Let’s call the place the Place

Last month, the city of Key West began working on improvements to the public area bounded by Front, Greene and Whitehead streets in front of the Custom House, one of our grandest and most important public buildings (and now an excellent museum run by the Key West Art & Historical Society). Today, the Citizen ran a photo by Rob O’Neal showing the area scraped clean, the obelisk at the center wrapped up.

I’m very glad this historically important area is getting attention - especially the obelisk, which was erected by the Key West Navy Club in 1866, dedicated to Union soldiers and sailors who died here during the Civil War (almost all of them of yellow fever). More on that below.

But here’s the thing - all the city releases and press coverage and I’m afraid to think of how many official documents refer to this area as Clinton Square. But that’s not its name. It’s Clinton Place.

If you doubt me, I refer you to “Key West: The Old And The New” by Jefferson B. Browne, the 1912 book considered Key West’s first comprehensive history. On page 52, he details how different streets and sites were named, including “‘Clinton Place’ after DeWitt Clinton of New York.” Referring to the dedication of the obelisk on page 62, he refers to it as “Clinton Place, the small triangular plot at the intersection of Front, Whitehead and Greene Streets… ”

Today In Keys history column, produced by the Monroe County Public Library’s Florida Keys History Center, as it appeared in the Key West Citizen on July 25, 2024.

“Triangular” is the key word here. Besides not being its actual name, “Clinton Square” is an embarrassing error of basic kindergarten-level geometry. When the state acquired the Custom House in the early 1990s and the Art & Historical Society took on the restoration, then-Executive Director Susan Olsen pointed this out to me: It’s not a square. It’s a triangle.

This may seem like a small nitpick, but facts matter. This is true in journalism and it’s true in history. We are a place that purportedly cares a lot about our history and for good reason. For a small island with a relatively small population, a lot of interesting stuff has gone down here. Our small size and geographic isolation helped keep a lot of the historic fabric intact and now it’s a major component of our multi-billion-dollar tourism and real estate economies. It matters on many levels.

And Clinton Place is, perhaps, the best examplar of Key West’s strange and interesting history when it comes to the Civil War and how it’s memorialized. We’re in Florida, the third state to secede, and the island was home to many enslavers (including U.S. Senator-turned-Confederate Naval Secretary Stephen Mallory, whose mother’s boarding house was also in that neighborhood - but who was not, it turns out, the person for whom Mallory Square was named). Key West stayed in Union hands because an enterprising Army captain occupied still-under-construction Fort Taylor soon after secession but there were a lot of Confederate sympathizers in the local population. And in the 1920s, at the height of Jim Crow, when many notable citizens were in the Klan, the United Daughters of the Confederacy put up a pavilion in Bayview Park, with full honors from the mayor and local dignitaries.

In the 1930s, the state of New York donated a memorial nearby, to honor the dozens of soldiers who were stationed here and died of aforesaid yellow fever. That pavilion has recently been renamed with the city’s official motto, One Human Family. And in 2016, the city added a statue honoring the Black Union soldiers recruited here, right in front of the pavilion.

Clinton Place in 2015. Photo by Nancy Klingener

Clinton Place might have the most interesting memorial evidence of all, though. That obelisk, memorializing the Union troops who died here is surrounded by a low fence with a plaque proudly claiming that it was “ERECTED BY J.V. HARRIS, CONFEDERATE VETERAN.”

Just as the Stephen Mallory Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy is still engraved at the base of the One Human Family pavilion at Bayview Park, I hope that fence and its plaque also remain through the improvements to Clinton Place.

Just like Clinton Place’s real name, the real history of Key West’s role in the Union victory - and the backlash afterwards - is part of our island’s history and our residents and visitors deserve to know the truth.

Here are a couple more images of Clinton Place from the Florida Keys History Center’s photo archive, just because they’re cool.

Clinton Place in front of Custom House ca. 1918. The Heritage House Collection, donated by the Campbell, Poirier and Pound families. Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.

Custom House on postcard by Frank Johnson, Key West. The DeWolfe and Wood Collection. Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.

The Searchers on page and screen

During this year's Key West Literary Seminar, Percival Everett, who teaches a course on Western movies, described The Searchers as a movie that both "admits to American racism and practices it." I had noticed a recent nonfiction book about the film, and the true story behind it, published last year. Everett's mention, plus the knowledge that we had the movie in the Monroe County Library collection, was enough for me to get hold of both. The Searchers by Glenn Frankel is an excellent nonfiction book, one of those books that uses a focused lens to examine an important slice of American history. It starts with the story of Cynthia Ann Parker, the real girl whose family was killed in a Comanche raid in Texas. She was kidnapped and, essentially, became Comanche, bearing three children. Some 25 years later, she was recaptured, along with her young daughter, by Americans in a raid on a Comanche camp -- an experience that appears to have been just as traumatic for her as the original kidnapping. She and the young daughter died a few years later. She never saw her teenage sons again.

One of those sons, named Quanah, grew up to be a leader of the Comanche and a peacemaker with whites. Teddy Roosevelt even had dinner at his house.

After telling Quanah's story, Frankel moves into how the Cynthia Ann Parker story reverberated through the culture -- with almost no regard to historical accuracy, naturally, and culminating with Alan Lemay's novel The Searchers. That novel, roughly, was the basis for the John Ford/John Wayne film that is the most prominent remaining reminder of the story. And what a weird film it is. I really wanted to admire it from a pure film appreciator point of view. But perhaps because I had just read the real story behind both the Cynthia Ann Parker life and the making of the movie, I just couldn't buy into it. All the side stories, like the nephew's romance with Laurie, seemed like a forced comic relief. And I've never gotten the John Wayne that so many people admire -- not his politics, particularly, but his persona. I'm glad I saw it, since it is obviously a significant piece of popular culture (the American Film Institute even includes it in its top 100 list of movies). But it didn't make sense to me, as a story. So thanks, Percival Everett. I guess.

Lurid Historical True Crime ... and Why I'm Not An Academic

I recently read a couple books about the case of Mary Rogers, a young woman in 19th century New York who was brutally murdered and possibly raped. Or maybe she'd had an abortion and the abortionists disposed of her body in a panic. In any case, she wound up dead in the waters off the shore of New Jersey. There were several different suspects and theories -- a jealous fiance, gang murder, abortion gone wrong? The case was never solved. The story was a sensation for the burgeoning penny press and inspired Edgar Allan Poe to write the Mystery of Marie Roget, set in Paris but clearly based on the Mary Rogers case. It continues to attract writers as a subject, a classic historical true crime subject.

The first book I read about it was an academic take: The Mysterious Death of Mary Rogers: Sex and Culture in Nineteenth Century New York. And for an academic book, it was fairly approachable. But I didn't finish it, which is rare for me. Two reasons. The first was the prose, which despite efforts to make the book comprehensible to ordinary humans, still included passages like this:

"As the subject of all forms of social discourse -- the newspaper, the mystery novel, and even that of legislators and reformers -- Rogers was the embodiment of all that antebellum middle-class culture named as unspeakable, but actually, according to the modern critic of the history of sexuality, Foucault, integrated into a 'regulated and polymorphous' variety of discourses."

Someday I will read an academic work in the humanities that does not name-check Foucault and/or Derrida within the first 20 pages. Or maybe I won't, because these works, as a class, are just too annoying. I spent too long in the world of reporting, I guess, but I can't stand being instructed on what something means. Just tell me what happened and let me draw my own conclusions, OK?

The other reason I gave up on this book is I felt there was a fundamental hypocrisy at work. It purports, in passages like that quoted above, to analyze and, to some extent, judge Rogers' treatment as an object of prurience by the press and the public at large. Well, yeah. And why exactly did you choose this subject for your book anyway? Perhaps because you realized that people are fascinated with crime, particularly crimes against attractive young women? Perhaps that's why you also included the word sex in your title? Edgar Allan Poe got it and he didn't feel the need to cast himself as a moral authority who is horrified by other people's interest while he was doing it. Then again, he didn't have Foucault and Derrida to tell him what was really going on.

Speaking of Poe, he is a major player in another nonfiction book about the case which I read all the way through: The Beautiful Cigar Girl by Daniel Stashower. This is a standard work of historical true crime, made sexier by Poe's role in the story. It suffers a bit from the basic problem with the Mary Rogers story -- we never do find out what, exactly, happened to her and who was responsible -- as opposed to other great works of historical true crime, like The Devil in the White City and The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher. Those books give you an answer to what the hell happened. Stashower's book gave me a lot more insight into Poe, so that was a plus. If you're interested in this story or in that genre, I recommend it. The subtitle, I must say, is a bit much: "Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe and the Invention of Murder." I get that you want to get Poe in there. And I get that this case was part of the beginnings of both widespread public interest in crime, via the new popular press. But murder's been around for a long time, hasn't it?

The book I really liked, though, was the one I just finished: The Mystery of Mary Rogers by Rick Geary. It's a graphic novel, part of a series by Geary called A Treasury of Victorian Murder, which also includes famous cases like Lizzie Borden. He's done some 20th century cases, too, and a biography of J. Edgar Hoover. I've now read three of his books and I think they're all terrific. So if you're going to read one book about this case, this one is my recommendation. And if you're a true crime buff, especially a historical true crime buff, definitely check Geary out. They're a good introduction to graphic novels, too, if you're curious about that genre but are not sure where to jump in.

Folos

Couple items of note: In my review of Susan Orlean's Rin Tin Tin, my only complaint was that there weren't enough images (especially of the original dog) and my hope was that someone was putting together a documentary using Orlean's work as its basis. My prayers are mostly answered! Orlean herself has put together a visual presentation -- and she's coming to Key West! Hooray! She'll be at the Tropic on Monday, Nov. 21 -- you can already buy tickets and you should do so. They're $12 for Tropic members; $15 for nonmembers. This is especially welcome this year since I won't make it to the Miami Book Fair (though if you are anywhere in South Florida and have the time and are interested in reading at all, I highly recommend it). And, since I wrote about the Shakespeare authorship question and read a whole book about it -- Contested Will by James Shapiro -- I went to see Anonymous. As always, I enjoyed the Elizabethan sets and costumes. And it was way fun to see theater of that time presented in its original context. Vanessa Redgrave was great as Elizabeth and her daughter, Joely Richardson, was, too. I don't really have a problem with historical inaccuracy in service of telling a dramatic story -- Elizabeth, starring Cate Blanchett, is one of my favorite movies ever. I watched the entire run of The Tudors, and enjoyed it, even though every single character was historically preposterous. But. I do have a problem with rampant inaccuracy (I'm no expert but I can rattle off about six in Anonymous without even trying) when you're purporting to be truthtellers who are correcting a giant historical inaccuracy/conspiracy. And, I have to say: Rhys Ifans' eye makeup. What was up with that???

Who is this guy?

Even though I'm certain the movie "Anonymous" is going to irritate the hell out of me, I will see it. Mostly because I will watch just about any Elizabethan costume drama. And because some weird voyeuristic part of me gets a kick out of seeing people get all worked up over the Oxford vs. Stratford argument. This is the century-old debate over whether William Shakespeare as we know him -- the author of all those comedies, tragedies, histories and sonnets -- was a glovemaker's son-turned-actor from Stratford or the aristocratic Earl of Oxford, who merely used the actor's name to shield himself from potential social and political reprisals. The movie tells the Oxford version of the story and will doubtless create endless new arenas for debate, a bunch of new Oxfordians and irritate the hell out of Stratfordians (which includes the vast majority of the scholarly establishment). I only hope longtime Oxfordians get equally riled up because now most of the public is going to believe Roland Emmerich -- a guy best known for disaster pics like Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and 2012 -- came up with this theory. My position is: I don't really care. I'm a sentimental Stratfordian merely because I like the idea that a schmoe of ordinary birth could turn out to be the greatest literary genius of the English language. I'm also cynical about conspiracy theories, especially those that would require conspiring on behalf of a whole lot of people. (This piece in the New York Times has a great line about the ability of Shakespeare scholars to pull off conspiracies.) But I think the plays are the things -- what matters is that we have this treasure trove of literary genius, not which guy's hand held the pen.

At least the whole tantalizing question of Shakespeare's identity and his legacy, and all the unanswered questions around him, has left us with so much material for so many interesting books, fiction and non. If you'd like to read a Shakespeare biography without signing over a couple weeks of your life, I highly recommend Bill Bryson's. It's part of the Eminent Lives series of briefish biographies by popular writers (as in nonacademic specialists, not potbiolers). The Key West Library has a large print copy which is 240 pages and it concludes with a chapter dealing with the various "claimants," ie. people who are not Shakespeare that people have proposed as the writers of Shakespeare's work. Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World and Peter Ackroyd's biography also come highly recommended, though they're both quite a bit longer than Bryson's. And after reading this ringing Stratfordian defense by Simon Schama I've put in an Interlibrary Loan request for James Shapiro's Contested Will. Shapiro himself has also weighed in on the movie, in a New York Times op-ed.

But what I really like are modern crime novels where a long-lost Shakespeare talisman serves as the MacGuffin.  My favorite is The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber. In that one, the Shakespeare artifact that has mysteriously surfaced after the centuries is a lost play about Mary Queen of Scots. Another that goes directly to the Stratford-Oxford question is Chasing Shakespeares by Sarah Smith. So does The School of Night by Alan Wall though it's less effortlessly entertaining (though highly intelligent) than the previous two. I'm told good things, too, about The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips -- not so much a crime novel as a literary puzzlebox, from the descriptions, but it's got its own lost Shakespeare play, this one about King Arthur.

One thing I have not yet done, the stuff I have not read -- though I really should, if only justify lugging the giant Riverside Shakespeare around with me for the last 25 years -- are the works of Shakespeare. (I have read most of the works of Shakespeare -- I was an English major -- but not in adulthood, which I find makes a big difference in how you understand a lot of stuff they made you read in high school and college. Wasted on the young, as they say.)