Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss

by Philip Nel

  On Thursday, 10 July, Dick and Betty Hahn arrived for the weekend a little earlier than usual. As they were leaving the hospital, Dave said, “Oh, balls!” Later that day, he fell into a coma. For most of the next day, the Hahns and Ruth stayed at Dave’s bedside. He was alive but unconscious. As evening approached, they left to get dinner and then returned to 24 Owenoke for the night. Exhausted, the three of them were lying on a bed and talking when the phone rang. Ruth was in no state to answer. Dick Hahn picked up the receiver. After a moment, he turned to Ruth and said, “Ruth, it’s over. And Dave is gone.” She began to sob softly. Dick and Betty tried to console her, talking with her until she fell asleep around midnight.7

  In its obituary, the New York Times described him as a cartoonist and creator of Barnaby, mentioning his authorship of “more than a dozen children’s books, including Harold and the Purple Crayon and Harold’s Fairy Tale,” only in the penultimate paragraph. In addition to a photo of Johnson, the Times ran a drawing of Barnaby and Mr. O’Malley. The little boy and his fairy godfather would be Crockett Johnson’s artistic and intellectual legacy.8

  Johnson’s ashes were scattered in Long Island Sound, laying him to rest in the waters through which he had so often sailed.9

  27

  LIFE AFTER DAVE

  “I wonder if there was time,” said Ann.

  “Time for what?” said Ben.

  “For a happy ending,” said Ann.

  “The tide came in too soon,” said Ben.

  —CROCKETT JOHNSON, Magic Beach (1959)

  Ruth never got over the loss of Dave. After the mute shock of bereavement, she struggled to cope, seeking a way forward. Immediately after his death, she knew she could not bear to stay in the house alone. So, Dick and Betty Hahn took her back to Baltimore to stay with them. A few weeks later, they brought her along on a planned holiday to Maine. Feeling a little better, Ruth decided to apply for a fellowship at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. There, she would be able to work among fellow artists, away from the memories evoked by Westport.1

  In October 1975, when the MacDowell Colony contacted Ursula Nordstrom for a reference, she must have paused for a moment before responding. Over the years, she and Krauss had had a full measure of dramatic conflicts. Three months earlier, Nordstrom had struggled with her note of condolence about Johnson’s death: Though it “came from the heart,” she thought it likely “the worst ‘sympathy’ note ever written” because she “adored Dave, … and didn’t see how he ever stayed married to dear Ruth who used to be able to drive me up the wall.” Yet when MacDowell inquired whether Krauss had “any personality problems of which you may know,” Nordstrom said, “I have always found her a delightful person.” Asked for a “frank assessment” of Krauss’s abilities, Nordstrom said that Ruth “brings to all her work the most important qualities—regard for the child’s individuality, imagination, depth of feeling, sensitivity. She is an artist in the true sense of the word.” Despite their differences, Nordstrom and Krauss respected each other.2

  Krauss also sought the company of poets closer to home. In late 1975 or early 1976, she joined Dale Shaw’s Westport Poetry Workshop, which included Peggy Heinrich, Janet Krauss, and children’s authors Freya Littledale and Doris Lund. Once a week, they met at the Unitarian Church and later at the Westport Arts Center. Krauss’s energy and work ethic inspired the other participants. Introducing her poem “If Only” as a new work (even though she wrote the first version in 1959), she explained its composition. She had filled many, many sheets of paper, she said, because doing so stimulated her memory, giving her access to the possibilities of accident and of unconscious associations. Then she threw out most of her drafts. When she was stuck for a word, she would stick a pin through the New York Times, see where it landed, and make fresh combinations of words that suited her. Once a month, Julius Gold kept his delicatessen open late so that Shaw’s group could meet for “Poem and Pickle” readings and discussions. Though Krauss was often reluctant to read her work in public, on one of those evenings she did. As the best-known poet in the group, she entered the deli to a standing ovation; more applause followed her reading of “If Only.” For the next seven years, Krauss remained an active participant in their readings—at Gold’s Deli, at the Westport Arts Center, at libraries, and even in New York on a few occasions.3

  In the fall of 1977, Ruth had her first residency at the MacDowell Colony. She enjoyed the experience enough to spend the summer of 1978 at another artists’ colony, Yaddo, in Saratoga Springs, New York. She returned to MacDowell that fall and again in August and September 1979, 1980, 1981, and 1982. During her weeks at MacDowell, Krauss was able to write unimpeded. The colony provided her with a studio, a bedroom, a bathroom, and meals. She ate breakfast and dinner in the main dining room, with the other artists. To avoid midday interruptions, MacDowell’s staff quietly left lunch in a picnic basket on Krauss’s doorstep.4

  Back home, Ruth had to learn how to take care of the details of daily life— all of the things that Dave had done for her. As she told a friend who asked how she was coping, “I lose and break things and cut and burn myself.” Dave had also paid the bills, looked after the property, and done all the driving. Shelley Trubowitz took her to buy a small, easily manageable car, which she refused to drive on highways, where the speed and traffic frightened her. She preferred the slower, more comfortable pace of back roads.5

  She missed Dave terribly. If a friend brought up his name, she would become agitated and change the subject. By July 1976, Harper stopped forwarding Crockett Johnson fan mail because it upset Ruth. However, as Dave’s heir and executor, she could not avoid him. That year, the IBM Research Division in Yorktown Heights, New York, held an exhibition of twenty-one of his paintings. The paintings had to be picked up from Ruth’s house. She needed to sign the contract granting permission for the exhibit. She had to be involved. Ruth wanted Dave’s work to be seen, even if remembering him grieved her.6

  As she was then still so upset, it is hard to know whether Krauss even saw the mixed reviews of Little Boat Lighter Than a Cork. Publishers Weekly praised the “tiny book” as “gentle as a lullaby, just right for introducing the joys of books to toddlers.” In contrast, School Library Journal’s Helen Gregory called it “a gentle if pointless tone poem” and noted that Maurice Sendak’s “entire Nutshell Library can be purchased for less than this unmemorable extravagance.” The book was published by Magic Circle Press, run by Ruth’s friend, Valerie Harms, which had limited distribution, and Little Boat Lighter Than a Cork was not a big seller.7

  Ruth did not want to live alone. She had been renting a room to a young woman, but they were not getting along. In 1977, Ruth responded to an ad in the Westport News: “20-something-year old woman poet seeks place to live and write.” The woman was Binnie Klein, whom Ruth had heard at a Westport poetry reading a few years earlier. She had enjoyed Klein’s work and had invited her back to the house, where the two women and Dave drank chocolate milk before Ruth sent Klein home with some volumes of poetry. Ruth was delighted to rent Dave’s studio to Klein.8

  The studio was exactly as Dave had left it: his paintings on the walls, his things in the desk, his mathematical equations on a bulletin board, and his bed. When Klein moved the equations from the board into a desk drawer, Ruth responded angrily: “How dare you touch these things! I told you not to move anything!” Klein apologized, and Ruth consented to let her bring in a free-standing rack to hold her clothes and to have a better door put up for more privacy.9

  Just as Ruth had depended on Dave, so she came to depend on Klein. As Ruth said at the time, “I can’t even change a lightbulb.” Home alone, she felt vulnerable, and she did not sleep well unless Klein was home: On nights when her tenant did a radio show that lasted until 3:00 in the morning, Ruth would get up and slam doors to vent her frustration.10

  Ruth was also struggling with her body, angry that it would no longer work just as she wanted it to. For a few years, her hip had
been causing her pain. Though she disliked hospitals, she at last scheduled a hip replacement operation but arranged to have the procedure in Baltimore so she could recuperate at the home of Dick and Betty Hahn. On the way to the hospital, Ruth proposed that they go to lunch, and Betty suggested Bertha’s, a restaurant famous for its mussels. Ruth said, “I’m going to go there and have mussels. I think I’m allergic to them. But if I’m allergic, I’m going to the right place to be treated!”11

  The surgery was a success and restored Ruth’s mobility, but the need for the operation contributed to her feeling that her body was betraying her. As she wrote at the time, “I loved physical activity, and love it now but cannot i.e. ‘run.’ … Now my body is a pain in the neck.”12

  Back in Westport, Klein took care of practical matters, while Ruth served as mentor and friend. Despite the fifty-year difference in their ages, both women were free spirits who loved poetry. Ruth was very generous with both her books and her encouragement. After Ruth showed her André Breton’s poem, “My Wife with the Woodfire Hair,” Klein went up to Dave’s studio and wrote “My Nightmare with Its Mother Just Off to the Left.” When Ruth saw it, she told Klein, “It’s the best thing you’ve ever written.” Ruth urged her friend to keep writing, telling her that some of her poems might make good children’s books. She would be happy to help if Klein wanted to publish them for younger readers. Ruth also welcomed Klein into her social circle, which then included Jean and Leonard Boudin; Freya Littledale; and conservative art critic Hilton Kramer and his wife, Esta.13

  After Klein moved out in 1979, Pablo Frasconi was back from York University and looking for a place to live. Ruth had known Frasconi since his childhood and offered to rent him Dave’s studio, still nearly just as Dave had left it. Frasconi did not mind: Living with Ruth was like living with family. They saw each other every day. They shared friends, and he occasionally did chores for her. Every once in a while, he would stay away for a night, and Ruth would say, “Well, you know, if you’re going to rent, you have to stay here. I want someone who will check up on me.”14

  Near the end of 1979, Dick Hahn’s daughter, Linda Graetz, wrote to Ruth for help. Living in Italy with her eleven-year-old son, Graetz had left a bad marriage but had no job prospects and no way to get home. Ruth sent them plane tickets, met them at the airport, and invited them to live with her. After a couple of weeks, Graetz realized that she and her son needed a place of their own. Though Ruth felt “abandoned” by this decision, she helped them find an apartment and got Graetz a job. Ruth also introduced Graetz to her friends, paid for the boy to go to summer camp, and paid the bill when Graetz decided to go to nursing school.15

  As curator of Dave’s legacy, Ruth was pleased when the Smithsonian Institution’s Mathematics Division came to collect Dave’s mathematical paintings and related materials. Dave would be recognized for his mathematical ideas, which had been very important to him during the final years of his life. However, Ruth let them take only eighty of the more than one hundred paintings, keeping the remainder hanging up in the house; the Smithsonian could have them after she was gone.

  Eleanor Hazard, cover for Ruth Krauss, Somebody Spilled the Sky (New York: Greenwillow, 1979). Used by permission of Eleanor (Hazard) Lanahan.

  Some people thought she was already gone. As her most popular books were decades old and her newer books were appearing only every three or four years, the name Ruth Krauss was gradually slipping out of public consciousness. One day, when she and her friend, Ina Chadwick, were browsing the aisles of a Westport bookstore, they overheard a customer in a neighboring aisle: “Oh, look at this book by Ruth Krauss! Do you think she’s still alive?” Krauss and Chadwick started laughing, and Krauss asked, “Do you want me to go back there and look like a ghost?” Somebody Spilled the Sky (1979) was easily Krauss’s best children’s book since her creative heyday with Maurice Sendak, but it received only mixed reviews. In the New York Times Book Review, poet Donald Hall wrote that perhaps Krauss’s “special well is running dry; at any rate it seems a trifle shallow.” Kirkus was skeptical of the fact that several of the items in Somebody Spilled the Sky had appeared in other books but assigned blame to Eleanor Hazard’s comic illustrations, which were “too linear” and not “wiggly enough.” In contrast, Publishers Weekly loved Hazard’s “crazy drawings,” praised Krauss’s “genius for echoing the daft but unassailable logic of children,” and predicted that children would “read and reread” the book.16

  Though most of her published and performed work in the late 1970s and the 1980s had been written earlier, Krauss remained receptive to creative discovery. Beneath her living room’s vaulted ceiling, she created what Chadwick calls “a kitchen of the mind.” As a concession to living room furniture, she set up two chairs in front of the fireplace, but the rest of the room was devoted to work tables covered with paper, pens, and crayons. When inspiration struck, Krauss would be ready.17

  A few years after Johnson’s death and much to Krauss’s surprise, she received a telephone call from her first husband, Lionel White, who was now on his fourth marriage and had decided that it was time to reach out. Still an alcoholic, he also remained an entertaining storyteller, and he wished Krauss well. They spoke once or twice a year until his death in late 1985.18

  Though she was pleased to hear from White, their divorce still ranked among her most painful experiences, and that early marriage left wounds that had never fully healed. In October 1979, Ruth confronted those memories as she tried to sort through the loneliness of her life without Dave. Encouraged by her psychiatrist, she recorded her thoughts. She felt “anguish” and was “almost ready to give up,” but she thought that this outlook “is something I should work on…. I’ve got to change the behavior of my feelings.” Dave’s illness and death, she reflected, “chang[ed] the entire way of my living & I am sure that each goodbye or rejection is an echo of that death.” Further, she didn’t want to be single. “I need a man. What man? Any? Well—not quite—although if I think hard enough one guy is the same unconscious as the other.” But no, she reminded herself, “after all men are not just sex objects & I guess that’s part of my problem…. I must become independent.” More than a quarter of the narrative concerned her life with White, and she concluded, “I guess it was like a living fantasy & I loved it all when we were together—before he began drinking.”19

  In the unpublished anti-ageist children’s book she wrote as a young woman, Krauss had noted that among the Northwest Coast Indians of the United States and Canada, “the high point of romantic sex is old-age, about seventy to ninety. You’re supposed to be romantic then; so, consequently, you are romantic then.” She attempted to follow this advice. Describing Krauss as “coquettish,” Klein found her flirtatiousness “very liberating,” showing that older women need not abide by cultural conventions. Dale Shaw remembered her falling in love with a man at a writer’s retreat and then being quite distraught when he called it off. At one point in the 1980s, she had a male boarder much younger than she whom she hoped would become her lover. On another occasion, she told Peggy Heinrich that a priest was interested in her but quickly changed the subject.20

  In 1979 or 1980, Susan Carr Hirschman approached Krauss about having Greenwillow, the children’s imprint Hirschman had founded at William Morrow, publish an anthology of Krauss’s work. She agreed but then panicked, phoning Heinrich and saying, “Oh, I just can’t handle it any more. I can’t do these things any more. What am I going to do? This is so much.” When Heinrich arrived to help, she discovered that Krauss was more than able to handle the project, though she seemed to need Heinrich’s presence for reassurance. Reviewers either loved or hated Minestrone: A Ruth Krauss Selection, published in the fall of 1981. Publishers Weekly saluted Krauss’s “unchained imagination” and her “unique contributions to children’s books, creations that delight grownups and boys and girls of all ages,” predicting that the “book will surely be among the new bestsellers.” Language Arts, a magazine for Englis
h teachers, pronounced the book “definitely for sharing. Calmer than Silverstein, and for a younger audience. I love them both.” In contrast, School Library Journal saw Krauss as “unsure of which age group she wishes to address” and “striv[ing] to be childlike,” with results that were “childish and condescending.” Kirkus dismissed this “recycled collection” of “disparate material,” mocking it as dated: “There’s a shade of ’60s twee (admittedly staked out by Krauss in the ’50s) to the best of her stuff; and at worst it verges on airy nothings.”21

  Just as Krauss resisted being classified as a children’s writer or a writer for grown-ups, so she resisted any fashion trend that made her uncomfortable. Starting in the early 1970s, she began wearing loose, comfortable clothing— cotton drawstring pants, a cotton pullover top, and soft leather shoes. Klein “never saw Ruth in a skirt or a dress. She dressed for comfort. She was just the essence of ‘This is me.’”22

  Krauss took a stand in her poetry, too. Though her proposed collection, Small Black Lambs Wandering in the Red Poppies, was not as overtly political as This Breast Gothic, she nonetheless saw it as having the potential to raise consciousness. In June 1982, an antinuclear demonstration featured a performance of selections from this unpublished book, intended, Krauss said, “for adults-and-children-together.” The combination of old and new verses does include a few with pacifist implications. One iteration of the title poem reads, “when I saw the small black lambs wandering in the red poppies / I threw my arms around the world and / loved it.”23

  Although Krauss wrote on her own, usually in the morning at her kitchen table, she relied on feedback from others. In 1985, as she drifted away from the Westport Poetry Workshop, she found artistic fellowship in a collaborative writing workshop run by sculptor Harvey Weiss. Though he had known Krauss for decades, Weiss was initially “surprised … that she wanted to enter into the give-and-take of a workshop.” She also enjoyed the attention: “Ruth’s position in the workshop was always a paramount one. People did not approach her work in the same way that any of the others in the workshop were approached. We had to learn how to work with Ruth, with her sentences, with her imagination, with her tremendous energy—rather than imposing anything from traditions or expectations that we had as writers or as poets or as academics or whatever. And she came to us with a number of poems that were sometimes astonishing.” Though it was Weiss’s workshop, Krauss’s experience and creative verve often gave her a starring role. She stayed with the group for a few years, attending semiregularly until at least 1987.24