Part III

Lure: (noun) Something that attracts or entices somebody to do something or go somewhere. 

A question for those of you not born on or near this island: What lured you to Georgetown? It's a favorite question of mine when in conversation with others who call Georgetown home.  The answers are always uniquely personal, yet have remarkably consistent themes, such as:  “My family has owned a summer place here for years”, or “We came for a visit a number of years ago and …”, or “My family’s from Maine and I’ve always wanted to move back”.  More than 20 years ago, Jim and I were Mainers searching for our little piece of the Maine coast.

The discovery of Georgetown by the White family - Clarence, Sr., Jane, and their three sons – happened in a way not unlike others’ experience.  They came to visit a friend.  According to Pictorialism into Modernism: The Clarence H. White School of Photography,

“In 1908 and 1909 he [Clarence White, Sr.] took the family to F. Holland Day’s  ‘Castle Guiney’1 on Georgetown Island, Maine, a site Jane White called ‘the promised land’”.2

In his book We Summer in Maine, Nathanial Hasenfus describes how it was also Day who introduced the Reverend Waldo C. Hasenfus, his brother, to Georgetown.  The Hasenfus descendents reside here still.

Getting to Georgetown was an adventure.  Today’s visitors might pack up the car or catch a flight.  But those who watched the 1929-to-1937 Clarence White, Jr. films know that the White family’s trips from New York City to this island often involved a succession of taxis, steamships, trains, and the hardly-a-luxury-ride autos of the time.  Clarence Sr. died in 1925, but Jane White and her family summered in Georgetown for many years. Friends and relatives from both the White and Royer families would treasure their visits to Georgetown for more than 80 years. 

Once one has been captured by this place, the next step is to find a way to earn a living or reorder one’s life to be here as much as possible.  Which is what the White family did by operating a seasonal school from 1910-1915.

In 1910 White purchased a neglected farmhouse3 near Day’s home for $100 and opened a summer school called Seguinland School of Photography. Students boarded at the nearby Seguinland Hotel; a neighboring cottage4 became a studio and darkroom; and Day, [Gertrude] Kasebier5, and Max Weber came to critique student work.  This ‘working vacation’ allowed the Whites to enjoy an upper middle-class luxury that they could not otherwise afford”.6

In 1916 the summer school moved to Connecticut, much closer to New York City where two years earlier Clarence Sr. had opened his School of Photography in Manhattan.  Some forty years later, after the NYC White School had closed, Clarence Jr. and Ruth tried to make Georgetown their year-round home by living at the family cottage and operating their own photography studio in Bath.  The business lasted only 3 years, but they, like many others, returned here for good upon retirement in 1972.

In the GHS archives is a June 6,1944 letter from Ruth to Clarence Jr. who was stationed with the Navy in Washington, DC. Months later their correspondence would make reference to their plans to establish a school of their own in Maine.  But perhaps the seeds for such a plan were sown in this earlier letter. Ruth clearly had fond memories of their work as a team, with Jane, to operate the Manhattan photography school that his father founded.

“Also, I just read the [Alfred] Stieglitz article in the Post…Enjoyed it as I always do, especially seeing the mention of your father, Day, and Frank Eugene.  And as always I’m a little frightened by the way things change and old things and people go on their way and we are left to carry on.  It seems quite a responsibility after all, doesn’t it?  Reading about the old Secession and 291 [Stieglitz’s Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession located at 291 Fifth Avenue] etc. makes me think of the 30’s and the school and your mother and all.  It just goes to show that even when you feel dissatisfied with some things, there is good in any time.  We used to be tired out by the school demands, etc., thinking that we’d be better off living elsewhere, having more of a home life [Ruth and Clarence lived in the same building as the White school, as did Jane White] separate from the school, etc.  And yet there was much that was nice about the years when things were going well there at 460 [460 West 144^th Street where the School was located from 1920-1940]and I often get a little homesick for it and would sort of like to run up the old stairs.  I can begin to understand why people as they grow old get nostalgic stirrings and like to look back at the past. Though I’m not old yet I hope [she was 37], I do get sentimental about it and many other things…There is so much about your father’s work and times that has always seemed really close and now it seems to fade more quickly.”

Although Ruth and Clarence Jr. are gone now and the White family no longer owns the Popple Beach home, their legacy and that of the house remain.  David Summers, one of Ruth’s former high school French students, visited the Whites in Georgetown several times between 1978 and 1988.  Recently he wrote to me the following:

“What's more, despite the extraordinary beauty of the site and the Clarence White Sr. images which mark an important chapter in the history of American photography, it is the PEOPLE inside that house that I remember most -- the hosts, the guests, the conversations, the wonderful soups on an autumn evening, the warmth of that place. In my mind's eye, I can also see the place where you turn in the drive from the main road -- the anticipation and adventure of a visit to Ruth and Clarence began at precisely that point.”

Mr. Summers and his wife, Bea, currently are with the American Consulate in Chiang Mai, Thailand.  But if history is any indicator, they, like others before them, may someday be lured to Georgetown, a century after Jane White found her promised land.

At the Georgetown Historical Society you can see Clarence H. White: The Reverence for Beauty and The Art of Pictorial Photography 1890-1925.  Both were written and donated to the GHS by Peter C. Bunnell, retired professor and former Curator of Photography, The Art Museum, Princeton University.