Henry Charlton Beck RSS Feed

    by Published on 11-20-07 10:25 PM

    If the ghost of Turner Brakeley is as benign as I feel he must be, he must approve, I feel very sure, of the La-Ha-Way he knew in the quiet days he passed there more than 50 years ago. For, I must report to you, a gentleman whose name is Stanley Switlik has not only restored what first were the La-Ha-Way plantations to the glories Turner evolved but, in terms of peacocks, swans, trustful deer, lak ...
    by Published on 11-19-07 10:23 PM

    Now that the vast Wharton estate, tri-county treasure trove of many of these stories, is back in the news, I feel impelled to refresh your memory concerning it. I do that knowing that there will be as many exaggerations as there may be fantastic tales concerning its places and people before, if enabling action follows Gov. Driscoll’s budgetary proposal, the area becomes a state park.

    It was the ...
    by Published on 11-19-07 10:21 PM

    Whenever I walk the Tallertown road, the ghosts rise up around me. There is, to begin with, the ghost of the town itself for in these days no one seems to be sure if the village, now only a scattering of weather black houses, was Tallertown or Tylertown. Up to now, or not long ago, it had been Tylertown to me because. old men like Constant Ford and Vill and Lonzo Nichols had associated it with a l ...
    by Published on 11-19-07 10:17 PM

    Now we have come to a land where clam and corn fritters are often “flitters,” where wasps are “waspers” and where the industrious ant, according to size, is either an “antymire” or something not sufficiently elegant for quotation in this family journal.

    We have arrived together in an area roughly bounded by Mount Misery, once called “Misericorde” wandering grape planting Frenchmen; Dover Forge, ...
    by Published on 11-19-07 10:14 PM

    “An observant traveler, taking his way through the bleak woods in November, especially, along the tangled and moss-carpeted trails among forgotten towns, must sooner or later acquire something of a philosophic viewpoint.

    “If he goes down to Retreat, four miles or so out of Vincentown, as we did, he will hear people recall how Charlotte Cushman, one of the most famous actresses of her time, spen ...
    by Published on 11-19-07 10:12 PM

    I could lead you down ordinary ways to Taunton, Etna, Atsion and Batsto, without more to-do. I could tell how that old sailor with the Creole wife, Charles Read, listed Taunton as Tanton when he advertised its sale in 1773, or how, three years after, Tom Maybury moved there to make cannon and shot under the noses of British and Hessian soldiers in Mount Holly.

    I could take you to Etna, called A ...