a collection of discreet tribes, that they all held the land in common ownership — and, most importantly, they should resist the white man.

In August of 1810 Tecumseh, with an entourage of 400 warriors, dressed in war paint, confronted Governor Harrison at his plantation-like home Grouseland at Vincennes, on the Wabash River in southwestern Indiana.  Tecumseh (who did not speak English) demanded that he rescind the Treaty of Fort Wayne and other treaties through which the Indians were compelled to cede land.  Remarkably unintimidated, Harrison, a proud Virginia aristocrat, argued that he had no business interfering with relations between the United States government and individual tribes, that the Indian tribes did not constitute a single nation, that the terms of the treaties concerned only the signatories, that the tribes in question were satisfied with the terms and resented his unwelcome interference.  Tecumseh made an eloquent response that Harrison did not understand.   Tecumseh’s people became agitated and seemed to threaten violence.  Harrison was forced to draw his sword and his guards brandished  their weapons.  A chief of the Potawatomi, Winamac defused the tense situation and urged the Indian warriors to leave in peace since they had come in peace.  (Tecumseh would later call him a “black dog” for taking the white man’s side).  Tecumseh, with a parting shot, told Harrison he would seek an alliance with the British if the Treaty of Fort Wayne was not nullified.

There were further talks between Tecumseh and Harrison, but they were fruitless. Tecumseh  insisted that he wanted only peace, but his actions invited suspicion.  Harrison, remaining unimpressed and unsympathetic, felt that Tecumseh was merely spoiling for a fight.

Tecumseh traveled south to try to recruit to his side the so-called civilized Indian tribes, the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw,  Creek, and Seminoles, who tended to favor at least some assimilation into European culture.  It was a failure.  Although Tecumseh was indeed a persuasive orator, he possessed an abrasive arrogance that turned off some Native American leaders.   In particular the great Choctaw chief  Pushmataha strongly rebuffed his scheme and argued the cause of the United States government.  Only  a break-off faction of the Creeks, the so-called Red Sticks, were receptive to his message of resistance and war.  The Red Sticks would incite the Creek War of 1813, which involved the United States and Great Britain, but which was primarily a civil war among the Creeks.  The Red Sticks were eventually defeated by state militias commanded by Major General Andrew Jackson and Choctaws led by Pushmataha at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, in east central Alabama, on March 27, 1814.  The Creeks were forced to cede more territory to the United States government and, later, most of the tribe was transported across the Mississippi to be settled in Indian Territory.

William Henry Harrison secured approval from the Department of War  to take military action against the Shawnee when it was learned that they had formed an alliance with the British and had smuggled in firearms from Canada — in contradiction to Tenskwatawa’s former prohibition on using white man’s weapons.  Knowing that Tecumseh was absent, Harrison marched a force of 1000 men to Prophetstown to intimidate the Shawnees into abiding by the peace.  He arranged to parlay with Tenskwatawa on November 6, 1811.  Instead of going to the conference, Tenskwatawa, in direct contradiction to Tecumseh’s orders, launched a preemptive strike upon Harrison’s force.  Tenskwatawa commanded 500 warriors of the Shawnee and other tribes, but the prophet was no general and exercised imperfect control over his diverse forces.   The attack was foiled when Harrison’s army held its ground.  Harrison lost 62 men, the Indians probably less.  Tenskwatawa had promised his people that a spell he had cast would render the red men invincible.  It hadn’t worked.  Tenskwatawa blamed his wife for the ineffective spell and promised to cast another, while urging his men to make another attack.  They, however, would have none of it.  Instead, the Indians abandoned Prophetstown.  Harrison’s forces burned it to the ground and destroyed stored food supplies — but did spare an elderly Indian woman who had been left behind.

This engagement, though hardly decisive, was the beginning of the end for Tecumseh’s confederation and his dream of expelling the white man from Indian lands.  It was later ballyhooed as the Battle of Tippecanoe when the presumed military hero William Henry Harrison ran for President in 1840.  (He even called himself “Old Tippecanoe”).  The battle resulted in Tenskwatawa losing prestige and enraging his brother.  It’s a moot question how important a role he would continue to play in the Indian Confederation.  Scorned and ostracized, he moved to Canada.  Nature did come to Tecumseh’s aid, though,  when the New Madrid earthquake of December 1811 and the appearance of the great Comet of 1811, visible in the fall of that year, were interpreted by some as signs that Tecumseh was fulfilling the will of the Great Spirit.

In June of 1812 the United States and Great Britain formally took up arms and the conflict with Tecumseh, a British ally, merged with this war.  When a British force Under Major-General Sir Isaac Brock invaded the Northwest Territory from Canada, Tecumseh, with 400 warriors, joined it.  At the siege of Fort Detroit the appearance of Tecumseh’s Indians created great alarm.  The impression that there was a greater force than there was caused the fort commander, Brigadier General William Hull, to surrender Detroit in August 16, 1812.  (Hull, a hero of the Revolutionary War, was court-martialed for cowardice and sentenced to death, but President Madison commuted the sentence to dismissal from the service).   Tecumseh was either made a brigadier general in the British army or at least regarded as such.  He did not, however, wear the British uniform, although the most famous depiction of him shows him doing so.

In April 1813 British forces, supported by Tecumseh and his strong supporter Wyandot Chief Roundhead with their 1250 warriors, besieged Fort Meigs.  The fort in northwestern Ohio across the Maumee River from the site of the Battle of the Fallen Timbers, had been newly constructed and was commanded by William Henry Harrison, now a Major General in command of the Army of the Northwest.   Harrison’s forces suffered heavy casualties, but the British were unsuccessful in taking Fort Meigs and raised the siege on May 7th.  Afterwards, American prisoners, who were supposed to be exchanged, were being killed by the Indians. It is reported that Tecumseh, who apparently disapproved of unnecessary cruelty (unlike, sadly, most of his race), berated the British commander, Major-General Henry Proctor, for not stopping it.  He put an end to it himself, supposedly telling Proctor, “I conquer to save, you to kill.”  This act is seen as evidence to support the later contention that Tecumseh was a “noble savage.”

On September 10, 1813 American naval commander Oliver Hazard Perry scored a victory at the Battle of Lake Erie and accepted the surrender of an entire British squadron.  He reported to Harrison, “We have met the enemy and they are ours.”  This disaster, from the British perspective,  left control of the lake in the hands of the Americans and imperiled General Proctor’s position and supply lines.  The British commander, therefore, decided to withdraw to Canada and not risk any further engagements. Like the British soldiers who served under Proctor, Tecumseh had little use for him and strongly disagreed with the decision.  Tecumseh wanted to press the fight against the Americans and retake tribal lands, but he reluctantly followed the British in their retreat.  He and his ally Roundhead could do nothing else.  But at Tecumseh’s insistence, the British, with their troops ill-fed and demoralized, did make a defensive stand, at Moraviantown, an Indian settlement on the Thames River in southwestern Ontario. 

General Proctor had only 800 troops, supported by 500 Indian warriors.  Harrison, who was in pursuit of the British, commanded a force numbering over 3700 men, including 1000 cavalry, mostly Kentucky volunteers under Colonel Richard Mentor Johnson, a member of the House of Representatives.  He had support as well from the United States Navy on nearby Lake Erie.

After dawn on October 5, 1813 the British attempted to draw a line of battle around a single 6-pound canon they had, while Tecumseh’s forces more astutely assembled in a swamp.  At the first charge of the Americans the British forces either threw down their weapons or fled, having the opportunity to fire their canon only once.  The Indian forces fought valiantly on, but futilely.  Both Tecumseh and Roundhead were killed.  When word was received that their chiefs had been lost, the Indians gave up the fight.  The Americans had won the battle.

There were differing reports as to casualties, but they were light, a handful of Americas and few dozen of the enemy.  Harrison’s forces captured almost 600 British soldiers, though.  Despite the scale of combat the Battle of the Thames was a pivotal engagement in the War of 1812 and a decisive engagement in the war against the Tecumseh confederation.
 
How Tecumseh came to his death is not known, but there were several who claimed to be his slayer and several contradictory accounts of his death.  Colonel Richard Mentor Johnson, while on horseback, had fired a fatal pistol shot at an Indian who was attacking him with a tomahawk.  He boasted that this had been Tecumseh, although the dead man was more likely a Potawatomi brave.  The reputation for being the man who killed Tecumseh was helpful to Johnson in his election to the Vice Presidency of the United States in 1836.

After the battle Harrison marched back to Fort Detroit.  There he received the surrender of demoralized Indians that had opposed him.  He simply told them to go home.  With the death of Tecumseh the Indian Confederation had collapsed, never to be resurrected.  The conclusion of the War of 1812 found the United States of America in control of the Northwest Territory  with most of its Native American inhabitants soon to be banished beyond the Mississippi River. 

While William Henry Harrison was immediately proclaimed a hero for his defeat of the British and the Indian Confederation, he quarreled with President Madison and resigned his commission as major general. 
Later, apologies were made and Harrison was awarded a gold medal by Congress.  Continuing in public life, William Henry Harrison ran unsuccessfully for President as a Northern Whig in 1836, but he and his running mate John Tyler won in landslide against President van Buren and Vice President Richard Mentor Johnson in 1840. Harrison, the wealthy southern aristocrat, portrayed himself in the campaign as a humble frontiersman and used the log cabin as a symbol of his candidacy.  He particularly emphasized his military career and his role as the heroic vanquisher of Tecumseh.  “Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too” is still remembered as his winning campaign slogan.  At his March 4th inauguration the hale and hardy 68-year-old refused to wear a hat or an overcoat as he delivered a long, two-hour address in cold, miserable weather.  Later, on March 26 he was caught in a heavy rain and came down with a cold which worsened to what doctors thought was pneumonia.  Medical treatments, which included bloodletting, only exacerbated his weakened condition, which was probably due to typhoid from the bad drinking water in Washington.  William Henry Harrison died on April 4, 1841 after only a month in office, serving the shortest term of any American President.  He was succeeded by his Vice-President,  John Tyler.  Harrison left a large family and one of his grandsons,  Benjamin Harrison, would be elected the 23rd President in 1888.

Tenskwatawa remained in Canada for some time after the defeat of Tecumseh.  At the request of the government, he return to the United States to assist in the removal of the Shawnee people to a new reservation in Kansas, near Kansas City.  Though unable to regain his stature as a revered prophet, he lived there until he died in 1836 at the age of 61.   George Caitlin, who specialized in Native American subjects, painted his portrait from life in 1830. Although he had exercised considerable influence for a time, he was generally regarded not only by the white men but by most of his own people as a charlatan and an opportunist.

In death Tecumseh became a legendary figure.  With his Indian Confederation no longer in existence and no longer a threat, white people found it comfortable to admire him.  For example, a judge of the Ohio Supreme Court, Charles Robert Sherman, named his son, the future Civil War general, “William Tecumseh Sherman.”  Although Chief Tecumseh was a great orator, the speeches attributed to him are mostly bogus.  A political as well as a military leader in more than a tribal sense, Tecumseh was unique among Native American chiefs in the 19th Century.  He possessed a vision that was more than parochial, a world-view that was vaguely modern.  While his ambitions failed, they can be regarded as, if not noble, at least understandable and worthy of sympathy.

As part of the Tecumseh legend, it has been theorized that he put an Indian curse on William Henry Harrison and his Presidential successors.  The curse demands that Presidents elected in years ending in zero (every 20 years) will die in office.  Curiously, the curse has been accurate: William Henry Harrison (1840) died of illness. Abraham Lincoln (1860) James Garfield (1880), and William McKinley (2000) were all assassinated.  Warren G. Harding (1920) died of a heart attack and Franklin D. Roosevelt (1940) passed away of a cerebral hemorrhage.  John F. Kennedy (1960) was also assassinated.  The curse eventually lost its potency, though.  Ronald Reagan (1980) was shot by a would-be assassin, but survived, and George W. Bush (2000) was unharmed when a dud grenade was thrown at him, a little-known assassination attempt made in the Republic of Georgia in 2005.  Only Zachary Taylor, who was elected in 1848 and died in office, does not fit the pattern.  However compelling the supposed curse, there is no evidence whatsoever that either Tecumseh or Tenskwatawa was connected with it.