I’ll display Elmo one final time, just like in Counterintuitive Saints, even though this article will have absolutely nothing to do with Sesame Street. Why? Because that’s what 12MC wants to do at the moment. How often does one get to feature Elmo?
I should probably recap some other salient points from the earlier article while I’m at it. First, St. Elmo (St. Erasmus) was the patron saint of sailors and abdominal pain. However a different St. Elmo — a fictional title character for a wildly popular romance novel written by Augusta Jane Evans in 1866 — happened to inspire multiple places and geographic labels in the United States during the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. I’m sure enthusiast of Victorian-era literature could draw uncountable comparisons and inferences between the book and its title character, the fictional St. Elmo Murray, and the historical saint of mariners and intestinal distress. I’ll ignore that entire perspective and stick with geography.
Seriously though, many different sources listed St. Elmo as one of the best selling U.S. novels of the Nineteenth Century, contending for popularity with Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Ben-Hur. My education must have been horribly deficient because I’d never heard of the book until last weekend. I wondered if my situation was a spectacular case of ignorance and forgetfulness, or if St. Elmo simply fell so far out of favor over the last century as to become completely obscure. It’s disconcerting.
Anyway, let’s go examine some objects named for the book.
St. Elmo Estate
Evans finished writing St. Elmo at the home of her aunt, Mary Howard Jones, in Columbus, Georgia. Mary was the widow of Seaborn Jones, a former U.S. Congressman, who had passed away a few years earlier. Seaborn Jones commissioned this estate in 1833 and named it El Dorado.
Researchers familiar with St. Elmo and its author believed that its fictional estate, La Bocage, was based largely upon the Seaborn Jones property. A subsequent owner even changed the name from El Dorado to St. Elmo as a tribute.
While it must have been a grand estate during its heyday and while the vintage home remains quite impressive, the surrounding acreage succumbed to typical suburb. The only notice of the estate’s exalted place in American literature is an historical marker in front of the property and nearby St. Elmo Drive (map).
That was just one example, and a fairly logical one. Augusta Evans Wilson, 1835-1909: A Biography, By William Perry Fidler (1951) noted a near-frenzy of more unusual designations.
“There were steamboats and railway coaches named ‘St. Elmo.’ Many southern towns had ‘St. Elmo Hotels,’ and at least two villages were named for the book. There was a ‘St. Elmo’ punch, a very strong ‘St Elmo’ cigar, and several blue-ribboned dogs named ‘St. Elmo.’ Many country estates or city mansions were called ‘La Bocage’ after the Murray estate in the novel. A remarkable number of children have been christened Edna Earl, for the heroine, or St. Elmo.”
Readers can explore the various St. Elmo towns on their own using GNIS. I’ll focus on some other possibilities.
St. Elmo Historic District
Chattanooga, Tennessee included a St. Elmo Historic District named for the book, “nestled in the valley of Lookout Mountain below the curling stretch of the Tennessee River known as Moccasin Bend.” A page maintained by the District claimed that “Evans had spent several summers on Lookout Mountain and found the view similar to that of St. Elmo Castle in Naples, Italy.” She apparently did visit Lookout Mountain at least once during the Civil War although I never could corroborate “several summers” or the Castle claim.
St. Elmo Cigar Company
This location was much more difficult to finger. First I had to find the St. Elmo Cigar Company, which probably disappeared about a hundred years ago, and then follow it back to its exact location. Eventually I stumbled upon the Los Angeles Herald, 3 September 1905 courtesy of the California Digital Newspaper Collection.
“… manufacturers of high grade clear Havana cigars and dealers in leaf tobacco, the plant of the company being located in the massive four story brick building at 216 Central avenue… brands of clear Havana cigars made by the company are ‘St. Elmo,’ ‘Senator White,’ ‘Sample Case’ and ‘La Corona’.”
A “massive four story brick building” no longer existed anywhere along the 200 block of Central Avenue in Los Angeles (street view). Times changed. That area later became Little Tokyo.
St. Elmo Hotel
I found numerous historical references to multiple hotels named for St. Elmo in the decades immediately following publication. The only example that still seemed to be standing with its original name was the St. Elmo Hotel in Ouray, Colorado. As its website mentioned,
“Construction started on the St. Elmo.. in the spring of 1897 and was completed the following spring… The hotel was the miner’s hotel… The St. Elmo Hotel is one of the few hotels in the region that has enjoyed almost continuous operation, and today operates as a small finely maintained nine room bed and breakfast inn.”
This hotel would have been built, named and operated during the correct era. However I couldn’t find that one final piece of evidence to tie the name to the novel. Even so it probably remains the leading candidate for that possibility.
I really wish I could have found a recipe for St. Elmo punch, too.
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