ABSTRACT
Roger Sessions liked to tell a story that began with the novelist’s opening cliché: “It was a dark and stormy night.” The subject of the anecdote was his ancestry, and both a letter to George Bartlett and a diary kept by two participants reveal why this particular night would be memorable. At 4:00 p.m. on August 9, 1917, during World War I, violinist Quincy Porter and pianist Bruce Simonds gave one of their series of concerts of French and Belgian music at Amherst College. 1 (Bartlett had arranged a similar concert in Webster, Massachusetts, on July 27.) These concerts were to raise money for the Red Cross; at a dollar a ticket they made $91.38 that August evening. Afterwards, 20-year-old Sessions and the two performers had a “wild time” at a dinner and musicale at Mme Bianchi’s, Emily Dickinson’s niece who lived in Austin Dickinson’s home next to where the poet had lived. Around 11:00 p.m. they “tore [them]selves away” from Amherst to leave for Sessions’s family home in Hadley. Sessions drove a horse-drawn cart powered by the family animal, Rex, with only one seat to accommodate “the three geniuses.” 2 The skittish horse preferred to walk downhill and proceeded at a snail’s pace.
