By Ellen de Saint Phalle, Member, Board of Directors, The Bronxville Historical Conservancy

May 4, 2016:  On April 15, close to 400 people gathered in Reisinger Auditorium at Sarah Lawrence College to hear Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Stacy Schiff present the Eighteenth Annual Brendan Gill Lecture. Schiff’s presentation focused on her most recent best-selling book, The Witches: Salem, 1692.  

Bronxville Conservancy co-chair Jack Bierwirth welcomed the crowd and thanked his co-chair, Erin Saluti, and board member Judy Foley for their efforts in planning the program, as well as the president of Sarah Lawrence College, Karen Lawrence, for her gracious hospitality in opening the campus to the Conservancy and the greater community for the event. 

President Lawrence expressed how much the college values its strong town-gown relationship, viewing the Conservancy as an important partner. President Lawrence said, “Sarah Lawrence enjoys and appreciates being a part of the wonderful tradition of the Gill Lecture.”

Brendan Gill committee chair and Conservancy lifetime co-chair Marilynn Hill introduced the speaker, enumerating Schiff’s many awards and honors, including the Pulitzer Prize and the Gilbert Chinard Prize, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. "Without a doubt," Hill stated, "biography is Schiff's talent. She is widely acclaimed for her ability to set scenes brilliantly and understand and shape her characters. Her skill as a story teller, and her exceptional gift for language--her bright, accessible prose--are touted by many as without equal."

Hill also quoted Schiff’s high school roommate and Bronxville resident Mary Hoch, who said, "Even in high school Schiff was full of energy, quick-witted with a brilliant vocabulary."

Schiff revealed she came to the subject of the Salem witch trials somewhat in response to her previous book, Cleopatra. She found the source material for Cleopatra extremely limited, “even the Nile is not where it was back then,” said Schiff. In contrast, the information and documentation for Salem, 1692 was rich in detailed material, including hundreds of sermons, letters, diaries, depositions, warrants, and confessions, and yet, she could not find one book that gave her a true feeling for how it was to live in Salem in 1692. Her goal, then, was to take all the documentation and recreate a very real sense of the time and place, how it smelled, looked, and felt, something she believed had not yet been fully revealed in any book. The challenge, Schiff admitted, was in making a preposterous situation, a thing so far-fetched, seem true.

Schiff focused her remarks on Ann Foster, a woman who confessed to practicing witchcraft in 1692 and whose confession gave detailed accounts of flying through the air on a pole to attend a satanical Sabbath with 25 other witches. In order to convey the power of witchcraft, Schiff determined, the reader has to buy into the delusion. It is up to the author "to make a crazy thing seem perfectly rational, and then, afterward, completely crazy." "It is bewildering," she said, and cited Henry James: "Bewilderment is crucial. We'd be lost without it. If we were never bewildered there would never be a story about us."

Schiff entertained questions from the audience and the evening concluded with a champagne reception.

To see photos of those attending, click here: Annual Brendan Gill Lecture 2016.

Pictured here:  Historian Stacy Schiff speaking at the Brendan Gill Lecture.

Photo courtesy The Bronxville Historical Conservancy