More and more I find myself having brief 'out of body' experiences when watching television ads and news programs. I feel as though whatever is coming through to me on my television is part of a really bad science fiction film that I'm watching, about how horrible the future could be. Cataclysms, terrorist attacks, floods, and other disasters across the globe; extreme weather; reality tv programs that pander to prurience and sensationalism; even bombastic crayon-colored candidates for the highest office in the most powerful nation on the earth: they all make me feel as though this life is surreal. And not in a cool way.
So it's interesting to think that perhaps others are feeling disaffected with this situation, this milieu, this time, if you will. And if they are feeling less inclined to be happy with the present, then perhaps they would enjoy a respite by imagining themselves in another time. In the past, to be precise.
Not that the past was all rainbows and ice cream: far from it! But there were fewer people and statistically, therefore, less crime. Also, most people didn't travel very far from home, and when they did, it still wasn't really far. Therefore, disasters, attacks and similar atrocities in foreign lands, when heard about on U.S. soil, were not as immediately affecting, because they had happened so far away. Very few, if any, felt--as I did a couple of days ago, hearing about the attacks at Ataturk Airport in Istanbul--a personal shock when hearing of a disaster. Or said to themselves in disbelief, as I did, 'gee I've flown into and out of that airport!' Additionally, in the past, communication was far slower than it is today. Therefore, news about disasters, attacks, etc. was doubly removed by distance and by time, because by the time people heard about things that had happened, weeks or even months had gone by.
For all these reasons, and probably more that I could think of but will not address here, the past seems to us here in the present to have been a much simpler time: quieter, calmer, more gracious perhaps as well. And it draws us, particularly when we find today's world less than inviting. The past beckons--'take a rest in me,' it says, 'even for an hour or so, forget the modern world and return to me.'
When I first heard a presentation last year on effective historical interpretation, I was excited. My friends will tell you that that's because I get excited about a lot of things: enthusiasm is one of my character traits. I enjoy an informative presentation when I'm on a tour--something I do rarely, except at historic sites, and even then I prefer to do my own 'tour'--but I really dislike having the obvious presented to me, or stated. I have a brain, and I can read: tell me something I cannot learn on my own!
Taking that tack, when I began doing guided tours at The Oldest House in Laceyville, and now at the LaPorte House at French Azilum near Towanda, I attempted to imbue them with spirit, a bit of that excitement about the past that I felt, a bit of the love and respect for the people and things from former times that I felt, too. I read books on various theories of historical interpretation, and attended another seminar on the subject, and I developed a method of giving a tour in an historic home that invites the visitors to become a part of the house's mythos, inveigles them, for a brief time, to adopt the rôle, mentally of course, of a visitor to the house back in times gone by.
Those who are willing to let their guard down enough to do this, even a little bit, enjoy the tour a great deal. They seem quite willing to enter into the spirit of pretend, a variation on the old 'suspension of disbelief' that we all do from time to time: we know we are not really back in the 18th or 19th century, but isn't it fun to pretend that we are for an hour or so?
I invite the visitors who take my tours of these historic homes to see the homes through the eyes of visitors from centuries past, friends of the family who lived there at that time, perhaps, who are stopping by to say hello. Although the visitors are not dressed in period costume, I am, and I think this adds to that 'suspension of disbelief' for them: everything they are looking at, including me, evokes an earlier time or is, in fact, from an earlier time. My visitors are still cognizant of the fact that they are from the modern world, and still ask questions, like, 'what kind of lighting did they have back in 1836?' (or 1781, or whenever). But they readily slip into the ambience of a past century, if they allow themselves to. (This is one reason I ask for mobiles to be silenced during my tours. Not only would a ring tone be disruptive, it would break the fragile spell I weave around us all as we travel through the house. We are encapsulated in a little bubble of time past, but that bubble can break with the first note of an electronic message.)
Clearly, I enjoy it, too: just look in my closets. There are as many (well, nearly) outfits from 1770-1920 as there are 'modern' clothes; indeed, I appear at so many functions and in photographs online and in print media in period or vintage clothing that when people see me in normal clothes they sometimes don't recognize me right away! And if I go to a fancy function where semi formal or formal dress is the norm, you'll probably see me in period garb, since I actually like wearing the clothes. Also, wearing them typically engenders questions, and these lead to information I can share, about what I do and where I do it, with others who may not know.
When I tried this technique out the first couple of times, I was a bit hesitant, tentative: would my visitors like it, or would they think I was a fruitcake for suggesting they 'pretend they are visitors to the house, coming to pay a call, perhaps, or coming to see the family and their new house.' Would they do it? Or would they refuse, and trail after me inwardly thinking I was a jerk?
A woman on one of the very first tours I did using this imaginative approach gave me the confidence to carry on with it and now I will unapologetically tell you it has become my favorite part of being a docent at an historic home. When I said, 'I'd like you to imagine, if you will, that you've come today to visit the family here, and you've just alighted from your carriage and come into the house...' she smiled a little bit, closed her eyes, and was clearly seeing herself in a long traveling gown and bonnet, stepping into the centuries old home as a welcome guest of some former owner.
These days, given the state of the country and the world, I feel that people are longing ever more for an escape. Not everyone has the means to fly off to a tropical island where you have no mobile reception or television and can forget for a while the plagues of modernity. But most people have the few dollars that the average historic home requests as a donation to enter and have a tour. And while they may not think of it as an 'escape' as such when planning their visit to The Oldest House or the LaPorte House and French Azilum, subconsciously they welcome it when it is offered to them.
Escape the worries, anxieties, fears and pressures of the modern world, even if just for an hour. Visit an historic home--preferably one of the two I docent at, of course, if you can!--and give your brain a short respite with an imaginative, immersive visit to the past.
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