I first heard the word when I was a boy. My grandmother told me about the days when she was a young woman and “the Chautauqua” came and briefly flooded our hometown in South Georgia with culture. There were plays, noted lecturers and classical music. To a boy the very name carried a certain mystique and excitement, enough to warrant an exclamation mark.
Much later I learned that there was a mother Chautauqua along the lake by the same name in western New York and the annual event in our small town was only one of some 255 little Chautauquas. There was a Chautauqua circuit with traveling lecturers and performers who went from town to town, quickening minds and entertaining hearts across the United States. It was all a part of a movement to bring culture and arts to the people.
Fred Anderson
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In recent years my friend, Paul Watlington, a Virginia Baptist minister in Norfolk, would go in the summers to serve as a host in the Baptist House at the mother Chautauqua; and he kept encouraging me to experience the unique place. In our church, Judy and Dick Morris are repeat Chautauquans and they shared information about it. Other friends, Katie and Isam Ballenger of Frederick, Md., prompted my wife and me to join them for a week at Chautauqua.
It is no small matter to go to Chautauqua. First, you must decide which week to attend and begin to find accommodations which range from denominational houses to rental cottages to a grand hotel. And then you have to get to the isolated community in the rural countryside of western New York.
Chautauqua is a community just as Williamsburg is a town. There are some 200 or more permanent residents, but each week during the summer the population soars to around 7,500. And like Colonial Williamsburg, the Chautauqua Institute requires a paid admission pass in order to enter the various facilities. Instead of the Colonial architecture of Virginia’s Williamsburg, Chautauqua is filled with Victorian gingerbread cottages and houses in a woodland setting beside a deep blue lake.
The Amphitheater at Chautauqua at night.
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Early in the new year the institute publishes the themes for the summer season and places the schedule on a website. Each week carries a different theme yet all include morning worship led by a different preacher each week and evening symphony concerts. There are some 50 choices of activities on a given day. These include lectures in the Hall of Philosophy, a columned open-air structure, or concerts in the mammoth 5,000-seat wooden amphitheatre known simply as “the Amp.” Some of the activities are for smaller audiences with specific interests. I enjoyed a walking tour led by the institute’s resident horticulturist.
The crown jewel is the Amp’s mighty pipe organ and it usually is played during the worship services. Another attraction is the bell tower down by the lake. The chimes sound the time and also play tunes which can be heard across the community.
Each morning newspaper boys (and girls) hawk The Chautauquan Daily, an engaging paper which carries complete coverage of the major lectures and the daily sermon. With a little encouragement the sellers will rhyme a song about the virtues of buying a paper.
With newspaper in hand, Chautauquans sit on the hard benches at “the Amp” and read reviews of last night’s play and circle the events of the day.
The week which we shared with the Ballengers carried the theme of “A Case for the Arts” and especially emphasized the role of religion and the arts. The week’s chaplain was a Baptist minister, the well-known C. Welton Gaddy, pastor of Northminster Baptist Church in Monroe, La. He crafted sermons which spoke to the various arts, including painting, storytelling, dancing and singing.
The people on the benches bear familiar resemblances to folks you know back home; after all, they are the same sort of people who occupy the pews in your church. They likely are deacons and vestrymen and choir members and faithful pew occupants in their own church.
The lecturers on the arts included Rocco Landesman, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, who stressed his own pet project entitled Art Works, emphasizing that performing and producing artists are part of the world of work. In the midst of his lecture, Landesman suddenly was interrupted by “a flash mob” of opera singers who throughout the Amp began to sing operatic choruses in various parts of the Amp. It was a delightful surprise.
All was not high brow during our week. One evening a circus troupe of acrobats and jugglers entertained in the Amp and the last evening even featured a rock group.
Chautauqua began in 1874 as a Methodist Sunday school retreat. In the summer of 1881 the Baptists were operating a rival retreat called Point Chautauqua just across the lake from the Methodists. One of the lecturers that summer was Alfred E. Dickinson, “junior editor” of the Religious Herald. He spoke on “The Truth about the South.”
One of Dickinson’s hearers was his friend, Thomas Pritchard, then president of Wake Forest College. Pritchard thought that the Methodist Chautauqua was better attended simply because Methodists “are more clannish” and felt that the Baptists’ Point Chautauqua “would draw from all parts of the country.” He was wrong. The Methodists won, but ultimately the mother Chautauqua became very ecumenical. One of the newest and most attractive facilities is the Jewish Center.
It is difficult to describe Chautauqua. It must be experienced. And there is always next summer.
Fred Anderson is executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and the Center for Baptist Heritage and Studies, located on the campus of the University of Richmond. He may be contacted at [email protected] or at P.O. Box 34, University of Richmond, VA 23173.