Reflections of Toddsville, Hollie Van Horne

Winter/Spring 1996

I was writing a historic fiction novel (as yet unpublished) about a New York opera singer and was looking for some photos of Victorian people in a Time/Life series book entitled THAT FABULOUS CENTURY. I saw a very attractive Victorian man with a mustache who had a newspaper on his lap, a cigar dangling from his mouth and a look in his eyes that said, “Back off!” The man in the photo looked familiar—like someone I already knew. There was no name under the photo and so I called him “Howard Emanuelle” the impresario of my heroine’s fictional opera house. I xeroxed off the photo and taped it above my computer where I wrote the half-finished novel.

Things got weird right away. The hero of that novel suddenly changed from Jim O’Brien to Howard Emanuelle. I had to eventually rewrite the first part of the book to match how it concluded. I finished that novel on Memorial Day 1996. Feeling a little sad about losing my characters after months of work, I decided to lie down and take a nap. My eyes were half-closed, and I was in a quasi-sleep state, when my mental vision saw “Howard” standing in my doorway. He was slouching seductively against the door frame in a stance I had written for him and said, “When are you going to write my book!”

The back of the Time/Life book explained that this photo was part of the Smith/Telfer photo legacy residing in the New York State Historical Association. I faxed them a query with the photo. They faxes back the man’s real name, some basic information, and told me that if I wanted to know more I could pay them $15.00 for them to research the man’s identity. I paid them. NYSHA researcher, Wayne Wright, wrote back that I had certainly picked quite a ‘character’ to be my character, that Cuyler E. Carr was a well-respected businessman of Cooperstown, Milford, and Toddsville, but that they’d always been puzzled that there was no report of his death or burial. I told him that as soon as I was finished with the school year, I would come to Cooperstown to do more research on Cuyler. I had no idea how that simple statement was going to change my life.

True to my word, I headed to Cooperstown in June 1996, to locate NYSHA so that I could search for the man in the photo. I was in luck because their gift shop had a small photo book of the Smith and Telfer collection for sale, and I found a second photo of Cuyler in it that must have been shot on the same day. This pose was even more, “Shove off!” looking than the other one because Cuyler was now reading the newspaper, refusing to even look at the cameraman. You can see those photos, by the way, on the front and back cover of REFLECTIONS OF TODDSVILLE.

My research began with Cuyler’s wife, Gertrude Johnson Carr, who died many years after him, had been schoolteacher in Brooklyn, New York, for 30 years, and who came to Toddsville at the end of the school year returning to Brooklyn after Labor Day in the fall. That is how I created the idea of the solstice and the equinox time-travel gimmick which I have used in every book. We found no picture of her, but we did find her burial plot—right next to her husband—and her sister, Marguerite. Wayne Wright seemed impressed as well as inspired. A variety of Milford and Toddsville folks began to help me as well. The portals to Cuyler’s life suddenly opened through photos, reports of lectures he’d given, stories he’d told, and microfiche copies of newspapers no longer in print—and suddenly it seemed that Cuyler himself was involved. The moment I left Cooperstown at the end of my first visit, I knew someone had hitched a ride to Ohio.

I walked into my house, went right to my computer, and wrote the first paragraph of REFLECTIONS OF TODDSVILLE, stared at what I’d written for a few seconds, and started to cry. How could I exist in two spheres? I felt like I was dreaming all the time. I stared at stars in the summer sky, got behind in my music while singing the role of Abigail Adams in a local production of the musical 1776, started wearing modern versions of the Victorian ‘look’, purchased antique clothing, and fumbled blindly through each teaching day so that I could come home to 1897. My poetry improved, and I wrote a poem explaining my predicament entitled “I Live in the Twilight” (it’s in the book). Cuyler had a way of keeping me guessing when it came to the details of his life. He’d allow me small sections at a time. Each visit to NYSHA or Toddsville (which I truly could not find as mentioned in the book) gave me just a little bit more information but not enough to change the outline of the plot or the dates in the novel. Example: July 10, 1897, was the fictional wedding date in the book because it had to be when Trudy would be with him for three months. But why couldn’t I find his real wedding date?

A birthday trip to do more research (September 27, 1996--yep, near the equinox) proved almost a waste of time until a dinner at Tunniclif's Inn, a waitress who made me cry by humming the theme from the movie SOMEWHERE IN TIME, and a photo broach of Cuyler on the lapel of my dress led me to a man who had more information right at the time I needed it for the book. But I still could not find a photo of Gertrude or a real wedding date.

I finished writing the book on February 17, 1997, poured two glasses of wine, and toasted Cuyler and myself for finishing REFLECTIONS OF TODDSVILLE ( yes, I drank both).

June 1997, I took another trip to Cooperstown in the hopes of finding Gertrude’s photo. I did find a watercolor she’d painted in 1898. The turn-of-the century, Brooklyn school teacher’s picture is an exact replica of a pivotal scene in my novel—an old, worn-out, red fishing boat resting by the side of the lake is the only prop Trudy has to connect 1897 to her own time period—and it’s in the real Gertude’s watercolor (which I now have on my bedroom wall).

February 1998, my principal announced that certain teachers who had fulfilled a summer requirement—which I had—were allowed to take President’s Day off. I booked a room at what used to be the annex of The Fenimore Hotel (used in the book). I decided to stop at Cuyler’s grave before I went to the hotel. I hastily bought a small bouquet of roses (the kind you pick up at a general store) and placed them on Cuyler’s grave. I said, “Happy Anniversary, Cuyler.” By that I meant that February 17, 1998, was one full year from the completion of REFLECTIONS OF TODDSVILLE. Ten hours later, I learned a spooky detail researching once again at NYSHA. Yep, you guessed it. The real Cuyler E. Carr and Gertrude Johnson Carr were married February 17, 1898. But if I had known that, I could not have written the book the way I did. Happy anniversary, indeed. Happy 100th anniversary to the day. I had to get a photo of Gertude—and a psychic.

My mother refused to listen to any more talk about time travel or Cuyler and warned me not to tell anyone all the surreal details because I would get a reputation for craziness. One of my new Toddsville friends hooked me up with a psychic for an on-the-hour, on-the-day, birthday reading. The only available room I could find for my stay in all of Cooperstown for 9/27/98 was a cabin—just outside of Richfield Springs—just like the cabin I had used as a time portal in my book. And, it just so happened that this psychic lady’s house was right behind my cabin, so all I had to do was walk about eight steps to her back door for the reading. That lady was sure surprised when Cuyler E. Carr showed up for a quasi-seance. I had been told on a long distance phone call from Georgia the day before the trip that Cuyler had immaculate penmanship (something a modern psychic would not have known) and that piece of information was the first thing that came through in the reading. “He’s saying that he has better handwriting than you do and that he is much smarter as well.” That’s my guy! At the end of the reading she told me that I was going to see Cuyler soon—and she did not mean in my mind’s eye either. I did.

Toddsville had been a forgotten ghost town but once the book arrived—self-published June 2000—the town came to life like Brigadoon. Cuyler’s homestead was restructured. The Carr Hotel was purchased and restored instead of being torn down. The haunted red house was restored after being painted blue. And I found Doc Almy’s tomb. I had my first booksigning for the novel in Cooperstown, New York, at Augur’s Bookstore on July 10, 2000. The bookstore is about four blocks from the church where my fictional Trudy and Cuyler said their vows July 10, 1897.

My mother was still not convinced until she read the book. She called me on the phone sobbing. “Okay,” she said, “I don’t remember you ever leaving, but you had to have been there.”

For a while, even I thought I was going off the deep end until I read Richard Matheson’s BID TIME RETURN (movie title SOMEWHERE IN TIME), and saw Jack Finney’s short story THE LOVE LETTER made into a Hallmark Hall of Fame television movie. More Kleenex, please. I had a support group! Other science fiction writers had been there—done that. Yes! I had been mentally transported to 1897 while physically existing in my own time period and writing a novel. And this was no superficial experience, I want you to know. I remember every sensory detail of 1897. And it all began with a black and white photo discovered in a book found in the high school’s library.

But that was just book one! I had no idea that I would have the same transpersonal experience for every single story afterwards. The Time Travelers, Inc. series began with the science fiction time-travel device Cuyler’s real life inspired. And that theory grows with each new title. Book seven, BENEATH THE WINGS OF ISIS, was just released June 2004, so I’ve been doing a lot of time-traveling.

Oh, I know what you’re thinking. I can see it spinning in your mind. “But, did she ever get that photo of Gertrude?” Absolutely! Staunch Victorian lady with a big hat and my face.

The End