The Story of Edith Hamilton and Doris Fielding Reid
Preeminent classicist scholar Edith Hamilton’s (1867-1963) relationship with stockbroker Doris Reid (1895-1973) lasted forty years. Doris was twenty-eight years younger than Edith, and the two met when Doris was an elementary school student at the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore, where Edith worked from 1896 through 1922 as headmistress under M. Carey Thomas, president of Bryn Mawr College from 1894 through 1922. By the time Doris left the school in 1911, her mother and Edith had begun to developed a close friendship.
Doris and Edith traveled in Europe together in the summer of 1921, and their relationship was solid and supportive for four decades. In the 19th century, such long-term relationships between women were sometimes dubbed “Boston marriages,” after the 1886 Henry James novel, The Bostonians, which featured a lesbian couple. Because they were financially independent from men, Boston marriages were generally a middle-to-upper class phenomenon, and there is no equivalent term for men who lived together.
“Carey” Thomas had been in a same-sex relationship with Mamie Gwinn (1860-1940), a Baltimore English professor who had helped Carey found the Bryn Mawr School in 1885. When Mamie broke Carey’s heart by marrying a man in 1904, Carey became involved in another longterm relationship with Mary Garrett (1854-1915), a suffragist from a wealthy family who worked as secretary of the Bryn Mawr School. It may have eased Carey’s grief somewhat that Mary left her the majority of her considerable estate, an unusually public testament of their devotion. In spite of her conflict with Edith, Carey retired from Bryn Mawr School at almost the same time Edith left and spent the rest of her life enjoying Mary’s fortune, travelling and enjoying the arts.
In the summer of 1922, Doris’s parents, Harry Fielding Reid and Edith Gittings Reid, purchased a house at Seawall on Mount Desert Island. The Reids, their extended family and their household staff had a house in Seal Harbor and summered there. Doris and Edith moved to the Seawall home together with Doris’s four-year-old nephew Dorian Reid (1918-2008) and remained through the first winter… the only winter they ever spent on the island! A housekeeper for the family later remembered the winter they stayed in the house. She reported that little Dorian "crinkled" from the newspapers that were stuffed under his sweater for insulation!
In 1922 Edith officially adopted Dorian, the son of Doris’ brother, Francis Fielding Reid (1892-1960) and Marie Magdalene Svendsen Reid (1895-1974), who were divorced. Doris wanted to adopt Dorian, but it was decided that Edith would be the legal parent, as Edith was more financially stable than Doris.
The story handed down in the family is that the land by the ocean was sold to Doris’s parents for one dollar, as “cows couldn't be raised there.” The middle section of the house was originally on Seawall Road, and Doris’s father had it moved down to its present site. They would later add wings on either side. In the early 1950’s, Doris and Edith built two small summer cottages on the extreme edges of the Seawall property to house the growing family of Dorian, Elizabeth (always called Betsey), and Mary. Edith and Doris seemed to prefer separation from the generations of children, though they welcomed the extended family for cocktails and post-dinner highballs.
Perhaps daunted by the harsh Maine winter, the following fall the small family moved to New York’s Grammercy Park neighborhood. The family continued to summer at the Maine cottage for the next four decades. Edith and Doris also welcomed other family members into their home, and two of Doris’ nieces, Elizabeth Fielding Reid(1920-1999) and Mary Fielding Reid (1922-1984), would stay with them on and off, both in New York and Seawall.
Edith and Doris home-schooled Dorian until he was ten, and Edith instilled in the boy a deep love for the Greek and Roman classics. When he was eleven, his two mothers took him on a trip to Greece. Dorian would have been twelve in 1930, when Edith published her runaway bestseller The Greek Way, a book that translated the classical world of academia into the popular vernacular of mainstream America. Possibly the homeschooling of Dorian was a source of inspiration in Edith's decision to write the book. The Great Depression may well have been another. Doris, a professional stockbroker, had just been hired by the investment firm Loomis, Sayles and Company in 1929. This was a terrible year to begin a career in finance, as it was the year of the Great Crash on Wall Street. (Doris had trained as a young woman to be a concert pianist.) The Greek Way was wildly successful and was a featured selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club. Edith followed this up with a string of other successful books: The Roman Way(1932), The Prophets of Israel (1936), Mythology (1942), and The Echo of Greece (1957).
After the death of Edith and Doris, the property with the three houses was left jointly to Dorian, Betsey, and Mary, and they continued the family tradition of spending his summers on the island. Dorian made his final trip to Maine in the summer of 2007 at the age of ninety, using the services of Angel Flight, an organization that arranged free air transportation for people needing medical treatment. Edith and Doris' adoptive son loved the ocean and he shared his love of sailing with his own children. He also was a fine wood craftsman, and among his works was an intricate model of the JT Morris, a steamship which ran to Bar Harbor, which he donated to the Southwest Harbor Public Library, where it can still be seen.
After many years of arguing, Dorian, Betsey, and Mary finalized the division of the property into three parcels, with Betsey getting the “Big House,” and Dorian and Mary receiving ownership of the two cottages. Betsey retired in 1980 and moved permanently into the Big House. After attempting to winterize the house, she spent several chilly winters there, finally deciding to rent a winterized house from October to May, but she returned every summer to the Seawall house. Now the sixth generation of Reids continues to own the property and enjoy summers there.
The two women remained in New York City until 1943, then moved to Washington, D.C., while still spending summers in Maine. In Washington, D.C., Doris was in charge of the local offices of Loomis, Sayles and Company, who had been her employer since 1929. Edith continued to write and frequently entertained friends, fellow writers, government representatives, and other dignitaries at her home. Among those with whom she socialized were Isak Dinesen, Robert Frost, and labor leader John L. Lewis. After their move to Washington, D.C., Edith became a commentator on education projects and began to receive honors for her work. Edith also recorded programs for television programs and the Voice of America, traveled to Europe, and continued to write books, articles, essays, and book reviews.
Edith considered the high point of her life to be a trip to Athens in 1957, at the age of ninety. She traveled to Greece to hear her translation of Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound performed at the ancient theater of Herodes Atticus. As part of the evening's ceremonies, King Paul of Greece awarded Edith the Golden Cross of the Order of Benefaction, Greece's highest honor, and the mayor of Athens made her an honorary citizen of the city. The U.S. news media, including TIMEmagazine, covered the event and the press emphasized the "majesty, monumentality, and emotional impact" of the play's setting. Edith called the ceremony "the proudest moment of my life."
Edith eventually rebuilt her bond with her sisters, though she was never as close to them as she had been. Margaret and Alice comforted a distraught Doris at Edith’s funeral in 1963. Four years after the death of her life partner, Doris published Edith Hamilton: An Intimate Portrait(1967). Writing biography may have been in Doris’ blood, as her mother had written a biographies of Dr. William Osler and Woodrow Wilson, but, in spite of its title, her biography of Edith contains little detail about the two women’s personal relationship. Doris outlived her partner by a decade, dying on January 15, 1973. Both women are buried at Cove Cemetery in Hadlyme, Connecticut, along with other members of the Hamilton family, including Margaret and her life partner Clara Landsberg.
Further Reading about Edith and Doris:
Franzen, Tricia. Spinsters and Lesbians: Independent Womanhood in the United States.New York: New York UP, 1996.
Hallett, Judith P. “Greek (and Roman) Ways and Thoroughfares: The Routing of Edith Hamilton’s Classical Antiquity." Women Classical Scholars: Unsealing the Fountain from the Renaissance to Jacqueline de Romilly. Ed. Rosie Wyles, Edith Hall. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2016.
Hamilton, Andrea. A Vision for Girls: Gender, Education, and the Bryn Mawr School. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 2004.
Sicherman, Barbara. Alice Hamilton: A Life in Letters, Urbana and Chicago: U of Illinois P, 2003.
“Edith Hamilton.” In Lesbian Histories and Cultures, an Encyclopedia, Vol. 1. Ed. Bonnie Zimmerman. New York and London: Garland, 2000.
The Ladder - Volumes 11-12 - Page 19.
Doris and Edith traveled in Europe together in the summer of 1921, and their relationship was solid and supportive for four decades. In the 19th century, such long-term relationships between women were sometimes dubbed “Boston marriages,” after the 1886 Henry James novel, The Bostonians, which featured a lesbian couple. Because they were financially independent from men, Boston marriages were generally a middle-to-upper class phenomenon, and there is no equivalent term for men who lived together.
“Carey” Thomas had been in a same-sex relationship with Mamie Gwinn (1860-1940), a Baltimore English professor who had helped Carey found the Bryn Mawr School in 1885. When Mamie broke Carey’s heart by marrying a man in 1904, Carey became involved in another longterm relationship with Mary Garrett (1854-1915), a suffragist from a wealthy family who worked as secretary of the Bryn Mawr School. It may have eased Carey’s grief somewhat that Mary left her the majority of her considerable estate, an unusually public testament of their devotion. In spite of her conflict with Edith, Carey retired from Bryn Mawr School at almost the same time Edith left and spent the rest of her life enjoying Mary’s fortune, travelling and enjoying the arts.
In the summer of 1922, Doris’s parents, Harry Fielding Reid and Edith Gittings Reid, purchased a house at Seawall on Mount Desert Island. The Reids, their extended family and their household staff had a house in Seal Harbor and summered there. Doris and Edith moved to the Seawall home together with Doris’s four-year-old nephew Dorian Reid (1918-2008) and remained through the first winter… the only winter they ever spent on the island! A housekeeper for the family later remembered the winter they stayed in the house. She reported that little Dorian "crinkled" from the newspapers that were stuffed under his sweater for insulation!
In 1922 Edith officially adopted Dorian, the son of Doris’ brother, Francis Fielding Reid (1892-1960) and Marie Magdalene Svendsen Reid (1895-1974), who were divorced. Doris wanted to adopt Dorian, but it was decided that Edith would be the legal parent, as Edith was more financially stable than Doris.
The story handed down in the family is that the land by the ocean was sold to Doris’s parents for one dollar, as “cows couldn't be raised there.” The middle section of the house was originally on Seawall Road, and Doris’s father had it moved down to its present site. They would later add wings on either side. In the early 1950’s, Doris and Edith built two small summer cottages on the extreme edges of the Seawall property to house the growing family of Dorian, Elizabeth (always called Betsey), and Mary. Edith and Doris seemed to prefer separation from the generations of children, though they welcomed the extended family for cocktails and post-dinner highballs.
Perhaps daunted by the harsh Maine winter, the following fall the small family moved to New York’s Grammercy Park neighborhood. The family continued to summer at the Maine cottage for the next four decades. Edith and Doris also welcomed other family members into their home, and two of Doris’ nieces, Elizabeth Fielding Reid(1920-1999) and Mary Fielding Reid (1922-1984), would stay with them on and off, both in New York and Seawall.
Edith and Doris home-schooled Dorian until he was ten, and Edith instilled in the boy a deep love for the Greek and Roman classics. When he was eleven, his two mothers took him on a trip to Greece. Dorian would have been twelve in 1930, when Edith published her runaway bestseller The Greek Way, a book that translated the classical world of academia into the popular vernacular of mainstream America. Possibly the homeschooling of Dorian was a source of inspiration in Edith's decision to write the book. The Great Depression may well have been another. Doris, a professional stockbroker, had just been hired by the investment firm Loomis, Sayles and Company in 1929. This was a terrible year to begin a career in finance, as it was the year of the Great Crash on Wall Street. (Doris had trained as a young woman to be a concert pianist.) The Greek Way was wildly successful and was a featured selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club. Edith followed this up with a string of other successful books: The Roman Way(1932), The Prophets of Israel (1936), Mythology (1942), and The Echo of Greece (1957).
After the death of Edith and Doris, the property with the three houses was left jointly to Dorian, Betsey, and Mary, and they continued the family tradition of spending his summers on the island. Dorian made his final trip to Maine in the summer of 2007 at the age of ninety, using the services of Angel Flight, an organization that arranged free air transportation for people needing medical treatment. Edith and Doris' adoptive son loved the ocean and he shared his love of sailing with his own children. He also was a fine wood craftsman, and among his works was an intricate model of the JT Morris, a steamship which ran to Bar Harbor, which he donated to the Southwest Harbor Public Library, where it can still be seen.
After many years of arguing, Dorian, Betsey, and Mary finalized the division of the property into three parcels, with Betsey getting the “Big House,” and Dorian and Mary receiving ownership of the two cottages. Betsey retired in 1980 and moved permanently into the Big House. After attempting to winterize the house, she spent several chilly winters there, finally deciding to rent a winterized house from October to May, but she returned every summer to the Seawall house. Now the sixth generation of Reids continues to own the property and enjoy summers there.
The two women remained in New York City until 1943, then moved to Washington, D.C., while still spending summers in Maine. In Washington, D.C., Doris was in charge of the local offices of Loomis, Sayles and Company, who had been her employer since 1929. Edith continued to write and frequently entertained friends, fellow writers, government representatives, and other dignitaries at her home. Among those with whom she socialized were Isak Dinesen, Robert Frost, and labor leader John L. Lewis. After their move to Washington, D.C., Edith became a commentator on education projects and began to receive honors for her work. Edith also recorded programs for television programs and the Voice of America, traveled to Europe, and continued to write books, articles, essays, and book reviews.
Edith considered the high point of her life to be a trip to Athens in 1957, at the age of ninety. She traveled to Greece to hear her translation of Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound performed at the ancient theater of Herodes Atticus. As part of the evening's ceremonies, King Paul of Greece awarded Edith the Golden Cross of the Order of Benefaction, Greece's highest honor, and the mayor of Athens made her an honorary citizen of the city. The U.S. news media, including TIMEmagazine, covered the event and the press emphasized the "majesty, monumentality, and emotional impact" of the play's setting. Edith called the ceremony "the proudest moment of my life."
Edith eventually rebuilt her bond with her sisters, though she was never as close to them as she had been. Margaret and Alice comforted a distraught Doris at Edith’s funeral in 1963. Four years after the death of her life partner, Doris published Edith Hamilton: An Intimate Portrait(1967). Writing biography may have been in Doris’ blood, as her mother had written a biographies of Dr. William Osler and Woodrow Wilson, but, in spite of its title, her biography of Edith contains little detail about the two women’s personal relationship. Doris outlived her partner by a decade, dying on January 15, 1973. Both women are buried at Cove Cemetery in Hadlyme, Connecticut, along with other members of the Hamilton family, including Margaret and her life partner Clara Landsberg.
Further Reading about Edith and Doris:
Franzen, Tricia. Spinsters and Lesbians: Independent Womanhood in the United States.New York: New York UP, 1996.
Hallett, Judith P. “Greek (and Roman) Ways and Thoroughfares: The Routing of Edith Hamilton’s Classical Antiquity." Women Classical Scholars: Unsealing the Fountain from the Renaissance to Jacqueline de Romilly. Ed. Rosie Wyles, Edith Hall. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2016.
Hamilton, Andrea. A Vision for Girls: Gender, Education, and the Bryn Mawr School. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 2004.
Sicherman, Barbara. Alice Hamilton: A Life in Letters, Urbana and Chicago: U of Illinois P, 2003.
“Edith Hamilton.” In Lesbian Histories and Cultures, an Encyclopedia, Vol. 1. Ed. Bonnie Zimmerman. New York and London: Garland, 2000.
The Ladder - Volumes 11-12 - Page 19.