After the tree was dragged home, Mary would exclaim on its beauty and perfection, and Will would nail a wooden cross on the bottom of the trunk for it to stand on. On Christmas Eve, it would be moved to its position on the sun porch. When the tree was set up and ready, the next task was putting holly sprigs behind every picture frame and mirror on the main floor of the house, with additional arrangements for the fireplace mantels.
The tree was decorated after the children were in bed, but Will and Mary didn’t follow the tradition where it was Santa Claus who did it. In fact, Santa had a small role in their young lives; he filled the stockings with small but welcome gifts, always with a tangerine in the toe. Mary’s theory, which experience proved valid, was that in this way, when the children learned that Santa, like the stork, was their mother and father, it wouldn’t be such a shock. And so to them Santa was an interesting curiosity, scurrying around the world in one night, to be discussed after they went to bed on Christmas Eve. Betty
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insisted, not unexpectedly, that she had actually seen him once, passing by the window with his entourage. Still, the girls knew enough to ask their parents for any special gift they wanted.
Special gift was always singular. Although Will and Mary were fairly well off for the times, there was usually only one big Christmas gift, such as a doll. This was the custom in those days. Additional gifts were smaller and included pajamas and underwear, all of which had to be displayed under the tree for visitors to see for at least a week, to the embarrassment of the girls.
One year Will went to a lot of trouble to make a canopied doll bed for Billee, using the workshop where his friend W. Preston “Scrapper” Day made gout stools that were sold in Colonial Williamsburg. Scrapper had also made Will a specially designed desk of knotty pine in that workshop. It was slanted for his typewriter, as he liked it, with room for papers on the side. (Later when Jo-an was a toddler, she liked to hide under the desk, playing at Will’s feet while he worked.)
Scrapper was a fine craftsman and helped Will with his project. That Christmas, however, Billee had asked for a live animal pet. She was sure she Will working at his special desk on the sun porch in Clay Bank, circa 1940.
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was getting one, as Will had also gone to a lot of trouble to prepare a large, elaborate box with holes and warnings and with her name on it. He teased her daily about its contents. Beside herself with excitement by Christmas morning, she was ecstatic to find a baby chick in the box. Unfortunately, all of Will’s hard work on the doll bed, which Billee appreciated only later, was ignored in favor of the tiny live animal.
Scrapper’s nickname came from his days at Virginia Tech where he played sports in spite of his short stature. He and his wife, Reenie, were good friends, visiting often with their sons Jean and Don. The boys, around the same age as Billee, were her only regular playmates in those early years.
However, there was a lot to entertain the girls. It was an idyllic spot for children. The house stood on several acres, a third was either salt water or mud flats depending on the tide. When you owned property on the river, you owned to the low water mark, and the channel was a mile out. In the summer, the exposed mud was the most fun. When the tide was out, you could prowl over it squishing the mud between your toes. There were endless attractions, soft crab holes to poke, and minnows to trap, watch briefly, and release to dart away on their frantic personal business.
At high tide, there was the water to bathe in. It tasted salty, was full of disgusting precipitates, and was warm as bath water. Maybe that’s why everyone said they were going bathing, never swimming. It was safe for children, no more than four feet deep at high tide as far as they could walk. Will said it was easier to float in salt water, and told everyone the children were so comfortable lying on top of the water, he thought they could fall sleep on it.
There were always castles to build on the sandy shore, fiddler crabs to capture to inhabit them, and fierce fights to protect them from older sisters.
Christmas was, of course, the highlight of the winter. On Christmas morning, the children would huddle at the top of the stairs waiting for the signal to begin what had become the traditional mantra, “bum, bum, here we come.” They would be crowded together, because the stairs were short and curved in the story-and-a-half house, and they had to keep back before the bend so they couldn’t see into the living room where the stockings were hung on the fireplace mantle. That first look at the tree was always glorious.
Mary and Will decorated it after the children were in bed, sometimes staying up all night. There were flashing colored lights, glittering balls, boxes of tinsel tossed on. Underneath, Betty’s electric train went round and round the cardboard village frosted with glittering snow. Next to the trunk was the Nativity scene, which Mary called by its Italian name, the presepio. The tree at Rock-efeller Center has never even come close to the tree of Billee’s childhood memories.
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Mary’s older brother John Mandola often stopped by at Christmas with his wife, Carmen, and their children, the cousins Jackie and Rita, on their way to Miami for the holidays. In a letter to Jo-an dated July 17, 1969, Will wrote of a visit from Rita and her family: “[Rita] seems to have taken her Christmases with us very seriously. She’s been trying to carry on the traditions we established. I was really rather touched.”
For the annual New Year’s Eve parties, the big, polished maple dining room table was spread with delicacies prepared by Mary, who loved all the planning and preparations. For the children, there was always the excitement of being awakened just before the stroke of midnight for the celebrations, putting on new housecoats bought for the occasion. Will and Mary always led a conga line of family and friends through the house, while the children ran outside to honk the horns in the cars.
Will prided himself on his eggnog, thick with whipped cream and served in red glass punch cups. He loved making his own versions of elaborate (and usually sweet) mixed drinks with exotic names such as corpse reviver. He made mint juleps with dark rum instead of bourbon, insisting that rum was authentic. He put sherry on grapefruit halves, served claret lemonade to the ladies in the summer, and had a concoction of gin on vanilla ice cream that he called a Boston Cooler. If you were feeling frail, an egg-milk (just like it sounds) was the cure, better with a little bourbon in it. Hot toddies (bourbon, honey, lemon and hot water) were the guaranteed cure for colds.
As was typical in Southern homes of the time, there was “help.” Ophelia Leigh worked for Will and Mary almost all their time in Virginia. In a relationship not always understood these days, she and Mary were friends and companions, and the children loved her. In a letter to Jo-an in the late fifties when work was being done on the house, Will wrote: “Mother and Ophelia are out examining the exterior improvements. Ophelia came to call.” And in another later letter (undated), “Ophelia came over to see us with two of her small grandchildren. We got to talking, and I made eucalyptus trees for them out of newspaper and printed some soldiers for them on the typewriter. I thought one of them was likely to climb on my lap any minute.” Their friendship continued until Mary’s death in 1967.
There was also a succession of gardeners or yard men. Billee remembers Robert, one of the yard men, pushing her around in the wheelbarrow and teaching her to play mumbly-peg during his lunch hour. The four-acre yard was kept mowed with a gasoline-powered mower. Early on, there was a small miniature golf course and later, for a time, a grass tennis court. Will insisted on grass, because that’s what they had at Wimbledon. The girls preferred to play at the Groh’s, their neighbor’s, with their sons Alan “Sonny” and Norman.
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Clockwise from left: Little Mary, Mary (adult), Betty and Billee (front). Ophelia looks on from porch.
They had a clay court which was always ready to play on, no mowing or
stripe marking.
Alan grew up to a successful career in New York City as director of The Stable Gallery. Some of the famous artists who exhibited there were Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Andy Warhol. After Alan’s death in 1996, a collection was presented by his friends to the Bayly Art Museum of the University of Virginia, his alma mater, in his honor.
Living with a writer father was normal to the girls, although others might not realize that writing is a time-consuming activity consisting of a lot of sitting around staring into space. When not involved in a more urgent activity, Will was usually quietly reading or sitting at his typewriter. If he was staring into space, Mary would hush the children saying, “Shh. Daddy’s thinking.” He typed rapidly with his two index fingers and always had his Wellington pipe in his mouth, seemingly oblivious to the smoke curling up into his eyes.
He was never comfortable out of reach of his typewriter, and when he was busy writing he did not like to be diverted. Billee remembers peeking over his shoulder once and reading, “It’s Fourth of July. Damn!” This was because he knew a flock of visitors would be arriving for a picnic.
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To feed his seemingly insatiable appetite for ideas and information, a wall of books grew in the living room, later spreading to other parts of the house, even to the bathroom. In addition to other titles he selected for research or pure pleasure, he bought the 51-volume Harvard Classics published in 1909
and originally known as Dr. Eliot’s Five Foot Shelf, The Encyclopedia Britannica and also Compton’s Encyclopedia for the children. He belonged to the Book of the Month Club .
All members of the Jenkins family were readers. When Billee was four, she announced firmly that she did not care to learn to read. She was perfectly satisfied with having people read to her for the rest of her life. This was rebellion on a scale that nose piercing or dying one’s hair purple would have been in this traditional family. In the Jenkins house, everyone read. There were books in every room, a wall of shelves in the living room, shelves under the windows in the sunroom, shelves in every bedroom, shelves in the bathroom.
If there were no shelves, there were books on the floor, on tables or open on someone’s lap. If you were a Jenkins, you read, even if you were four years old. She learned to read.
Will loved browsing in second-hand bookstores and often bought boxes of old books at auction sales expecting they might contain one or two that interested him. He loved Victorian children’s books, traveler’s tales, deep-sea explorations, scientific studies, biographies, classics, everything that expanded his thinking and told him something
he didn’t know. He marked this
seem ingly random collection with a
bookplate he and Mary designed and
executed with linoleum block print-
ing.
The Botetourt Bibliographical
Society of the College of William
and Mary asked to visit Will to look
at his book collection in 1966. In his
response he said, “They range from
a Renard the Fox, in Latin, of 1490,
through Parson Weems to Harold
Bell Wright and Nicholas Carter,
and — cutting back — Valentine Vox
the Ventriloquist and Charlotte Temple and Doctor Johnson’s dictionary and
then off in all directions.... They are
Linocut bookplate designed and printed
the books one professional writer has
by Will and Mary for their own library.
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accumulated because he wanted to own them, plus some cases of reluctance to part with anything once read.”
His extensive reading provided useful background for Will’s stories. He was proud when one time he got a letter from a fan in the Far East who said,
“When did you live here? You describe it perfectly.” For Billee, at least, the shelf of hardcover books in the bookcase written by Will F. Jenkins or Murray Leinster had special significance. Although most were reprints of stories that had already appeared in magazines, the books were a more tangible evidence of what he did than the magazines that came into the house and were looked at and tossed aside. In addition, the fact that there were dedications in some of the books was also significant, and she was very aware of which was dedicated to whom.
The following were dedicated to his wife, Mary:
“To big Mary — who liked this story” — Murder Madness (Murray Leinster) was published by Brewer & Warren in 1931 (reprinted by Fantasy Publishing Co., 1949) Astounding, June, July and August 1930.
“To Mary Mandola Jenkins, Sr.” — Kid Deputy (Will F. Jenkins) King, 1935, Triple X Western, February, March and April 1928.
“To Mary Mandola Jenkins” — Black Sheep (Will F. Jenkins) Julian Messner, Inc., 1936, Adventure, January 1928.
His daughters were included also:
“To Mary Mandola Jenkins 2nd” — Sword of Kings (Murray Leinster) John Long, Ltd., 1933 Frontier Stories, July 1928.
“To Elizabeth Madden Jenkins” — Outlaw Sheriff (Will F. Jenkins) King, 1934 (printed in UK as Rustlin’ Sheriff ) Eldon Press, 1934.
“To Wenllian Louise Jenkins”— Fighting Horse Valley (Will F. Jenkins) King, 1934.
A story Will loved to tell was that Billee, when called upon to sign her formal name (Wenllian) at a very young age, took Fighting Horse Valley off the shelf and remarked, “It sure is handy to have a book dedicated to you when you don’t know how to spell your name.”
As Jo-an was so much younger it was 1942, before he dedicated The Man Who Feared (Will F. Jenkins, Gateway, 1942) to her. Murray Leinster’s The Last Space Ship (Frederick Fell, Inc., 1949) was followed in 1953 by Space Tug (Shasta), and in 1954 by The Forgotten Planet (Gnome Press).
Several other novels came out in the 1930s. Scalps (Murray Leinster) was published by Brewer & Warren in 1930, Murder Will Out (Murray Leinster) by John Hamilton in 1932, Mexican Trail (Will F. Jenkins) by Alfred H. King Six • The 1930s
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in 1933, Murder in the Family (Murray Leinster) by John Hamilton in 1935, No Clues (Murray Leinster) by Wright & Brown in 1935, and Guns for Achin (Murray Leinster) by Wright & Brown in 1936.
Nineteen thirty-six was a pivotal moment in Will’s career. He achieved an important milestone with the publication of “Wild Waters” in the January 1936 issue of Collier’s, his first in a mainstream “slick” magazine. “Two in a Boat” appeared in the March 7, 1936, issue , and fiction editor Kenneth Littauer bought six more stories from Will that year. He appeared in Collier’s for the next twenty years.
These magazines not only paid more — Collier’s was paying him $1,000
for a short story — but also were considered more prestigious both for the quality of the writing and the seriousness of the reporting. The pulps were considered second-rate. This was the beginning of a steady market in the slick magazines. He entered American Magazine in April 1938 with “Portrait of an Artist,” in The Woman’s Home Companion in September 1939 with “He looked like Robert Taylor,” and Cosmopolitan with “Headline” in June 1939. He first appeared in Esquire with “Pygie Takes a Wife” in July 1939.
In 1937, writing for Liberty Magazine, Will won the first prize of $1,000
for “A Very Nice Family,” published in the January 2 edition. He and Mary used the award money to complete guest quarters in the detached garage at Ardudwy in Clay Bank. The second prize was won by William E. Barrett, later well known for the novels The Lilies of the Field (later made into a movie starring Sidney Poitier) and The Left Hand of God (also made into a movie, this time starring Humphrey Bogart). As a result of the awards, the Barretts came to Clay Bank to meet Will and Mary, and the girls were delighted that they brought their young son with them. Because Will’s daughters were home-schooled, they were eager to meet other young people, and any visitor close to their age was a treasure.
They thought the Barretts’ son was particularly cute, and, although the visit was brief, talked about him for a long time.
Also in 1937, a long relationship began with Curtis Publishing and Ben Hibbs, who was an editor at Curtis’ The Country Gentleman from 1929 through 1942. This had been primarily an agricultural magazine but had begun to print short stories. Will began to appear in its pages with “Tik-Lui, the God” published in the August 1937 issue. Hibbs was known for traveling around the country to research his articles and editorials. He and his wife visited Will and Mary at Clay Bank in 1940.
During the visit, they stopped in at Morgan’s Drug Store to meet Will’s good friend Dr. L. V. “Happy” Morgan, pharmacist and owner of the store, and to enjoy one of Will’s favorite all-chocolate sodas. Raymond Brown worked at the soda fountain when he was in high school and grew up to be 80
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Will’s doctor, fan and friend. After Will died, he and Happy Morgan set up a memorial to him at the Gloucester Public Library dedicating a collection of Jenkins and Leinster books.
Morgan’s was a family place. When Life magazine came out with the controversial article “The Birth of a Baby” in their April 11, 1938, issue, Dr.
Murray Leinster Page 9