Maine Memory Network

Mary Elise "May" Fellows (1873-1953) was the only child of Frank and Deborah Swan Fellows, born eight years after the couple was married.

She, her parents, her aunt Jennie Swan Richards and uncle Charles Richards, along with uncle Frank Swan, all lived in the Skowhegan house where her grandfather had lived.

The extended family was important to May Fellows, and she returned to Skowhegan and to family throughout her life.

James Fellows (1837-1914), a native of Skowhegan, worked as cashier of the Second National Bank in Skowhegan for 49 years.

He introduced his daughter to the violin -- although she was reluctant to even hold one at first.

She wrote, "My father played the violin, and though self taught, he had a sense of tempo and rhythm that made my toes tingle to dance. He played old jigs and reels of bygone days."

Deborah Swan Fellows (1846-1934), a native of Bloomfield, and also interested in music, provided the impetus for her daughter to seek a career in music.

May Fellows recalled, "My father, mother and Uncle Frank used to sing hymns and old southern spirituals on Sunday evenings by the fireside.

"Their voices were harmonious and musical, my mother’s clear as a bell, my uncle’s a deep velvety bass.

"My father was the tenor and, to the astonishment of the family, I began improvising an alto, then going into the next room and pressing my hands over my ears, unable to bear the ecstasy of that music."

May Fellows learned to read by about age three and attended three years of public school in Skowhegan -- and, in the summer and fall of 1882, took violin lessons from a Colby College student.

Deborah Fellows then decided her daughter had a future in music and arranged for the two of them to move to Boston in the fall of 1883.

May studied at the New England Conservatory and her mother was hired as a preceptor -- a job that paid her daughter's tuition and room and board for both of them.

The nine-year-old studied music and read voraciously from the Conservatory library -- and had some additional formal education during the following year.

However, she was largely self-taught, interested in music, art, the classics, literature, and poetry, among other topics.

Her first public appearance was in 1885 at the Quarterly Concert given by the Conservatory at Tremont Hall. She performed Hauser's "Slumber Song."

In addition to introducing May Fellows to music theory and technique, the Conservatory and Boston introduced her -- and her mother -- to "proper" Boston society.

Through a Conservatory program, May was "adopted" first by Mrs. Walter Baker who took May into her "luxuriously appointed" home in Dorchester;" and later by Aimee and Winthrop Sargent, who she described as "wealthy and benevolent members of Boston’s aristocracy."

From about age 12 until 17, May Fellows lived mostly away from her parents, studying violin with Timothee Adamowski, Franz Kneisel, and Eugen Grünberg.

In 1892, the Sargents and Kneisel arranged for her to go abroad to study with Kneisel's teacher, Jacob Grün in Vienna.

Her mother accompanied her and, once again, the two were charmed by elite society and the musical celebrities they encountered -- including Brahms.

However, the Fellows could not afford to keep Deborah and Mary Elise in Europe and, at age 19, the young violinist was no longer a "prodigy" and had not had a formal musical debut in Europe.

After returning to the U.S., Fellows taught for a while, then, seeking recognition as a performer, joined a musical trio that traveled across the northern tier of the U.S. and southwestern Canada.

It was a grand adventure for Fellows and the two other young women musicians with whom she traveled.

They saw the sometimes-wild west, met a bevy of male admirers, and received some glowing reviews. The tour, however, was not a financial success and Fellows returned east to teach, perform, and in 1897, attend Colby College for a year.

In part for financial security, in 1898 she married Bruce White, a mine owner and developer she had met while touring.

They lived in Nelson, British Columbia, a frontier town where Elise Fellows White, as she now called herself, enjoyed the rugged outdoors and learning about her husband's mines, while struggling to continue a musical – and refined – life.

In fact, for much of the time after she left Europe until her death, Fellows attempted to reprise her early acclaim as a violinist and acceptance into elite society -- a challenge for any woman, especially one with few financial resources.

The Whites had two sons, Bruce H. W., born in 1900; and James, born in 1907. Shortly after James White's birth, Elise returned to Skowhegan with her sons.

Of her time in British Columbia with her husband, White wrote, "I tried to be impossibly happy."

Bruce White continued to support the family until his death in the 1918 flu epidemic, but he had also suffered financial losses.

Elise Fellows White and her sons were back in the home with the extended family.

They enjoyed time at Lake Wesserunsett in a cabin Uncle Frank built. The boys went to school and Elise attempted to continue her violin career.

Uncle Frank died in 1912 and James Fellows two years later, leaving Deborah and Elise alone together. They continued to live together -- raising the boys and struggling with finances -- until Deborah's death in 1934.

Sons Bruce and James White both graduated from Bowdoin College, and both married.

Deborah Fellows and Elise Fellows White lived in various locations in Skowhegan, Boston, Topsham, Brunswick, and Portland.

The Depression and poor investments resulted in the two women having little money.

Elise continued to play the violin, teach some, write, and care for her aging mother.

In both New York and Skowhegan, Elise connected with artist Zaidee Morrison, also a Skowhegan native. The connection was important to White.

They got together frequently, especially in New York during the Depression years when White was penniless.

After visiting Morrison in 1942, White wrote in her diary, "She is an artist at the crest of her ability, while I am done and incapacitated, but I keep cheerful."

After Deborah Fellows death in 1934, Elise had brief jobs in New York and Vermont, teaching and serving as a housemother. She kept playing the violin as well.

In 1937, she went to New York to see her friend Bertha O'Reilly O'Donoghue, with whom she had been on tour in 1895-1896.

While there, she "had seven violin solos of my old-time concert pieces recorded" at Schirmer’s.

The accompanist was Carl Deis -- and Elise did not have to pay for his services, an added bonus.

Elise's friend Bertha went to Schirmer’s with her, while the now 63-year-old violinist recorded:

Finale of C minor sonata of Grieg
Souvenir de Moscou,Wieniawski
Polonaise, Vieuxtemps
Etude-Caprice by myself
Mazurka, Zarzyscki
Nocturne, Chopin-Wilheling
Berceuse, Paul Juon

While living in New York, White helped support herself -- and feed her soul -- by working for the American Association of University Women as a hostess at their World's Fair booth.

She also wrote articles for the Skowhegan Independent Reporter about the fair and used one of the pieces to get a press pass for the fair.

She wrote: "The Press Bureau at the Fair gave me a journalist pass, just like that! I had to sit in a booth and have my photograph taken without a hat.

"It's a wonder they didn’t fingerprint me. I took my pass into the Fairgrounds as proud as a cat with a newly caught mouse."

In July 1942, White made several more recordings while in New York.

She wrote in her diary, "Oh! My records! These new recordings make me happy. Schirmer’s machine is a joy, such tone-quality and such clarity!"

She performed for the Rossini Club in Portland and at some other venues, but it was primarily these recordings that reminded White of her experiences as a prodigy and promising young woman violinist.

White's teachers, and many of her peers from her youth were gone.

After her teacher Franz Kneisel died in 1926, his widow, Marianne, wrote to White, "I cannot tell you how happy it made my Franz to see you and your dear mother last summer ... he did enjoy this little visit with you, for he always held you in the highest esteem."

White struggled financially and from loneliness from before her mother's death to her own death in 1953.

She and her eldest son's wife did not get along well, so White did not spend much time with them or her six grandchildren.

She had a better relationship with her younger son and his wife and daughter, but they were unable to support her or offer her a home.

In 1948, she wrote to her son Bruce, "I am safe and comfortable here at the Salvation Army Emergency Lodge at only fifty cents a night. I eat at various Automats and feel well. I have enough money pinned to my undershirt to last several weeks."

Still, as she notes in her autobiography and other writing, she met many interesting and important people, experienced life at the heights of society and on the western mining frontier, and left behind documents that shed light on her, her personality, and experiences as diverse as mining and classical music.

Her interest in culture – as well as in fame – is evidenced by the many concerts she gave, music she composed, poetry she wrote and sometimes published, articles
on music and events she wrote and published, drawings and other artwork she created.

Mary Elise Fellows White was determined to have a life that mattered – and to demonstrate to future generations that her life and her art had done just that.