ART IN THE AGE OF MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION

"A Titan Courage": The Steel Will of New Hampshire Women

This is a portrait of Katherine Sleeper Walden. Much has been written in local history on this Founding Mother.

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On Katherine Sleeper Walden from The Tamworth Narrative, 1958…

Tamworth village has its Parson Hidden, South Tamworth is Larkin Mason, Chocorua village its Elder Runnells. Wonalancet has likewise a central figure in its story whose hand almost fashioned its very fabric. A mere hard-working woman would not ordinarily have had so profound an effect on her surroundings, but it must be remembered of Kate Sleeper that since Bradbury Jewell she was practically the first outsider of either sex when she settled in this pocket of the hills in 1890, as well as the first inhabitant with a talent for organizing, and further, that she was a woman of exceptional charm and originality no matter in what society she might be placed. Her grandfather had been editor of the Boston Transcript, and young as she was, she had worked as a Boston reporter. Her successes were the more impressive because of her disarming blonde frailness which seemed to belie forcefulness completely. But she had a titan courage; she met head-on her multitudinous problems whether personal or mechanical, asking neither quarter nor sympathy. With all this when over eighty she once confesses that she had always been afraid; every time she had to walk down the road after dark, she was in terror of “the cut-throats that I saw lurking behind every bush.” Yet she seconded her man in his will to see the far places of the earth, and carried on without him for periods of years. When in 1890, but tradition eighteen years old but apparently nearer twenty-five, she took the notion to stay and live in the back country where she had come to get well, she rose out of her hammock in Lucy Blake’s orchard near Tamworth, to look at farms and buy one.

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I love this account, and I love to think of what it must have been like in this town, before it was really a town. To move from a bustling city to nearly impenetrable wilderness. AND, to not take flack from the politicking of men of the time. To go it alone and build a community out of sheer willpower…

The night hours have been bringing thunder and lightning storms, recently, and I stretch out on my mattress, alone in this incredibly old house, and wonder if I am doing what Katherine Walden did sometimes while her partner (Arthur T. Walden, of sled dog breeding fame) was off trotting the globe. I have met women here whose husbands travel all over the Northeast, taking jobs where they arise. They “hold down the fort” here. Many run their own small businesses while growing their own food, raising their own chickens, mowing their own lawns, and rearing a roost of well-behaved, intelligent children.

So in a sense, not much has changed with New Hampshire women since the 1700s.

Exhibit I: Salvaged Barn Wood Desk

In a town as small as Tamworth, news travels fast. My arrival has not gone unnoticed. When suggesting fun things to do, many statements are prefaced with, “Well, I’m sure it’s nothing like you’re used to…” or “It’s not like in a big city, but…” In this way, I feel an overwhelming need to prove myself to be a fast-learner and hard worker who really understands and appreciates self-sufficiency. This new physical and psychological environment is my own sort of wilderness.

If I dig in my heels hard and commit to learning new things every day, I have a feeling that the stony soil will start to give way for some new roots.

Exhibit II: Hens & Chickens, a “succulent” plant that grows in rocks?! Very thematically appropriate.