![]() ![]() ![]() White hair was desirable but rare, so powder allowed men to get the white “look” for darker wigs, or for their own hair. Wigs (some styles were called perukes or periwigs) were made of human, horse, or goat hair. Come visit and ask us why! “The Last Leaf” felt especially good to discover during April, Literature and Poetry Month, because Thomas Melvill’s grandson, my beloved Herman Melville, had a whale of a time as a writer himself. Other pieces in the collections include the poems and prose of member Sarah Wentworth Morton, and the novels The Scarlet Letter and Little Women. I have gladly collected “The Last Leaf” into my mental anthology of King’s Chapel writing. It can also be quiet objects I pass by sometimes, that suddenly blossom into new meaning, as the Melvill stone did through Oliver Wendell Holmes’s poem. It can be stories about past people and events, whether in writing or in conversations we have with chapel visitors. It can be the profound preservation of this entire mid-18th-century church and crypt, so much of which is original. Together they get me thinking, during Preservation Month in May, about what preservation can be. The poem preserves a sense of his life, and the stone preserves his name and the dates of that lifetime. ![]() I have Melvill’s image from the poem in my mind now whenever I see this stone, and he's become, vividly, a person who once lived, once took a walk, was once seen by an empathetic poet. “The Last Leaf” was not a Holmes poem I knew, and as a King’s Chapel History Program educator, I’m happy Rob introduced us. The poem’s speaker wants to chuckle at his eccentric look, but also feels deeply for Melvill’s losses, knowing that he may find himself someday in Melvill’s old-fashioned shoes. He seems to be thinking sadly of people long gone. His clothes are from younger days in the 18th century: “the old three-cornered hat,/And the breeches, and all that.”. Melvill walking in Boston, looking weary and lost and out of step with the 19th century. ![]()
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