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The Preservation Legacy of Charles William Eliot
The Reverend Peter J. Gomes
TThe following is an excerpt of a speech given
by The Reverend Peter J. Gomes to Friends of
Acadia at the home of Gail and Hamilton
Clark in Northeast Harbor on August 21,
2007, in honor of Acadia founder Charles
W. Eliot.
Gail and Hamilton Clark, center and left, hosted The Reverend Peter J. Gomes at their home in Northeast
Harbor to celebrate Charles W. Eliot, one of the founding fathers of Acadia National Park. |
President Eliot was concerned for the
well-being of the natural environment
in the place he discovered as an avid
and effective sailor along the Maine coast, and
like my ancestor, Estevan Gomes, he too
discovered these rocky islands and the mainland,
and on the inspiration of his son was
persuaded to buy property here in which to
summer. Eliot in Maine is a gripping saga. If
you think about it, it is very hard to imagine
a man less suited to the relative crudities of
this rugged coastline; it is hard to sort out
these two things and see them together, but
somehow they appealed to President Eliot. I
think that the austerity of the landscape
appealed to him, for there is nothing false or
artificial about this; it is rugged, natural, and
it has a kind of dignity and grandeur that artifice
could not improve. That appealed to
Eliot's aesthetic, and sense of austerity, and
also to what almost became a signature term
to him, the "durable values of life," the things
that last, that are not creatures of fashion, the
things that do not come and go; and out of
this aesthetic, out of this feeling for durable
values came the principle of preservation with
which you are so intimately familiar.
It is difficult to think of President Eliot
in repose...If you've ever seen any photographs
of him here with his family around
him, you have seen that he was as upright
and austere and engaged as he would be in
the faculty room or the chemistry laboratory
in Cambridge. I think he was never off
duty, and, as a result, all those powers and
forces that concentrated in him were
devoted to whatever subject caught his
imagination, one of which was how best to
preserve for the future the beauties and
splendors of this particular corner of the
universe. He had an artist's eye, although
in many respects he was hardly artistic,
and he recognized the vulnerability of
these beautiful surroundings of mountains
and waters to the noxious advance of modern
society.
Now, this raises one of the paradoxes of
Eliot, because he was by no means a
fuddy-duddy, somebody in awe of or interested
in the past more than in the present
or the future, for he understood that the
key to the future here was somehow to preserve
the best of the past so that each present
generation, such as our own, could
enjoy it in full possession, as it were, from
the beginning. So, when he first came
upon these delightful shores of Mount
Desert it was not simply to escape the rigors
of Cambridge nor to let go, let down,
or let out steam; he turned all his energy to
what could be done for the good here.
Fortunately you have heard of his collaborators
in that magnificent trinity, Mr. Dorr
and Mr. Rockefeller, and now Mr. Eliot is
joining them with his vision, his attention
to detail, and his willingness to risk whatever
it took for the well-
being of the future.
Those three men would have been a
formidable company with which to deal. If
any one of them had come to my door and
I had seen him coming, I would have
locked the door and hidden myself in the
basement, because there would have been
no way to resist whatever it was he wanted.
Apparently Mr. Dorr was a very hard-working,
industrious, energetic man for
the well-being of the park, its first superintendent,
I understand; and who could
refuse an invitation to give money, from
Mr. Rockefeller? It would be very hard to
say, "Oh, I don't think I want to give to
that cause, Mr. Rockefeller." Those two
had immense strength of personality, and
think of President Eliot's, whose very eye
made people who were innocent of any
Friends of Acadia Journal crime confess on the spot. They were an
incomparable trinity, and when they set
their minds together to achieve some purpose
it is no wonder that that purpose was
achieved. I can think of no other three
people in the history of the West who
could have pulled that off, unless they
were the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Ghost; short of that, they were perhaps
the most unusual amalgam of talent,
resources, and opportunity devoted to
something of which we are all todayat
this very hourthe beneficiaries.
...What would be the motivations for
Charles William Eliot to devote all of his
extra energy to what was going on here in
Acadia? I think there are several, and I will
illustrate them:
1) The motivation for preservation corre-sponded
to his conviction that there were
some things that lasted, that endured, that
were worth keeping, those "durable val-ues"
of which he wrote and spoke over and
over again. He was not a fashionista, he
was not into the current moment. I think
the notion of preservation stems from that.
2) I think there was very much alive in
President Eliot the notion of the public
good, that if something is good everyone
should benefit from it, not only the
wealthy and privilegedHe saw here
something of beauty that should be preserved
for the public and not only for the
privileged few, and it was this idea of the
public good at work both at Harvard and
here that I think has led to this singular
creation in which we find ourselves.
3) He had a very specific interest in the
landscape, which in a reversal of nature the
father inherited from the son, for he had a
son, Charles Eliot, destined to be one of
the first landscape architects in America,
who died tragically as a young man. It fell
to the father to write his biography, his
memoirs. Many people say, and I think itıs
probably true, that what happened here in
Acadia is in some regard the older manıs
testimony to the unfinished work of his
much younger son. This is a monument to
what Charles Eliot might have been able to
do had he lived beyond his premature
death. There is something very passionate
about the father taking on the work of the
son; itıs supposed to be the other way
around and itıs tragic when it works this
way, but it was this tragedy in Eliotıs life
that helped transform him and helped him
transform this area. That is an important
element.
...If you look at the landscape of the first
quarter of the 20th
century you will see
that there are very few people who stand
out in bold relief as being both representative
of their time and transcending their
time. Very few people do that; Charles
William Eliot did. He stood head and
shoulders above all of his contemporaries,
and when the history of the first quarter ofthe 20
thcentury is written his name, like
that of Abu ben Adim, leads all of the rest,
not because of his own vainglory, not
because of his own ego or his own press
clippings, but because he caught and
overcame the spirit of the age. That is a
high achievement, and it is for that reason
that Charles William Eliot is truly among
the greats.
When you walk down Quincy Street in
Cambridge and pass the old Presidentsı
House at number 17, you will notice a set
of handsome gates dedicated to Charles
William Eliot, and on the southern pier
there is an inscription that says: "He
opened paths for our childrenıs feet; something
of him will remain a part of us forever."
What a nice epitaph: "something of
him will remain a part of us forever."
Here we are...singing the praises of a
man now long dead, who most of us
would not have dared to address if not
spoken to first, if spoken to at all, somebody
removed in style, in personality, and
in interest from almost everything we
know, and yet here today we gather to celebrate
his name, not just because of him
but because of what he stood for and continues
to stand for in a rather tired and
tawdry world. To quote the great epitaph
given to Sir Christopher Wren in regard
to St. Paulıs Cathedral in London: "If
you would seek his monument, look
around you."
This-this beautiful Acadia National
Park-is the living memorial to the
extraordinary, difficult, inspired, imaginative
man, Charles William Eliot. Should
we live into any of those characteristics of
him we would be fortunate; to put them
all together is to provide an occasion for
great celebration and even greater thanksgiving,
and presumably that is why weıve
all been summoned here tonight, that is
why you have all been wise enough to
accept the generous invitation, and that is
why we have all become, for one reason or
another or in one fashion or another,
Friends of Acadia...God bless Charles
William Eliot and all that he stood for.
The Reverend Peter J. Gomes is
Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and
Pusey Minister in The Memorial Church at
Harvard University.
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