Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss

by Philip Nel

  By the time the ad appeared, Ruth and Dave had embarked for Europe. They traveled by ship to Lisbon, Naples, Athens, and the Greek isles of Rhodes, Delos, Santorini, and Astypalea. Ruth loved the seals on Delos’s shore, but the children of Astypalea impressed her most—so much so that she wrote two letters to Ursula Nordstrom describing the “children running down from the hills with flowers all kinds & colors known & unknown & putting them all over me.” Even when they did not speak her language, children were drawn to Ruth and she to them.3

  Dave had never been to Europe before and relished learning everything about each place. After their sea voyage, they moved on to the European mainland, visiting Venice, Lausanne, and Vallorbe before crossing the border into France and arriving in Paris in early June. Dave seemed so at home there that a lost Frenchman came to him for directions in a Paris Metro station. A month later, they were in London, where Dave “poked around on every street north of the Thames from London Bridge to Battersea Bridge as far inland as Oxford and Holborn Streets and the Wall.” He was intent on absorbing as much of each new place as he could, walking the streets, looking at the architecture, visiting landmarks. Ruth was less thrilled, writing, “I hate London— noise, dirt, traffic, confusion etc. etc. Dave loves it.”4

  While in London, Dave provided some wry “travel advice” for Harper’s Barbara Dicks, who had previously lived there. Knowing that Ruth had visited London before, Barbara asked in a letter “if you find London changed since you were last there.” Dave, who had never visited the city before, replied, “Of course there are so many new things for me to notice. Right between The Strand and Pall Mall there is a tall monument (in a circle they call Trafalgar Square) to some guy who was the boyfriend of Lady Hamilton, I think. This and a number of other things were not here in the London I knew back in 1765.” He was also amused by New England’s appropriations of old England’s architecture: “Near Waterloo Station I saw (from the train from Folkestone) a church that is an exact replica of a Wren church in Provincetown. It took me a moment to figure out I was looking at the original.”5

  On 2 July, Ruth and Dave boarded the ship for home. Traveling had been exciting but exhausting. As Ruth wrote in “If Only,” “If only France was in Connecticut / If only England was in Connecticut / If only Connecticut was in Turkey.” Arriving back in Rowayton by mid-July, they found that their cars would not start, the stove would not light, and humidity prevented the windows from shutting properly. Moreover, the change in climate gave Ruth what she called “lying-down pneumonia,” though she was soon up and about and returned to her manuscripts, which she kept in the freezer in deference to her long-held fear of house fires.6

  As she approached her sixty-fourth birthday, Krauss was thriving professionally. In March, nine of her poetry plays had been staged under the title The Cantilever Rainbow at Brooklyn’s Spencer Memorial Church, along with a play by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. In April, The Cantilever Rainbow moved on to Café La MaMa, a hip Lower East Side venue for experimental plays. Krauss’s work received strong reviews in the Village Voice, and there was talk of presenting the plays at the Guggenheim in the fall. Ten of her plays appeared in the June issue of Kulchur (1960–65) an influential magazine that published John Ashbery, Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, and Ted Berrigan. She learned that her poem plays would appear in Michael Benedikt’s anthology Theatre Experiment, alongside work by Kenneth Koch, e. e. cummings, Gertrude Stein, and Wallace Stevens, company that caused her to exclaim, “Oui! oo-la la!” She was being taken seriously as an Artist.7

  However, she found bringing her new poetic sensibility into children’s books challenging. As she wrote to Berrigan, “I’m trying to trying to transfer into the field of writing for children some of the things I’ve learned as a ‘poet.’” By way of example, she enclosed the text for Little Boat Lighter Than a Cork, a planned “poem-picture-book.” Before leaving for Europe, she had asked her agent, Marilyn Marlow, to shop Little Boat to publishers. Nordstrom was irritated by Krauss’s decision to use an agent rather than offering the manuscript first to Harper, but Krauss explained, “I think you would not want it. It would probably not sell well.” Nordstrom immediately phoned Marlow, only to learn that the book was under review at another publisher. Nordstrom then wrote to Krauss, “Of course we would like to see the new Ruth Krauss children’s book, you dope, and why do you have to decide what we will or will not love?” However, when Nordstrom ultimately saw Little Boat, she declined. Though “an exquisite poem,” Nordstrom thought it had “more appeal for adults than for children.” The book would not be published for another decade.8

  While in Europe, Krauss finally told Nordstrom about the book of poems that Pantheon would be publishing under the title The Cantilever Rainbow (which differs from her play by that name). Nordstrom did her best to be gracious, writing that she was “sure it is going to be beautiful…. I am not jealous, not much anyhow, of Pantheon having you and [Antonio] Frasconi,” who had done the woodcut illustrations. Published in the fall of 1965, the book grappled more or less successfully with the question of audience. Though Krauss saw the book’s poems and poem plays as “not for ‘children,’” Pantheon’s juvenile division published The Cantilever Rainbow, marketing the book to ages eleven and up. Reviewers praised The Cantilever Rainbow but worried that it might be too advanced for its intended audience. Library Journal’s Lillian Morrison thought the pieces “funny, clever, imaginative in a Dada way, and often quite lovely and lyrical” but believed that the book would appeal to primarily “the brighter and more sophisticated” teenager. Kirkus suggested two likely audiences: “youngsters” whose “talented teachers” introduce them to the book, and “college students with a taste for curiosity and the avant garde.” In Book Week, Richard Howard called Krauss “determinedly original in everything she does” and considered the work “the first book for children in the idiom of the New York School.”9

  Johnson at last found a publisher for his most experimental works when Holt, Rinehart, and Winston accepted Magic Beach and The Emperor’s Gifts. For the former, the publisher accepted the manuscript but not the illustrations. Perhaps feeling that such an abstract story needed more concrete pictures, Holt enlisted Betty Fraser, a young freelance illustrator whose work had appeared in trade and fashion magazines. Her elaborate artwork was quite different from Johnson’s spare, minimalist aesthetic, and he did not collaborate with her on the art. Although Johnson discarded most of his manuscripts, he saved his Magic Beach dummy, suggesting that he still hoped to publish the original version with his illustrations.10

  In the spring of 1965, Holt published the book as Castles in the Sand. Reviewers were less baffled than the readers at Harper who had twice rejected the manuscript but did wonder what children would make of it. The New York Times Book Review’s Barbara Novak O’Doherty admitted that the book was “perhaps a little too oblique for a child” but nonetheless felt that Johnson “lifts the standard in children’s literature considerably with this attempt, and I’m all for it.” The verdict on the illustrations was mixed. Kirkus found some “effective” but others “done in a style that suggests Coloring Book Modern.” Library Journal thought “Betty Fraser’s pictures have the delicacy to match the text” but also believed that “literal-minded small children may be confused by the blend of fantasy and real life without any definite delineation between the two.” In the Harold stories, Johnson’s style invites readers’ imaginations to supply absent details, subtly emphasizing the theme; in Castles in the Sand, Fraser’s accretion of images crowds the canvas, leaving less room for readers to participate in the creation of meaning.11

  Also published in 1965, The Emperor’s Gifts generated similarly mixed reviews. Kirkus thought it “catchy and re-tellable,” but Book Week considered it “third rate” and “a classic example of how not to handle abstract concepts in a storybook for kids.” Library Journal labeled it “one Crockett Johnson title libraries can do without.” The same year, Putnam’s published Gordy and the Pirate,
but it, too, was less than a hit. Kirkus found it “genuinely funny,” but the Bulletin for the Center of Children’s Books thought it only “mildly amusing” and lacking “the flair of Ellen’s Lion or the author’s even better-known Harold stories.”12

  As 1965 ended, 74 Rowayton Avenue was full of activity. On 26 December, twenty-year-old Nina Rowand Wallace married Brett Taylor, with a reception and a spaghetti dinner held at Ruth and Dave’s house. The young couple then left for Greece to found an art school, a bold decision that Dave noted.13

  Earlier in the month, Krauss’s A Beautiful Day shared a bill with Gertrude Stein’s Play I Play II Play III at the Judson Poets’ Theater. Directed by Remy Charlip with music by Al Carmines, A Beautiful Day collected seven of Ruth’s gently surrealist plays. Those in attendance on opening night loved Krauss’s work, rising to their feet, cheering, and applauding. Johnson and Krauss saw the second performance, after which the crowd cried out “Bravo! Bravo!” and “wild applause rang from the theatre’s rafters,” much to Johnson’s delight. He turned to Krauss and said, “Isn’t this wonderful?” Disappointment on her face, she looked at him. “I’m crushed!,” she said. “This audience is not as enthusiastic as the one we had last night!”14

  Plenty of critical enthusiasm greeted the show. Reviewing what he called “the miracle of ‘A Beautiful Day,’” the Village Voice’s Michael Smith considered Krauss, Charlip, and Carmines “geniuses.” Smith described Krauss’s work as “insistently human, grounded in the reality of experience, and despite its lightness it never floats into the looser, more detached regions of fairy tale and fantasy. Its distinct and incisive bite produces the nourishment of astonishment and delight.” He saw Krauss’s writing as the key to the poem plays’ success: “Their content is simple, charming, and often sentimental, but they are saved from sentimentality’s traps by two characteristics in the writing. One is its range and specificity of reference, which by bringing together disparate fragments from the most widely separated fields places events in the context of the real wide world. Second is its pure verbal felicity, which occurs mainly in the variations of rhythm and sound patterns and by graceful irregularity keeps the ear and mind alert.” Encouraged by the reception to her work, Krauss wrote to Ferlinghetti, enclosing a program for The Cantilever Rainbow, presented in March along with one of his plays and some of her other work. He was complimentary about her work but declined to publish it: “You certainly have a wild and beautiful imagination. I would like to see a lot of it on stage. Delightful. On the page, is another matter, however. I really don’t see these pieces in print. For our purposes, for use in City Lights Journal or in the Pocket Poets Series for instance, I find the whole a little light.”15

  Crockett Johnson, Proof of the Pythagorean Theorem (Euclid) (1965). Image courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution. Reprinted with the permission of the Estate of Ruth Krauss, Stewart I. Edelstein, Executor. All Rights Reserved.

  Ferlinghetti’s was a minority view. Most contemporary critics praised Krauss’s verse, and culturally important journals and anthologies published her work. However, Ferlinghetti went on to pinpoint the main reason that Krauss’s poetry did not acquire a wider audience at the time and is not studied today: “After your big success digging That Hole, I’m afraid you’re kind of typed as a ‘children’s writer’ and it certainly is a delightful child’s fantasy and wonder at work throughout these pieces.” Krauss could not escape her image as a famous and successful writer for children.16

  In the wake of the disappointing response to his latest books, Johnson turned away from the children’s book business. In December 1965, Dave started painting, inspired by mathematical formulae, which had long fascinated him, as evidenced by Atlas’s speech in Barnaby two decades earlier. Taking the basement as his studio, he began what he called “a series of romantic tributes to the great geometric mathematicians”—Pythagoras, Euclid, Descartes, and others. Intimidated by the idea of painting on canvas, Johnson instead used inexpensive Masonite fiberboard. He started on pieces no larger than two or three square feet in size, and, after gaining some confidence, decided to enlarge one depicting Euclid’s proof of the Pythagorean right triangle. He found the new version, four feet square, “a kind of imposing thing, like God or your 5B teacher confronting you.”17

  He enjoyed the work but was not sure whether it was merely a hobby or whether he was following his friends and fellow New Masses cartoonists Ad Reinhardt, Abe Ajay, and Adolf Dehn into a career as a serious artist. With a mixture of shyness and eagerness, he began to share his work with some of his friends, starting with Antonio and Leona Frasconi and their sons. Struck by Johnson’s excitement in explaining the pictures’ geometric properties, nine-year-old Miguel Frasconi thought, “This is an adult, and he’s as excited as a little kid.” Though the Frasconis did not understand the math, they liked Johnson’s colors and thought the paintings quite beautiful. Johnson was relieved and surprised that they had not “blanch[ed] when they look[ed] at” the art and that they seemed “seriously to assume I know what I’m doing.” In February 1966, he showed his paintings to Ajay, who “was kind and helpful and polite.” But Johnson nonetheless thought it “possible he thinks I have gone senile, or that I have.”18

  Johnson’s self-deprecating humor masked a genuine sense of doubt. For reassurance and advice, he wrote to Reinhardt, now an art professor at Brooklyn College and famous for his abstract expressionist paintings in subtly contrasting shades of black. Reinhardt immediately offered to come up to appraise the paintings and asked for more information about the work. Johnson replied that his paintings based on theorems “cannot be something that has not been done before,” and “at worst” might be a “slight unifying gimmick for a show”: “I wonder if I cannot con a gallery into scheduling a show say next winter after a gander at the masterpieces on hand (which I shall now call preliminary sketches). After all, there is the slight gimmick to peddle and my very famous name in other fields (I am still remembered widely as a fellow did a comic strip about a little boy with wings called Krazy Kat or something).” Johnson continued to downplay his art, describing his geometric abstractions as having “offered me … a simple-minded chance to put something down with paint without too many cornball shapes bubbling out of my punkin head,” but also found his paintings aesthetically pleasing and thought that they would “have an irresistible appeal to people that like coldly intellectual abstractions and warmly emotional realistic art.” One March weekend, Reinhardt took the train up to Connecticut and looked at the paintings. Within a few months, he had put his old friend in touch with a New York gallery, and Johnson’s first exhibition as a painter was in the works.19

  Krauss’s works continued to thrive on the Off-Off Broadway scene. Practical Mother’s Guide, a short play that had recently run at the Judson Church, develops the favorite Krauss theme of spring. The doorbell rings, and Child asks, “Mama Mama, is that the bell for springtime?” When Child opens the door, a man arrives with the sun, “all tied up in ribbons and moths.” The package has been sent C.O.D. Mother explains that she has “no money,” but Child asks if the man can leave it anyway. He does, and Child “does a sun dance.” In early March, Caffe Cino ran Krauss’s Newsletters, a collection of news poems. In June, Charlip’s version of A Beautiful Day opened at the Judson.20

  In September 1964, a Delaware school district decided to name its elementary school libraries in honor of authors or illustrators of children’s books. On 16 April 1966, Krauss and Johnson visited Greenville’s Yorklyn Elementary School, just outside of Wilmington, for a ceremony dedicating the newly christened Ruth Krauss Library. The library housed material related to Krauss’s books, including original artwork, manuscripts, and publishers’ proofs. Krauss was quite pleased to be “a cornerstone,” as she put it, and Johnson, too, was proud, though he joked about the library’s location near the heart of the weapons industry: “A bomb shelter was dedicated to Ruth, with her name on the door and everything. They have beaten it into an elegan
t library, right there in the middle of Munitionsland.”21

  After visiting her cousin, Dick Hahn, and his second wife, Betty, in Baltimore, they returned home. In 1966, Johnson spent considerable time in his damp basement studio, creating two dozen paintings based on diagrams from mathematics books. Norwalk’s Burndy Engineering Company had an excellent scientific library, and Johnson took advantage of the vast collection of literature assembled by the corporation’s founder, Bern Dibner. Johnson also bought volumes that seemed especially useful, amassing a library of nearly one hundred mathematical books. From a drawing in James R. Newman’s four-volume The World of Mathematics (1956), Johnson’s Similar Triangles (Thales) illustrates a theorem by the Greek mathematician Thales (c. 640–546 B.C.), who showed that corresponding sides of similar triangles are proportional. After a diagram in George Garnow’s One Two Three … Infinity (1961), Johnson painted Relativity in Time and Space (Einstein), depicting Albert Einstein’s discovery that both time and distance are not absolute but depend on the location of the observer. Another painting inspired by The World of Mathematics, Pendulum Motion (Galileo) interprets a theorem demonstrating that as Galileo demonstrated, “motion is persistent and continues until arrested by some opposing force.” According to mathematics professor J. B. Stroud, Johnson’s “painting shows the path of a free-swinging pendulum along with three other paths where the string is snagged [on a nail] as it travels.”22