Charles Torrey Simpson unheeded warning

Charles Torrey Simpson

There’s a green space amid the concrete that is downtown Miami named for Charles Torrey Simpson, a man who late in life fell in love with natural South Florida and the Everglades and warned in four books and extensive writings about the need to preserve them.

Not much else remains in South Florida of Simpson’s legacy. He consulted with James Deering on the gardens for his Vizcaya estate on Biscayne Bay but his homestead in Lemon City just north of downtown Miami is gone. A towering condo, complete with tennis courts, swimming pools and a marina rests there now. All signs of the 9.5-acre plot with pine woods, a hardwood hammock and the three-story stilt house he called The Sentinels are gone.

In his second book, In Lower Florida Wilds, Simpson relates that he was astonished at the viewpoint of a distinguished scientist who called talk of the beauty of nature “pure bosh.”

"I do not want to investigate nature as though I were solving a problem in mathematics,” wrote Simpson. “I want none of the elements of business to enter into any of my relations with it. I am not and cannot be a scientific attorney.”

“In my attempts to unravel its mysteries I have a sense of reverence and devotion, I feel as though I were on enchanted ground. And whenever any of its mysteries are revealed to me I have a feeling of elation–I was about to say exaltation, just as though the birds or the trees had told me their secrets and I had understood their language–and nature herself had made me a confidant.”

A copy of the first edition of Simpson’s book is in the collection of rare and unusual books at Lighthouse Books, ABAA.

Some consider Simpson the father of the conservation movement in South Florida. He was a respected friend of Marjory Stoneman Douglas, David Fairchild, John K. Small (about whom we will write soon), James Deering, and other luminaries in horticulture and botany.

Will Simpson's warnings about the need to preserve and protect the beauty of our natural surroundings be nothing more than a cry in the wilderness?

Fuller Warren's political primer

Shortly after he was sworn in as governor of Florida in 1949, Fuller Warren published a book titled How To Win In Politics, a subject about which he was well qualified to write. The governorship was the culmination of a lifetime career in public service.

A copy of that book, signed by the author, is in the collection of rare and unusual books at Lighthouse Books, ABAA.

Fuller Warren was first elected to public office when he was still a senior at the University of Florida. He won a seat in the Florida House in 1927. He was 21 years old. As a student he had served as a page in the Florida House. Later, he served on the Jacksonville City Council, again in the state legislature, and finally as governor.

The book might have been a slim volume had it not been for the contribution of Allen Morris, venerable clerk of the Florida House. Morris produced an appendix that is really a practical guide for running for public office in Florida–or at least, it was when it came out.

So much has changed in public life since 1949.  Still, for the student of Florida history, particularly Florida political history, this volume offers an amazing glimpse at the politics of the era. Its chapters feature titles like "Talking Your Way Into Office," "It Takes Teamwork to Win," "You Can’t Kid the People–For Very Long," and, "Getting Out the Right Vote."

Warren discusses the need for stamina in seeking a statewide office, noting that such efforts take a physical toll on the candidate. He shares his own concerns over an injury he sustained in a car accident; he feared that the resulting weakness to his right arm and shoulder would affect his ability to meet handshaking requirements.

His fears proved unfounded. In fact, he discovered that constant handshaking provided exercise his arm and shoulder needed. He did, however, develop callouses on his palms that were nearly as tough as the ones he had developed earlier in his life while working for a lumbermill in his native Blountstown.

Office seekers have to be flexible, he cautions. Campaigns often turn on the oddest events. In a chapter called The Strangest Things Happen, Morris shares how Fred P. Cone’s 1936 campaign acquired Suwannee River as its theme song.

The campaign had not planned to use that song or any other as a theme song. They did play music before Cone’s speeches, however. This was done using records and a record player attached to the sound system.

Before one campaign appearance in South Florida, campaign workers discovered a minor catastrophe. All of the records had become warped beyond use–except one: Suwannee River. The sound system operator, probably out of desperation, played the song again and again. Campaign workers discovered an amazing thing. The audience, mostly Yankee transplants, loved it. After that the campaign played the song frequently at campaign rallies all over the state–and Cone became known as Old Suwannee.

Candidates always want to control their message in public media. One way to do that in Fuller Warren’s era was to produce matted human interest stories, complete with photographs, on the theory that harried editors would choose to drop them into their papers if they didn’t editorialize too much. The beauty was that the stories couldn't be cut easily, so often the entire story (and the whole message) was published. The plan often worked in those days.

There’s an example of such a story in the book.  The feature, about Fuller Warren’s sister, Alma, describes her excitement at occupying the Governor’s Mansion as the state’s First Lady, after an election she was certain he would win. It paints a lovely picture of Warren, the candidate, sharing his home with his sister after the recent death of their mother. The article omits the fact that she would enjoy the  position of First Lady only since, at the time, Warren was twice divorced -- not a topic the candidate wanted voters dwelling upon.

Warren advises the aspiring candidate to keep his name before the public in any way he can, but especially through frequent letter writing to the state’s newspapers. One can image that Fuller Warren would have had a great time with Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

A great find

Book appraisal work does sometimes brings surprises; a book appraiser in Utah was recently surprised with a very unusual work indeed. The volume, called Nurenberg Chronicle, was published in 1494, and is an illustrated world history. It was one of the first books to successfully use illustrations with text in a pleasing and efficient design. It acquired the quite appropriate name Nuremberg Chronicle because of the city in which it was published, although it is known among scholars as the Book of Chronicles. In Germany, it's called Schedel's World History, after the author, Hermann Schedel.

 The volume was published by Anton Koberger, once the most successful publisher in Germany. Koberger owned 24 printing presses and had offices not only in Germany, but all over Europe. He was the godfather of Albrecht Durer, the painter, printmaker and engraver.

The appraiser, Ken Sanders, owns an antiquarian bookshop in Salt Lake City.

George Anson’s astounding world voyage

Commodore George Anson

It is the stuff of novels and epic films. A Voyage Round the World is a true account, but it is a sea story as action-packed as the popular Master and Commander historical fiction series by Patrick O’Brian, though Voyage happened more than half a century before the time in which O'Brian's novels are set.

In 1740, a British expedition set sail under the command of Commodore George Anson, a skilled naval commander and wealthy aristocrat. The mission: attack Spanish ports and vessels in the Pacific Ocean. England was at war with Spain and anything that disrupted Spain’s commerce, especially in the New World, was considered a top priority. While the voyage mostly failed in its primary mission, Anson returned a hero, mainly due to a serendipitous turn of events after much disaster.

The four-year expedition is chronicled in A Voyage Round the World, published in 1748. The massive volume was compiled by the flagship’s chaplain from the papers of the commodore. A copy of a first edition is in the collection of rare and unusual books at Lighthouse Books, ABAA. It includes 42 copper plates illustrating the various ports of call and some of what was seen along the way.

That the expedition even got under way at all was an astounding event, considering that it was ill-equipped, undermanned, and got a late start. Six warships and two store ships set sail from Great Britain with 1,854 men and boys aboard, many of whom were patients in military hospitals and too ill to serve in battle. The expedition was part of the conflict between Great Britain and Spain known as the War of Jenkins’ Ear.

HMS Centurion, the flagship, was the only one to return to Britain, after circumnavigating the globe. Warships Gloucester, Wager and the sloop Tryal were lost through damage, storms or misfortune. Severn and Pearl were separated from the rest, eventually turned back, and arrived in England amid speculation that they deserted, though there were never any charges The supply ships, Anna and Industry, suffered ignoble ends in an episode that could have been a novel unto itself.

In all, only about 500 survived, including 188 original crew members and officers who returned on the Centurion. The expedition was beset with disaster after disaster, including severe storms that damaged and separated the ships, leaky vessels, mutiny, marooned crews, and illness. Anson encountered hostile ports, including a run-in with Chinese officials in Canton and Macau, who demanded a port tax that Anson refused to pay on the ground that his was a warship, not a merchant vessel. Storms plagued the expedition because it had started late, putting in at the southern tip of South America at the worst possible time of the year.

The expedition did succeed in capturing merchant vessels bound for Spanish ports in South America, and relieving them of their cash, but the real prize came near the end of the expedition.

For centuries, the Spanish had made annual or semi-annual runs across the Pacific Ocean from Manila to Acapulco and back. Part of the plan had been to capture the Spanish galleon as it left Acapulco carrying silver for trade in the Philippines. Anson lay in wait off the coast but it soon became clear that the Spanish had spotted his ships and wouldn’t be sending any galleons.

Manila Galleon by Samuel Scott, painted before 1772.

Anson headed to China, where he endured much difficulty and months of delay. When, finally, he got his remaining ship fully repaired, he decided to try once more for the Spanish galleon, which was by now, he expected, nearing the Philippines in the western Pacific.

Anson got lucky. He encountered the Neustra Señora de Covadonga, laden with 1.3 million pieces of eight and 2,230 pounds of silver. Anson took the vessel, and after a brief visit back in Canton, where Chinese officials and British merchants both took a dim view of his arrival (believing he wanted to make Canton a base for his pirating activities), he made a swift return to Great Britain.

The arrival of the Centurion in England was cause for great celebration and Anson was accorded the status of a hero. His share of the proceeds of this four-year adventure left his family financially secure and Anson subsequently enjoyed a distinguished naval and political career.