Two shows curated by Susana Leval, both at the Woodstock Artists Association and Museum and at The Woodstock Guild will soon celebrate all I now “leave out” concerning music and musicians as the Maverick. As for Hervey, himself, Tom Wolfe and William Rhoads’ essays in 2006 WAAM catalogue “The Maverick: Hervey White’s Colony of the Arts” is certainly the most thorough and concise history to date, although Hervey White’s colony is really “the common thread” running through many crucial chapters of Alf Ever’s famous local history, Woodstock: History Of An American Town (and rumor has it Alf contributed to Christie White Dauphin’s fascinating on-line history of both her paternal grandparents: “Hervey White: The Maverick of Woodstock”).
Our story picks back up in 1914, when after a decade of bitter silence between the foremost art colony builders in a town now famous for such, Mr. Whitehead magnanimously wrote his former protégé, the tireless Mr. White.
Whitehead’s letter no longer exists, but Alf Evers (collecting scads of information on White in anticipation, many believe, of a biography he never formally attempted) wrote: “Ralph Whitehead sometimes said that it was possible to hate someone for no more than ten years.” Alf then tied this statement to the letter Whitehead sent Hervey in the fall of 1914, inviting him to the Ralph and Lady Jane’s “at home” gathering, also attended by “many who had left Byrdcliffe.” The Whitehead archive located in the Winterthur Library in Delaware has been unable to locate Hervey’s response, which Evers (citing Winterthur for origin) nevertheless quoted as follows: “I am not, nor do I wish to be, a conventional gentleman…At all such social functions I am only playing a part…The older I get the more distasteful the part becomes to me…I find I am getting back to the customs more and more of my childhood…that I am more brusque, more impatient and more boorish than ever…and a new alliance between us on such lines would surely come to grief.
“There are, however, I am sure, many ways in which we might work in sympathy, things that we may be doing in the community for the arts and for the people. Can we not meet naturally and fraternally in these, and recognize that our early associations as well as our temperaments would make social exchanges disastrous?”
These proud, barely amicable words, written by a man still nursing old, astonishingly raw wounds, are perhaps shocking to those who’ve heard of only the “saintly” reputation of Hervey White. What soon comes clear, however, is that while White adamantly refused to visit the Whitehead’s stronghold, he would — after the phenomenal success of the first Maverick Festival — extend his own invitation back to Byrdcliffe’s founders, inquiring as to whether they’d care to participate in a celebration quite near all their hearts…such a celebration, however, being on White’s own turf. Actually, if you read Hervey’s last paragraph a second time, you’ll note the wily fox actually preparing for very different terms to a very different armistice — of his own particular design.
It is fact that the Whiteheads were “high up” on the list of subscribers who, by purchasing season tickets to the Maverick Concert Hall’s inaugural summer were not only underwriting the building of the astounding structure, itself, but also contributing to what guarantees White audaciously promised his contributing artists. That many of these extraordinary musicians were at one time members of the Byrdcliffe colony, who White effectively “stole away,” renders this master-stroke all the more astounding. It also proved Whitehead to be remarkably generous and sincere in his wish to re-kindle one of the most profound friendships of his own strangely unfulfilled life.
We owe a great debt to the novelist Allan Updegraff who, decades before the tape recorder, became the only writer to truly “capture” the voice of Hervey White, in a marvelous interview appearing in The New York Times July 30, 1916 — three weeks after the Maverick Concert Hall opened. Herein, White’s off-the-cuff remarks assured those in the know that Ralph and Jane Whitehead hadn’t merely sent a check but actually appeared for White’s personal triumph at an, if not “the” opening performance of the hall. To protect the Whiteheads privacy White commented only that the previous Sunday’s performance included, “several farm wives and two millionaires” — while to the best of my knowledge, the Whiteheads were then Woodstock’s only millionaires.
The following back-story is crucial: Nearly 20 years earlier Whitehead confided to Hervey that from early childhood he’d always been easily wounded, bitterly jealous, and quick to become a formidable enemy. The older man then ominously warned his young friend never to attempt to better him. Historians have long criticized Whitehead (and rightly so) for his prejudice and — despite a professed socialism — for what seems an irredeemable case of snobbery. The accusation essentially boils down to the charge that Whitehead seldom if ever truly “evolves.”
This story ends with pointed proof that a congenitally “jealous” Ralph Whitehead — by contributing to and attending the opening concerts of The Maverick Concert Hall, and by in person doubtlessly applauding the glorious accomplishment of his one-time charge — most certainly did “evolve.” Furthermore, it should be clear by now that his was a shared evolution.
In Byrdcliffe, classical music had always been a magnificent diversion, a delicious, high-minded and soul-stirring entertainment. Hervey White wrested this “side-show” from its traditional home of erudition and wealth and, by framing such in the rough, somehow even further exalted an essence now available to all. Indeed, the minimal genius of White’s design both elevated and enshrined a music he actually likened to religion, while proclaiming it to be the very heartbeat of his kingdom. Whitehead was, of course, completely aware of this Promethean theft, yet — in the end — delighted in it, realizing he was, after all, the source of The Maverick’s endowment. This, in turn, allowed Hervey to likewise overcome a deep-rooted, long-held enmity against “Papa Whitehead” as noted in the prefatory note introducing this article.
So while The Maverick Concert Hall represents the passing of European “high art” unto a rough-hewn Americanism in a unique and historically important manner, it also provided a sacred space within for a reconciliation between the staunch “Mr. Whitehead” and his dearly missed protégé Hervey White. This being so profound a reconciliation as allowed that, up until Whitehead’s tragic death in 1929, the two old friends could often be seen walking together on Glenford Road in full sight of the Ashokan Reservoir, most contentedly revisiting magnificent times, from long, long ago.
*Hervey’s unpublished autobiography also credits Professor Marsh of Harvard for supplying the “classic” ratio of dimensions, contributing to his hall’s world famous acoustics.
The Maverick’s Maverick
Tad Wise, whose published works include the biographical novel Tesla and co-authorship of Circling The Sacred Mountain, is currently writing the first full-length biography of Hervey White entitled The Maverick’s Maverick: Hervey White and The Spirit of Woodstock. He will finish work this year and publish in 2016.
We posed four questions to Mr. Wise.
Why Hervey White?
- Though he died 25 years before seeds germinated at the Maverick bore their most dramatic flowering, Hervey White is the true godfather of what came to be called Woodstock Nation.
- I believe an extremely clear-eyed revolution is materializing against the world-korporate right now; basically a ‘refusal to participate in planetary suicide.’ My book will place Hervey White squarely beside Shelley, Thoreau, Ruskin, Morris, Tesla, Gandhi, and Tolstoy, as an early champion in this struggle. Simultaneously I provide a tragic backstory — not without a redemptive and indeed triumphant aspect. Here was a gay pioneer mentoring other ambitious misfits by creating an eddy running contrary to the headwaters of America’s great river of greed. Along the way Hervey spawned Performance Art in America 50 years before the terms’ invention. And for a while there…a Pax Woodstockia actually reigned supreme.
In what state is the book right now?
I’ve completed research known to no one, revealing an individual acknowledged by neither family, friend nor historian. That places me — chronologically speaking — almost halfway through Hervey’s history. Because I don’t have funds to research a year and then write a year, I rewrite constantly, but I do that anyway…
Who is the publisher?
Your garden variety editor would dismiss any proposal of this book as “of regional interest” — and only my final manuscript will grab a visionary editor’s attention, so I won’t submit to the trade ‘til I’m done. However I’ll be sending an overly detailed first draft to Harvard, Iowa and Kansas Universities, as well as Chicago University. This will be an important scholarly work I have no expectation of publishing.
Will it change people’s perceptions of the Maverick?
The Maverick is the Anarchist’s Roanoke — a lost colony representing everything that was best about Woodstock: proud poverty, irreverent talent, hard work and sexy play. The irony of it being that Hervey’s single greatest work of art, The Maverick Concert Hall, has not only survived but continues to triumph. Unfortunately, it has become something of voice in the wilderness and the extraordinary community it “called to church” every Sunday has long since disappeared.
Anyone wishing to assist in the completion of The Maverick’s Maverick may write Tad Wise at eewiseiii@gmail.com
Join the family! 
