An Evening With David McCullough presented by the Hingham Historical Society

[Music] [Applause] can't tell you how happy those of the in I heart to be part of this wonderful community we've been coming here for quite a long time since our daughter Melissa first moved here up some thirty years ago and we know the town that we know how much it has meant to our sons and daughters and grandchildren and you know how even better than we have prior to now well delightful good extremely interesting places to live and it certainly it's rich with history and rich with the reminders that we are it was 50 years ago this spring my first book was published the Johnstown Flood 50 there's a new edition coming up pleased to say medical Memorial and commemorative the issue of it of the book fiftieth anniversary roughly nine went out to Johnstown to celebrate the publication of the book and we serve our poor children with us and they were still very little the oldest was 12 and the youngest was 5 and we got there and it was a bigger crowd than we ever imagined at the opening of it and we were a little concerned about how the children would behave or is naked laughs wasn't even a going on so roughly having a stroke of genius to suggest that we put them on the stage so you got some little chairs these are the tiny little chairs and made him sit right on the stage looking at the audience and it is good with gold so we thought the night we tried the same thing before of you stand up please I hope it will work again tonight but all of your wife some years ago not long after I finished it down south well we went to a party cocktail party on the vineyard one night and it was everyone relax and was fine we didn't know everybody there and the host was taking me or roughly around introduce and we got to one lady we knew who she was but we didn't know her and she had a very aristocratic way of talking and of looking at you and our host said like thought you might be interested note David's working on a book about the Brooklyn Bridge and she said who in the world would run read a book about the so I don't remember what I said we left the party very soon after it I was venting my anger I believe the driveway it occurred to me perfectly good question who in the world would want to read a book about the Brooklyn Bridge and I said to myself and to Rosalie I would and that's why I'm writing it because I'd like to read that book and it doesn't exist and that's essentially what I've been doing ever since after I finished the Johnstown Flood and it came out had two other publishers besides my publisher Simon Schuster who came to me one one of me to do the Chicago Fire and the other one the San Francisco earthquake I thought damn it I'm being typecast as bad news McCullough and I and I'm not even 32 or whatever I was so I thought to myself I want to do a subject about a symbol of affirmation that we aren't all fools all the time and irresponsible which is the real cause of the Johnstown Flood and I had trouble coming up with an idea and one day at lunch I was two old friends one of them was an engineer and the other a science writer was down in the Lower East Side of New York and we were put in fairly short distance of the bridge and they got talking about the Brooklyn Bridge and I had of course we'd lived in Brooklyn for a while right in Brooklyn heissen Bobby knew the bridge we walked on the bridge walked with our first child a baby carriage on the promenade there and the minute he said that I thought that's my subject so I had a date to meet somebody back at the office I was working in American heritage the old a hardbound history magazine with no ads in it wonderful magazine no it was and I was very privileged to be working there and I met if somebody was coming in to see me and I the hell with that I'm I went right to the 42nd Street library I think I took those marble stairs three at a time went to the card catalogue pulled it out for the Brooklyn Bridge and there were fifty cards in there about the subject but not one of them described the book I was already blocked blocking out in my head and I knew this is it well I will now tell you the story of what happened next because I think it's the it's deep essence of what the excitement of this kind of work is I learned from a man named Warren Corrigan who was a engineering specialist at the Smithsonian that there was a collection up at Rutgers RPI in Troy New York that Washington Roebling who was a graduate of Rutgers had left them and yeah I he didn't seem to know much about this collection but he told me to listen he was he'd imagined it was quite good so one Saturday Rosalie and I drove up to Troy from White Plains where we were living is one of those absolutely crystal fall days and we're driving along the Hudson River and it was one of those scenes of the day that made you think that everything was right with the world and we got there and because it was a Saturday and the rpi football game was off campus there was nobody on campus so when we went to the library which was then in an old church there was only one person on duty a woman at the desk and I said I've come to see the collection that she said well because I'm the only one on duty I can't go upstairs to show you but here's the key as the top of the stairs third floor turn left first door on the left so we started up the stairs and as we got higher the wattage of the lighting diminished so that by the time we reached the top it was sort of 40 watt about 140 watt bulb and we turned left and there was this big door and I didn't know what to expect I thought probably it'll be a nice room with file cabinets maybe a work table and some chairs we opened the door and it was nothing but a closet but the closet had shelves although all the way from the floor to the ceiling and it was a hard ceiling like this room all absolutely jammed tight with tied up bundles of letters scrapbooks photographs reports unbelievable and I said oh my god and she said oh my god she just saw four years disappear so we started taking a look at what was there and it was fantastic and then we found we went across the hall and it was just a storage room the door was unlocked and walked in and lying around on the floor like rows of old wallpaper were original drawings by by him Washington took by Roebling the father and the gusted and they were original drawings of the bridge but done in different styles that powers were different his own him and all kinds of other things I reached up on the top of a shelf of it's just a junk pile and pulled down the bundle of notes and the notes were kept by the older Robley didn't the seances he had where he was making contact with his deceased wife in his own handwriting and the head right he was wandering all over the place I couldn't figure it out everybody it was dark in the room whether having a seance so I've got sort of interested in all this but oh and the the shoelaces that were used to tie the letters up or that old ship those old shoelaces that wax on and and that you could tell they had never been undone and one here that was thrilled and on the other hand I thought how could these people be so irresponsible maybe my god look what this is and I realized that I was pioneering I had to go and do this myself if I told them why are you doing this you realize you've got a treasure national treasure they say all right come back in two years we'll have it all sorted out I thought no don't tell him what where don't say a word thank you very much so I kept going back and forth to that closet for about three more years and the more I got into it the more I realized what a phenomenal accomplishment it was and all that they didn't expect they would have been hit by they thought they knew exactly how to do it I should put it with you when I say they I mean Washington bro because the father had died earlier so he had to take over and he was in his 30s and eventually he contracted caisson disease the bends and he couldn't leave his room which was into the top floor of a house on Brooklyn ice and he could look out see how things were going when the telescope from his room but it was his wife who went out there all the time and who really took over as the boss as is often the case and I've written about this several times including Abigail Adams is a stunning example she's one of the most remarkable people that we've ever had in this country yeah very interested in giving people their credit is due long overdue and that they can come on stage and be in the in the best light on stage and hi turn now I want to talk a little bit about how I work because none of the I would say almost everyone I know we meet for the first time I should say has really no idea how a book of this kind is written and that's really true of all of us about somebody's job you say well what do you do I'm into the actual business or I'm a doctor you know that must be interesting we have no idea what's involved and I'm often at the doctors that tend to be physicians they're often very interested in history which i think is great but sometimes they'll say more than once doctor will say well I like history very much I like to read history a lot someday I'm gonna write a book and all you say well that's great good luck I feel like these I want some day I feel like I'd might like to take out independece right and and what doctor said I can teach you how to do that after about three days [Laughter] but it's different than most people imagine most people imagine the writers life is isolated that you're alone you're in your room where you work and you and your book writing away well of course for some kinds of writing that's true particularly fiction of course but for the kind of work that I do you're constantly in need of help and you're working with other people all the time just like the people who work here and they they know their way around their subject in a way you don't yet particularly if your approach is the same as mine which is I never have undertaken a subject I knew much about the most people who are in history they have a specialty civil war is their specialty maybe that's all they write about it all they what I write about that has never appealed to me if I knew all about the subject I wouldn't want to write the book because it wouldn't be an adventure for me it wouldn't be a detective case or a journey and when I tell my academic friends what do you what they say what do you what are you working on now and I say to book about them Harry Truman oh oh what's your theme I don't I don't have any theme so I make one up tell them what with it but it's really not often but not until the very end of the book of bends of the work I suddenly realized what the theme is and that was quite true of the first book the john-san fight well what's your theme the theme I realized was it's dangerous perhaps even perilous to assume the people who are in positions of responsibility are behaving responsibly right you can't you can't do that you have to keep watch you have to make sure they're behaving respect that disaster during which more than 2,000 people were killed it was the worst disaster we've ever had up until 9/11 that disaster need never have happened it was all human failure people assuming that this fellow for that group it was responsible was doing their job at several levels and they weren't I I've always been interested in titles and when I finished my Johnstown book I wanted a great title for it and I was ready to turn the manuscript in to my editor who had never worked with first of all had heard from him hadn't talked to him for three years well you first started up and I wanted to turn it in he Peter swated was his name was a great known in the publishing business for his titles the longest day about d-day that was his title he came up with Blackboard Jungle famous book that was his site so I felt particularly bound to come up with ingenious title and I searched through Shakespeare Isis look through the Bible honey I think never found anything if I leave weeks were going by and I felt guilty that I wasn't turning in the book so I called him I said mr. Shui this is David McCullough you don't like do you remember me he said he had a way sort of a Damon Runyon way of talking I loved him said oh yeah how are you doing I said I finished my book Oh glad to hear that I said embarrasses say I can't think of a title no problem with my titles that book he call it the Johnstown Flood so what were you thinking to call it one wet Wednesday he was like he was something and he worked with your editors and your copy editors and it's not a lonesome thing when you see the acknowledgement section in the back of a book particularly of a history or a biography every one of the people mentioned in there has really contributed I give you one other example when I was working on the Theodore Roosevelt book I was using that that machine that used to wonder that one of those things called the process of copying yeah bimmy graph is that right yeah and they're all I get asked my grandchildren anybody they don't know what I'm talking about but I was weren't using that at the Harvard library to look at Theodore Roosevelt's Diaries when he was young Mike were the microfilm that's it and he had a Kraig that she turned yeah and I got to one entry in the diary and it was clear that he had blacked it out it was a blot right on the one day and I knew that that one day was the day he learned that his father had died so I thought he said something and he what's it eliminated so he's blotting it out I thought I've got to go see the original so I think I can't prove this but I may be the only person who ever flew to Washington look at an inkblot I came into the manuscript division of the Library of Congress went up to the desk and there was this young fellow there who struck me is probably new on the job and I said I told him his whole story about I wanted to see the ink blot in the diary and he said sir if you will go back and stay in your seat I will call somebody else so I'd already made big work tables I think went back to my seat and he looked he'd said it the way we get somebody like you every once in a while and I don't know quite how to handle it so I get here and then we waited and then came this tall didn't follow with him three-piece suit best and chain for his wash across the best and he went over the invoice and it guys looking very serious so he came back around and he stood behind me said what seems to be the problem so I repeated the whole story of see this pink blood I this was written by Theodore Roosevelt on learning the news of his father's death and I think that he's blood something out and I think and it was as I was sorry it kept his lowering his head and I sit down to the Vita's see closer and then he said I said I'd really like to see what's under that pink lock and he said wouldn't that be great now that's the attitude that you dream of in a helper you know archive aura or a library or any place where of these old documents are so he said I'll get back to you so he called me about two weeks later he said that I have to turn this over to the FBI because they have the best system of all for finding out about something like this so he called me back and he said that he had bad news disappointing news I said the FBI's told us that the only way they can find out what's written under there is to destroy the paper destroy the page and we can't allow that I said well absolutely right I understand perfectly thank you for trying he said I haven't given up yet so I'm gonna turn it over to our people so he called me another couple of weeks he said well we haven't got it all but we got quite a lot mad at myself for getting tight he got out and got drunk touchy and he was a man who never drank but he was just so disappointed in himself that he did that and when you find something like that it's really thrilling I've never embarked on a subject that I didn't know anything about during which I in the process of understanding what happened to him to whom and why what I didn't find something that nobody else had found I've always had the good luck of uncovering something and often something quite wonderful right now I'm working on a book which I'm writing right here Hingham at home I knew all about the pioneers who went out from New England from back mostly from Massachusetts to make the first settlement in the Northwest Territory now the Northwest Territory is a subject most of us know nothing about until I embarked on this project I knew nothing about it but it's been a perfect example for me of still wanting to work at these things my own way I don't do any research in advance except enough to get started so that I'm as ignorant of what may happen in Chapter 9 as the reader is and that's the way I want it because I don't want to be so far sighted that I'm acting as though the people who are involved were farsighted there's no such thing as that foresee future that's one of the lessons of history nobody knew I was gonna come out when I read why why he should have thought of this and don't know this he'll know he was in the midst of it she was in the midst of it and the way life when I got going on this I thought the Northwest Territory was Washington an Oregon in that part of the country the Northwest Territory was landed belong to Britain which they ceded to us after the end of the revolution and that incredible decision was brought off by John Adams and John Hay if the peace treaty in Paris that ended the war unbelievable that area in in acreage and square miles is as large as all of the original 13 colonies so he doubled the size of the country and if out of it would come five states Ohio Indiana Illinois Michigan and Wisconsin bigger than all of France and it was nothing but forest nothing but primeval forest and the question was how is it going to be settled well the some of the veterans of the Revolution who lived here in Massachusetts met had decided they were going to create what they called the Ohio Company and they were going to go to the government which still was a primitive state we didn't even have a constitution yet and get them to create the basic formula basic outline of government for this area and the one who went down and sold them the idea was one of the most remarkable men of the 18th century that remarkable century his name was Manasseh Cutler and he lived up here in Hamilton he was the pass the church their church is still there the parsonage is still there he is buried in the graveyard across the street now Vanessa Cutler was a doctor medical doctor a lawyer and a preacher doctoral degrees in all three professions imagine besides that he was a botanist and an astronomer and one of the most remarkable men intellectually of the 18th century hey hey hey brilliant in every way he was probably second only depends upon Franklin so they sent him down to New York to persuade Congress to take this on he'd never done anything like it he went alone and he pulled it off and what they insisted there be and this is so important and this is based on the fact that they are a Puritan background there would be no then we complete religious freedom in all the states that would emerge from this territory there would be public supported education for everybody including at the university level no state in the country yet had anything like that and and most important of all there'll be no slavery when it went through that meant that half of our country before we even had a president they passed the Constitution until later that same summer $0.18 1787 before we even had a full government in place slavery had been bad in what constitute half of the country and we owe that to those people and we owe it in large part to their Puritan background their Puran ideals and I've discovered as maybe some of you have that the Puritans were not people who dressed all in black didn't want anyone to ever have any fun they like the same they like to dance they like to drink they didn't just wear black and of course switch direction some of the earliest them we're right here in this search and and we can be very thankful for that background and they would fight for this all going through the next 50 some years because there were strong elements trying to break that no slavery rule including I'm I'm sorry to say Thomas Jefferson and they kept fighting for it and they held their ground and there never was never what would be any slavery you know all the Northwest Territory and that's all coming out of this part of the country and the background of those people now I can only tell this story because I found this treasure trove trunk in the Attic if you will of papers letters diaries such as you couldn't hardly imagine all in the library of the little College Marietta College in Marietta it Marietta Ohio it Marietta is the first time they settled and what a story it is and it's today half the size of Hingham in population about 13,000 people and the woman who runs that collection her name is Linda show honor is phenomenal and I tell students when you go into a library when you go into an archive or Historical Society to look at what they have remember that the people who work there are as important and valuable as the material you're gonna find always tell a librarian of what you're trying to do always when I first started working on the research for the Johnstown Flood I was the English major in college I had only the history that was required which I'm glad it was required I'm a great believer in required courses I really am you know 80% of the colleges and universities in the country now no longer require any history for graduation absolutely terrible thing to do I'm for that I'm for required courses for that reason but I've also I think it's important that people at that stage in life learned that some things in life are required this is all just what you want anyway the the the the value of what's in the heads of the librarians is often as important or more important than the actual collections judy judy shift at at the Yale library when that lady retires it's gonna be as if one of their major collections walked out the door that's how much she knows the problem today is you go into a library and they'll have young assistants working there and you asked I want to see you know everything you have on Augustus saint-gaudens so they say yeah thank you very much just a minute they go Bing Bing Bing on the computer then the zing zing zing out comes a printed thing about what they haven't I guess the same gods and they don't know anything about who Augustus saint-gaudens was whereas if you asked to see one of the older more established libraries they'll know and then tremendous about guess to say gods and what they have in the collection but they'll also know what other things one ought to look at very often in trying to fathom the character the nature of one of your principal characters in a book it's the secondary characters who give you the most information and they are often people that are in the wings so to speak in memory and they're their letters and diaries now in this project that I'm doing now first of all let me just say same thing I've always wanted to write a book about people you've never heard of and see if I could get you into the ten without him relying on historic celebrity I love from the time I first saw it or read it Thornton Wilder's our town and I thought wouldn't it be great if I could do our town only with real people and because what I'm really trying to do is to tell a story I'm not in the story right people call me the story I don't think of myself as a story I'm a writer a story writer I write stories but they're not made up there's nothing in them to my knowledge there's fictitious I can't just say the yellow streetcar came that came along and picked him up at 6:30 in the morning if I don't know it was a yellow streetcar it might have been a registry car why streetcar what I have to know but I also want to know a great deal more than what many historians and biographers are primarily looking for I want to know what did their voice sound like but color with her eyes what bad habits do they have when were they deflated by when the how and why they failed at something how did they address defeat how did they respond to other people who didn't necessarily act helpfully all of that what did they love what was their primary aspiration but to think we consider a good life the writing of the Wright brothers for example I realized the importance of the father who taught them to have purpose in life that the good life was a life with purpose and worthy purpose so they were never working for money they made a lot of money but that never was the reason they were so devoted to their way they felt we were on a mission and they said so and of course that has a large part to do with changing changing history the Wright brothers by the way like so many of the characters in my book that I'm writing now about the Ohio settlers had little or no formal education they never went to college they never finished high school and they had no taken no courses and mathematics my method I'm behind a half and none of that so all of these young people today who want to get in technologically advancing professions or jobs are naturally taking all that and abandoning the humanities here the two people who cracked one of the most difficult technical problems of all time who were who were liberalized majors if you will in high school they had they lived in the house that had no running water with their father mother had died it had no central heat it had no electricity it had no indoor plumbing but it was full of books because the father was a great reader it's full of whole sets of Mark Twain and Shakespeare and so forth and he encouraged them to read and to read above their level and told them learn to use the English language on your feet and on paper and you don't have to worry much beyond that it's still true still true that that the liberal arts are essential information isn't learning information is plentiful as we've never known it if information we're learning if you memorize the World Almanac you wouldn't be educated you'd be weird young people today unfortunately don't really need to know an awful lot cuz they could look it up why looking up know their vocabularies diminishing that's all measurable I have a character in the book and I'm writing now who never what finish school is about 16 maybe or less he couldn't go to college because his father because of the standard of the economy then after the Revolution he couldn't spell but what a vocabulary had phenomenal he uses words occasionally I'm not sure I know the Arendt Lee correct meaning and he would not give up no matter how at the universities he faced his name is Ephraim Conger he was the son of Manasseh Cutler but by Manasseh Cutler was up as a minister in in Hamilton and in associating with all kinds of brilliant people including the presence of Harvard and so forth and with scientists from over bike lettered by science for scientist abroad this boy's uncle had died when he was fairly young and his name was Ephraim and they asked the father Ephraim the aromaticity the minister if they could take their little six-year-old boy and raise him because they'd lost their child and he was named Ephraim for the man who had died and they eat grew up on a farm in Connecticut where they had virtually nothing so he couldn't go to college he didn't have any schooling and even when he was the grown man out in Ohio struggling with everything he had to survive out there his father would and he was writing to his father his partner right back correcting his spell and his grammar and so forth and this marvelous man didn't get touchy and and hurt about it he just thanked his father very much to have that life come come up alive is one of the joys of this work you're bringing these people back to life we have an expression called gone but not forgotten my feeling is strong feeling is if they're not forgotten they're not gone and that's my mission in life to bring these people back to living witness and in many ways you get to know them better than you know people in real life truly because for one thing in real life you don't get to read other people's mail and of course the days everybody writes sending letters anymore I don't know how future historians are gonna write about us really if you have any interest in immortality start keeping a diary and write letters to somebody every day and when you get to the point where you think maybe the curtain is going to come down give it to this collection here and it'll be quoted for hundreds of years because it'd be the only collection of letters and diaries in existence I really enjoyed this kind of chance to talk to people about my work and how I do it I can't close without telling you one thing very important I believe that anytime you write something that you're serious about get somebody to read it aloud for you because then you hear things about it that you don't necessarily see particularly you've been looking at day after day on paper you hear when you're using the same word too often you hear when your sentence structure is getting tiresome you hear when you're being boring and you don't want that so everything that I've ever written Rosalie has read aloud to me and reading aloud isn't just once it's often three four or five times because when you get toward the end of the book you know much more than you do when you've started and you want to go back and rewrite I tell people don't strive to be a writer learn to be a rewriter because that's where it gets up to the point where it works and keep in mind all the five senses smell sight sound feeling and don't ever think of history has a lot of facts in quotations you have to memorize it's about people it's about human people get to the humanity at the center of each individual Jefferson said when it went in the course of human events that's what it is human events and when Rosa Lee reads I III know if it's all right not just from the expression on her face but sometimes she'll tell me when I was finishing one of the chapters in the Theodore Roosevelt book she was reading it aloud she comedy said there's something wrong with that sentence I said well read it again so she read it again I said she I said there's nothing wrong with that sentence she said yes there is I said give me that so I took it back I read it to her I said see how would it be she said no there's something wrong with that sentence I said well just keep going so she kept going in the book went to the publisher eventually and it was published and was reviewed in the New York Review of Books by Gorby doll and in the review he said I can't quote it exactly however sometimes mr. McCullough doesn't write very well consider this sentence thank you yeah there's no stand up there yeah [Applause] you

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Length: 44min 0sec (2640 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 09 2020