Marlene Wagman-Geller

 Forrest Gump, sitting on a park-bench, has a one-sided conversation with a disinterested

nurse when he told her, “Momma always says there's an awful lot you could tell about a person

by their shoes. Where they're going. Where they've been. I've worn lots of shoes.”

“We are the breakers of our own hearts.”

–Eudora Welty  

Eudora Welty House & Garden (opened 2006)

Jackson, Mississippi

Although her home was where Eudora Alice Welty did her writing, it never went by a literary name, as did Virginia Woolf’s Monk’s House, Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House, or Jane Austen’s Chawton House. Eudora referred to her residence as, “Tudor style with some timbering, you know, à la Shakespeare.” To learn about the literary landmark, set your compass to the Eudora Welty House & Garden.

Jacques Marchais

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“It stands as a great monument to our love!”—Jacques Marchais (letter to Harry Klauber)

The Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art (opened 1947)

338 Lighthouse Avenue, Staten Island, New York 10306

In 1933 James Hilton published Lost Horizons whose backdrop, the Himalayas, is known as “the rooftop of the world.” For those unable to travel to the fabled kingdom, take the ferry to Staten Island’s The Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art.

Johnny Cash’s 1969 song “A Boy Named Sue” revolves around a man who has spent his life with upraised fists, infuriated that his father had saddled him with a female name. In a similar vein, John Coblentz christened his daughter Jacques Marchais. In the Cash song, the adult Sue reconciles with his father when the old man explained his rationale: his effeminate moniker would teach him to be tough. Jacques never had the opportunity to inquire why her father had bequeathed her a French boy’s name as John passed away when she was a toddler.

Jacques Marchais Coblentz was born in 1887 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her mother, Margaret, a widow without means of support, entrusted Jacques to an orphanage run by nuns, although she was not Catholic. When Jacques was three, Margaret reclaimed her daughter and put her on the vaudeville circuit. As a male name would cause confusion, she billed Jacques as Edna Coblentz or Edna Norman (her maiden name). Wealthy Chicago families requested private performances—one of whom was Mike Cassius McDonald, who introduced organized crime to Chicago.

When she was five years old, Margaret opened a chest that had gathered decades of dust in their attic. The Pandora’s Box held thirteen bronze deities her great-grandfather, John Joseph Norman, a Philadelphia sea merchant, had received from an Indian lama in Darjeeling.

At age sixteen, Jacques travelled to Boston to star in the comedy Peggy from Paris, where she met Brookings Montgomery, a student at MIT. When Brookings married the destitute teen, his prominent St. Louis family disowned him. The couple had children Edna May, Jane, and Brookings Jr.; they divorced in 1910. Six years later, Jacques married hotel manager Percy S. Deponai, a union that came with a one-year expiration date.

The Grande Dame of mystery, Agatha Christie wrote, “It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story.” Although the writer’s words ring true, the following unveils secrets hidden in the core of the Big Apple.

“I, Kusama, am the modern Alice in Wonderland.”

      Artists and eccentricities go together: Vincent van Gogh gave his severed ear as a present to a prostitute; Virginia Woolf heard birds sing in ancient Greek, Ozzy Osbourne bit the head off a bat. And eccentricity on steroids describes the pop art, polka-dot princess.

 “From my window I overlooked a pond in which a former butler had drowned himself. As one gloomy day succeeded another, I began to feel a deep sympathy for him.” -Consuelo Vanderbilt upon moving into Blenheim Palace.

Blenheim Palace (opened 1950)

Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England

During the Gilded Age, the mating dance between American heiresses and the British aristocracy replaced matters of the heart with matters of money. In the prosaic process, the daughters of the nouveaux riche received titles; their cash-strapped husbands received an infusion of funds. Downton Abbey’s Cora Crawley was a husband-hunter whose calling was to transform to Lady Crawley. Cora’s nonfictional counterpart was Consuelo Vanderbilt, the chatelaine of Blenheim Palace.

Chapter # 17  A Facial Attraction       (1940)

         In some scenarios, soap operas can play second fiddle to reality, especially when family fortunes and over-sized personalities are part of the dramatis personae. Fact triumphed fiction in the case of a surgically enhanced cat lady, a dynasty with Nazi associations, and a trove of treasures.

Prudence Crandall

“My whole life has been one of opposition.”—Prudence Crandall (age eighty-four)

Prudence Crandall Museum (opened 1984)

A 1907 song by Will D. Cobb and Gus Edwards recalls, “School days, school days / Dear old Golden Rule Days.” Not everyone waxes nostalgic about school days, which was the case with the girls who attended the Canterbury Female Boarding School. To enter the Prudence Crandall Museum is to step into a threshold where great courage walked together with great hate.

“I believe in being everlastingly on the warpath.”

–Carry A. Nation

Carry A. Nation Home & Museum (opened in 1950)

Medicine Lodge, Kansas, the United States

The lyrics to Peter, Paul, and Mary’s folksong held the promise, “If I had a hammer/I’d hammer in the morning/I’d hammer in the evening…” Carry A. Nation’s choice of instrument of social justice was, rather than a hammer, a hatchet. In the Carry A. Nation Museum, one can learn about the activist who was never temperate in terms of the Temperance Movement.

“Art is a tyrant. It demands heart, brain, soul, body…I wed art.” 

–Rosa Bonheur

Château de Rosa Bonheur (opened 2017)

Thomery, France

As she lay dying, Queen Victoria whispered for Turi, her Pomeranian, to be brought to her bed. Another nineteenth century woman who worshipped animals was a French painter. To view her canvasses, to learn about a road less travelled, proceed to the Château Musée Rosa Bonheur.

“I got my start by giving myself a start.” –Madame C. J. Walker

In William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 29,” the speaker bemoans, “I all alone beweep my outcast state.” In contrast, rather than indulge in a pity party, Sarah Walker turned her misfortune into a fortune, and in the process, she became America’s first female, self-made millionaire.