e-Newsletter | March 17, 2023
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The Tower on the Marsh: Christiana Morgan's Obscured Legacy
by Sierra Gitlin, Administrative Assistant
You may have heard there’s a castle in Byfield. You may have seen its tower from Middle Road, as you crossed the Parker River heading toward the Governor’s Academy. Or, more interestingly, you may not have. Its shape is obscured, tucked among the pines, and the beauty of the marsh itself could easily distract you from the architectural wonder that inhabits the southern river bank. And its designer and builder, Christiana Morgan, like so many fascinating women whose stories are either forgotten completely or folded into the biographies of the men in their lives, is now largely unknown.
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The Tower on the Marsh
Born Christiana Drummond Councilman in Boston on October 6, 1897, Ms. Morgan was raised among Boston’s most elite families. She was a bright and highly creative child, vivacious but moody, curious, rebellious, and not at all happy to squeeze herself into the role of the demure lady expected by her parents and Boston Brahmin society. From adolescence on she suffered a variety of ailments - headaches, melancholy, “neurasthenia,” and deep depressive episodes that would recur throughout her life. Her doctors, men of their time, believed that women damaged their psyches when they experienced too much excitement or cultivated their own agency. She was sent to a restrictive boarding school in Connecticut to limit stimulation and discourage her from any activity which might rouse her passions.
Passions are not easily denied, however, and she grew up to become a brilliant, active, searching woman, propelled by a deep sense of injury that women’s lives were expected to be mostly parenthetical to their husband’s. Still, the former Miss Councilman married William Morgan, just as World War 1 was beginning. Moved to serve in her own right, she trained as a nurse in New York City as her husband fought abroad. She discovered she was a talented healer, and in-demand for her effective work, she led emergency field hospitals during the 1918 flu epidemic. She became a mother. Restless in marriage and motherhood, caught between the power of her intellect and her inability to freely exercise it, she had affairs, took art classes, and happened upon the then-cutting-edge work of Carl Jung. It would shape the rest of her life, and lead us back to the tower in Byfield. His writings on the subconscious, creativity, and libido resonated with her to such an extent that she would devote the rest of her life to its exploration.
Inspired and seeking help with her complicated life and psyche, married still to Bill Morgan, but madly in love with eminent Harvard psychology professor Harry Murray, a 28-year-old Morgan traveled to Jung’s clinic in Zurich in 1926. There she learned to access her subconscious, entering a trance-like state via meditation. Her exceptionally vibrant inner world manifested as archetypal visions, which she then translated to drawings. Over a period of nine months, she recorded hundreds of these visions, creating a body of work which Jung later used in his “Visions Seminar” and his research and writing for years to come. Jung considered Morgan an authentic manifestation of the anima, in possession of unequaled access to universal archetypes and female power. However, in a cringeworthy turn, Jung ultimately believed her role was to serve as a muse to powerful men.
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Detail carving over exit
After undergoing her own extensive analysis with Jung, she trained as a psychotherapist herself, and returning to Boston began a lifelong collaboration with Harry Murray, both as lovers and as colleagues at the Harvard Psychology Clinic, where as a lay psychoanalyst, she was a pioneer in examining the psychology of women. Together she and Murray developed the Thematic Apperception Test in 1934, a projective psychological test based on Morgan's visionary drawings that is still used today. While Morgan was listed as co-author of the first publication of the test, which immediately became a best-seller for Harvard University Press, her name was removed from subsequent editions. The drawings based on her visions were eventually removed as well. Like her tower in the pines, her contributions to the field of depth psychology are obscured.
Modeled after Carl Jung’s own towered retreat in Bollingen, Switzerland, The Tower on the Marsh, as they would eventually call it, was a place to read, write, meditate, paint and sculpt, as well as a lover’s retreat for Morgan and Murray. Morgan worked tirelessly alongside Newbury builder Kenneth Knight to construct the house and three-story stucco tower, drawing on his deep knowledge and experience to learn wood carving, masonry, and carpentry. She reveled in the physical work, and with relentless attention spanning decades, she imbued the entire building with the symbology of her soul, a monument to her and Harry’s love and a prayer for her/their spiritual and intellectual actualization. She filled the house with elaborate carvings, crafting meticulously detailed wooden shutters, doors, large movable panels, and paintings, leaving no surface untouched by the outpouring of her meditative visions. The themes are Biblical, mythological, metaphysical, archetypal, mysterious, and deeply personal.
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Detail of mahogany door carved by Morgan
Each floor of the tower houses one round room. The bottom floor, built into the hillside, served as a meditation room, as well as an erotic den where Morgan and Murray invented sexual rituals aimed both at stoking their creativity and quelling their demons. Morgan covered the two large windows with translucent paper painted in bright colors with the most resonant symbols from her visions. The designs are now rendered in stunning stained glass, executed and installed by Mary Leighton in 1966. The second floor is the bedroom, with “Amor Fati” “Love of Fate,” carved into a huge mahogany square on the ceiling. On the third floor, an airy study where Morgan and Murray worked, the idea being that the creative energies they kindled on the first floor would rise upward, gain power, and inspire their research and writing. It was a bold and visceral attempt to transcend their own limitations, but it was, ultimately, unsuccessful.
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One of two stained glass panels on lower level based on Morgan’s vision paintings
The end of Christiana Morgan’s story is tragic, ambiguous, and not at all atypical of creative, powerful, intelligent women of her time period. Morgan struggled all her life with the incompatibility of her inner world and what the outer world could either offer or accept. When she bought the land overlooking the river in Byfield in 1927, she was seeking integration and respite from that conflict, but her work, her visions, and her power were eventually stifled by her complex relationship with Harry. As their love and their work faltered, heartbreak, disappointment, alcoholism, and ill-health took their toll on Morgan. After undergoing a sympathectomy (a surgical severing of the sympathetic nerve chain running up and down the spine, responsible for the fight-or-flight response) at the age of 69 to treat her high blood pressure, she died in 1967 on St. John while vacationing with Harry, drowned in just two feet of water. There is reason to believe she killed herself, though even in her final moment, Harry’s conflicting reports of how he found her have obscured her truth.
A biography “Translate This Darkness, The Life of Christiana Morgan, The Veiled Woman in Jung’s Circle,” by Claire Douglas, quotes builder Kenneth Knight as saying Christiana was “a very good woman.” Published in 1993, it was my main source of information for this article. Hilary Morgan, Christiana's granddaughter, has made a documentary about her grandmother, called Tower of Dreams.
The Tower is now part of the Governor’s Academy campus and is not open to the public.
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Second Night Added! History of Old Newbury in 3 Drinks:
Part I: Beer (1635-1700)
Friday, March 31, 2023, 6:30 pm
Museum of Old Newbury, 98 High Street, Newburyport
Join the Museum of Old Newbury for a beer tasting and history talk, featuring Ipswich Ale!
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General Benjamin Franklin Butler: A Noisy, Fearless Life
Thursday, April 20, 2023, 7 pm
Museum of Old Newbury, 98 High Street, Newburyport
Learn more about the controversies surrounding Benjamin Butler - Civil War General, US congressman, and Massachusetts governor.
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Fashion Night Out: Girls' Style from the Civil War to 1900
Thursday, May 11, 2023, 6:30 pm
Museum of Old Newbury, 98 High Street, Newburyport
Our ever-popular fashion series continues with a focus on Girls' Style from the Civil War to 1900.
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The Heirloom Gardner - Traditional Plants and Skills with John Forti, May 18, 7pm.
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, 166 High St., Newburyport.
Join us for a refreshing look at traditional plants and skills for the modern world with garden historian and ethnobotanist John Forti.
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Save the Date!
The 44th Annual Newburyport Garden Tour - June 10 & 11, 10am -4pm (tickets available soon)
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Woman on the MOON
...a blog by Bethany Groff Dorau, Executive Director
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Mourning the Myth
So are you, probably.
But since I am in a position where I am listened to, generally (unless you are my 19-year-old daughter), and presumed to be telling the truth, this is a painful admission. The revelation of my most recent lie particularly rankled because I should have known better.
Here’s the scene. Ghlee Woodworth, a ray of hyper-energized sunshine in our lives, dashes into the museum office, covers a mind-blowing array of topics (ground-penetrating radar, a neighbor’s puppy, owls) in exactly three minutes, and then puts down the bowl of a clay pipe on my desk and explodes back out the door. She jogs on the beach. That must be her secret, I think. I struggle to keep up.
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The clay pipe bowl was found by a maintenance worker in Highland Cemetery, likely pushed up and out by the deep freeze. It had legible marking that identified it as a Glasgow pipe from the 19th century, made at the factory of William White. You can see the "W.WH..." in the photo. |
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Clay pipes were widely smoked, particularly by working people (yes, men and women), before the mass production of cigarettes in the 20th century. Everything I’ve said so far is true, but here comes the lie. “Pipe stem fragments were the cigarettes butts of their time, as people sharing a pipe would snap off the end and toss it before passing it to the next person.” |
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This 17th century woman has the decency to keep her germ-riddled pipe to herself. A Woman Seated Smoking a Pipe by Gabriel Metsu, 1629-1667, Manchester City Galleries
I have no idea where I heard this, but I announced this “fact” with great confidence before crinkling up my forehead and thinking about it. One of the lasting images I remember from my Little House on the Prairie books is how often everyone shared a water dipper in school, at home, on the train with strangers. Why on earth would people think to snap off the end of a pipe? There was no germ theory of disease. I felt an all-too familiar sinking feeling.
In my feeble effort to verify this “fact”, I stumbled upon a book that is at this very moment insulting and infuriating me. It is called Death by Petticoat: American History Myths Debunked, by Mary Miley Theobald, published under the auspices of Colonial Williamsburg. Let me just say, if I ever run into Mary Miley Theobald in a dark alley, there may be a certain amount of unpleasantness.
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To set the stage, Ms. Theobald lays blame at the feet of my fellow museum professionals. “It is hard to visit a museum today without encountering these myths.” Surely not at OUR museum!
Not so fast. Here, in order, are myths I believed to be true until I was today years old:
Myth #5: men posed with one hand inside their vest to save money since portrait artists gave a discount if they didn't have to go to the extra work of painting hands.
Makes sense, right? Until you look at all the bajillionaires with their hands in their vests.
Myth #29: Women used arsenic to lighten their complexion.
Close – it was poisonous lead.
Myth #31: Cooks used spices to disguise the flavor of rotting food.
Well, maybe sometimes, but in general, the people who could afford spices could also afford non-rotting food.
Myth #45: The position of a horse’s leg on an equestrian statue tells how the rider died.
I guess not. You have a 1 out of 3 chance of getting this right when viewing a statue, but there is no consistent evidence of this as an intentional practice.
There were plenty more of the 63 myths contained in this volume that I believed at some point in my career, like the one about how beds were shorter because people slept propped up on pillows. I was disabused of this while working for Historic New England, when Abbot Lowell Cummings, former president of (then) SPNEA, handed me a tape measure and told me to measure a bed at the Coffin House. It was about as long as my bed at home, just appeared shorter because of pillowy coverlets and tall posts. Abbot carried a tape measure for just such an occasion. Most beds were made to fit the needs of the family, he said, and would be longer or shorter as needed, but adult beds are almost always over 6’ long.
As I write this, I remember how it felt to have Abbot, a venerated expert in early New England everything, correct my information in front of a group of people. Honestly, it felt – just fine, and I am a sensitive sort. Abbot had a wonderful way of making people feel like he was so excited to share some new bit of information with them – like it was the most natural thing in the world to believe something that is demonstrably untrue until someone shines a bit more light. For Abbot, knowledge was a gift, not a weapon.
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Abbot Lowell Cummings in the pulpit of another of my favorite places, Rocky Hill Meeting House. Courtesy of Historic New England.
These myths have a purpose, of course. They make sense and are often based on reasonable observations. They seem to offer a bit of code to unlock the secret messages of the past. And they are good stories, often far more interesting than admitting that something is unknown, or qualifying a statement until it becomes an exercise in pedanticism.
Aside from the shade Ms. Theobald cast on museums, I found myself loving this book. I would be happy to lend you a copy. Most of the “myths” she lists are neither wrong nor right. They are just not applicable to large groups of people. Some people probably did sleep propped up on pillows. Some people died young. Some people were shorter “back then”. Mary Miley Theobald did the hard work of saying “well, sometimes, by some people”, which, in my experience is much harder to do than dispensing generalizations.
But the acknowledgement of the complexity of human experience over time will save the world, I think. Many terrible things have been done by people who believed in eternal, unchangeable “facts” applied to large groups of other people. It is much more difficult to allow for nuance, to acknowledge what an impact race, class, gender, personality, experience, etc. has (and had) on how people live.
Also, in case you were wondering, Venetian blinds were not invented in Venice.
You’re welcome.
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Something Is Always Cooking... |
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Hermits
We were recently talking in the office about hermits, a cookie that one family member has for breakfast nearly every day. The original power bar, they travel well and were frequently mailed to soldiers overseas during the two World Wars. The recipe may have originated in Plattsburgh, New York, though many New England towns claim ownership. This version comes from Doris Allen and appears in “Cushing House Cooks,” available in our online bookstore.
2 cups raisins
½ cup butter
1 ½ cups sugar
2 eggs
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon powdered cloves
1 teaspoon nutmeg
½ cup chopped walnuts
Cover raisins with cold water and boil 15 minutes. Drain and cool. Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, and beat well after each addition. Sift dry ingredients; add to creamed mixture. Add cooled raisins and chopped nuts. Fold in thoroughly. Pour into greased and floured 9x13-inch pan. Bake at 350F for 35 minutes, until done. Cut into squares. Enjoy!
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Click the image to do the puzzle
Stained glass window in Christiana Morgan's Byfield tower. Design by Christiana Morgan, stained glass installation by Mary Leighton, 1966. Photo by Siera Gitlin.
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generosity of our sponsors:
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Museum of Old Newbury
98 High Street
Newburyport, MA 01950
978-462-2681
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