Brucemore, Inc.

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by Ellen Williamson
Mr. and Mrs. George Bruce Douglas, Jr .. daughters Ellen (left) and Margaret, and " a cross little black
Shetland pony called Neddie" - on the grounds of Brucemore about 1910. Photo courtesy Mrs.
Howard Hall.
In the year I was born - 1905 - Cedar Rapids haq a
opulation of about twenty thousand people. The Douglas
imily must have seemed an odd group to the other
~sidents, for they never discarded their Scotch ways and
Listoms, but stuck firmly by them. Not only did we have
ollie and sheltie dogs with names like Jeanie and
.oderick Dhu, but we children drove around in a wickerasket-type cart behind a cross little black Shetland pony
alled Neddie. Out by the barn and stables was a little
Jund dog-kennel house with runways where West
:ighland terriers were raised commercially.
Why had the Douglases come to Cedar Rapids in the first
lace? Because my grandfather George Douglas, a
tonecutter and construction engineer who lived in
'hurso, Scotland, was asked to come to the United States
:>help to build a railroad that would run from Chicago to
lmaha, Nebraska... . Cedar Rapids, being just about
alfway between the two cities, seemed to be the best
lace for Grandfather to settle, especially as a cousin of
is, Robert Stuart, was already living there and with his
ivo sons had started a small cereal plant which was
irning out a variety of rolled and steel-cut oats. Grand:ither put some money into the company, and as a result
is railroad was given the business of shipping oats East
nd West.
The company did well, and around the turn of the cen1ry merged with another oat mill, known as the American
I\ Brucemore Memory" i1 excerpted from the book, Wh•n W• Went First Cta.a, by Ellen
l illiamoon. Copyright c 1977 by Ellen Williamoon. Published by Doubleday&. Company,
, C,
Cereal Company. What should they name the new company? They found that one brand of the Douglas-Stuart
Mills outsold all the others (actually they were all exactly
the same but were packaged differently), and it was
known as the Quaker brand. The name evidently sounded
solid and honest and safe for babykin's oatmeal, so they
named the big new company the Quaker Oats Company,
and that is what it has been called ever since.
Our little bit of Scotland included a dour Scot named
Ross who kept the horses glossy and well groomed. He was
also excellent with the bagpipes and he piped my father
and mother into dinner every night when there was
company. And while we children ate our oatmeal porridge
and applesauce upstairs in the nursery with our Scotch
nurse Miss MacDannel (known to us as Danny) the men in
the family appeared for dinner in full-dress kilt. My father
and his two brothers all lived near each other at this time,
and it was a grand sight to behold them (I've been told) ,
all tall and handsome, wearing the pleated kilts of the
ancient Douglas plaid, the colors of soft blues and greens,
and each with a short-waisted dress jacket of black or
gray velvet or heavy silk twill (a material then called
bombazine).
After dinner there was often a game of whist (that would
be the forerunner of bridge) and I learned that gentlewomen in those time referred to the spade suit as "lily."
The word "spade" or "pique" was considered vulgar,
especially as the design started out as the fleur-de-lys.
Besides whist there was music. My mother played the
harp and the piano, and there was also an Aeolian pipe
organ that played (when pumped furiously) rolls of music.
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Brucemore, Inc.
wine. There is a tunnel leading from the lower cellar over
to the Garden House (a two-bedroom guest house) two
hundred feet away. One can still crawl through it quite
comfortably. It's purpose? It carried steam heat in a big
pipe from Brucemore's two big coal furnaces.
Up on the third floor there is a small secret room with its
own cozy little bay window looking down on the garden.
Whyfore? Back in the 1920s a new and larger pipe organ
was installed. The smaller pipes were all put in a thirdfloor guest room, the larger pipes being down in the cellar,
and the bay window was walled off with an extra ten
square feet, making it the smallest and most private room
in the house. (The next book I write is going to be a
whodunit, all laid in Brucemore, and the body will be
found in the secret room. It will turn out to be the corpse of
- ,1-.f.-.
a clever little old man who lived all his life in Brucemore
The three bo~g~s~~a'~-ghte~ C!Jring their years of growing up at
with no one knowing it. He came and went via the empty
Brucemore (from left, as they are presently known) Ellen Williamson,
Margaret ~all and Barbara Dixon. Photo courtesy of Mrs. Howard Hall.
tunnel of course, used the elevator when we were running
down the stairs, etc.)
Outside, the workmen that were brought over fr_om
' .. - ...
Ireland to build the house also left their individual touches.
(Several years. later I remember pumping away at the
The . . . big stone chimneys are each carved ~n a different
design. Each side of the house bears different stone or
thing myself while singing ''Oh, ·Where, Tell Me .Where,
slate inlaid areas to relieve the monotony of the brick, and
Has My Highland Laddie Gone" accompanied by the
proper notes, thanks to the self~'1nwinding paper roll, with .· _the lintels over the windows and doors are each carVed
all the stops pulled -out.. The '_ noise was like the dawn
differently.
coming up like thunder indeed.)/\.::-.'-;~.: '. ,·'=': -_ . '
, . One ... thing about Brucemore: the library is haunted
Mother and her
sisters-in-law never cire5sed in kilts,·
(shades of the little old man). One night when I was
studying algebra my father and I were sitting in the
at least not in the evening. They: all three wore c.ustommade Parisian dresses from Paul Poiret, Worth, Patou,
library with a fire going and the lights turned low. He was
Callot Soeurs, Vionnet, -· always · gown8 .from .La Haute
reading in his favorite armchair, his reading lamp turned
Couture. '.' . } ~>.:>;,-:. ··· '
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on, and I was over at the desk. All of a sudden we both
Brucerriore:. Wbat 'was it like?
heard a soft swishing noise coming from above the
At fi;fSt the property was just a big front lawn sweeping , fireplace. We looked up and to our amazement saw, in the
uphill to the stark three-story red-brick house standing
dim light, a tall ceramic vase moving from its post at the
bleakly at the top, driveway to the left, and a sidewalk
right-hand edge of the long mantelpiece. It was moving
ascending to the right. That was all; behind the house it
slowly but steadily toward the other matching blue vase at
was strictly farm. There were stables arid cow barns and a
.the left edge. There was nothing else on the mantel.
pond for ducks. There were . fields of corn. and alfalfa, Dad rose to his feet.
.
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chicken houses and a -pigsty; :and beyond · was a dense '
· '-'This cannot be," he stated firmly, · peering · at the
woods filled with hazelnut bushes ·and walnut _and but- ;. .mantel closely. "Aha, I know," he exclaimed. "There's a
ternut trees..
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· ·:·:·. -:·>-- • ., ; · • . mouse in it." He picked it up, turned it_over and shook it
Gradually the farm .receded. First the big white barn - but nothing fell out. The two vases, being each two feet tall
departed and an orchard with a playhouse and swings for . and smooth, would have presented difficultieS to any and
us took its place; then a formal garden and tennis court. _all mice.
·.. ,- _._ ·
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appeared adjaeent to the house, ·next a greenhouse and a · ~. _I stOod up too. "what did it?" I quavered, f~ling the
squash court; then the pond became landscaped and a pair ·. palnis of my hands turning clammy.
·
. Dad looked bewildered. "It's not a practical joke," he
of white swam·fioated on the surface. ·: ;-'.~\·- •3::;·/-_Today there is still vegetable garden,'\ivhicli'is hidden . announced. "There are no strings or invisible threads
away behind the.garage~ and I noticed the last time that I
around." He turned to me after running his hands over and
saw it, it contained . a mere
rows 'of sweet com.
under the mantel. "It can only be that the thing is on a
Brucemore has beeome completely' citified: · ·, ·
slant. Perhaps the house is settling. Tomorrow we'll get a
The house too has lcist its stark Victorian look, thanks to
carpenter's level and prove it."
the addition of many porches and terraces and surrounWith this announcement he went back to his book. The
ding trees. It still is a curious house both inside and outnext day the mantel turned out to be perfectly level. Even
a golf ball remained in stable equilibrium when perched
side. Each of its thirty-odd rooms contains fireplace, and
each one is different. There are two stairways to each of
next to the creeping vase. It made Dad so · cross and
the three main stories and the attic, as "'ell as the cellar,
puzzled that we refrained from talking about it.
A week or so later a scientist of some sort of psychology
and there is also an elevator shaft. There are two
basements, one with recreation rooms and laundries and a
or parapsychology appeared at Brucemore. My father had
furnace room, and a lower one for storing vegetables and
sent for him from the University of Chicago and he made a
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special trip to Brucemore. Dad met him in the front hall
and told him in a few terse words to go over the whole
house, and give his scientific opinion: was there any part
of it that seemed different from the rest?
To Dad's great surprise, the professor, after a careful
private inspection of the whole place, announced at lunch
that the only part of the house with a strange and unnatural atmosphere was the library. He couldn't explain,
he said, but there was something wrong with it. He would
like to stay on and conduct some experiments; perhaps it
would take weeks or even months.
After lunch Father marched him to the door and the car
drove him to the station, and that was the end of the
library's future as some kind of an official psychic
phenomenon.
Later on that winter a committee that I belonged to had
a meeting in the hall just outside the library. The long
velvet curtains at the room's entrance had been pulled,
and there were fifteen of us who sat in a circle in the hall,
which when the curtains were drawn turned into a room,
also with its own large fireplace.
The meeting had been called regarding a Christmas
party that our club was giving. As we listened to reports
about the cost of refreshments and the orchestra we
suddenly heard a loud groan of agony, more bestial than
human, coming clearly from the library, behind the heavy
draperies.
My first thought was that one of the members had
crawled in as a joke and was trying to scare us (word of
the moving vase had spread).
Quickly we counted noses but everyone was there. Then
we decided that sister Barbara and some of her crowd had
hidden away in there, but the room was empty when we
turned on the lights, and it had no hiding places or secret
exits.
Some of the committee girls were so unnerved that they
left at once, and we finished up the meeting around the
dining-room table.
This strange groaning sound has been heard several
more times since then, as well as the sound of low
menacing laughter. My mother decided that it was a
friendly poltergeist of some sort, pointing out that it never
left the library, nor did it ever do harm to anyone, and the
groans and laughter were too far away to ever wake
anyone up, nor ever really disturb anyone, and the vase
was never moved again.
The last time that I heard the poltergeist was several
years ago. I had gone up the front stairway and had just
reached the landing when I heard a semi-moan ending in a
hoarse sort of cackle. Believe me, being all alone in that
part of the house, I broke into a wild dash, reached the
second flight of stairs and arrived in my room as if shot
from a pneumatic tube....
Once when I was very young a respectable and well-todo bachelor cousin wrote from somewhere in Perth,
Scotland, inviting himself to come and stay a month with
his Iowa relatives. He was Sir Sholto Archibald DouglasHamilton; he was thirty-four years old, had never visited
"the States," and wondered if he should bring his golf
clubs or ... were there no golf links available?
My father wrote and suggested that he spend the month
of October at Brucemore, the autumn being the best
season in the Middle West, and he added that there were
several golf links in the vicinity, but he noted
apologetically that compared to St. Andrews and Dornoch
and so on, our links were new and primitive.
Sir Sholto arrived on an afternoon train in the early fall
with all sorts of bags and valises and satchels, minus the
golf clubs, and begged pardon for traveling with so little
baggage. He was a large tweedy type with a bushy beard,
a splendid Scotch brogue, and a warm smile.
When my father conducted him to our new car, a large
gray open Stoddard Dayton, he was amazed. "By Jove!"
he exclaimed. "You have a motah." He turned to my
father. "And you have roads?" he asked.
My father nodded. The chauffeur got the luggage in
somehow, cranked the motor, and off they went.
Sir Sholto seemed dumbfounded. "My word" - he
pointed his finger- "you seem to have sidewalks. I say er- it seems far more civilized than I had believed the
Middle West to be." He turned to Daddy. "Cousin George,
sir, are the Indians hereabouts friendly or otherwise?" He
patted his bulging overcoat pocket. "I thought it best to
come fully armed."
Daddy answered solemnly that there were in fact
several Indian tribes in the vicinity, that on a clear night
one could see the smoke from their tepees across the
cornfields, and that they were friendly unless they drank
too much firewater, which only happened on Saturday
nights.
Sir Sholto was delighted. "They carry tommy-hawks, of
course," he suggested.
"Tomahawks," my father corrected him. "And of
course bows and arrows. Steel arrowheads nowadays,'' he
added. "Cost plenty wampum."
"What sort of Indians?" Sir Sholto asked eagerly.
"The local tribes are the Tama Indians," Daddy said
after a moment of busy thinking. "I think they must be
Sioux or Dakota or a mixture of both."
After they had reached Brucemore and the auto had
snorted up the long elm-shaded driveway to the house, he
was welcomed by Mother and the brothers, his luggage
was dispatched to his room, and he was told that dinner
would be at eight, with a before-dinner drink served in the
library (the word "cocktail" was not yet in use), and that
Daddy's valet would have his dinner jacket laid out for
him.
Poor cousin Sholto turned beet-red with embarrassment. "I say." He faced them bravely. "I've nowt
but apologies. 1-1 thought that you were all a bunch of
wild and woollies. I didn't bring any proper clothes - just
rough gear for stalking Indians - aye, that's about it." He
turned to Daddy, "You and your savages!" And he
laughed uproariously. "Aye, and I believed it all until I
saw your bonnie Brucemore."
Ellen Wllllamson ls the author of three books, Wall Street
Made Easy, Spend Yourself Rich, and When We Went
First Class, from whlch the above excerpts are taken. She
ls a sister to Margaret Douglas Hall.
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