Mourning the Myth

by Bethany Groff Dorau, Executive Director

I am an accidental liar (I have confessed this already here).

So are you, probably.

But since I am in a position where I am listened to, generally (unless you are my 19-year-old daughter), and presumed to be telling the truth, this is a painful admission. The revelation of my most recent lie particularly rankled because I should have known better. 

Here’s the scene. Ghlee Woodworth, a ray of hyper-energized sunshine in our lives, dashes into the museum office, covers a mind-blowing array of topics (ground-penetrating radar, a neighbor’s puppy, owls) in exactly three minutes, and then puts down the bowl of a clay pipe on my desk and explodes back out the door. She jogs on the beach. That must be her secret, I think. I struggle to keep up. 

The clay pipe bowl was found by a maintenance worker in Highland Cemetery, likely pushed up and out by the deep freeze. It had legible marking that identified it as a Glasgow pipe from the 19th century, made at the factory of William White. You can see the "W.WH..." in the photo.  

Clay pipes were widely smoked, particularly by working people (yes, men and women), before the mass production of cigarettes in the 20th century. Everything I’ve said so far is true, but here comes the lie. “Pipe stem fragments were the cigarettes butts of their time, as people sharing a pipe would snap off the end and toss it before passing it to the next person.”

This 17th century woman has the decency to keep her germ-riddled pipe to herself.  “A Woman Seated Smoking a Pipe” by Gabriel Metsu, 1629-1667, Manchester City Galleries.

I have no idea where I heard this, but I announced this “fact” with great confidence before crinkling up my forehead and thinking about it. One of the lasting images I remember from my Little House on the Prairie books is how often everyone shared a water dipper in school, at home, on the train with strangers. Why on earth would people think to snap off the end of a pipe? There was no germ theory of disease. I felt an all-too familiar sinking feeling. 

In my feeble effort to verify this “fact”, I stumbled upon a book that is at this very moment insulting and infuriating me. It is called Death by Petticoat: American History Myths Debunked, by Mary Miley Theobald, published under the auspices of Colonial Williamsburg. Let me just say, if I ever run into Mary Miley Theobald in a dark alley, there may be a certain amount of unpleasantness

To set the stage, Ms. Theobald lays blame at the feet of my fellow museum professionals. “It is hard to visit a museum today without encountering these myths.” Surely not at OUR museum!

Not so fast. Here, in order, are myths I believed to be true until I was today years old:

Myth #5: men posed with one hand inside their vest to save money since portrait artists gave a discount if they didn't have to go to the extra work of painting hands.

Makes sense, right? Until you look at all the bajillionaires with their hands in their vests.   

Myth #29: Women used arsenic to lighten their complexion.

Close – it was poisonous lead.

Myth #31: Cooks used spices to disguise the flavor of rotting food.

Well, maybe sometimes, but in general, the people who could afford spices could also afford non-rotting food.

Myth #45: The position of a horse’s leg on an equestrian statue tells how the rider died.

I guess not. You have a 1 out of 3 chance of getting this right when viewing a statue, but there is no consistent evidence of this as an intentional practice.

There were plenty more of the 63 myths contained in this volume that I believed at some point in my career, like the one about how beds were shorter because people slept propped up on pillows. I was disabused of this while working for Historic New England, when Abbot Lowell Cummings, former president of (then) SPNEA, handed me a tape measure and told me to measure a bed at the Coffin House. It was about as long as my bed at home, just appeared shorter because of pillowy coverlets and tall posts. Abbot carried a tape measure for just such an occasion. Most beds were made to fit the needs of the family, he said, and would be longer or shorter as needed, but adult beds are almost always over 6’ long.

As I write this, I remember how it felt to have Abbot, a venerated expert in early New England everything, correct my information in front of a group of people. Honestly, it felt – just fine, and I am a sensitive sort. Abbot had a wonderful way of making people feel like he was so excited to share some new bit of information with them – like it was the most natural thing in the world to believe something that is demonstrably untrue until someone shines a bit more light. For Abbot, knowledge was a gift, not a weapon. 

Abbot Lowell Cummings in the pulpit of another of my favorite places, Rocky Hill Meeting House. Courtesy of Historic New England.

These myths have a purpose, of course. They make sense and are often based on reasonable observations. They seem to offer a bit of code to unlock the secret messages of the past. And they are good stories, often far more interesting than admitting that something is unknown, or qualifying a statement until it becomes an exercise in pedanticism.

Aside from the shade Ms. Theobald cast on museums, I found myself loving this book. I would be happy to lend you a copy. Most of the “myths” she lists are neither wrong nor right. They are just not applicable to large groups of people. Some people probably did sleep propped up on pillows. Some people died young. Some people were shorter “back then”. Mary Miley Theobald did the hard work of saying “well, sometimes, by some people”, which, in my experience is much harder to do than dispensing generalizations. 

But the acknowledgement of the complexity of human experience over time will save the world, I think. Many terrible things have been done by people who believed in eternal, unchangeable “facts” applied to large groups of other people. It is much more difficult to allow for nuance, to acknowledge what an impact race, class, gender, personality, experience, etc. has (and had) on how people live.

Also, in case you were wondering, Venetian blinds were not invented in Venice.

You’re welcome.