Jim Tilley

A Different Look at the Shelburne Museum

After visiting it, I thought I should write about the premier exhibit:
the side-paddle-wheel steamship Ticonderoga that was hauled
miles over fields and swamp and through woods to its resting spot.
Who could have paid for that costly feat? Electra Havemeyer
Webb, I learned, the daughter of ultra-wealthy NYC parents.
She’d founded the museum and funded transporting the steamship

that had ferried passengers on Lake Champlain for nearly fifty
years. Why a boat for an exhibit? Likely to display the trappings
of the rich, who consumed their meals in the cherry-paneled
and gold-ceilinged dining room. It made me understand why
robber barons with so much money donate to worthwhile causes,
soothing whatever conscience they can muster. Was Electra

one of those? Yes, I concluded after touring the columned mansion
she’d commissioned to be built on the museum site to replicate
six of the seventeen rooms in her 740 Park Avenue apartment,
placing all the lavish furniture and the oil paintings by European
masters back in their proper spots, but all this only following her
death. From the outside, the structure presents like a miniature

White House. I can imagine the President comfortable there after
refurbishing the inside in black and white marble and gold,
then adding a ballroom, and renaming the place. Maybe Electra
knew the type too well, and had the museum charter written
to prevent that from ever happening. But what’s a charter anyway?
She probably couldn’t have imagined a rogue Supreme Court.

Jim Tilley’s poetry is inspired by his love of the outdoors, particularly walks in the woods or along a lakeshore or seashore. He has published four full-length collections of poetry and a novel with Red Hen Press. His short memoir, The Elegant Solution, was published as a Ploughshares Solo. Five of his poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His most recent poetry collection, Ripples in the Fabric of the Universe: New & Selected Poems, was published in June 2024.