Visitor Questions Answered

Sorry about the lack of posts here lately. We've had a slight time management problem...but it's a good kind! We've had so many visitors it's been hard to get blog posts written!

I'm going to do a quick round-up of a few visitor questions that I've had over the past several weeks. I wasn't able to answer the questions definitely at the time, so I told people to check our blog and I would post when I found out.

Where did Lew and Susan meet?

They met at a party at Susan's sister and brother-in-law's home, Lane Place. Of course, Lew had already had encounters with Susan's family--when he was a boy, he sneaked into the Elston homestead hoping for a glimpse of their piano!

Is that Lew's sink?


It is! We think he had the sink so accessible so he could clean his paintbrushes. (No, that isn't Lew's fire extinguisher.)

Is that a water pipe?

Yes! That is an oriental narghile, or water pipe, that Lew brought home from Constantinopole.  It's made of clear, blue glass with floral designs painted on it and a terra cotta top piece. The flowers appear to be burgundy hibiscus, yellow roses, and bittersweet. On one flower petal is the sultan's tughra in a circle, on the next flower petal is a gold oval with:  "B. Fucmez - Constantinople" around some Turkish writing.  Under this is a small circle with what may be "LEW" in it.

Visitor Questions Answered

Every now and then I'll have someone ask me a question to which I don't have the answer. I always do my best to find out, but sometimes I don't find the answer until the visitor is already gone. Today I want to answer a few questions I've been asked lately.

What is this pedestal made out of?

This is an onyx pedestal from Rome, pale green with gold and white marbling.  It has seven metal rings around it. The pedestal stands in the mechanical room of the Study building, where our Ben-Hur exhibit is located.

Were the bricks around the inglenook painted?

No. The bricks were made that color, which is also used as an accent color on the outside of the Study building.

How tall was Lew Wallace?

According to his hunting license, he was 5'10".

What is this chunk of rock?

This is a piece of turquoise. Our records suggest Susan might have used it as a paperweight. You'll find it in one of the display cases on the south wall of the Study.


Anyone else have any questions? I love doing research to find the answers to these questions. I always tell people I learn things from our visitors just as often as they learn things from me! Chime in in the comments and play "stump the museum girl!"

Lew and the Snooze

Archaeologists have found evidence that clocks have existed as early as 400 BC clocks run on water existed in China and the Greeks had early mechanical clocks in the 1st century BC. In the early 13th century clocks even had alarms set on them to make a motion or sound at the same time everyday, which were often used to call monks to prayer or meals. These signals were fixed and in order to change them you had to change the fundamental mechanisms of the clock itself. It was also around this time that scholars find references to clocks made of gears and weights. These clocks worked in much the same way as the water counterparts in their use of gravity, but now there was a physical weight instead of pouring water. Whether it is by gears or water, clocks stayed the same for hundreds of years until the advent of microchips and digital technology.

So where, you ask, does Lew Wallace factor into all of these useless clock factoids? Well, the clock has undergone several innovations and improvements, one of which is the advent of the snooze button. Some people have mistakenly credited this to General Lew Wallace, but this just is not true. Says one blogger (http://www.thebluesmokeband.com/alarm.clocks.php), “Stated simply: the snooze button has left me less than satisfied. Given this, I naturally wanted to find a place to lay blame. Who better than the inventor of the snooze button: Lew Wallace.” A careful examination of the history of the clock and its many assets shows us why this just cannot be, but first we must absolutely decide what the snooze button really is.

The snooze button allows the clock owner to set an alarm on his/her clock and when the alarm signals the proper time the owner has the option of resetting that clock for a prescribed amount of time. It is possible to reset a mechanical alarm and even to do so with little effort, but it involves actually changing the alarm time. You cannot patent an action like that, so the snooze button must also involve the owner triggering some kind of predetermined signal that does not necessarily have to go off. This kind of manipulation of a clock was only really available until the General Electric-Telechron in 1956. Not too much later the digital revolution changed clocks forever.

General Wallace died in 1905, a full 51 years before the first marketed snooze alarm. He also could not have invented the alarm itself because an Ottoman engineer, Taqi al-Din, writes about a mechanical alarm clock in his book, The Brightest Stars for the Construction of Mechanical Clocks, which was published somewhere around 1556. Even in the United States the first clock patent goes to Eli Terry On November 17, 1797. It is just not possible for Lew Wallace to have invented the snooze alarm and in fact his own clock is a weight-driven Tiffany timepiece that is still functioning at the Museum.

Researched and written by museum intern Will Finney, Wabash College '10

Lew Wallace: Atheist?

We here at the Museum like to monitor what's being said about Lew Wallace around the internet, and most of what we find is accurate and interesting. One of the more prevalent fallacies, however, is the story that General Wallace was an atheist who wrote Ben-Hur to disprove Christianity. Here is my reply to one blogger:

General Wallace was never an atheist. According to his Autobiography, published posthumously in 1907, he wrote that he was raised in the Christian tradition but wasn't a devout follower: "“At that time, speaking candidly, I was not in the least influenced by religious sentiment. I had no convictions about God or Christ. I neither believed nor disbelieved in them."

And Ben-Hur originally was to be a story about the three kings that attended Christ's birth:

" ‘Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the East to Jerusalem, saying, Where is He that is born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the east, and are come to worship him.’ “Far back as my memory goes of things read by or to me, those lines took a hold on my imagination beyond every other passage of Scripture. How simple they are! But analyze them, and behold the points of wonder! "

It was a chance train ride with Capt. Robert Ingersol that solidified Wallace's desire to closely examine the life of Jesus:

"It is possible to fix the hour and place of the first thought of a book precisely enough; that was a night in 1876. I had been listening to discussion which involved such elemental points as God, heaven, life hereafter, Jesus Christ, and His divinity. Trudging on in the dark, alone except as one’s thoughts may be company, good or bad, a sense of the importance of the theme struck me for the first time with a force both singular and persistent. “My ignorance of it was painfully a spot of deeper darkness in the darkness. I was ashamed of myself, and make haste now to declare that the mortification of pride I then endured, or if it be preferred, the punishment of spirit, ended in a resolution to study the whole matter, if only for the gratification there might be in having convictions of one kind or another."

Wallace later said that through the research and writing of Ben-Hur, by learning of the story of Christ, "I found myself writing reverentially, and frequently with awe."

So although Wallace never intended Ben-Hur to be a de-bunking of Christianity, he still found himself transfixed, and transformed, by the life of Jesus Christ.

Another misconception is that General Wallace traveled through Europe to do research for his book, when in reality he had never visited the region prior to the book's publication. According to his Autobiography:

"In the next place, I had never been to the Holy Land. In making it the location of my story, it was needful not merely to be familiar with its history and geography, I must be able to paint it, water, land, and sky, in actual colors. Nor would the critics excuse me for mistakes in the costumes or customs of any of the peoples representatively introduced, Greek, Roman, Egyptian, especially the children of Israel. “Ponder the task! There was but one method open to me. I examined catalogues of books and maps, and sent for everything likely to be useful. I wrote with a chart always before my eyes - a German publication, showing the towns and villages, all sacred places, the heights, the depressions, the passes, trails, and distances. Travelers told me of the birds, animals, vegetation and seasons."

Later, when Wallace was appointed Minister to the Ottoman Empire, he traveled the region extensively and found that the geographical areas that he had written about were largely accurate. Imagine doing that in the late 1870s, with nothing but books and charts to aid you! That's just one of the many things that impress me about General Wallace.

As always, if readers want to know more about the fascinating life of General Wallace, they can visit our website, http://www.ben-hur.com/, or give us a call at the General Lew Wallace Study and Museum, 765-362-5769. We'd be happy to tell you all about our favorite guy!

Kara Edie, Visitor Services & Marketing Coordinator

Ben-Hur on a Bet?

We frequently receive questions by e-mail relating to Lew Wallace, and I received one today asking whether or not Lew Wallace wrote Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ on a bet. Lew Wallace’s motivation to write Ben-Hur has been the subject of many discussions, beginning during his lifetime. Wallace answered this oft-posed question by writing “How I Came to Write Ben-Hur” for his Autobiography. To summarize: Wallace began writing what would become the novel beginning with his personal exploration of the first Christmas simply. He laid the manuscript aside without the thought of a formal book. Then, in 1876, while riding a train to Indianapolis, Wallace engaged in a conversation about God and Christianity, realized he was not as informed as he thought he was, and as a result, “...the mortification of pride I then endured, or if it be preferred, the punishment of spirit, ended in a resolution to study the whole matter, if only for the gratification there might be in having convictions of one kind or another.” (Wallace, Autobiography Vol. II 1906) So, it was Wallace’s idea to undertake a study of Christ rather than a bet from someone else, and reviving his earlier manuscript of the first Christmas, he wrote a tale of Christ through the life of a contemporary, Judah Ben-Hur.

As for Christ’s appearance in the novel, Wallace stated that “...He should not be present as an actor in any scene of my creation. The giving a cup of water to Ben-Hur at the well near Nazareth is the only violation of this rule. Finally, when He was come, I would be religiously careful that every word He uttered should be a literal quotation from one of His sainted biographers.” (Wallace, Autobiography Vol. II 1906) He was also insistent the Christ not be played by a person in the Broadway stage production of Ben-Hur that began in 1899; the producers solved this by portraying Christ with a shaft of white light rather than an actor.

Many things happen as a result of bets, but best-selling novels are not one of them.

--Amanda Wesselmann, Associate Director