Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society
History Quarterly Digital Archives

Source: Winter 2004 Volume 41 Number 1, Pages 13–23

DEVON DRAMATIC ASSOCIATION
THE BELGIAN CONSUL GENERAL AND HIS FAMILY AT DEVON

Excerpts from A Mes Petits Enfants (To My Grandchildren)
January 1925

Paul Hagemans

Translated from the French

In the original printed version, page 14 contained a separate single-page background article on Paul Hagemans. For better content continuity in this online version, page 14 has been extracted into its own file, accessible here.

Page 13

My dear grandchildren, I am writing my personal memories in your honor. People have brought to my attention, that in several regards, my life has been rather unusual and that I should tell you about it. If it includes a lesson, it's that one should walk straight ahead and never be discouraged.

By a strange twist of fate, I have known ruin twice in my life without knowing why it was. The first time was in 1875 when I had just turned 21 years old. My father lost his fortune which was considerable for the time and the country and which had come from his grandfather, the banker Hagemans of the Hagemans et Caroly bank of Brussels. The second time was in 1922 when I had to retire and that my pension, following the effects of the great war, was reduced to a ridiculous minimum. But let's not anticipate things.

THE UNITED STATES: AT DEVON

The “Friesland” was a little ship which, having sailed a lot but which traveled well when it concerned crossing the Atlantic, at 8000 tons was nothing but a nut shell. For those with their sea legs, it was neither good nor bad, but for all the others, it was something else. As for me, I was among “the others.” Luckily for her, Mika is a better sailor than I, and the children almost never suffered sea sickness.

In any case, the rolling and the pitching did not prevent Jacques and Paulette from playing on the deck during the trip. It was long. Finally on April 14, 1890, we entered New York harbor, a magnificent and grandiose sight of which I tried to give an idea in the brochure entitled “New York” of which several copies still exist in my papers. On board we had made the acquaintance of a likable elderly lady, Madame Lejeune, from Liège, who had known the grandfather and parents of your Mika, whose memories, flavored with good humor, helped us endure the monotony of the crossing.

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She was going to Chicago to one of her sons who had married a niece of our consul there, Mr. Charles Henrotin. She advised us to stay at the Hotel Martin in New York, a French hotel, where we wouldn't feel too homesick. That's what we did after undergoing interrogation by reporters who absolutely wanted to know “What we think of the United States,” where we had not yet set foot. Henri Werlemann, a childhood friend of your grandmother was waiting for us at the dock, and thanks to him the custom formalities were taken care of in a flash.

We stayed only a few days in New York where we didn't know what to do with the children. I went to see our Consul, my good old friend Mali, then we left for Philadelphia. We stayed there at the Lafayette Hotel which has since disappeared, but which at that time was the best hotel in town. It was located on south Broad Street, at a spot where the Land Title Building is located today. Our rooms looked out on Broad Street and we saw from there, a parade in which took part, I don't know which cavalry regiment, probably the City-Troop, which appeared to us the most ridiculous in the world. Real toy soldiers with white filo-selle gloves and hands placed on the stomach.

In this already far away time, Philadelphia was still a very “small city.” Thus, the streets were very poorly lit and as all the store display windows were shut very early, the streets looked like night in a rough area. On the first night, Mika and I ventured out when all of a sudden an infernal noise was heard, bells ringing, gallop of horses, etc., and an instant later passed before us in a flash, two fire wagons spitting sparks, which vanished as quickly into the darkness toward the unknown.

Two nights later, we were returning from having dinner in Devon at our Consul Charles Sajous, when after passing the Rosemont station, they made the passengers get off; the line was blocked by a derailment which had happened a moment before. We had to walk along the tracks to the Bryn Mawr station (it was one o'clock in the morning). These two incidents, cropping up one after the other, fit well with the crazy ideas we had then in Europe of the United States. I have to confess that gave recently arrived Europeans something to think about. Frankly, as a start, one couldn't have wanted better; we were experiencing local color. We had to take our part; we had fallen into the country of daredevils. In effect, it had all the appearance of such, but chance had done it all and the accidents and catastrophes to which we henceforth resigned ourselves were spared us.

However, it was written in the book of destiny that we would set up our home in Devon. Sajous committed us to it strongly. He pointed out to us that soon it was going to be too hot to stay in the city, that we would have to find something in the country, that Devon was, as a vacation resort, the most visited of the places situated on the Main Line of the P.R.R., and that it would be preferable, as a result, to move there right away.

We had no objections to that as we had already been able to remark that if we stayed in town, we wouldn't know what to do with the children three quarters of the day. But houses to rent in Devon were rare. In fact there wasn't one that suited us, or hardly: [but] a double house belonging to Dr. Okie. We would have preferred a single house, without close neighbors, but half a loaf is better than no bread, and that is how we became Dr. Okie's renters and how, since then we have kept the friendliest relationship with the entire Okie family.

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Through them we met the Sharps and the Coates from Berwyn. Besides the Dixons who occupied the other half of the house, we had as neighbors the Brownings. Mrs. Browning was a sister of Dr. Okie. And all these fine people welcomed us in the friendliest manner. Every week there was an evening of whist, in turn, at one of our homes, at the Okies, the Brownings, the Sharps and us.

In short, from the autumn of 1890, we had established in Devon and its surroundings, friendships so agreeable that we decided to give up the idea that we would have to return to the city for the winter and I renewed for one year, from November 1, the six-month lease I had signed first of all.

Toward the end of the winter of 1891, Sophie Rassiewich left us. She was a strange, passionate, crazy girl, but faithful as a dog. According to the stories she told us, her fiancé, implicated in a terrorist attack, had been sent to Siberia and she had been refused permission to go with him. We also discovered one day that she had a large scar on her forehead. All this combined explains the strange behavior, not to say the least, of her character. These strange behaviors finished by unnerving Mika to such a point that she couldn't keep her, when one beautiful morning Sophie declared to her that she could no long continue to live with us. A few months later, we learned that she was living here in the United States with an orthodox priest who mistreated her. She wrote us incoherent letters in which she complained of having been humiliated by Negroes, that everybody tricked her, and what more do I know. The poor girl ended up by being locked up at Kirkbrite, an asylum for aliens in West Philadelphia.

At the same time that I had been named Consul General to the United States, my good friend VanBruyssel had been named Consul General to Canada. He had settled with his wife and their daughter Suzanne in a beautiful property named Haldimand and near Montmorency falls near Quebec. He lived there as a great lord with horses and carriages, and received many visitors. On several occasions, he had invited us to spend two weeks with him and his invitation was evidently so sincere that we ended up accepting it. We left for Canada in September 1892. A memorable visit from many points of view. The welcome which we received from the VanBruyssels was so sincere and so cordial that we never forgot it.

[Here five pages are missing or not translated from the original French document. One brief paragraph describes how Dr. Okie's house was decidedly too small and that in Devon he didn't have another to rent. The family found a house in Rosemont. The pages and translation then continue.]

We were not happy in Rosemont and we waited impatiently for the moment when we could return to Devon. The occasion presented itself in the spring of 1894. The Paist house, on which we had our eye for a long time, became vacant in April and without losing a moment, we took possession of it.

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This time we were suitably housed. The large and pretty house was surrounded by a beautiful garden planted with maple and fruit trees, shrubs and grapevines which gave delicious grapes. Behind the charming garden and an orchard, a very large vegetable garden supplied us all the necessary vegetables for the needs of our household, including corn and potatoes; we even tried a planting of asparagus according to the Belgian method, and succeeded so well that our asparagus was the most beautiful of the surrounding area and grew with such vigor that we were able to give some to all of our friends. A stable for each horse and a shed completed the property. We soon got back in touch with our old friends and made others; our closest neighbors were the Hastings, the Divines, the Diaments, the Wilts, the Baltz and in Wayne, the Spiers and the Fallons.

On October 1, 1894 I had to take a business trip in the West, and it fit my schedule to return by Green Bay and Detroit and to stop at Niagara Falls where Mika and the two children would come to join me. I insisted on having them take advantage of the occasion to see the famous falls and the upper rapids which have no equal in the world. On October 12 we were all together and enjoying the unique spectacle.

While returning from this visit, we all experienced more or less, but especially Paulette and I, the symptoms of sea sickness, or more rightly what they call in the United States, “car sickness” and whose effects are the same. This “car sickness,” about which I had heard but never experienced until our return from Niagara, can only be produced on a zigzag line during the course of continuing swaying, rather similar to that of the tail of a kite. Besides, it is rather unpleasant and we assured the conductor, who was required to make this trip every day and did not succeed in getting used to it, of our sincere sympathies.

Our first winter in the Paist house was not happy. In January 1895, Jacques caught diphtheria and a few days after, Mika also caught it. It was our fine Dr. Okie who cared for them and he did it with such admirable devotion. These were difficult times to spend. By a nasty turn of the “meanest of things,” the day after Jacques fell ill, a terrible blizzard hit us. In certain places the snow piled up in uncommon proportions; in front of the house it reached four to six feet in height. Train service was completely disrupted; suppliers were unable to return to their usual rounds until several days later, and to top it all off, there was no way of finding a nurse. I was therefore alone in caring for the two patients in bed up stairs and taking care of little Paulette who I had moved to the ground floor. Luckily, Maggie, the cook, did not leave us and I maintained a deep gratitude for her courageous and loyal conduct.

In spite of the snow which made almost all of the roads impassable, Dr. Okie came on horseback twice a day to visit his patients. Upon arriving at our house, his horse had snow up to its chest. As for me, I spent my time making the trip between the first floor and the second floor, and vice versa, changing my clothes each time. And the marvel of the affair is that my dear little Paulette escaped the contagion. She was, besides so nice, so reasonable even though she had not yet arrived at the age of reason. She helped me so much, that in a word, if she got through this critical period unaffected, it was due in large part to herself.

Page 18

Finally at the end of three weeks Mika and Jacques started to get better and life resumed its normal course, and when inthe first days of April, Buffalo Bill came for the first time to Philadelphia with his “Wild West Show,” we had the pleasure of being able to go together to see this picturesque new show.

Before the movies had popularized the Far West with its Indians, trappers, adventures, cowboys and cowgirls, its heroic adventures, its bucking broncos, its without equal sharp shooters, its incomparable wildlife which today has almost disappeared, Buffalo Bill understood what one could get from all of these elements presented to the public in a circus ring. During each show, he himself mounted a galloping horse shooting at a silver ball which a cowboy riding at his side threw into the air, and he never missed a one. The success of the Wild West Show was enormous, not only in the United States but especially in Europe where Buffalo Bill was received by all the sovereigns.

Paulette had just celebrated her seventh birthday and it's at this time that I started the custom of reading at night for her, most especially all the wonderful stories which have made, make and will make the joy of childhood. This is the origin of what Paulette called the evenings in good condition because I continued this practice for many years. We have read therefore all the stories of Mme De Segure, de Mme D'Aulnay, of the brothers Grimm, of Andersen, the Thousand and One Nights, Alfred Assolant, Zenaide Fleuriot, Robinson Crusoe, Don Quiohotte, Alesandre Dumas, pere, Victor Hugo, Musset, Moliere, Beau-marchais, Robert Louis Stevenson, Kipling, Fenimore Cooper, Bret Harte, etc. including Booth Tarkington and Anatole France. The literary baggage we accumulated without noticing it was enormous.

September 21, 1895 - Visit to the Malis in Plainfield. This property was the favorite creation of Mr. Johnson, the father of Mrs. Mali. She was a contemporary to the creation of the New Jersey Central Railroad and had seen the town of Plainfield develop around her during those years. From this point of view she was able to furnish Henry George with a typical example to justify his theory for a “single tax,” because by the lone fact of the growth of the population which had grown up around her, the property in Plainfield gained an enormous value without Mr. Johnson having made any effort other than to sleep on his two ears. It had everything one needed to spend a very agreeable weekend, woods, lawn, streams, and ponds, but it was so hot that our only concern was trying to find a shady spot in which to breathe. As for the children, we let them stroll around in their shirts, and this on September 21.

Mr. Johnson was a great lover of flowers and he had built in Plainfield a greenhouse widening in the middle to a sort of rotunda topped with a dome. When we visited Plainfield, a single rose-tree covered the entire dome. It was a Marechal [words missing; meaning unclear] whose stem was as thick as the arm and which people said was 30 or 40 years old. When it was in full bloom, the spectacle must have been enchanting, because even near the end of the season, one could realize what it must have been like in the month of June.

February 2, 1896 - A large oceangoing ship, the St. Paul, sank off the coast at Long Branch and the Pennsylvania R. R. organized excursion trains for those whom the unexpected spectacle might interest. I suggested to Mika to make the trip with the children and we left Devon the following day. We had no idea of what an “excursion train” was.

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It didn't take us long before we had an idea, but once the wine is poured, you have to drink it. Long Branch in winter offers less amenities then in summer and it is fortunate that a cook-shop (greasy spoon) had been set up at the time of the sinking of the St. Paul, or else we would have had to tighten our belts until our return to Devon that night which, for the children especially, would have been a very long day. But the sight of the huge sunken ship stuck in the sand at scarcely one hundred steps from the beach at low tide where we were walking, was worth the trip. The St. Paul ended up being refloated without damage after having been lightened in large part of its cargo.

July 31, 1896 - Jacques and Paulette show a real disposition for the theater: they love putting on shows. Their mother provided the chance today to make their public debut. She had invited some twenty of our friends to a little show organized at the house. Things went very well. I mention it here because it was in reality that it was this show which gave Mika the idea to establish the Devon Dramatic Association.

September 19, December 29, 1896, and April 30, 1897. These three dates represent respectively those of the first, second and third shows of the club about which I have just spoken. The club's objective was to provide for the youth of Devon and surrounding area the chance to meet frequently and to provide a way for the young talents to show off and to fight the tendency of the people of Devon to isolate themselves during the winter and to close themselves up at home until spring like woodchucks, and finally to help in a financial way worthy charitable institutions

Mika was not only the President of the club, but the producer, director, costume maker, scenery painter, etc. – everything. She gave herself headaches but the success made the effort worthwhile and the youths which she led to victory showed a gratefulness which she often noticed. There isn't one of these young boys and girls, today fathers and mothers, who doesn't remember these times with pleasure and melancholy.

Here's [sic] the programs from these three shows.

The Devon Dramatic Association
First Performance
Devon, September 19, 1896

[The program for this performance is reproduced on the cover of this issue of the Quarterly.]

Second Entertainment
The Devon Dramatic Association
Devon, December 29th, 1896

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The proceeds of this entertainment will be used for the benefit of the West Chester Hospital.

Third Entertainment
The Devon Dramatic Association
Friday evening, April 30th 1897

The proceeds of this entertainment will be used for the benefit of the Children Country Week Association.

February 27, 1897 - We take the children to the theater for the first time to see John Drew and Maud Adams in “Rosemary.” Billy Berry comes with us. It is in this play that Ethel Barrymore makes her debut. She played the role of a little naive and clumsy servant girl at an inn. She was charming.

[Here five pages from the original French document are missing or not translated.]

. . . He did not comment on the presentation of the oysters. They were found excellent but large and sufficient to constitute a meal for a woman only. Then came the “planked shad.” This time, they were curious about the announced surprise. The head waiter after having presented the dish to the host and to his guests, served to each one of us his portion, and we religiously began to eat the succulent fish. I watched my fellow diners and believed to see on their faces signs of approval, when suddenly the Prince shouted out smiling: “But this is shad. They fish for it every day in the Escaut, and I eat it in Brussels every Friday during Lent and until the end of April.”

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October 4, 1898 - Jacques enters Penn Charter. The event did not go well. His time spent first at the school of Miss Buzby and then at Miss Stone's had badly prepared him for Penn Charter where the discipline was more strict and the studies more serious. The following year, we sent him to the Haverford Grammar School where he distinguished himself especially in sports. He was part of the soccer team to the great pleasure of his mother.

March 24, 1899 - I am promoted to the rank of Officer of the Order of Leopold.

September [date is not clear in the original document] 1899 - Visit to the Spiers in Wisscasset, Maine. Our friends the Spiers had so praised the beauties of the coast of Maine and more specifically the site where they spent their summers that we finally gave into their insistences and accepted their invitation to go spend a week there with them. The place is in fact very picturesque. From the point that their house occupied one could overlook the entire course of the Sheepscott River which emptied into the ocean a dozen miles from there, lined on both banks with cliffs topped with pine forests. A network of natural winding canals emptying into the river connected it with the Bath river and the other with the Boothbay Bay and provided multiple and various entrances by sail and motor boat.

Our good friend Spiers took us for rides in all directions in his naphtha launch, through all the meanderings of this aquatic labyrinth of which he knew all the turns, but Mrs. Spiers accompanied us only one time on a picnic to a place we could reach in a few moments. She had been cured of her desire for excursions since one day during a trip to an exceptional place which has the engaging name of “Hell Gate.” They had encountered a real steamboat whose wake had almost swamped them. They escaped it with a bath of icy water, but she never again wanted to expose herself to such an adventure. One of the trips was especially interesting. After having gone down the Sheepscott river to its mouth, we came across a small rocky island which . . .

[Here two pages are missing from the original French document.]

. . . bed and was sleeping, she was suddenly awakened from her nap by her sons bursting into her room which overlooked the verandah. They threw a black monster on her bed which they had just caught in their net. This giant lobster which must have been one hundred years old weighed fourteen pounds. Poor Mrs. Fallon almost fainted.

On September 11 we left for Devon by way of Boston and Providence R. I. where we embarked on the “Priscilla.” This was a rather unpleasant trip. A thick fog prevented us from seeing more than two steps ahead of ourselves, making navigation extremely dangerous, and later, near midnight, when we were in the middle of Long Island Sound the fog changed to rain. Mika and Paulette were soundly asleep when they were awakened by a shower of icy water which was falling on their beds from the ceiling of their cabin. They had to get up, and as there was no place else for them to stay, they had to be content with the consolation that the steward gave them in knowing that it was always like that when it rained.

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We hardly had returned when Mika had to become busy with the theatrical presentation that Miss Simons and her sister Mrs. Patton had begged her to organize at the Devon Inn with the members of the club. This was the recognition of her success. The play took place on October 6 in the ballroom of the hotel. Here is the report that I kept from the letter that I was writing to Maurice on October 8. I am sending you the program from the last evening party organized by Gris at the Devon Inn, on October 6. The Devon Inn, as I think I have told you, is the most select place in the suburbs of Philadelphia; it is there that meetings are given, in the spring and fall, by the families of high society of Philadelphia and New York.

For a long time the owner of the Devon Inn has begged Gris to organize something at her place. They have there a real auditorium and a stage, etc... But Gris thought that if she had succeeded on a more modest stage, it wouldn't be the same in a real theater. Finally they so insisted that she gave in. The success paid for her boldness. The day following the production, Mrs. Patton, the owner, wrote to Margot: “Everyone says that it was a brilliant success and Paulette's admirers are legion.” The fact is that this little girl is a born actress; she acts like an angel, and with imperturbable aplomb.

Thus, for example, at a certain moment in the play, she was supposed to remove her apron. Not being able to do it, she calmly walked over to her boss, the Doctor Cure-All, and said to him: “Doctor, won't you help me untie my apron?” and did it so naturally that everybody thought it was part of the play. This play is a “farce” as they say in English. The Doctor Cure-All announces in the newspapers that he has cured all illnesses; from which a parade of people who desire, one to lose weight, another to gain weight, a third to become taller, etc... He succeeds too well and in the second act all are angry. Paulette played the doctor's servant girl and was on stage all the time. Jacques played the role of the little girl who is timid in the first act and sassy in the second. It was a great success and the whole room broke out laughing at his appearances.

The tableaus also went very well. In the first, the “Chinese Tea Party,” about ten girls in sumptuous costumes had tea under a flowering peach tree. Appro-priate set design and very successful. The “Brownies” represented a scene of goblins in the dark forest seated around a fire on giant mushroom. The “Birth of the Rose” was represented by a charming young girl in a low cut dress, bare arms covered in a pink gauze and coming out of an immense rose in the middle of a beautiful garden where each flower was represented by a little girl. The “Minuet” in a scenery of the time with very rich costumes made a wonderful effect.

Finally, in the “Troubles of Housekeeping,” tableau in three scenes, we saw a very stylish young household, served by domestics in grand costumes (first scene) then, abandoned by the servants, obliged to do everything for themselves, the husband polishing his boots with a despairing look, and all untidy, the wife, a cooking pan in hand, crying (second scene) and finally the solution, the couple moving the household to a fashionable hotel (third scene). The Count Jacques de Lichtervelde, the son of our ambassador to Washington, who spent his entire summer in Devon and enjoyed it, played the role of the young husband.

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The “Love's Duet” was a love duo between a fat gray cat (Jacques) and a pretty white female cat, on the roofs. At the moment when they meow their warmest feelings, a window of the mansard roof opens, a man in a night gown and cotton night cap holding a candle in his hand appears, furious, and throws a boot at their heads and the two cats disappear in the wings, each to his own side. The scene was repeated and our two actors improvised a second fantastic edition which caused stamping of feet in the hall. In sum, a complete success.

February 13, 1900 - Reception on board the “Variag,” the battleship built by Cramp for the Russian Navy. The officers who came from Russia to take delivery of the ship made their guests welcome in the hospitality tradition of Moscow. Among the attending delegates, the ladies and young women received as a souvenir a corsage of flowers tied with a black silk ribbon with the name of the battleship in gold letters. From the technical point of view, the visit is the most interesting for those who, like us, have never been on board a battleship like that. One has to believe that the number 13 merits the bad reputation that is given it. It's the date of February 13, 1900 which did not bring happiness to the “Variag.” It was the first Russian ship to sink five years later during the Russian-Japanese war.

August 14, 1900 - To vary a little our monotonous existence and to rejuvenate our red corpuscles, we are going to spend a week in Beach Haven, at the Hotel Engleside. There is a crowd and we are packed four in a room which isn't even 12 feet square. But the food is excellent and we have good company. On the other hand the beach is without consistency and swimming is dangerous at low tide. The only natural advantage of Beach Haven is to have behind us a fish filled bay, the Barnegat, and for asthmatics, to be in an absolute dryness which permits them to escape hay fever. This is the rumor that locals spread, but which experience does not seem to confirm.

April 19 - Mika gives a Cotillion at the Devon school to which she invites all her friends, young and old. It causes her a lot of worry but she took pleasure in the complete success of it. It's the occasion where we made the acquaintances of the Clarks who soon were our best friends and their daughter Dorothy the best friend of Paulette with Anna Divine. The Divines and the Clarks, the latter new arrivals, lived across from us on Berkeley Road and the three little girls played together all day. Paulette must remember the time she was playing “House” in the tall grass. Wasn't that a good time?

May 1, 1901 - Move to Overbrook. It cost us to leave Devon and to lose our friends from there but it was necessary for service reasons and also for personal reasons, the question of domestic help had become each winter, more and more difficult to resolve.

The editors wish to thank Eric H. Archer of Walnut Creek, California, who contacted the Club in May 2003 for information about Dr. Richardson B. Okie and then forwarded this document written by his great-grandfather, Paul Hagemans, in French and found in his family archives. It consists of 178 typed pages and is dated January 1925. The excerpts translated here are from pages 80 to 112.

The editors also wish to thank Larry Langhans, retired teacher of French at Conestoga High School for translating the excerpts from this original 1925 French document.