{"id":6129,"date":"2019-03-05T10:23:28","date_gmt":"2019-03-05T16:23:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/?p=6129"},"modified":"2019-03-05T10:43:14","modified_gmt":"2019-03-05T16:43:14","slug":"the-roads-to-bonniebrook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/2019\/03\/05\/the-roads-to-bonniebrook\/","title":{"rendered":"The Roads to Bonniebrook"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

PLATE 1.<\/span> Winding roads among the rocks and cedars lead to the Bonniebrook Estate five miles north of present-day Branson, Missouri.<\/strong><\/p>\n

[\/vc_column_text][vc_separator][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

The Roads to Bonniebrook<\/h1>\n

by Joshua Heston<\/strong><\/p>\n

On an early morning in January, 1947, the little Ozark cove and cedar break with a tiny stream leading down to Bear Creek was bleak and barren. Smoke rose from the ashes of a space surprisingly small for all the life and love, heartbreak and art that had been contained within. A mysterious place too, a small family cemetery lay nearby, holding the bones of an Irish immigrant family made good in the New World. And the house \u2014 mansion really, first in the Land of Taney to have three stories, 14 rooms and its own staff \u2014 was lost forever. Odds and ends, kitchen utensils, porcelain dolls all lay in the ash, most twisted beyond recognition.<\/p>\n

The dream of Rose O\u2019Neill was gone.[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”6120″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_separator][vc_column_text]O\u2019Neill would arrive in this Ozark holler in the spring of 1894. Earlier, her family \u2014 father William Patrick O\u2019Neill, mother Meemie, siblings John Hugh, Jamie, Lee and Clink \u2014 had traveled by wagon from Omaha. William Patrick O\u2019Neill had taken advantage of the Homestead Act and was yet another outsider moving into sparsely populated Taney County because of cheap land. Rose, burgeoning artist and illustrator, had been sent to New York City to study art. And so, fresh from New York, 19-year old Rose first made her way to the Ozarks.<\/p>\n

She found a dilapidated homestead and a dog-trot cabin amid the bluffs and cedar \u2014 and she fell in love. The nearly impassable brush in the cove became the \u201cTangles\u201d while the little spring branch became \u201cBonnie Brook,\u201d so-named for the happy noises she heard it making. The place became a playground of imagination for this young girl who was rapidly becoming one of the highest paid illustrators \u2014 and celebrities \u2014 in New York. For you see, when Rose wasn\u2019t playing in the creek or dreaming up fanciful stories of fauns and dryads, she was creating commercial artwork for the likes of Puck, Life, Harper\u2019s Bazaar and Brooklyn Life.[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”6121″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_separator][vc_column_text]Within four years, Rose\u2019s income was so great she was sending money to her parents to build a replacement for the ramshackle dog-trot cabin. But this wasn\u2019t any home. Built in stages, the Bonniebrook Mansion would become the grandest, perhaps most mysterious, certainly most eccentric, home in Taney County.<\/p>\n

Raw materials came in the form of native oak lumber, milled by brother John Hugh. John had married local girl Lottie Mintz and teamed up with her father to begin a sawmill on the estate. Rose would decry the cutting of Bonniebrook\u2019s trees, likely having made friends with many of them.<\/p>\n

Exact construction dates are hard to nail down but as the money came in there were three construction phases. First, a living room, music room and library (with three bedrooms above) were built. John Hugh\u2019s and Lottie\u2019s son Paul would be born in the music room in 1900. Later a sprawling kitchen, dining room, laundry (and caretakers\u2019 living quarters) were added. The place now had eight bedrooms and was the first home in Taney County with running water and indoor lavatories.[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”6122″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_separator][vc_column_text]Lastly, a soaring third floor was added, creating Rose\u2019s personal studio, complete with skylight, open balconies and a \u201cBird Caf\u00e9\u201d from which the successful illustrator could embrace all the holler\u2019s \u201crascally beauty,\u201d as she called it. The natural world served as deep inspiration for Rose O\u2019Neill but more than that, nature, so commonplace to others, was a fairy land of safety where, no matter the hurt of a world cruel, dark and frightening, there was always light and life and magic.<\/p>\n

A common wood thrush (Hylocichla mustelina<\/em>) became \u201cthe Flute-bird.\u201d The yucca lilies, planted in profusion around the old place were \u2014 she would write in the spring of 1937 \u2014 \u201cwaiting for extreme white in summer and the white moth husbands when they let out the perfume at night. The night perfume of the yuccas is drunkening. Unlike the simple fragrances of honeysuckle, verbena, catalpa, it comes from some far other place [and] the shape of the massed candelabrum has been used in gold for monstrances in Italian churches \u2014 an elongated diamond. In the morning we have seen the snowy husbands tumbling out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such was her balm and her shield, soothing and protecting this unique young woman from a harsh world outside. It was a world that would rob her younger brother Jamie of his life in 1905 (he is buried in a plot just down from the house). There were two marriages \u2014 and two divorces \u2014 as well as the shifting fortunes of the O\u2019Neill\u2019s artistic empire.[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”6123″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_separator][vc_column_text]There were countless parties in this old mansion \u2014 parties filled to the brim with the glitterati of the era. There was poetry and song and literature, philosophy and love. There was also a lot of work as Rose teamed with her sister Callista to manage an at-the-time flourishing market for the Kewpie dolls. In 1909, Rose would later note, she had fallen asleep in her third-floor studio and dreamed of tiny, chubby, winged children \u2014 strangely reminiscent of her baby brother Jamie \u2014 dancing on the coverlet. She began to sketch them, sending drawings and a proposal to Ladies Home Journal. By December 1909, America was falling in love with the Kewpie.<\/p>\n

In time, Rose would purchase a second estate, playfully named Carabas and located in Connecticut, as well as a villa on the Isle of Capri, just off the coast of Italy near Naples. However, Bonniebrook, with all its \u201crascally tangle,\u201d remained ever close to the artist\u2019s heart.[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”6124″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_separator][vc_column_text]As the glittering fortunes of the 1920s gave way to the economic despair of the Great Depression, the O\u2019Neill empire foundered. Rose lost control of her Italian villa. Travel was cut back dramatically. When debtors came calling, the lavish artwork and massive sculptures of Carabas were loaded up in the dark of night and packed off to Missouri.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Embrace of the Tree chained in the bottom of the truck with the Fauness must have heaved like a titan in the womb of his mother,\u201d Rose wrote. \u201cTen feet of Indiana limestone weighing, I think the man said, as much as two tons. The statues now have their feet to the ground on the innocent lawn of Meemie who would have taken little pleasure in the brutes.\u201d[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”6125″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_separator][vc_column_text]Meemie had passed away in the spring of 1937 and her loss hit Rose, herself 62 years old, very hard. A personal journal notes the loss and the intimacy of daughter and mother and their shared affection of the natural world made magical by love and poetry.<\/p>\n

\u201cI sodded a naked path in Meemie\u2019s sacred lawn and planted seed on others,\u201d she wrote on April 30, 1937. \u201cMeemie\u2019s \u2018red star\u2019 is plentiful,\u201d on May 5. And on May 30, \u201cHoneysuckle in flood. Humming bird appeared yesterday. Meemie\u2019s big rose in middle still going. Her wild verbenas still talking about her.\u201d<\/p>\n

And on July 6, 1937, \u201cHollyhocks giving up the ghost. Yuccas all gone. Day lilies done except for Meemie\u2019s double ones. Portulacas flourishing but they go to sleep pretty early in the afternoon. Most of my infant phlox dying….\u201d[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”6126″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_separator][vc_column_text]In another nine years, Rose would be gone as well, the once majestic mansion a dilapidated ruin. Jamie, Meemie, Rose and Callista lay in the graveyard down the lawn overlooking the beloved \u201cBonnie Brook\u201d \u2014 that same spring branch of which Rose had noted, on June 9, 1937, \u201cthe brook was wild and yellow as Tiber. By eight or nine it was clear but splendidly enraged. Clink put me into his rubber boots and I went down the valley to see Bear [Creek]. He is up to the banks to the knees of the trees, pressing powerfully, yellow and actually making a noise like the edge of the sea.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then it was January 1947. Brother Clink, a savant scarcely capable of caring for himself, was alone. It was a cold night and he had tucked a box of kittens near the stove, building up the fire to keep them warm, before heading over the hill to eat supper at a neighbor\u2019s. By the time anyone saw the smoke, it was far too late. Forty-nine years of art and life and love was gone forever.[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”6127″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_separator][vc_column_text]The land, dark and abandoned, lay bleakly until the 1980s when the Bonniebrook Historical Society \u2014 having been formed in 1975 \u2014 raised enough money to begin a reconstruction of the mansion. Bob Gibbons, the first Society president, worked hard to get Bonniebrook included on the National Register of Historic Places. Darwin Anderson, second president, focused on obtaining the massive Embrace of the Tree \u2014 which had to be again shipped, this time from Michigan. Fourth president Lois Holman worked to raise funds and fifth president Cliff Harralson oversaw the completion of the mansion in 1993, 100 years after the O\u2019Neill family first drove a wagon into this old holler.[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”6128″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_separator][vc_column_text]As close a reconstruction as possible, the mansion is open to tours, as is an adjacent art museum. And yet there are many details lost to history. Rose called the mansion her \u201cGreen House in the Woods,\u201d which inspired the structure\u2019s present-day paint job. But vintage photos suggest something different. Was the house painted green or was it green because of the masses of vines that slowly encapsulated the mansion over the years?<\/p>\n

Early photos suggest unpainted, plain oak siding. Over the decades, the home itself may have become moss-covered \u2014 degrading to its structural integrity but likely appreciated by the eccentric and artistic O\u2019Neills. A recently uncovered photo of the back of the home \u2014 the only photo known to exist \u2014 shows inconsistencies as well.<\/p>\n

Regardless, the estate \u2014 mansion, creek, gardens and humble cemetery \u2014 is still a mysterious, enchanted place to those who embrace the mythical, the legendary and the strangely magical.<\/p>\n

\u201cFlute-bird singing,\u201d Rose would write on July 14, 1937, \u201cBut less continuously. A long farewell \u2014 waving of hands, dreams when the day forgets. Epoch of gladiolus. There should be a sign, not a word, to express marvel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally published JUNE 6, 2014<\/span>[\/vc_column_text][vc_separator][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

Story credits:<\/h1>\n

ALL PHOTOGRAPHY IS COURTESY OF THE BONNIEBROOK HISTORICAL SOCIETY AND MUSEUM. PARTICULAR THANKS GO TO SUSAN SCOTT AND MARTHA MELTON FOR THEIR EXTENSIVE RESEARCH AND HARD WORK IN PRESERVING ROSE O\u2019NEILL ARTWORK. DIGITAL PRINT MANAGEMENT FOR STATEOFTHEOZARKS: J. HESTON.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] PLATE 1. Winding roads among the rocks and cedars lead to the Bonniebrook Estate five miles north of present-day Branson, Missouri. [\/vc_column_text][vc_separator][vc_column_text] The Roads to Bonniebrook by Joshua Heston On an early morning in January, 1947, the little Ozark cove and cedar break with a tiny stream leading down to Bear Creek was bleak…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6119,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[949,466,582],"tags":[734,1047,735,733],"class_list":["post-6129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ozarkfinearts","category-ozarkshistory","category-sotoarchive","tag-bonniebrook","tag-kewpie","tag-kewpies","tag-rose-oneill","category-949","category-466","category-582","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6129"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6139,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6129\/revisions\/6139"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}