2004-07-26
LOCAL HISTORY || GILLETTE'S CASTLE
The vista's expansive and while it is just a few kilometeres away from the house, I rarely go here | But with distant relatives visiting, it's an ideal excuse to go to this beautiful state park | My sister and brother arrive replete with other family and friends | 
She's busted her toe but still does the tour just a bit slower than the rest of us |
Originally named the "Seventh Sister, after the rock formation upon which it is perched] the "castle" was a whimsey of actor and raconteur William Gillette | It was his
retirement home, where he lived and entertained until his death in 1937 |
During WWI [1914-1919], the manse cost over a million dollars to build | In the middle of WWII [1943], the State of Connecticut bought the estate for $30,000 USD, ensuring, according to the provisions of his will, that "...no blithering sapheads..." would get the grounds and ruin them |
It's a popular site | Lots of people roaming about the the castle, its nearby forested steep ridges and rolling woodlands, [184 acres of grounds, we're told]
And, as seen to the left, every castle needs a knight |
We visit inside | The lecture guides regale us with tales about the house [for it isn''t really a castle] and grounds: one of the first to have a steel frame; how Gillette designed the entire building, it's gadgets [many] and gewgaws; that for some years electrical power was generated on site; that the project employed 20 men for several years and that the stone was carted up
by local farmers at $1 a load |
We're told about some of his many eccentricties: that he kept pet frogs; played practical jokes on guests; was enamoured of elaborate and [some thought] unnecessary detail; that he had international guests from Mary Pickford to Albert Einstein | He was briefly wed to a woman [who died young and never lived to see the castle completed] and that he never had children |
Gillette was a complicated, brilliant man | Born of high-bred Hartford, CT family, he went into the performing arts against their better
wishes | He succeeded, perhaps most notably by taking the role of Sherlock Holmes and creating in it the signature items [the deerstalker cap and meershaum pipe] that people nowadays think of as typical Holmes affectations | He starred in, wrote, directed and produced plays [among them "Secret Services" from which the sketch on the left is based] | He was a prolific designer and aesthete | And he was, like the character he famously portrayed, mysterious |
For me, one mystery remains, that of Yakitaka Ozaki*, his friend and personal secretary, who lived with, or close to, Gillette for decades, residing on the estate until his own death in 1942 | An entire room is devoted to him [one referred to only as Gillette's 'valet'],
yet little is said of their relationship | It's disaapointing that the tour guides don't even mention him, while, in contrast, they go to great pains to assure you Gillette was wed to a woman, however short that nuptuial was in effect | I'm certainly aware that many very wealthy people employ, as it were, life long companions, so I'm not implying anything here | But they clearly played some influential role in WG's life | More attention ought to have been paid |
¶ 09:10
south<-- view from the castle's promontory -->north .
The vista's expansive and while it is just a few kilometeres away from the house, I rarely go here | But with distant relatives visiting, it's an ideal excuse to go to this beautiful state park | My sister and brother arrive replete with other family and friends | She's busted her toe but still does the tour just a bit slower than the rest of us |
Originally named the "Seventh Sister, after the rock formation upon which it is perched] the "castle" was a whimsey of actor and raconteur William Gillette | It was his
retirement home, where he lived and entertained until his death in 1937 |
During WWI [1914-1919], the manse cost over a million dollars to build | In the middle of WWII [1943], the State of Connecticut bought the estate for $30,000 USD, ensuring, according to the provisions of his will, that "...no blithering sapheads..." would get the grounds and ruin them |
It's a popular site | Lots of people roaming about the the castle, its nearby forested steep ridges and rolling woodlands, [184 acres of grounds, we're told]
And, as seen to the left, every castle needs a knight |
We visit inside | The lecture guides regale us with tales about the house [for it isn''t really a castle] and grounds: one of the first to have a steel frame; how Gillette designed the entire building, it's gadgets [many] and gewgaws; that for some years electrical power was generated on site; that the project employed 20 men for several years and that the stone was carted up
by local farmers at $1 a load |
We're told about some of his many eccentricties: that he kept pet frogs; played practical jokes on guests; was enamoured of elaborate and [some thought] unnecessary detail; that he had international guests from Mary Pickford to Albert Einstein | He was briefly wed to a woman [who died young and never lived to see the castle completed] and that he never had children |
Gillette was a complicated, brilliant man | Born of high-bred Hartford, CT family, he went into the performing arts against their better
wishes | He succeeded, perhaps most notably by taking the role of Sherlock Holmes and creating in it the signature items [the deerstalker cap and meershaum pipe] that people nowadays think of as typical Holmes affectations | He starred in, wrote, directed and produced plays [among them "Secret Services" from which the sketch on the left is based] | He was a prolific designer and aesthete | And he was, like the character he famously portrayed, mysterious |
For me, one mystery remains, that of Yakitaka Ozaki*, his friend and personal secretary, who lived with, or close to, Gillette for decades, residing on the estate until his own death in 1942 | An entire room is devoted to him [one referred to only as Gillette's 'valet'],
yet little is said of their relationship | It's disaapointing that the tour guides don't even mention him, while, in contrast, they go to great pains to assure you Gillette was wed to a woman, however short that nuptuial was in effect | I'm certainly aware that many very wealthy people employ, as it were, life long companions, so I'm not implying anything here | But they clearly played some influential role in WG's life | More attention ought to have been paid |
UPDATE: * There were actually two Japanese gents who llived on the grounds of Gillette's estate | A monograph "His Beloved Aunt Polly" published by Connecticut Department of Environmental Conservation, recounts that, first Yakitaka Ozaki, hired on as a cabin boy on the Aunt Polly, Gillette's luxurious houseboat and residence while the castle was being built. Later a second man, Fukumatsu Tsubone, lived on the estate in a cottage near the Hadlyme Ferry tending a herb and vegetable garden |
FOR MORE ABOUT Gilette's Castle: Official Park Site | A quirky site about Castles in the USA has this to say about Gillette's | About.com provides a short photo tour | The Friends help support the castle | NPR's Savvy Traveler had Tom Verde do a story about Gillette's Castle | Acorn Bed & Breakfast writes a plug as well | ABOUT GILLETTE'S BOAT: The DEP monograph, "His Beloved Aunt Polly" | Aunt Polly's Archeological Remains |
FOR MORE ABOUT Gilette's Castle: Official Park Site | A quirky site about Castles in the USA has this to say about Gillette's | About.com provides a short photo tour | The Friends help support the castle | NPR's Savvy Traveler had Tom Verde do a story about Gillette's Castle | Acorn Bed & Breakfast writes a plug as well | ABOUT GILLETTE'S BOAT: The DEP monograph, "His Beloved Aunt Polly" | Aunt Polly's Archeological Remains |
¶ 09:10
Comments:
<< Home
Beautiful section on the castle. Ozaki came to work for Gillette after Gillette purchased one of his two houseboats. They were lifelong friends. In answer to the unspoken suggestion, there is no indication anywhere that Gillette was anything but heterosexual. In fact, deserved or not, years after his wife's death he had a reputation as a ladies man. Ozaki lived in the cottage down by the ferry in Hadlyme. S. Takizawa lived in servants quarters. Tsubone, too, but he died young (in 1924, age 37). More of Ozaki and Gillette will be contained in my biography of Gillette, which should be published toward the end of this year. Henry Zecher
Post a Comment
# posted by 
: 22 March, 2010 16:37
: 22 March, 2010 16:37<< Home
