Inside Texas: Culture, Identity and Houses, 1878–1920

1. “All That Stuff”: An Introduction

______ Jll ______ "All That Stuff" AN INTRODUCTION ]I[N 1984 author-screenwriter Horton Foote called me to advise him on a set design for the movie 1918, a semiautobiographical film shot in Waxahachie about the 1918 influenza epidemic. Foote explained that many scenes would recreate his family's home. He said he had some of the original furniture, which he described as "white." I suspected he meant an enameled bedstead, and a colonial revival dresser and matching dressing table. Foote explained that the film company's art department - a Texas crew who embraced Hollywood's vision of their state - rejected the white furniture in favor of Victorian furnishings. Since he had no family photographs , Foote requested interior photographs I had collected that would approximate a Waxahachie interior in 1918. He believed my photographs and my research on house interiors would bolster his position against the art department so that he could use the very furniture that had been in the house. The art department did not want the real thing - the sort of furniture widely available in Texas stores in the 19IO - 1920 decade. They overlooked the important details of the movie characters' lives - that they were young and newly married and had the need of all newlyweds to furnish their home. Instead, they wanted to perpetuate the Hollywood stereotype ofTexans as somehow singular and anachronistic, unaware of fashion and styles. Their syllogism went something like this: "If Texans have bad taste - and they do - and if so-called Victorian taste equals bad taste - and it does - then Texans in 1918 decorated their houses in that manner." According to the movie's set designers, Texans were also behind the times, and although Victorian decoration was disappearing by 1918, newly married young Texans (and older ones) would be avid consumers of it. My search for early interior views gave me the opportunity to test the notion that Texas houses - like most things Texan - are unique and 3 Inside Texas 4 THE NATURAL REGION S OF TEXAS 1.1. The natural regions of Texas (From Rupert N. Richardson , Ernest Wallace, and Adrian Anderson, Texas: The Lone Star State, 5th ed., Englewood Cliffs, N.].: Prentice Hall, 1988, p.3. Based upon Stanley A. Arbingast, Lorrin G. Kennamer, and Michael E. Bonnie Atlas of Texas, Austin: Bureau of Business Research, University of Texas at Austin, 1967). different and to debunk "the Hollywood art department fallacy. " Interior photographs contain much practical information not only for set designers but also for historic preservationists . Many people charged with historic house recreation either despair if their specific structure has no surviving photographic documentation or seize the first high-style East Coast interior photograph they can find and attempt to graft details upon a vernacular building in Texas. This is often understandable. But the published interior views always seem to be either too high-style or too low-style, too early or too late, too far west or too far east to have much to do with one's project. It is especially critical now to locate regional images as scholars increasingly recognize that people's creation of domestic environments depends in large part on factors relating to geography: climate , availability of goods, and ethnicity. In nineteenth-century Texas, all three factors had an impact on household furnishings. Texas then as now had typically long and hot summers, and mild winters with occasional fierce blue northers. In West Texas, annual rainfall was sometimes less than ten inches, while in the eastern part of the state winds from the Gulf of Mexico brought frequent and heavy rains. Soil and climate created conditions in which oak, hickory , and pine flourished in East Texas; oaks and mesquite grew intermittently in the central part of the state; and in West Texas, the land supported only grasses and shrubs, oaks, junipers, or cedars, and mesquite. In East Texas there was plentiful lumber; in southern and western areas, it was scarce (fig. I. I). At mid nineteenth century, transportation routes were starting to make available all kinds of goods, including household furnishings. Several ports connected settlers with markets in other parts of the country. Galveston was the most active; Matagorda, Indianola (destroyed by a storm in 1875, rebuilt, and again destroyed in 1886), and Port Lavaca were also busy ports. Prior to the [880s, upon arrival in Galveston or other port cities, goods could be shipped - with considerable difficulty - over land routes...