Margaret Wise Brown Read online

  45. Charles Green Shaw, “Through the Magnifying Glass,” New Yorker, 3 December 1927, 36, 38.

  46. Michael Strange, Who Tells Me True (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1940), 142.

  47. Alpert, The Barrymores, 220. See also Margot Peters, The House of Barrymore (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 224–26, 264–65.

  48. Diana Barrymore and Gerold Frank, Too Much, Too Soon (New York: Henry Holt, 1957), 21.

  49. Michael Strange, undated publicity brochure (National Concert and Artists Corporation, New York), Rockefeller.

  50. Maxwell Perkins to Michael Strange, 14 May 1941, Scribner Archives, Princeton University Library (collection hereafter cited as Princeton).

  51. Katherine Woods, review of Who Tells Me True, New York Times Book Review, 12 May 1940, 9.

  52. Maxwell Perkins to Harrison Tweed, 26 November 1940, Princeton (Scribner CO 101, Box 148). Published with permission of Princeton University Library and Charles Scribner’s Sons, an imprint of Macmillan Publishing Company.

  53. MWB to Lucy Sprague Mitchell, undated (June 1940), Columbia.

  54. Ibid.

  55. MWB to Lucy Sprague Mitchell, 1 July 1940, Columbia.

  56. MWB to Lucy Sprague Mitchell, 21 July 1940, Columbia.

  57. Lucy Sprague Mitchell to MWB, 31 July 1940, Columbia.

  58. MWB, Hollins Alumnae Quarterly class notes (Fall 1940): 18.

  59. Edith Thacher Hurd, interview with author, Vinalhaven, Maine, 11 September 1983.

  60. MWB to Lucy Sprague Mitchell, 5 August 1940, Columbia.

  61. Esphyr Slobodkina, interview with author, Hallandale, Fla., 10 January 1983.

  62. Slobodkina, Notes, 2:541.

  63. MWB to Lucy Sprague Mitchell, 14 September 1940, Columbia.

  64. Esphyr Slobodkina, 10 January 1983. Slobodkina also describes this incident in detail in Notes, 2:552–53.

  65. Esphyr Slobodkina, 10 January 1983.

  66. MWB to Lucy Sprague Mitchell, 14 September 1940, Columbia.

  67. MWB, “Oh Gentle Jew,” unpublished typescript, undated, Rockefeller.

  68. Slobodkina, Notes, 2:502.

  69. Strange, Who Tells Me True, 212.

  70. MWB to Gertrude Stein, 28 November 1940, Beinecke.

  71. MWB, “In the Blackberry Patch,” unpublished, undated typescript, Rockefeller.

  72. Stein, World, 58–59.

  73. MWB to John Macrae, Sr., 11 February 1941, collection of Roberta Brown Rauch.

  74. MWB, “The Earth Will Have Us,” unpublished play manuscript and related notes, Westerly.

  75. Leonora A. Orr, Hollins Alumnae Quarterly class notes (Spring 1941): 21. The article referred to is E. J. Kahn, Jr. “Tallyho!,” New Yorker, 8 March 1941, 49–55.

  76. Kahn, “Tallyho!”, 49.

  77. MWB, “The New York Evening Post, April 3, 1941,” unpublished typescript, undated, Rockefeller.

  78. Virginia Woolf, The Waves (1931; reprint, New York and London: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1978), 239.

  CHAPTER FIVE Other Houses, Other Worlds

  1. MWB, “Author’s Biographical Data,” prepared for Simon & Schuster, 1945 or thereafter, Westerly.

  2. MWB to Lucy Sprague Mitchell, 29 July 1942, Columbia.

  3. Clement Hurd, “Remembering Margaret Wise Brown,” 560.

  4. MWB as Golden MacDonald, The Little Island, illustrated by Leonard Weisgard (Garden City: Doubleday, Doran, 1946).

  5. MWB to Lucy Sprague Mitchell, 30 August 1941, Columbia.

  6. MWB, untitled, undated manuscript beginning “They were two people alone in the fog,” Rockefeller.

  7. Polly Schoyer Brooks, telephone interview with author, May or June 1986 (date not recorded in notes).

  8. Preston Schoyer, The Foreigners (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1942). MWB’s copy with Schoyer’s inscription is in Michael Strange’s house on Vinalhaven.

  9. MWB to Lucy Sprague Mitchell, 30 August 1941, Columbia.

  10. MWB to Lucy Sprague Mitchell, 14 September 1940, Columbia.

  11. MWB, The Runaway Bunny, illustrated by Clement Hurd (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1942).

  12. MWB to Lucy Sprague Mitchell, 11 October 1941, Columbia.

  13. The Book of Knowledge (1951), 78.

  14. MWB to Lucy Sprague Mitchell, 30 August 1941, Columbia.

  15. MWB, Bank Street student notebook, Rockefeller.

  16. Rose Bliven to Lucy Sprague Mitchell, 21 February 1951, Columbia.

  17. May Lamberton Becker, review of The Runaway Bunny, Books (15 March 1942): 6. In 1966, Clement Hurd began work on a reillustrated edition of The Runaway Bunny, hoping to prepare new art which would reproduce more effectively than had the originals. The new edition, which appeared in 1972, was an immediate success. (The final full-color illustration in the 1972 edition is the same painting that Hurd first prepared as a sample for Wait Till the Moon Is Full, a project from which he was eventually dropped in favor of Garth Williams.) See Clement Hurd to Mr. (Eugene M.) Scheel, undated, collection of Edith Thacher Hurd; and Ursula Nordstrom to Clement Hurd, 31 January 1966, collection of Edith Thacher Hurd.

  18. MWB, “Leonard Weisgard Wins the Caldecott Award,” Publishers’ Weekly (5 July 1947): 42.

  19. MWB, “Writing for Children,” Hollins Alumnae Magazine (Winter 1949): 1.

  20. MWB as Golden MacDonald, Red Light Green Light (Garden City: Doubleday, Doran, 1944).

  21. MWB to Michael Strange, undated (early 1942), Rockefeller.

  22. MWB to Lucy Sprague Mitchell, 29 July 1942, Columbia.

  23. Ibid.

  24. Frances Clarke Sayers to Bertha E. Mahony, 20 August 1942, Horn Book Archives, Simmons College, Boston.

  25. Jean Chariot, “Illustrating Children’s Books,” An Artist on Art: The Collected Essays of Jean Chariot (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1972), 1:363, 366.

  26. John G. McCullough, 17 July 1986.

  27. MWB, A Child’s Good Night Book (New York: Scott, 1943).

  28. John G. McCullough, 17 July 1986.

  29. Jean Chariot’s diary is quoted in Peter Morse, Jean Chariot’s Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii and Jean Chariot Foundation, 1976), 249.

  30. Miriam L. Wesley and Alice W. Hollis, transcript of interview with Jean Chariot, 18 August 1961, Archives of American Art Oral History, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.: 19

  31. MWB, “Publishers’ Biographical Material,” Westerly.

  32. Clement Hurd, interview with author, Vinalhaven, Maine, 11 July 1983.

  33. Lucille Ogle, 8 September 1982.

  34. Wallace B. Putnam, interview with author, Yorktown Heights, N.Y., 2 December 1983.

  35. Leonard Weisgard, 26 October–5 November 1982.

  36. Dorothy A. Bennett, interview with author, El Cerrito, California, 23 April 1984.

  37. Colette Richardson, interview with author, New York, N.Y., 17 January 1983.

  38. Dorothy Wagstaff Ripley, 3 June 1987.

  39. Shaw, diary, 28 July 1949, Smithsonian.

  40. See Alpert, The Barrymores, 220.

  41. A letter from Ursula Nordstrom to MWB dated 20 April 1943 is addressed to her at 10 Gracie Square (HarperCollins); a notation in MWB’s Bank Street student file dated October 1943 lists 10 Gracie Square as her “last address” (Milbank).

  42. Transcript of “The Baby Institute” radio broadcast on the Blue Network, 18 November 1943, Westerly.

  43. Leonard Weisgard, 26 October–5 November 1982.

  44. MWB, “Room and a River,” unpublished manuscript, undated, Rockefeller.

  45. Yvonne Thomas, interview with author, New York, N.Y., 24 April 1985.

  46. Dorothy A. Bennett, 23 April 1984.

  47. Lucius Beebe, “This New York,” New York Herald Tribune, 6 July 1940.

  48. Ted Scott Peckham, interview with author, New York, N.Y., 16 December 1984.

  49. Joseph D. Ryle, 27 October 1983.

  50. Barrymore and Frank, Too Much,
Too Soon, 51.

  51. Ibid., 214–15.

  52. In an undated letter to Michael Strange from late 1947, MWB wrote: “Diana looks wonderful and is in better and sweeter spirits than she has been in a long time and things seem to be turning her way. Bob [Wilcox] seems very steady and loves her a lot and I think is giving her pride in her self because he is proud of her.” (Rockefeller.)

  53. Yvonne Thomas, 24 April 1985.

  54. Morrell Gipson, interview with author, New York, N.Y., 21 January 1987.

  55. In 1967, when Cobble Court was threatened with demolition, its current owner arranged to move the structure to a new location. On Sunday, 5 March 1967, the wooden cottage was hoisted onto a steel dolly and towed to its present site at the corner of Charles and Greenwich streets in Greenwich Village.

  56. Strange, Who Tells Me True, 319.

  57. M. C., Harper internal reader’s report on MWB manuscript of The Dark Wood of the Golden Birds, 29 February 1944, HarperCollins.

  58. M. C., Harper internal reader’s report on MWB manuscript “War in the Woods,” 22 March 1943, HarperCollins.

  59. MWB, “Some Facts About Yourself,” author’s questionnaire, William R. Scott, Inc., stamped as received 29 May 1944, Scott files, HarperCollins.

  60. MWB, “Civil Defense for Five Years Old [sic],” proposal for a book apparently to be titled “The Bomb Proof Bunnies,” Westerly.

  61. MWB to Louise Raymond, undated (spring 1938), HarperCollins.

  62. Michael Strange, Resurrecting Life, 19.

  63. M. C. on The Dark Wood, 29 February 1944, HarperCollins.

  64. Nordstrom’s notation appears in the left margin of the 29 February report cited above.

  65. Shaw, diary, 9 March 1944, Smithsonian.

  66. Judi Culbertson and Tom Randall, Permanent New Yorkers: A Biographical Guide to the Cemeteries of New York (Chelsea, Vt.: Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 1987), 172.

  67. Barrymore and Frank, Too Much, Too Soon, 226.

  68. Ursula Nordstrom, 7 March 1981.

  69. MWB to Ursula Nordstrom, undated (early 1945), HarperCollins.

  70. MWB, undated, untitled autobiographical note beginning “Born in New York of a family,” Westerly.

  71. MWB to Ursula Nordstrom, 27 April 1945, HarperCollins.

  72. MWB to Ursula Nordstrom, undated (early 1945), HarperCollins.

  73. Edith Thacher Hurd, 14 July 1982.

  74. Five Little Firemen was published in 1948 under the authors’ actual names. Only one of their many collaborations, The Man in the Manhole and the Fix-It Men (New York: W. R. Scott, 1946), which was the first of their joint efforts to be published, bore the pseudonym Juniper Sage.

  75. The author was unable to learn what became of Smoke.

  76. The passage from Henry V, Act IV, Scene iii, is: “This story shall the good man teach his son; / And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by, / From this day to the ending of the world, / But we in it shall be remembered— / We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; / For he today that sheds his blood with me / Shall be my brother . . .” Margaret modified the original spelling by the addition of an “’s.” She proceeded to use “Crispin” and “Crispian” interchangeably as the dog’s name.

  77. Leonard Weisgard, 26 October–5 November 1982.

  CHAPTER SIX In the Great Green Room

  1. MWB, Goodnight Moon manuscript notebook, Kerlan Collection, University of Minnesota Libraries (collection hereafter cited as Kerlan).

  2. Ursula Nordstrom to Clement Hurd, 8 February 1946, HarperCollins.

  3. MWB to Evelyn F. Burkey, 14 January 1946, Authors League of America, New York.

  4. Ursula Nordstrom to MWB, 25 January 1946, HarperCollins.

  5. Ironically, it was Moore who had encouraged White to write a children’s fantasy in the first place. See Letters of E. B. White, comp. and ed. Dorothy Lobrano Guth (New York, Hagerstown, San Francisco, London: Harper & Row, 1976), 266–67.

  6. Ursula Nordstrom, 7 March 1981.

  7. MWB, Goodnight Moon, illustrated by Clement Hurd (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1947).

  8. Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, ed. Walter Blair and Victor Fischer (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1985), 39.

  9. Alfred Kazin, “Creatures of Circumstance: Mark Twain,” An American Procession: The Major American Writers From 1830 to 1930––The Crucial Century (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), 208.

  10. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. Maria Jolas (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), 67–68.

  11. MWB, Goodnight Moon manuscript notebook, Kerlan.

  12. Clement Hurd to “Dear Misses Brown, Nordstrom et als [sic],” 3 March 1946, HarperCollins.

  13. Clement Hurd and Edith Thacher Hurd, “Leonard Weisgard,” Horn Book (July 1947): 281.

  14. MWB as Golden MacDonald, The Little Island, illustrated by Leonard Weisgard (Garden City: Doubleday, Doran, 1946).

  15. Shaw, diary, 13 April 1946, Smithsonian.

  16. P. H. (staff member, Harper & Brothers) to Michael Strange, 23 May 1946, HarperCollins.

  17. MWB, Hollins Alumnae Quarterly (Summer 1945): 24.

  18. MWB to Ursula Nordstrom, undated (late July or early August 1946), HarperCollins.

  19. Ursula Nordstrom to MWB, 28 August 1946, HarperCollins.

  20. Garth Williams, interview with author, New York, N. Y., 1 March 1983.

  21. Bruce Bliven, Jr., 7 August 1984; Bruce Bliven, Jr., “Child’s Best Seller,” Life, 2 December 1946, 64.

  22. Clement Hurd to Ursula Nordstrom, 2 September 1946, HarperCollins; Clement Hurd, interview with author, Starksboro, Vt., 14 July 1982.

  23. Clement Hurd, “Remembering Margaret Wise Brown,” 556.

  24. MWB to Lillian Lustig, undated (September 1946), Scott files, HarperCollins.

  25. Ibid.

  26. MWB and Garth Williams to Ursula Nordstrom (telegram), 29 October 1946, HarperCollins.

  27. Ursula Nordstrom, marginal notation on telegram cited above, HarperCollins.

  28. MWB to Ursula Nordstrom, undated (November 1946), HarperCollins. (During the war years, Bennett Cerf conducted a weekly radio program called “Books Are Bullets,” in which he interviewed authors of war-related general trade books.)

  29. Bliven, “Child’s Best Seller,” 59.

  30. Ibid. 66.

  31. MWB to Evelyn F. Burkey, 17 October 1946, Authors League.

  32. Louise Seaman Bechtel to Bertha E. Mahony, dated January 1947, Horn Book Archives, Simmons College, Boston.

  33. Bertha E. Mahony to Louise Seaman Bechtel, 3 January 1947, Horn Book Archives. Evidently Mahony’s and Bechtel’s letters crossed in the mail.

  34. B. Gratz Brown, Jr., 20 September 1982.

  35. Leonard Weisgard, 26 October–5 November 1982.

  36. Leonard Weisgard, “Caldecott Acceptance Paper,” Horn Book (July 1947): 285.

  37. Lee Bennett Hopkins, “Leonard Weisgard,” Books Are By People (New York: Citation Press, 1969), 309.

  38. Clement and Edith Hurd, “Leonard Weisgard,” 281.

  39. Inscription on watch, collection of Leonard Weisgard.

  40. Dummies with Caldecott medallions pasted on the cover are in the MWB Collection, Westerly.

  41. MWB to Michael Strange, 17 August [1947], Rockefeller.

  42. MWB to Michael Strange, 18 August 1947, Rockefeller.

  43. MWB to Michael Strange, undated, Rockefeller.

  44. MWB to Michael Strange, undated (postmarked 26 August 1947), Rockefeller.

  45. MWB to Michael Strange, undated (late October 1947), Rockefeller.

  46. MWB to Evelyn F. Burkey, 24 October 1947, Authors League.

  47. MWB to Michael Strange, undated (25 October 1947), Rockefeller.

  48. Ibid.

  49. MWB to Michael Strange, undated (postmarked 27 October 1947), Rockefeller.

  50. MWB to Michael Strange, undated (postmarked 29 October 1947), Rockefeller.

  51. Ibid.

&n
bsp; 52. MWB to Michael Strange, undated (postmarked 10 November 1947), Rockefeller.

  53. MWB to Michael Strange, undated (November 1947), Rockefeller.

  54. MWB to Michael Strange, undated (9 November 1947), Rockefeller.

  55. Michael Strange to MWB, undated (November 1947), Rockefeller.

  56. Leonard Weisgard, 26 October–5 November 1982.

  57. MWB to Michael Strange, undated (postmarked 12 November 1947), Rockefeller.

  58. MWB to Michael Strange, undated (November 1947), Rockefeller.

  59. Marilyn Iarusso, telephone interview with author, 24 September 1986.

  60. Rosemary C. Benét, review of Goodnight Moon, New Yorker, 6 December 1947, 132.

  61. A. T. Eaton, review of Goodnight Moon, Christian Science Monitor, 30 September 1947, 12.

  62. Other reviews of Goodnight Moon include: Virginia Mathews, New York Times Book Review, 7 September 1947, 35; M. L. Becker, New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review, 26 October 1947, 10; Yvonne Poirier, San Francisco Chronicle, 16 November 1947, 10.

  63. Sales figures from Clement Hurd’s log were supplied to the author by Thacher Hurd. William Morris of HarperCollins calculated the approximate total of U.S. sales as of February 1992.

  64. The 1949 printings of Two Little Miners were: 338,772 (first), 168,852 (second and third each). The single printing for the following year was significantly smaller.

  65. MWB, Hollins Alumnae Quarterly (Winter 1947–48): 20.

  66. Rosemary C. Benét, review of The First Story, by MWB, illustrated by Marc Simont, New Yorker, 6 December 1947, 132.

  67. Ursula Nordstrom to Marc Simont, 2 December 1947, HarperCollins.

  68. Ursula Nordstrom to MWB, 2 December 1947, HarperCollins.

  69. Ursula Nordstrom to Marc Simont, 2 December 1947, HarperCollins.

  70. Barrymore and Frank, Too Much, Too Soon, 249.

  CHAPTER SEVEN“Graver Cadences”

  1. Margaret Cousins to author, 10 January 1985.

  2. MWB, “One Eye Open,” Good Housekeeping, April 1948, 94.

  3. MWB to Clement Hurd, undated (early 1948), Kerlan.

  4. Slobodkina, Notes, 2: 495–9.

  5. John G. McCullough to MWB, 6 April 1948, Scott files, HarperCollins.

  6. MWB to Evelyn F. Burkey, 15 February 1948, Authors League.

  7. Shaw, diary, 4 April 1948, Smithsonian.

  8. MWB to Evelyn F. Burkey, 10 April 1948, Authors League.