Composers’ parents: How much is known of them? How much concern do they elicit? In the vast majority of cases—Signor Rossini, Madame Debussy, or Herr Stockhausen—the answer is “very little”: Indeed, it is unusual for Grove even to provide them with forenames. The reason? Because it is the composers themselves, their musical works, and their subsequent influence that are valued, rather than the raw genetic material from which they were created. There are, of course, exceptions: One of a composer's parents might achieve a degree of vicarious fame because the composers furnished the relevant information, or because significant factors are associated with those individuals that supposedly deem them worthy of study. The most obvious example from among the so-called greats of music history is Johann Georg Leopold Mozart (1719–87), father of Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Amadeus (1756–91), whose opinions and actions had a lasting impact on his son, both personally and professionally. Important, too, in a more general context, is the Bach family, because of its considerable influence over music in North Germany and elsewhere for more than two centuries.

What, then, of the parents of Charles Edward Ives (1874–1954)? Of Charles's father—George Edward Ives (1845–94)—we think we know a good deal, not least as a result of Charles's later, extended, comments regarding his father's influence on his musical development.Footnote ¹ More recently, some aspects of Charles's veneration of George have come to be questioned, in the light of factual discoveries that suggest a history rather less gilded than that subsequently articulated by his son. To cite but two examples of the factional truth concocted by Charles, George was most certainly not (contrary to his son's narrative) a hero of the Civil War, but rather—as has conclusively been demonstrated by Stuart Feder—the subject of a court-martial on 3 July 1864, at which he pleaded guilty to the charges of “neglect of duty” and “conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline.”Footnote ² That George received a relatively mild punishment for his offenses—the forfeiture of one month's pay and close arrest for ten days—may to a considerable degree reflect the fact that the presiding officer at the trial was George's cousin, Lieutenant Colonel Nelson White, who in effect rescued George's subsequent army and civilian career from disgrace. A second example of Charles exaggerating his father's achievements is revealed by Jan Swafford in Charles Ives: A Life with Music. Footnote ³ Charles relayed on several occasions, not least on pages 45–46 of Memos, the now well-known story of how his father's Civil War band had been described as “the best . . . in the army” in an exchange between President Lincoln and General Grant. Unfortunately, on the only occasion when such an exchange could have taken place, George was (and had been for some time) on sick leave in Danbury; in other words, and contrary to the strong implication in Charles's version of the story, his father had been—as Swafford gracefully puts it—“not in attendance for his greatest moment of glory.”

In view of circumstances such as those just outlined, what then are we to make of Charles's mother, Mary Elizabeth Parmelee Ives (1850?–1929), of whom her son says next to nothing? The picture in the extant literature of Mollie, as she was usually known, is somewhat sketchy: Probably the best-known description of her is that drawn by Feder, who reads a great deal into the scant information available to him. The gist of Feder's characterization might be summarized thus: “[Mollie] is scarcely mentioned in any of the family materials. . . . If not medically an invalid, strictly speaking, she appears to have been treated as one socially . . . [and] may have been beginning to undergo some form of mental deterioration . . . in the nature of a mood disorder or even presenile dementia.”Footnote ⁴ However, Feder had at times a distinct tendency to let his psychiatrist's imagination run wild and to come to conclusions that were not always borne out by the facts.Footnote ⁵ Can Mollie truly, then, continue simply to be written off as “the unanswered question of her son's biography”? Or should she be given the benefit of a more objective—or at least clinically less speculative—appraisal? The aim of this article is to examine afresh, and in detail, the surviving concrete evidence concerning Mollie Ives, in order to try and draw some broader conclusions as to her true status and condition.

Some facts: Mary Elizabeth Parmelee was probably born on 2 January 1850, in Redding, Connecticut (in contradistinction to the majority of secondary sources, which give 1849).Footnote ⁶ She was the fifth of the six children conceived by Noah David Parmelee (1808–52) and Mary Ann Parmelee née Smith (dates unknown), who had been married since 1831. At the time of Mollie's birth, Noah has been variously described by Feder as a tailor, by Swafford as a “square-jawed storekeeper,” and by John Kirkpatrick as a farmer. According to Charles Ives (as reported by Swafford) Noah spent his spare time “tinkering with perpetual motion machines.” By the 1870s, when George Ives began courting Mollie, her mother—now Widow Parmelee—was among Danbury's most prominent church singers. The Parmelees were originally descended from Belgian nobility, but their Danbury residence on River Street was, in Feder's words, “a fair distance socially” from the Ives’ house on Main Street. On New Year's Day 1874, George Ives and Mollie Parmelee were married at Danbury's Methodist Episcopal Church, and they subsequently produced two children—Charles Edward and his younger brother, Joseph Moss (1876–1939). Figure 1 is a photograph of Mollie, probably taken at around the time of her wedding.

Figure 1. Mollie Ives as a young woman. Photo no. 29, The Charles Ives Papers, MSS 14, Irving S. Gilmore Library, Yale University.

For the first five or so years of their marriage, George and Mollie lived in the old Ives family home on Danbury's Main Street, but from 1879 or 1880, when Charles's Uncle Lyman and Aunt Amelia wished to move into the house, George, Mollie, Charles, and Moss were dispatched to 16 Stevens Street, which, though only a few blocks away from Main Street, is rightly described by Feder as being “in another part . . . of town.” About a decade later, the family again relocated, this time to 10 Chapel Place, which—as John Kirkpatrick notes—was “rebuilt from the barn up in back of the old house.”Footnote ⁷ There they remained for a substantial period, which saw Charles leave for New Haven, George pass away, and Moss follow his brother to Yale. Although Uncle Lyman died in 1904, it was not the by-then-widowed Mollie who subsequently moved into the Main Street house as Aunt Amelia's companion, but rather her youngest sibling, the spinster Lucy Cornelia Parmelee, usually known as Aunt Nell. Indeed, it was only after the death in 1918 of Aunt Amelia—who bequeathed the use of the house to Aunt Nell for her lifetime—that Mollie, along with a relative from the White side of the Ives family, was able to return to the home in which her children had been born. She lived there until her death in 1929, by which time the whole building had been physically moved uphill to Chapel Place. Mollie apparently stayed inside the house while it was being shifted.

Although Mollie appears only infrequently in the Ives papers and associated literature, her appearances there are a little more numerous than some commentators might lead us to believe, especially if third-person references are included alongside first-person actions. In the Appendix are collated what appear to be all of the concrete references to Mollie in the Ivesian literature—though note that concrete means not only those references found in correspondence and other family documents, but also reminiscences of her provided by both first- and second-hand witnesses.

Several matters relating to the collation are worthy of attention: First, there is only one first-hand description of Mollie, that provided by T. Findlay MacKenzie, who spoke of her as “a nice-looking woman, rather petite with dark hair and dark eyes, neat and very bright.”Footnote ⁸ MacKenzie had been employed as a tutor for Charles Ives's nephew, Moss White Ives, since 1920; he and Ives established a long-lasting friendship, and he had met Mollie in 1921. However, his reminiscence dates from a half-century later, when Vivian Perlis interviewed him in 1971. The only other description—for want of a better word—is Kirkpatrick's second-hand characterization of her as “a small but intense focus of energy and determination.”Footnote ⁹

Second, there appear to be two extant letters in Mollie's hand, which are rendered in bold in the Appendix. The first dates from 22 August 1889 and is an addendum to a letter addressed by Charles to his father (see Fig. 2). The second letter was written almost exactly a year later and was again enclosed with a letter from Charles to his father (see Fig. 3). Although this letter has previously been attributed to Aunt Amelia, the handwriting is identical to that shown in Figure 2, and the signature quite clearly reads “Mollie” rather than “Millie.”

Figure 2. Letter to George Ives, written by Charles Ives and Mollie Ives, 22 August 1889. The Charles Ives Papers, subseries IIIA, box 33, folder 1. Reproduced by permission of The American Academy of Arts and Letters, copyright owner.

Figure 3. Excerpt from letter to George Ives, written by [Charles Ives and] Mollie Ives, 19 August 1890. The Charles Ives Papers, subseries IIIA, box 33, folder 1. Reproduced by permission of The American Academy of Arts and Letters, copyright owner. See also Tom C. Owens, ed., Selected Correspondence of Charles Ives (Berkeley: University of California Press, Reference Owens2007), letter no. 6, where the excerpt is attributed to Amelia Brewster.

In a later letter, dated 4 October 1893, Charles complains about his mother's handwriting: “I wish you would please get somebody else to write [them] as I can hardly make them out.”Footnote ¹⁰ However, there is nothing in the extant examples of Mollie's handwriting—nor, it should be pointed out, in any other of Charles's letters—to justify this complaint.

The third matter of note in the collation is that despite occasional remarks concerning Mollie's health in the letters of both George and Charles, none of them is categorically serious. Two letters, dated 10 December 1893 and 28 September 1894, mention Mollie's having a cold.Footnote ¹¹ Two other references are at best ambiguously worded. Thus, in Charles's letter to his father dated 20 August 1889, it is not clear whether it is Mollie or Aunt Milly who is “not very well”;Footnote ¹² and perhaps even more significantly, the well-known letter from George to Charles, dated 28 September 1894, can be read in two quite different ways. After noting that “Your mother and Moss each have colds,” George starts a new sentence: “Mother has another new nurse, quite a young girl but starts off well.” This statement can—and has until now—been interpreted as meaning that Mollie has a new nurse; but by “Mother” George could just as easily have meant his own mother—Charles's grandmother—Sara Hotchkiss Wilcox Ives, who approximately eight months earlier had had an accident of some kind, and who was by this time in her late eighties.Footnote ¹³

The final matter of note is the general tone of almost all of the references contained in the Appendix: With the exception of those instances discussed above, there is nothing here to suggest any kind of medical invalidity, mental deterioration, or even the “social exclusion” at which Feder hints. Mollie goes about her business, pickling pears, attending to her son's domestic needs, visiting him at college and—after his marriage—in his home. Indeed, the only solid piece of evidence for her supposed “condition” is that when the Ives house was being moved in 1924, she made the somewhat odd decision to stay inside it. By 1924, however, Mollie was in her mid-seventies, and the individual being discussed here is the presumably rather stubborn woman who, according to family legend, had once stopped a commuter train in its tracks.Footnote ¹⁴ If further evidence of Mollie's apparent good health in later life were needed, it seems to be provided by the photograph shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Mollie Ives in later life. Photo no. 30, The Charles Ives Papers, MSS 14. Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, Yale University.

No date accompanies this photograph, but the graying hair and fuller face suggest a person of at least middle age. A clue of sorts is seen in the background, though: The building behind Mollie is the converted barn in which she lived from approximately 1890 through 1918. The barn stood farther up the hill from the main Ives house—which had its own garden—and was located at 10 Chapel Place. A notice board, possibly for the chapel in question, can be partially seen on the left of the picture. A very rough estimate for the date of the picture would therefore be 1915, when Mollie was 65, though this assumption could well be some way off the mark.

Was there, then, anything “wrong” with Mollie Ives? The answer, based on an examination of the extant evidence, would seem to be no; but by one of those supreme ironies that only exist in fact rather than fiction, there was in fact something very seriously wrong with her. That no one has previously noticed is a further irony, not least given that the information is publicly available and has probably been examined by several Ives scholars, most notably Stuart Feder. In January 1931, Charles Ives—who was by that time suffering badly from the effects of diabetes—was referred to the pioneering Joslin Clinic in Boston; as a result of that referral, he became one of the earliest diabetics to be treated with insulin. At Ives's first consultation, on 26 January 1931, his consultant took a full medical history (see Fig. 5).

Figure 5. Charles Ives's medical record from the Joslin Clinic, Boston. The Charles Ives Papers, subseries IIIC, box 39, folder 1. Reproduced by permission of The American Academy of Arts and Letters, copyright owner.

Those who have previously examined this document have, not altogether surprisingly, concentrated on the information it contains concerning Ives's health: The record details his broken nose, received during a sports event at Yale; his two major physical collapses, of 1906 and 1918; his height (5′ 9½″), his weight (160 pounds), and his blood pressure (a perfectly healthy 150/85); the dosages of insulin he was prescribed; and—added subsequently—the circumstances of his death in 1954. But what the record also reveals, in its uppermost portion, is that Ives's father, George, died from apoplexy—a statement fully in accordance with the known details of George's symptoms immediately prior to his passing—and that his mother, Mollie, died as a result of Addison's disease. (Given that her passing had been only two years earlier, there is no reason to doubt the veracity this statement.)Footnote ¹⁵

For those unfamiliar with Addison's disease, a brief clinical diversion is necessary. The syndrome was first described in 1855 by Thomas Addison, a colleague of Thomas Hodgkin at Guy's Hospital in London. It is a rare condition, more common in women than men, and results from the failure of the adrenal gland to produce sufficient amounts of steroid hormones. It may develop in children as well as adults and may reflect a number of underlying causes, including tuberculosis. (Given that the latter was endemic among the urban poor in the nineteenth century, it is entirely plausible that Mollie may have contracted, or at least been exposed to, the disease in her early years.) The symptoms associated with Addison's disease gradually accumulate, often over considerable periods of time;Footnote ¹⁶ typically, they include chronic, worsening fatigue; muscle weakness and spasms; loss of appetite and weight; nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea; headaches and sweating; changes in mood and personality, including irritability and depression; low blood pressure, which can cause dizziness and fainting; and skin changes such as hyperpigmentation. A particularly nasty feature of the disease occurs when the adrenal insufficiency is severe: In a so-called Addisonian crisis the sufferer may experience deep pains in the legs, lower back, and abdomen; severe vomiting and diarrhea, leading to dehydration; dangerously low blood pressure; loss of consciousness; hypoglycemia; confusion and psychosis; severe lethargy; and convulsions and fever. Left untreated, an Addisonian crisis can be fatal.

Nowadays, Addison's disease can be controlled fairly successfully using hydrocortisone tablets, and even Addisonian crises can be averted if dealt with swiftly. Hydrocortisone was developed only during the 1940s, however, and so Mollie Ives—assuming she was even aware of her condition—would have had to rely on more traditional (and relatively ineffective) methods of controlling her symptoms: rest, principally, and the intake of saline and dextrose fluids to counteract dehydration. Note also that whereas many women with the disease are able to bear children without complication, pregnancy is a time when particular caution needs to be exercised. Notwithstanding all of these negative points, Addison's sufferers often lead fairly normal lives—for instance, John F. Kennedy coped pretty well with the demands of the U.S. presidency despite having Addison's.

To return, then, to the evidence cited earlier concerning what Stuart Feder characterized as Mollie Ives's “invalidity,” it should be clear that most (if not all) of her alleged symptoms might well be attributed to Addison's disease. The tendency toward periods of muscle weakness could explain Charles's complaints in 1893 concerning his mother's handwriting, even though those complaints are never repeated elsewhere or borne out by the extant letters in her hand; the two ambiguous references to health matters detailed in family correspondence may well refer, after all, to Mollie, rather than Aunt Amelia or Grandmother Ives, as Mollie would certainly have experienced periods of feeling unwell and during Addisonian crises would assuredly have required nursing. Mollie's unwillingness to leave the Ives house during its removal to Chapel Place in 1924 could be as attributable to her Addisonian symptoms as to her stubbornness, and it is worth remembering that during the period of the move Charles, according to Philip Sunderland, “wanted everybody to realize that she was to be treated well.” Similarly, when George and baby Charles were dispatched to the old barn when Mollie was pregnant with Moss—because “Mollie didn't want too much confusion”—this would be entirely consistent with the Addisonian tendency for symptoms to increase at times of stress and for the consequent clinical need to exercise caution.Footnote ¹⁷ Finally, think of Findlay MacKenzie's 1921 description of Mollie as having “dark eyes” and look again at the early photograph shown as Figure 1: Could those dark patches around her eyes be attributable to the Addisonian tendency toward hyperpigmentation?

At the beginning of this article, it was noted how little we know of (or care about) the vast majority of composers’ parents; subsequently, the notion that Mollie Ives was “the unanswered question of her son's biography” was queried. Having examined the evidence afresh, the truth of the matter—at least to my mind—is that Mollie was no more, nor no less, unusual than Signor Rossini, Madame Debussy, or Herr Stockhausen. Rather, she was a perfectly ordinary human being, but one who had the great misfortune to suffer from Addison's disease.