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all the time and puttering to the last
 

      There was no glare anywhere, though high [42] windows, in accord with the high ceilings, were on three sides of the house. Sylvestre was forever the advocate of the dim light. She said that not only did it mean peace and rest for the eyes, but evoked poetry. This as to interiors, but in God’s great outdoors values are different, though she confessed to delight in a dark, rainy day.
      “Most people,” she said, “think there is no such recuperative force as all the light that can be obtained; and this may be true medically and for continuous work — but not for relaxation or refreshment. To the nervous, to the weary, a dim light is the peace that descends — especially in summer. Try it! First stand as long as you can the light pouring in. Then pull the shades half down or more, so no longer there is an overhead light, hardly a horizontal one, if you are doing nothing onerous, and watch the change in your feelings, your nerves. Why, it is often something like a miracle. Fatigue, anxiety, strain, disappear utterly, and bliss comes instead.”
      In winter, from the gilt cornices of these high windows depended damask curtains over ecru linen lace in Arabian pattern, while long gilt pierglasses, harmonizing with the cornices, in every room upstairs and down reigned supreme. The Baltimore lady was responsible for these, saying she always wanted to know exactly how she looked to others as well as herself to the last comb, pin and tie. In this respect she was most unlike her [43] granddaughter who, though so amazingly resembling her in appearance, seldom took the trouble to look in the glass, and thereby was now and then criticised for something like untidiness.
      “Well, we can’t have everything to please us,” she once said. “To be looking at yourself all the time and puttering over your face not only takes up so many precious minutes but seems to me vulgar. Anyhow, I wear the right colors, I keep myself mended, and I’m clean.”
      Indeed she was clean, she believed in cold water, and hot too, to the last degree. The number of bathrooms in the house, due almost entirely to her wishes, were no slight expense.

ex Helen Bartlett Bridgman, The Last Passion (New York: Cloister Publishing Company, 1925) : 43
U Michigan copy/scan (via google books) : link
U California copy/scan (one of two via hathitrust) : link

dedicated to Flora Field, “A Flash of Flame, A Glint of Gold”

—

the books is described, not reviewed — I find no reviews — in
“‘Last Voyage’ of Dr. Bridgman Presented to Brooklyn Chamber,” in Brooklyn (“published weekly by the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce”) 7:14 (December 12, 1925): 37 : link

      “Through the kindness of Mrs. Helen Bartlett Bridgman, widow of Dr. Herbert Lawrence Bridgman, the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce Library has been presented with four books by Mrs. Bridgman...
      The Fourth Book, ‘The Last Passion,’ a story commingling fact with fancy, may pique the curiosity of our townspeople, since it is unmistakably a romance of Brooklyn Heights. That mellow and dreamline embankment opposite Manhattan, with its off touches and memories and ideals, its abiding charm already noted by discriminating observers here and abroad, and now and then inducing them to stay, stirs Mrs. Bridgman to enthusiasm. In its way, the way of a lovely eddy in a swift current, the book voices the tumultuous New York of the moment, the ups and downs of its exciting and troubled career, leading the Lord only knows where, while saliently encouraging, especially for women, the quiet home rather than the rough road.”

aside —
am reading this book now (20250626), and thinking of it as a retrospection of its author’s life — how did it come to this, what was lost or let go, what (if anything) gained. It evidences music (especially opera) criticism, a preference for Germany, a casual anti-semitism, even a veiled doubt about what Colonel Rutherford was doing in his frequent engagements in Manhattan. There is also the Philip Dinsmoor / Mark Monitor character, that brings to (this) mind the William Sharp / Fiona Macleod dual personality.
      will return to this, once I’ve finished reading the novel.
 

Helen Bartlett Bridgman (1863-1935)

1. obituary, New York Times (October 18, 1935) : link (paywall)

   oddly, the obituary focuses more on Bridgman’s husband than on her own work —
   Mrs. Bridgman was the author of two books, “Gems,” a study of rare minerals used as ornaments; and an autobiography entitled, “Within My Horizons.”

   Perhaps she was “cancelled” as a defender of Germany prior to American entry into the First World War. Most of the books listed further below appear to have been privately printed.

2. obituary, Brooklyn Times Union (October 18, 1935) : 24
   link

   H. L. Bridgman's Widow Dies at 72
   Wrote Musical Criticisms and Stories for Newspapers — Was Author of “Gems.”
         Helen Bartlett Bridgman, 72, world traveler and widow of Herbert L. Bridgman, Brooklyn newspaper executive and Arctic explorer, died yesterday in her home, 604 Carleton ave.
         Mrs. Bridgman was born in Milwaukee, the daughter of Frederick Kinlock Bartlett and Sophia Pamela Bartlett. She was educated in the public schools in Milwaukee and in 1887 was married to Mr. Bridgman.
         For many years she wrote musical criticisms, sketches and stories for newspapers. She was the author of “Gems” and “Treatise on Precious Stones,” both of which she wrote in 1916, “Within My Horizon” was published in 1920; and her last two stories, “Conquering the World” and “The Last Passion,” were written in 1925.
         She traveled extensively in North and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa, contribuitng many articles on her travels to the old Brooklyn Standard Union, of which her husband was business manager until his death.
         Mr. Bridgman, who died at sea on the United States naval training ship Newport, on Sept. 24, 1924, was an explorer and scientist as well as a newspaper man. To him Admiral Peary cabled the famous code message “Sun,” which meant “Pole” reached; Roosevelt (the ship) safe.”
         The funeral service for Mrs Bridgman will be held privately in accordance with her request.
         No members of her immediate family survive.

3. titles catalogued at LoC :

   1885
   A pagan wedding. (St. Paul, 1885)
   “textual manuscript,” Reader’s collection, Library of Congress Copyright Office, drama deposit : permalink

   1889
   Heart Stories, by Theodore Bartlett; edited by Helen Bartlett Bridgman (New York, G. P. Putnam, 1889)
   LoC : permalink Ohio U copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
   Theodore Bartlett (1857-1885) was Helen’s brother; he is memorialized in the introduction to this volume of his writing.

   1915
   An American woman’s plea for Germany By Helen Bartlett Bridgman; Reprinted from The Standard Union, Brooklyn, N.Y. (New York, The Fatherland, 1915)
   LoC : permalink
   hathitrust : link

   1915
   Looking Toward Peace, by Helen Bartlett Bridgman, author of An American woman’s plea for Germany; Reprinted from The Standard Union, Brooklyn, N. Y. (1915)
   LoC copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
   last page : “Manuscript completed April 7, 1915.”

   1916
   Gems, by Helen Bartlett Bridgman (Brooklyn, N.Y., 1916
   NYPL copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
   Wellesley College copy/scan (via archive.org) : link
   dedicated to Zona Gale, “Lover of Gems in Earth and Sky”

   1920
   Within My Horizon by Helen Bartlett Bridgman, illustrated from photographs. (Boston: Small, Maynard & Company, 1920)
   numerous copies via hathitrust : link
   dedicated to Forrest Halsey, “without whom this might never have been”

   1925
   Conquering the World, by Helen Bartlett Bridgman (New York, Cloister publishing company, 1925)
   memoir, travels, and Keene, New Hampshire.
   LoC : permalink
   U California copy/scan (one of two via hathitrust) : link

   1925
   The Last Passion (1925)

4. other writings
   many many pieces at the Brooklyn Standard-Union (too many to list here)

   1890
   “Naples and Die. But not from joy, says Helen Bartlett Bridgman.”
   A description of the famed city based on fact, not fancy — filth and cleanliness strangely intermingled with the direct squalor and splendid magnificence.
   in the Brooklyn Standard-Union (April 22, 1890) : 1
   via Brooklyn (Public Library) Newsstand : link

   1890
   “Of Rudydard Kipling: An American Woman a Most Enthusiastic Admirer,” in Morning Oregonian (Portland, Oregon; 16 June 1890),
   from the Brooklyn Standard-Union
   described and transcribed in Tom Hubbard, ed., Lives of Victorian Literary Figures, Part VII, Volume 3: Joseph Conrad, Henry Rider Haggard and Rudyard Kipling (2009) : link

   1892
   “A Dainty Vagrant; And how it became a settled citizen,” in Romance (“A Monthly Magazine of Complete Stories”) 8:2 (December 1892) : 301-308 : link
   about a cat; first printed in the Brooklyn Standard-Union

   1898
   “‘Westward Ho!’
   Sights and Scenes of Kyoto, the Old Capital.
   The Geisha Girls at Home. A city of temples, pottery and silks — through Lake Biwa tunnel and down Katsuragawa Rapids — the financier as a boatman — ‘come back again’ and ‘too muchee saki’”
   Times-Union (January 22, 1898) : 5
   via Brooklyn (Public Library) Newsstand : link
   tenth in a series on Japan

   1905
   “The Secret of a Successful Drama,” in Good Housekeeping (June 1905) : 632-633
   U Chicago copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
   Cornell copy/scan (via google books) : link
   a review of a production of Candida, a play by Bernard Shaw. I detect a personal aspect to its selection by Bridgman for this review, which is concluded by an editor’s moralizing/critical comment; will probably transcribe.

   note to self : a later production reviewed at length by John Erskine in The Delineator (October 1927) : 38, 113-114 : link

   1911
   “My Magic Chain.”
   Times-Union (July 9, 1911) : 15
   via Brooklyn (Public Library) Newsstand : link

   a chain of beads, simple, purchased (after haggling) in Japan; on living with fewer possessions.

   1915
   “Panama-Pacific; Greece, Rome and Orient Rolled Into One.
   Earth, Air, Fire, Water.
   Every Prospect Pleases; Only New York is Gloom”
   Times-Union (November 19, 1915) : 13
   via Brooklyn (Public Library) Newsstand : link

   ...But how to begin on this world within a world, how to dissociate fact from fancy. For apart from its enterprise, not free from selfish considerations, this Exposition is no more California than it is ancient Greece or the deepest Orient or that Imperial Rome it so revives and glorifies. That its benign influence may be felt all over the country, however, is the one prayer of many who contend it is beauty-for-the-few and ugliness-for-the-many that is tearing us to pieces.
         Yet since when has beauty been a concrete thing, to be taken up and passed around? For all desirable things we have to pay the price. Nothing worth while comes through any channel save life and love and pain...

   —

5. wife of Herbert L. Bridgman (1844-1924), business manager of the Brooklyn Standard Union; associate of Robert Peary
   something of his (and on him) at 541a
6. Helen Bartlett Bridgman at findagrave : link

   —

7. Helen Bartlett Bridgman was a sympathetic reviewer of The Winged Destiny by William Sharp (1855-1905), Scottish writer who wrote under pseudonym of Fiona Macleod. wikipedia : link

   see a letter from Fiona Macleod to Bridgman, in which he discusses his anonymity, in William Sharp (Fiona Macleod), A Memoir compiled by his wife Elizabeth A. Sharp; vol II (London (1912) : 266-269 : link
    

25 June 2025