The Nation’s Historian in World War II
Charles Beard wasn’t in an optimistic mood when he and Mary checked in at secluded Pine Crest Inn in late 1943. Roosevelt was now in his third elected term, which Beard didn’t like. World War II was a global catastrophe, a conflict Professor Beard strongly had opposed America joining – unlike the first World War he’d enthusiastically supported. Now in his late sixties, long-vigorous Beard must have realized he would author no more ground-breaking works with broad, fresh insights about history or political science. Already he’d been elected a president of American Historical Association, president of American Political Science Association, and into the exclusive American Philosophical Society.
Mary Ritter Beard, his long-time wife and equal partner in research and scholarship, wasn’t in good cheer either. Despite Eleanor Roosevelt’s support of it, her World Center for Women’s Archives in New York, which Mary led, closed in 1940 for lack of enough funding amid serious internal conflict. Her next big project was a bust too, to persuade influential Encyclopedia Britannica to change the thrust of its women biographies. The war had stanched the parade of influential people to their home on a fine dairy farm overlooking the Housatonic river at New Milford, Connecticut. They left the farm in charge of their loyal German-immigrant couple, departing for North Carolina to spend several months in Woodcutter’s Cottage with its view of Tryon Peak.
Low-key but stylish Pine Crest became their abode for three winters. Tryon welcomed writers and philosophers of all stripes, and community etiquette was to allow the rich and famous their desired privacy. The inn’s staff were attentive but discreet. Meals were served at the main dining room, or brought over to cottages as room service. The proprietor was Christian Science, so there wasn’t alcohol around and little noise to bother them. Neither did Pine Crest’s rooms have radios or telephones. Telegrams were sent over or received by courier-boy from the local office. New York and Washington daily newspapers arrived at Tryon by express trains less than 24 hours after they came off the presses.
As to getting their works published, the Beards were still at the top of the heap. Their co-authored titles The Making of American Civilization (1937), America in Midpassage (1939), and The American Spirit: A Study of the Idea of Civilization in the United States (1942) were all successful and added to the luster of their academic reputation.
In 1943 Charles completed his The Republic: Conversations on Fundamentals. The book came out targeting the mass market in wartime, to build consensus about the legitimacy of America’s democracy and values. Henry Luce, publisher of Life, spotted it as an opportunity, and offered to serialize condensed versions of Beard’s chapters for ten consecutive weeks in his enormously-influential weekly magazine. The author accepted Luce’s attractive offer. Life sent its up-and-coming photographer Walter Sanders down to Tryon. His images of December 1943 document the inn at Pine Crest, Trade Street in Tryon, and Professor Beard’s recreational wanderings on foot in nearby scenery.
Although Charles Beard’s purpose for sojourning at Tryon wasn’t to socialize, he accepted The Lanier Library’s invitation to discuss his latest book The Republic publicly. Professor Beard was admired among America's educators for his meaty, compelling lectures. Many in his cosmopolitan audience were, like Henry Luce, committed Republicans. The program was held there January 6, 1944 – just days before Life’s first installment hit millions of American mailboxes and newsstands with a cover date of January 17. The man who Tryon’s locals heard talk was soon seen on the front-cover of that edition, looking every bit the wise sage — posed majestically by Sanders — gazing out over misty mountains from a high perch.
Truth be told, only some small proportion of Life readers already knew who Charles Beard was. He was, after all, an academic. His books were reviewed in up-market periodicals and typically read by the intelligentsia. The mass-market weekly’s cover and Luce’s skillful repackaging of his serious material made Beard a household name. Thus while he was in Tryon he became known as “the nation’s historian.”
America’s biggest-circulation magazine was image-driven. Luce’s editorial team laid out Beard’s copy along with strong graphics and pithy picture captions that casual readers instantly could understand. Nine of the ten installments concluded with a Sanders photo made at Tryon.
The first ends by portraying the Author-Professor seated comfortably in serious conversation with a well-dressed, mature couple in front of the Pine Crest lobby fireplace. Traditional décor evokes living rooms of solid citizens anywhere in America.
Life’s second installment ends with a warm and fuzzy image of Mary and Charles inside comfortable Woodcutter’s Cottage. Caption tells they’re at work writing a co-authored “basic history” of the nation (which came out in 1944 from New Home Library) and establishes their “family credentials” as parents of a son and a daughter – who also write.
Third installment concludes with Sanders’s evocative image of the Professor striding contemplatively along a winter woodland path. In much of America, January 1944 was a bleak time, literally and figuratively. Life’s caption shares that Beard’s home was a farmhouse overlooking a Connecticut river. At the same time, the copywriter informs readers he spends time too in the nation’s capital — “keeping up” can be interpreted however a reader wishes.
February 14, 1944 issue depicts Beard high on Hogback Mountain near Tryon, encountering an ox team and driver. Beard’s “conversation” explicates Federal Government’s powers to promote the general welfare, per the Constitution, and this caption subtly reinforces the concept that simple people with ox teams are eligible for special consideration in Policy and Budgeting. The issue contains, as well, a letter from a World War II serviceman opining that skin color has no bearing on America’s objectives.
Professor Beard writing at Woodcutter Cottage. Two new titles came about from three winters working at Pine Crest Inn: A Basic History of the United States co-authored with Mary Ritter Beard (1944) and his American Foreign Policy in the Making 1932 – 1940 published after the war was over by Yale University Press — scathing in criticism of FDR, Congress, and many Americans. Eminent historian Samuel Eliot Morrison’s negative review of the book appeared the month before Charles Beard died.
March 6, 1944 issue depicts Beard chatting on Trade Street with Seth Vining, founder of the Tryon Daily Bulletin in 1928. Charles sympathized with any small-town newspaper editor, because his first job after college graduation was editing the newspaper in his Indiana hometown.
German-born photographer Sanders’s assignment to Tryon for Life followed by fewer than four years the visit by German-born staff photographer Hansel Mieth, one of only two women then on its photography staff. Her warm welcome in Tryon in 1939 no doubt bolstered the editorial team’s confidence that the community would yield good images for the magazine’s Beard serial in 1944.
“The Fates and Fortunes of Our Republic” was Life’s concluding serial on March 20. Ending it is Sanders’s dramatic silhouette, with fedora and his cane, “Author Beard looks into a cloudy sunset sky and ponders the future. He believes that America will live and grow for many centuries to come.” It was a hopeful message resonating with the public’s mood looking forward to victory in Europe and Asia.
The influential magazine’s thoughtful full-page editorial focuses on domestic topics, “Beard’s Republic: Its Principles Are in the Constitution of 1787; Its Facts in the Headlines of 1944.” Today little-remembered, a big political fight was underway between President Roosevelt and Congress over a tax-bill veto. Senator Barkley made a dramatic speech accusing FDR of making “deliberate and calculated assault upon the honesty and integrity of every member of the legislature of the United States.” Life’s editorial stance was Beard was right – Congress was supposed to dominate the Executive, but no longer did. “The Democrats under the Presidential whip have delegated so many powers that Congress can hardly keep track of how much it has given away. Some of this is inevitable in wartime, but much of the emasculation of Congress occurred before the war.” Having set up Beard as America’s almighty scholar teaching what ought to be, during ten carefully-crafted issues, the Henry Luce team’s editorial cites Beard’s suggestions and opinions as the way forward in policy.
In this same issue Life published a glowing feature about Thomas Dewey, Governor of New York, who in June easily won the 1944 Republican nomination for President and campaigned vigorously. But in the November election, FDR swept into his fourth term and Democrats retained their majorities in both houses of Congress, a clear national referendum.
Author’s collection
In a letter from Tryon in December 1944, Charles Beard expresses his dissatisfaction about the political situation to another author, Harvard-educated Anthony Netboy working in Washington: “Perhaps you have given too much credit to the propaganda. The propagandists could not have got so far without the underground support of President Roosevelt and his job-holders.”
After his death Mary Ritter Beard destroyed most of Charles’s letters, but this one survives because Netboy pasted it into his copy of their freshly-printed A Basic History of the United States. Roosevelt died in Georgia in April, resting at secluded Warm Springs before his anticipated trip to the founding conference of the United Nations. Germany soon surrendered, Truman approved the “job-holders” recommendation to drop atomic bombs in Japan, and “FDR’s war” was over.
Pine Crest’s stationery was used by many well-known personalities for correspondence of a personal character. Carter Pennell Brown, its proprietor from Illinois, was interested in all kinds of design and he personally designed furniture, interiors, and entire buildings in Michigan and North Carolina, though he wasn’t a degreed architect. Brown’s special interest was adaptive reuse, the creative use of salvaged vintage materials for new purposes, and clever replication of traditional forms to create environments to be comfortable and picturesque, yet unpretentious.
Brown’s choice of semi-transparent paper, rustic ink color, and vaguely antiquarian font for the inn’s stationery shows what he was trying to achieve for Tryon; the “cut” of Pine Crest’s low-key entry sign has an equestrian, barnsy look – as indeed the inn had an on-premises horse stable. Printing was done letterpress in Tryon by Elbert Hubbard Arledge, named for (yes) Elbert Hubbard, famous entrepreneur of The Roycrofters — influential in the country’s Arts & Crafts movement which had many adherents in Tryon’s history.
Michael McCue
June 2023
