According to Jean Young, for instance, an increasingly uncomfortable George Bellows [circa 1924-25] admitted to painter, Petra Cabot, that no, he hadn’t followed the advice of Woodstock’s beloved Dr. Downer (who was alarmed at the famous artist’s inflamed appendix). Witnessing obvious discomfort, Petra abruptly asked to see the painter’s palm. Naturally, she was already well aware that Mrs. Bellows — a devout Christian Scientist, would’ve been contemptuous of any medical doctor’s diagnosis, and furthermore, that George was probably in considerable hot water at home for consulting any physician but God, in the first place. With only a single glance at Bellow’s right hand, Petra grew pale. “You need to go to the hospital right away,” is all she is said to have said. Although we don’t know the exact date of this palm reading, we do know that on January 8, 1925, George Bellows was dead at 43.
It’s also fascinating to learn that sometime in the early 1920s, the Nobel prize-winning Indian poet, Rabindranath Tagore, visited Woodstock and proclaimed that the entire village was filled with magical vapors. Tagore had by then adopted the teachings of the nomadic Indian sect known as “The Bauls of Bengal.” We’ll hear more of them.
Now returning to the Whiteheads…The only male member of the family who lived to see 1930 was Peter, who I remember as a sweet, old, generous sot — but who, back in those days, was a lost lamb most loved by his increasingly wacky mother, Lady Jane.
It was the winter of 1936, in one of those California hotels they frequented that time of year, that Jane and Peter Whitehead encountered a kind, most thoughtful priest (whose fuller history I’ll tell another time) who just happened to be an expert on The Arts & Crafts Movement, (which, of course, was a sign!) originally inspiring the creation of Byrdcliffe. Although introducing himself merely as “Father Francis,” this wasn’t just any old friar, but in fact the Archbishop of the American branch of the Old Catholic Church (fractured in 1916 from its “Old Roman Catholic” half). Nevertheless, and purely for the fact he’d so quickly gained the trust of her son (Peter usually only made friends buying strangers drinks), Jane asked if she could persuade Father Francis to move his mission to Woodstock.
Now it just so happens, that the original meadow from which Bolton Brown first fell in love with a sight exploding over and beyond our tiny village below, and so hurried down the mountain to wire Whitehead and Hervey in, some say Asheville, North Carolina, to cease searching for the ideal location of their colony-to-be, because he, Bolton Brown, had just discovered it. [Whitehead, Hervey White, and “the discoverer” Bolton Brown, are considered the founders of Modern Woodstock.]
Well, at the base of this very meadow in 1936, there presently languished a little church called “the Chapel of Ease,” which accommodated guests of Mead’s Mountain House, though more importantly — or so it was hoped — would soon attract clients of the Overlook Mountain House another mile and a half up. However, this Mountain House, finished just as the stock market crashed in ‘29, was fated to never open. So it came to pass, that Mrs. Whitehead, much to the chagrin of its Episcopalean owners, now bought the Chapel of Ease for Father Francis, who, 37 years later published a remarkable essay in The Churchman, which was fast reprinted in May-June ‘73 issue of The Woodstock Oracle, (the price of which was “Absolutely Free.”) Though only a half page long, with “Hippies — Hope of the Future,” its author provided a unique insight as to how and why Woodstock became the welcoming “manger” within which so many restless and often troubled souls, sought and found sanctuary. In other words, how and why we went Woo-woo. It begins:
“An article in a recent NY Times referred to a phenomena that has arisen universally as ‘The Woodstock Nation.’ Since I have resided in Woodstock for over 30 years, perhaps a word or two about life and experience in the ‘Woodstock Nation’ would not be amiss. They may serve to prove that the ‘Woodstock Nation’ is no chimera.
“My first experience with a hippie was several years ago when I invited a long-haired youth to spend a January night in my ‘Prophet’s Chamber,’ rather than risk his life in a blanket on the church grounds. Over a cup of coffee this youth quoted Kahil Gibran and other such writers. Next morning he remarked on my building project (I was only 82 years old then), ‘Father, you need help.’ That was a gross understatement! Well, Frank stayed with me, worked with me and later brought some of his hippie friends. This beginning started my life in another world — a world that I had long sought in holy Mother Church. Sharing with these youths my home and life I learned first hand of their hopes and aspirations in this crazy, confused world — the world rubber-stamped with ‘In God We Trust,’ a sad slogan to try to cover hypocrisies.”
In short, it describes how, though also popular with many non-bohemian Woodstockers, Father Francis had been recently dubbed “The Hippie Priest” by the New York Daily News. And so while he wouldn’t admit to becoming the bane of every other “respectable” clergyman in town, it’s clear enough, he was. The result being that, although many of his flock had and would also kneel at the feet of a vast assortment of teachers, seers, gurus, and would-be messiahs on their way through town [you’ll meet most in part II]…still, it was our good Father’s loving and nonjudgmental counsel which provided a generation of “problem children” little or no authority against which to rebel. Any one of them could try out Sufism or Taoism or go to this or that new meditation center, yet…when they doubted, faltered, or fell? The Church on the Mount was always there to welcome them back. Dylan himself was often seen emerging from the back room, having scoured obscure volumes for hours, or finding relief from the responsibility he’d inadvertently assumed, in the melodic, hypnotic enchantment of the old priest’s voice. “Father of Night” (presaging his Christian phase) on Dylan’s jubilant New Morning, is our poet laureate’s tribute to Woodstock’s own Father Francis, which begins:
Father of night, Father of day
Father who takes the darkness away
Father who teacheth the birds to fly
Builder of rainbows up in the sky
Father of loneliness and pain
Father of love and Father of rain.
In the photograph accompanying his article, our ‘Hippie Priest’ is seen marrying a barefoot couple on what is called “his mountaintop,” while a long-haired and thickly bearded acolyte holds open the Holy Book for the Archbishop to read. The Acolyte is none other than Michael Esposito, our much-beloved musician, painter, cartoonist [his “Swami Salami” has graced this paper for many years] and bicycle repairman for the mechanically, financially, and astrally challenged. But what few realize, is that Esposito gave away a collection of incredibly rare guitars and dropped out of The Blues Magoos, —among the first psychedelic pioneers to break into the Top 40 — all to follow in the footsteps of Father Francis.
Next week, Tracing the trajectory of Woodstock seeker/journalist and archivist extraordinarre Peter Blum we’ll head straight into the velvet vortex of “no-sense land,” known to time-travellers and other summer soldiers of the sixties and beyond, as “The Golden Girdle of Woo.”
Esposito’s bicycle shop behind Oriole9 is “The Olde Spokes’ Home.”
I am already indebted to Peter Blum for lending me The Woodstock Oracle from which I culled its reprint by Father Francis and for byzantine details concerning ‘the Chapel of Ease’ from its present inheritor Fr. John Nelson.
