Secret stories

After Vance Muse stumbled onto turn-of-the-century photo albums from Bailey Island, he had two questions: who are these men and why are they holding hands?

By Tony Giampetruzzi

STORY TELLER: Vance Muse sits before copies of the photos that have led him to discover a homosexual colony on Bailey Island near the turn of the century.

Two years ago, journalist Vance Muse stumbled upon a secret history. In the pages of some old photo albums from a second-hand store were images of a mysterious group of young, wealthy socialites on holiday in Maine. The pictures were from the early 1900s, but their subjects were not identified. The albums could have been just curious artifacts if not for one thing: these turn-of-the-century vacationers were quite obviously gay.

The photos, labeled from 1908 to 1911, were in surprisingly good condition, says Muse,but they revealed few clues to the Maine summer folk’s identities — no names, but a teasing license plate here and boat landing there. Perhaps it was the lack of identification that helped pique Muse’s curiosity, but the photo albums and their subjects soon consumed his imagination and sent him in search of the stories behind the images. After years of sleuthing and making the lives of those in the pictures part of his own life, Muse says his discoveries will be published sometime in 2002 by Random House in a book called We Were Here.

Ultimately, what Muse discovered is that the pictures portray friends on a series of summer holidays, an extended “family” of gay, lesbian, and straight Philadelphians. “You could instantly see that the affectionate pairings were inclusive,” says Muse. “You see men and women, men and men, and women and women. I could tell from what was happening in the pictures that these people were gay. There was nothing incredibly overt, but the fact is, you either see it or you don’t.”

Muse recently showed a number of the photos at a lecture at the University of Southern Maine, and, to the eyes of those in attendance, they certainly reveal what appear to be gays and lesbians in varying phases of frivolity. Men holding hands, embracing, in drag. Such overt displays of affection is what intrigued Muse most about the mystery.

The photos were taken by a Kodak Brownie camera, he explains. At that time, such cameras were much like today’s disposables. The photos were snapped, the entire camera was mailed to Rochester, New York, for developing, and the camera was returned ready for another use. For that fact alone, says Vance, the subjects of the photos were incredibly bold for their day.

Muse, over the last two years, has been able to determine the identity of these long-deceased people. A mansion in the Philadelphia area that was portrayed in one of the photos, which took Muse months to find, led to the most information. Bailey Island date lines on letters found at a local historical society were also helpful. And a photo of an old boat landing also helped Muse determine that the Maine connection was Bailey Island, near Portland.

Some family members and their guests were gay, and one vacationer, Ben Luckey (Muse’s favorite) appeared through the photos to have a different boyfriend each summer. “Ben Luckey actually turned out to be a dressmaker at Lord and Taylor in New York City,” says Muse. Luckey died in 1916. Although his death was labeled a suicide, his family thought differently. “He was the ultimate victim of discrimination and intolerance,” says Muse. “He was found dead, two shotgun wounds in the head, an apparent victim of hate in New York City.” Muse discovered that Luckey’s family, who knew he was gay, pursued the case for years, but to no avail.

“Other characters included George Smith who was a fly boy during World War 1. He often came to Bailey’s with his boyfriend.” Smith owned the mysterious mansion near Philadelphia.

Another couple was Amy Blanchard and Ida Waugh who, Muse learned, were together for 55 years. Amy and Ida turned out to be the authors of children’s books and had homes on Bailey Island, in Paris, and Philadelphia. Altogether, they published 19 books, among them “Faggots and Flames: A Campfire Girl’s Romance,” a novel designed for Girl Scouts.

“They typified the so-called Boston marriage,” says Muse, using the term that often refers to the romantic, although not always sexual, relationships of single women during the Victorian and post- Victorian era.

According to Muse, the albums ended in 1911, but the stories continue. He says he is not surprised by what he has found and that wealthy families such as these came to Maine to escape the puritanical nature of cities like Philadelphia during the early part of the last century. Muse says little has changed — people still come to Maine to disappear and reimagine themselves. He counts himself among them.

Q: How did this odyssey of yours begin?

A: I was actually given the four photo albums by a couple friends, Paul Heroux who teaches ceramics at Bates College and Carl Balazzolo, a well-known painter. They found the albums at a curiosity shop in Maine, which I’ll disclose the name of in the book. I have to say that it is a really great shop.

I poured over the books for quite some time before deciding to do something with them. In fact, a number of my friends were influential in my decision saying that the photographs are really quite significant. For years I’ve been writing articles for magazines like Vogue, GQ, Mirabella, and I’ve done a number of books, but they have always been some sort of extension of an article that I have written.

Q: How is this book different?

A: I had the albums for at least a year before deciding to do anything with them, and I eventually found myself really taken by the photographs. To me, abandoned family albums always touch a chord. These are not posed photographs, they are snapshots. Snapshots have so much more significance, more than I think people realize. They tell a story and really allow you to examine the essence of these people’s lives. They show people being caught unawares and, because of the chronology of these albums, you see people actually grow. More significant is that in them you see people, men, at the turn of the century, holding hands. What I saw are the types of things that I know that I would like to see in my own family albums.

Q: You say that compiling this book is as much about you as the people in the photographs. How is this about you?

A: This project came along at about the same time that I was looking for a family album to adopt. Not long ago, a fire in my grandparents’ house in Houston destroyed everything, including the family photos. They are so important. You know, a lot of people say that if there was a fire in their home, the kids and the pets would be the first things out — then the photo albums. I think that through photo albums you can also create the family of your dreams.

Q: At a lecture that you gave at USM you said that these albums begin and end in graveyards. What did you mean by that?

A: This entire project began in a graveyard for me. That’s what I love about antique shops and flea markets. They are a place for dead people’s things. They are like tombs. Isn’t it strange how we have such an affinity for antiques; we are constantly surrounding ourselves with dead people’s things. So this entire project began in a graveyard of sorts. My favorite subject in the photographs is a man who I identified as Ben Luckey, who went to Bailey Island, and whose family had a house of their own there. Each summer he had a different boyfriend, and was just the typical dandy, full of life and expression. My detective work on this project eventually brought me to a graveyard in Patterson, New Jersey, where Luckey was buried in 1916 at the age of 26. That’s why, metaphorically, I say that the project begins and ends in a graveyard.

Q: That story seems very indicative of the amazing amount of information you have gathered about these people in such a short period of time. Yet, I know that you struggled with absolutely no clues for months. What was your big break?

A: One of the photos depicted an old mansion and I knew that if I could locate it then I would be able to piece together much of the story. I searched everywhere and spoke to a number of historians who, oddly, had no idea where it existed. Finally I was at a party in Philadelphia and met the editor of the Philadelphia Enquirer who took an interest in the project and offered to run the photo of the house. A man named Fred Platt saw the picture and led me to the house in the suburbs of Philadelphia; it was then that everything came together. We went there and a very old man answered the door. He had purchased the house from one of the photo subjects in 1953. It was the footprints of that building that led to the footprints of the people in the photos.

Q: The search was frustrating to that point?

A: Absolutely. One of the photos had a car with a Pennsylvania license plate — I thought that might turn up something. First of all, there weren’t even that many cars back then, so it’s odd that we could even identify a license plate in the picture. So, I went to Harrisburg to look up old license plate records. Officials at the state house totally discouraged me from doing that because they only had records back to the 1960s. I wouldn’t take no for an answer, and at one point I was going through old boxes in the basement of the statehouse trying to find some information. Nothing showed up though.

Q: Why do you think that these people came to Maine and, specifically, Bailey Island?

A: Most wealthy families at that time would go to Northwest Harbor or Bar Harbor, and those retreats were just summer extensions of the stuffiness of places like Philadelphia. Bailey Island, and other areas of Maine, were clearly different. The social demands were not as accentuated and the populations were more sparse.

I still think that most of Maine is different from other resort areas. I feel so complete and compelled to be myself here. Mainers tend to mind their own business and, yet, they are eccentric and tolerant. Maine is a place that gives safe harbor to self-expression.

Q: Are you surprised by how much you have been able to find out about these people?

A: Totally. I’m not trying to write a biography of these people; they are not major American figures. What interests me is how eccentric they were, and how they would come to Maine to relax and be themselves. The book is really just as much about my world as it is theirs. I don’t really think there has ever really been anything quite like this published before, and that’s why I’m taking my time with it. No one can steal this story and write it before I do. This is history, but a history that has always been left out. I’m certain that there have been other albums like these, but they have been destroyed or never talked about. That’s why I hope to see this book on the general non-fiction shelves at bookstores. I feel that it is my job to bring these people, as a part of history, to the rest of the world.

Q: But this will have significance in the annals of gay history?

A: It simply affirms that we have a history that has been largely shut out of mainstream history. Most of these types of relics have been destroyed — I’m helping to bring them back.

Tony Giapetruzzi can be reached at groovejet4@aol.com.