This article was written by Francie Von Mertens, longtime nature columnist for the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript. She also has been active with N.H. Audubon and its dePierrefeu-Willard Pond Wildlife Sanctuary for many decades.
Certain information for this article came from “Unity in the Spirit,“ Elsa Tudor de Pierrefeu,
Rindge, 1955, and “‘They think I’m mad,’ said the Marquise,” Herbert Kubly, Vogue, Sept. 15, 1961.
Visitors to New Hampshire Audubon’s dePierrefeu-Willard Pond Wildlife Sanctuary in
Antrim and Hancock pass a cabin as they walk from the parking area to the boat launch.
Weathered over the century since it was built, it blends in with the landscape. Weathered structurally also, the cabin will be removed later this year.
But first, some history that honors the many stories the cabin tells. It’s a history with several chapters: war and its emotional toll; a healing sanctuary; and, four decades later, the creation of an Audubon sanctuary for wildlife.
War and its emotional toll
The cabin was built by Elsa Tudor de Pierrefeu, known by many locals as “the countess.”
She married Count Alain Dedons de Pierrefeu in Paris in 1904. The couple settled in Hancock where Elsa’s family had roots as summer residents.
When World War I began, Alain returned to France to join the military. Elsa served in France, also, as a nurse.
Their four young children remained in Hancock village with caregivers in what she called “the pink house.”
Elsa wrote that she and Alain agreed that they would work for world peace if he survived the war. She also wrote that they doubted he would survive the horrors of that war. They were right.
Scarred by war, Elsa built the cabin at Willard Pond as a healing sanctuary and, should the madness of war spread, she stored grain and other food stuffs in the house and barn and built two smaller refuge cabins for her children.
Ask locals about “the countess” and many mention a lot of grain.
After Elsa’s death, her granddaughter Kayti Sullivan removed a lot of rusted canned goods from the cabin basement. Kayti lives near the cabin and speaks of her “most adored” grandmother as someone who listened to and affirmed her as a young girl. Her grandmother also set an example as someone firm in her beliefs, a “ferocious” vegetarian who practiced yoga into her 80s.
There are many Elsa stories, including that she danced at Boston’s Jordan Hall as “Madame de Pierrefeu / Née Elsa Tudor / Symbolic Dances.” Her Tudor family, well-known in Boston, provided funds to get her off the stage.
It’s not clear that Elsa and her four children lived at the cabin. It’s likely that her children preferred the comforts of “the pink house” in the village.
A healing sanctuary
Long before the Willard Pond area became an Audubon wildlife sanctuary, Elsa called it a “sanctuary.” She invited many to stay in the cabin to experience the healing powers of the cabin and the natural world around it.
Several were artist-residents at MacDowell Colony. One, a New Yorker, said he would invite friends to join him — not eager to live alone in silent, dark woods.
Elsa replied, “You will regret them. The unseen life is strong and you will not be lonely.”
By the end of one long stay, he wrote that he, too, experienced Elsa’s “faeries” and her “dance of the atoms.” He also served martinis for “a summer’s night fête” for 40.
Elsa, very likely, would not have been one of the 40.
A hand-painted board at the sanctuary quoted the Book of Isaiah: “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain.” Elsa often called the sanctuary her “holy mountain.”
True to her belief that all life is sacred, Elsa asked that cabin guests agree not to harm any living being. On a sanctuary walk, she cautioned the New Yorker to avoid stepping on a Solomon’s seal. Elsa knew her wild flowers.
Elsa traveled the world in a quest for unity among all religions, the peace work that she and Alain de Pierrefeu had vowed to pursue if Alain survived World War I. Rome, Delhi, Bombay, London, Paris, Washington, New York, she met with religious leaders to promote a worldwide, ecumenical day of unity and peace.
Most responses were encouraging, but it remained for her to do the work. A few did not embrace her vision of unity among different faiths.
She held firm to her belief that all religions worship the same God.
Elsa died in 1967, bequeathing 650 acres on the western shore of Willard Pond as an Audubon wildlife sanctuary. She divided the remaining 400 acres among her children.
She was clear in the Audubon deed that “these premises are conveyed … that the area around Willard Lake be and remain a sanctuary for all forms of wild life.”
She had shared the healing powers of her “holy mountain” with people scarred from two world wars, and now was passing it along as a sanctuary for wildlife.
Thus began a new chapter for Elsa’s cabin and its wild surround.
The creation of an Audubon sanctuary for wildlife
In decades since, New Hampshire Audubon’s dePierrefeu-Willard Pond Wildlife Sanctuary has grown from the original 650 acres to almost 1,800.
Her children donated land to the Sanctuary. Two neighbors, the Morgans and Whistlers, also donated theirs, and the Harris Center, down the road in Hancock, donated 50 acres known as the “Brown pasture.”
At a 2007 gathering at Willard to celebrate a 365-acre expansion of the Sanctuary (helped by Harris Center funds), N.H. Audubon President Rick Minard asked the 60 people gathered for a minute of silence to honor Elsa de Pierrefeu’s practice of a noonday minute of silence in which to visualize world unity and peace.
Minard also announced a new award — the Meade Cadot Award — to honor N.H. Audubon’s conservation partners. Who better to be the first recipient, he said, than Meade Cadot and the Harris Center for Conservation Education.
Meade also helped begin a new chapter for Elsa’s cabin.
He came to the area soon after college, hired as N.H. Audubon’s resident naturalist and steward at Willard Pond.
Elsa’s sanctuary worked its magic, and Meade set down roots in the area.
He soon became the Harris Center’s first paid director, and his land protection work began. What he called the “SuperSanctuary” of permanently conserved land now numbers some 36,000 acres including over 4,000 in the Willard Pond area.
Meade is the first to credit many land conservation partners: land trusts, landowners, state and federal agencies, Audubon, and town conservation commissions.
I like to joke that Audubon can take credit for the SuperSanctuary acres that Meade and the Harris Center have conserved over 50 years.
Without that first job as N.H Audubon’s Willard Pond resident naturalist. . . .
The cabin’s history of young resident naturalists and Sanctuary stewards continued for six decades. Most, like Meade, have made important contributions to land and wildlife stewardship as educators, writers, field biologists and land-trust staff.
One tells of a cabin bat population that interrupted sleep as they scurried about.
The guano scent was strong.
Elsa’s grandson, Forbes Leland, lived in a nearby cabin. He said the bats were making his grand mère’s cabin unlivable. He prepared the nearby barn for bats and then replaced a cabin wall that had grooves perfect for roosting bats.
The cabin continued to host bats, but the exclusion was successful enough that bat field trips thereafter centered on the barn, not the cabin.
Elsa’s wildlife sanctuary has abundant wildlife (both flora and fauna), and field trips explore Willard in all seasons — spring’s ephemeral wildflowers to wildlife tracks in
winter.
There was a time when a nudist wandered the Sanctuary. Meade Cadot and other field trip leaders shared a certain anxiety about encountering a “naturalist” of another order.
Forbes Leland felt deeply connected with the wildlife sanctuary. Over the decades, he’d check in with Audubon for updates or with suggestions.
He insisted on and helped fund, removal of two decaying cabins that Elsa built, including the cabin he lived in for some 10 years.
He was clear that inhabited shoreline cabins were incompatible with his grandmother’s vision of a sanctuary for wildlife.
In 2009, N.H. Audubon gave Forbes the President’s Award, “In recognition of his
longstanding work in support of the dePierrefeu-Willard Pond Wildlife Sanctuary.”
Modest always, he credited others for what he accomplished.
Here’s the real story.
A few years before the award, Forbes dreamed that his father gave him clear
directions: “Complete the Sanctuary.”
He set about what he called “the trifecta”: conserving three properties that
included the last unprotected shoreline.
One woman, contributing to the first of the trifecta, wrote that a paddle on Willard
was the last thing she did before leaving for Peace Corps service in South Africa.
John Kerrick wrote a heartfelt letter, “Raised at Willard Pond,” about trips there
with his four children to explore nature up close and wild.
Local Trout Unlimited members also contributed. With a wink, Ed Henault said
they hold their summer “meetings” at Willard — afloat and fishing. He often said that
“Willard never disappoints” — whether he caught a fish or not.
Permitting fly-fishing only, and electric motors, not gas, Willard Pond lures many
fisherfolk.
Supporting Forbes’s trifecta vision from the start, N.H. Audubon directed funds
from its Goulder Fund for Land Protection to the other two land-protection projects.
Rosamund Curtis, Elsa’s great-granddaughter, offered her property for what she
had paid in taxes since it came to her, continuing the tradition Elsa’s family’s generous
support.
Rosamund and her mother, Kayti, share Elsa’s spiritual connections with the
“holy mountain.”
When I moved to the area, I kept hearing about “Willard,” as in, “Have you been
to Willard?” In time, I learned what “Willard” was.
It’s where we locals bring visiting family to show them why we live here.
There’s a memorial inscription that honors Forbes on a shoreline boulder near the site of his cabin. Respecting Forbes’s modesty, his two sisters chose a boulder that is hard to find. (Hint: It’s off the beaten path to the outflow dam and looks north to the view that Forbes saw from his cabin.)
A loon’s yodel accompanied a small gathering near the newly-inscribed boulder.
It was September 17, 2021, Forbes’s birthday. The “gentle giant” would have been 80.
Forbes wrote about swimming with the loons.
And now, after 100 years of cabin history and 58 years of Wildlife Sanctuary history, the cabin stories are coming to an end but the wildlife stories will continue.
Long under consideration, recent inspections helped N.H Audubon determine
that the cabin no longer can be maintained as safe for residency.
The resident steward and his family have moved out, the last in a line of cabin and Sanctuary caretakers.
N.H. Audubon president, Doug Bechtel, speaks of “the history and legacy of this amazing place,” including the many “who entrusted us with protecting the natural environment at Willard Pond.”
Determining how best to maintain a caretaker presence will be done with care.
On summer weekends, the large parking area is full but the peace and silence of Elsa’s sanctuary still can be found by paddle, hike or sitting on a shoreline boulder.
On Tuesday after a Labor Day crowd, there were only a few cars in the parking area.
The cabin will be razed, but stonework and a porch area facing south to the Mill Pond will remain. A plaque will tell the Elsa de Pierrefeu story.