BETTY: The Story of Betty MacDonald, Author of The Egg and I

by Anne Wellman

  The feminist argument may not stand up to scrutiny. Once married to Don MacDonald, Betty happily made a home and declared that she was first, last and always a wife and mother. (She even, of her own volition, returned to canning.) As a writer she is left in limbo: not viewed as among the classic regionalists, and arguably not truly in the vanguard of feminism, while her anecdotal style, the affectionate focus on her rambunctious family, and what the New York Times critic Bosley Crowther termed the ‘earthy tang’ of her writing may not suggest a serious author. But taken together, her gift for local color, her wifely scepticism, and the anecdotes and intimate details of work and home life all combine to provide an accurate picture of significant times in America: homesteading, Depression, war, and finally the growing prosperity of the mid-20th century. Betty MacDonald’s lightly fictionalized accounts of her life in the Northwest in the 1920s-1950s, shot through with an acerbic commentary on the people and manners she saw around her, are authentic gems encapsulating a place and a time in history.

  There are no monuments to Betty, no endowments or scholarships, only the renamed stretch of two-lane road passing the chicken farm where she lived for four long years: Egg and I Road.

  Afterword

  BETTY’S will was admitted to probate on 5 May 1958 in Seattle. Press reported that Betty left her share of the Vashon home to Don; although it had been up for sale in 1956, seemingly it had not been sold. Most of the remainder of her estate, valued at more than $60,000, was in California and was to be probated separately in Monterey. Her ‘community’ half (probably meaning everything that Betty and Don owned together), other than the Vashon property, was bequeathed to Anne and Joan.

  Betty’s literary estate may have included a novel. According to her sister Mary in 1959, there was considerable unpublished material among Betty’s belongings, including an entire novel and an uncompleted collection of stories for the Mrs Piggle-Wiggle series. Rumors of the novel surfaced again in 1982 when Betty’s daughter Joan mentioned in an interview that a publisher’s representative had the manuscript of an unpublished novel which had been found among Betty’s papers. This may or may not have been an early version of Onions in the Stew, which Joan understood had originally been written as a novel. Joan also had her mother’s letters, which she described as ‘hysterically funny’, meant only for Betty’s mother and sisters and not for public consumption.

  People

  Betty’s husband Donald MacDonald stayed on at the ranch after Betty’s death and continued to raise cattle. In 1975, when he was sixty-five, Don caught the flu and was in bed alone for several weeks. Finally feeling better, he got up and dressed but fell down the front steps as he was going out. When the ranch manager reached him, Don was unconscious. An ambulance was called and he was taken to the local hospital, but he had suffered a heart attack and never regained consciousness. Machines kept his breathing going but Don was brain dead and the machinery was disconnected after about a week.

  Betty’s first daughter Anne MacDonald had at least three children and was married three times. After Don died in 1975 Anne and her son Darsie Evans moved onto the ranch but, after several years of dispute with Joan about the property, it was eventually sold.

  In 2001 Anne told a Carmel Valley newsletter that she was finally writing her first book, after having promised her mother over forty years ago that she would be a writer. She was already a successful artist and said that the inspiration for her oil painting came from her wonderful, talented grandmother Sydney Bard, who had patiently taught her so much when she was a child. Anne exhibited her works throughout the US, Canada and Japan. In 2007 she published Happy Birthday, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, based on stories and characters created by Betty. The book is attributed to both mother and daughter.

  Betty’s second daughter Joan MacDonald and husband Jerry Keil had four children. Long after Betty died, Joan, along with Anne, was still receiving so many fan letters from children, mothers, grandmothers, teachers and librarians wanting Nancy and Plum to be reprinted that she decided to lobby publishers for a new edition. Joan was unable to secure a deal so in 1982 she and a friend formed the Betty MacDonald Memorial Publishing Company, planning to republish all her mother’s books. At first Joan was going to call her enterprise the Anybody Can Do Anything Company, but instead they selected the ultimate name as a ‘tribute and resurrection of Betty MacDonald’. The first of their efforts was Nancy and Plum, which appeared in Seattle stores that year in time for Christmas. Joan announced that 5% of all present and future sales of the book would be donated to the Children’s Orthopedic Hospital ‘in the name of Betty MacDonald for all the children everywhere’. The book went out of print again but the letters kept coming, so in 1997 Joan republished Nancy and Plum for the second time, having formed the Joan Keil Enterprises company somewhere along the way. Joan often gave talks about Betty at libraries and schools and like her mother was very creative: she loved to paint, garden, cook and arrange flowers, and she also sang in variety shows to help raise money for charity. And, just like Betty, Joan’s sense of humor always made people laugh. She died in 2004 at the age of 75, in Bellevue, Washington.

  Betty’s sister Mary Bard wrote several books herself, including her best-known work The Doctor Wears Three Faces (dedicated to Betty, who ‘egged me on’). In 1950 this was turned into a movie entitled Mother Didn’t Tell Me, starring Dorothy McGuire, June Havoc, and Leif Erickson. She remained an active participant in Seattle community life and in the late 1960s volunteered to teach play-writing in schools in Seattle’s Central Area, despite the racial unrest there at the time. One of the leaders of the Seattle chapter of the Black Panthers used to provide a safe passage for Mary through the volatile area, meeting her each week downtown and driving her to her volunteer work himself. Mary suffered a stroke and died on Vashon in 1970.

  Betty’s brother Cleve Bard graduated from Roosevelt High and was married twice, first to Margaret Tracy in 1933, with whom he had his first son. He had two sons with his second wife Mary Alice. He is buried in Vashon Island Cemetery.

  Betty’s sister Dede (Dorothea Darsie) Bard graduated from Roosevelt High and embarked on a singing career. She married Melvin Goldsmith in 1943, and had at least two children. She died in 1994.

  Betty’s youngest sister Alison Bard graduated from Roosevelt High and first married Frank Sugia, a well-known jazz accordionist and bandleader on the Northwest music scene. With their infant son Darsie they moved to Vashon one year after Betty, in 1943, but then divorced following the birth of their second son Bard in 1945. Alison married Bernard Beck in 1946 and their daughter was born in 1948. The family moved to Mercer Island in the 1950s and there Alison began a long career in real-estate sales. In the mid 1960s she divorced and in the early 1970s married William Burnett. They lived in Kailua Kona, Hawaii, Scottsdale, Arizona and Kirkland, Washington, where William Burnett died in 1978. Alison loved to entertain, was a passionate gardener, wonderful cook, talented decorator, and a gifted writer. She loved music, especially jazz, and was an amazing dancer. She loved dogs and was a fierce champion of fairness. Alison died in 2009 at the age of eighty-nine.

  Alison’s son Darsie Beck became a well-known artist on Vashon. When he was a little boy Betty and the girls often took care of him while Alison worked, and he remembered countless adventures on the beach, parties at the house and a kitchen that was always the hub of all the fun. Darsie recalled those years with Betty and her daughters as very creative; art was just part of the entertainment. He is the author of Your Essential Nature, A Practical Guide to Greater Creativity and Spiritual Harmony, a workbook describing his long practice of daily writing, drawing and meditation.

  Betty’s dear friend Blanche Caffiere died in 2006 at the age of 100, after a long career as teacher, author and librarian. One of Blanche’s students was Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who worked as her school library assistant. He later credited his philanthropic efforts to introduce computer technology into school libraries to Blanche’s early encouragement o
f his own studies and her insistence on the importance of reading. Her 1992 book about her life and friendship with Betty and the Bards, Much Laughter, A Few Tears, has provided fans and scholars with valuable insights into Betty’s life and work. The book was also published in Czechoslovakia where Betty MacDonald was still extremely popular. The interest there in Blanche’s memoir took the 94-year-old Blanche to Prague where she was feted, interviewed on television, and mobbed by autograph seekers. She was a popular public speaker in the US also and appeared as part of the Vashon Island Library’s anniversary celebrations in October 2006, when she stood for nearly an hour sharing memories of Vashon and her dear friend Betty.

  Monica Sone (‘Kimi’ in The Plague and I) grew up in Seattle, where her parents, immigrants from Japan, managed a hotel. During World War II she and her family were interned at Puyallup Civilian Assembly Center and at the Minidoka War Relocation Center in Hunt, Idaho. In 1942, Monica was allowed to leave the camp to attend college in Indiana, where she lived with a local family. She eventually gained a master’s degree in clinical psychology. Her best-known work is the 1953 memoir Nisei Daughter, which tells the story of Japanese immigrant family life in the United States before and during the war, and in which she writes of her friendship with Betty (‘Chris’) at Firland sanatorium. Monica passed away in 2011 at the age of 92.

  Places

  In 1967, when the Egg and I farm was for sale, it had a new, three-bed house and two-car garage but some of the same stately cedars and other timber still stood on the forty acres as they had done in Betty’s day. The house offered a ‘tremendous view of Olympics’, a good well and hunting on the property. The school bus stopped at the door.

  The brown shingled house at 6317 15th Avenue in Seattle, where Betty and her family lived in the 1930s, no longer exists. The house had many occupants after Betty and her family moved away, and then slowly deteriorated. On 24 July 2012 the house was demolished.

  The house on Vashon Island where Betty wrote her books is now a private residence but the surrounding woods and orchards remain unchanged. Two of the subsequent owners have also been writers. The huge barn that the MacDonalds built on their land, painted red with white trim, is operating as a Bed and Breakfast.

  The Bishop farm in Chimacum on the Olympic Peninsula remains in the family and is now run as an organic dairy farm.

  Bibliography and References

  Ament, Deloris Tarzan, historylink.org, Essay 5221 (about William Cumming)

  American Women’s Club of Amsterdam, OPIJNEN – The Dutch Village That Still Cares, Tulip Talk newsletter May 1983

  Anne and Joan MacDonald, A Common Reader interview, 1998; Foreword to 1987 Harper and Row Perennial edition of The Egg and I

  Arts News (Vashon Allied Arts), Vashon Island was home to Betty MacDonald, March 1988

  Bard, Mary, Forty Odd, J. B. Lippincott, 1952

  Bard, Mary, The Doctor Wears Three Faces, J. B. Lippincott, 1949

  Beck, Darsie, E S Bard Drawings and Paintings

  Becker, Paula, historylink.org, Essays 3928, 7035, 8261, 8263, 8267, 8270, 8271, 8273, 10155, 10346, 10715

  Bellingham Herald

  Boulder Daily Camera

  Burnett, Alison Bard, Epilog to Blanche Caffiere’s Much Laughter, A Few Tears

  Caffiere, Blanche, Much Laughter, A Few Tears, Blue Gables Publishing, 1992

  Callahan, Margaret Bundy, Story of a Full Life, Seattle Times, 3 July 1949 (about Sydney Bard)

  Carmel Valley Newsletter, The Art of Anne Canham, January 2001

  Chinn, Ray historylink.org Essay 9333 (University District oral history)

  Cumming, William, Sketchbook: A Memoir of the 1930s and the Northwest School, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1984

  Daily Chronicle (Centralia, Washington)

  Daily Olympian

  Dederer, Claire, Her Great Depression, Columbia Journalism Review, January/February 2011

  Dorpat, Paul historylink.org Essay 3380 (about the University District)

  Gravelle, Randal Hooverville and the Unemployed: Seattle during the Great Depression

  Gregory, James, Economics and Poverty The Great Depression in Washington State Project, https://depts.washington.edu/depress/economics_poverty.shtml (retrieved 2015)

  Hamley, Frederick G. Firland: A Story of Firland Sanatorium, Seattle: Firland Occupational Therapy Department, ca. 1937

  Hart, James D., The Popular Book, University of California Press, 1950

  Hoekstra, Samantha, The Egg and Us: Contextualization and Historicization of Betty MacDonald’s Works, thesis, Florida State University, 2014

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTaZaqAIjagMe Betty in movie trailer

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvaZivR6UcE Betty in newsreel

  Kindig, Jessie, Culture and Arts during the Depression, The Great Depression in Washington State Project, https://depts.washington.edu/depress/culture_arts.shtml (retrieved 2015)

  Kraig, Beth, Betty and the Bishops: Was The Egg and I Libelous? Columbia Magazine, Spring 1998: Vol. 12, No. 1.

  Kraig, Beth, It’s About Time Somebody Out Here Wrote the Truth: Betty Bard MacDonald and North/West Regionalism Western American Literature 40.3 (Fall 2005): 237-71

  Laughlin, Helen MacDonald, sister of Donald MacDonald (description of death of Donald MacDonald)

  Levey, Jane F., Imagining the Family in U.S. Popular Postwar Culture: The Case of The Egg and I and Cheaper by the Dozen, Journal of Women’s History, 13.3 (Autumn 2001), Johns Hopkins University Press

  Life magazine, Life Goes Calling on the Author of The Egg and I, March 18 1946

  MacDonald, Betty, letters, 15 July 1945 (to Mrs. Forrest, Folder V.F. 844 Betty Bard MacDonald Papers, University of Washington); 14 Feb 1946 (to Mary Bard Jensen); 5 Sept 1947 (to Hazel); 6 February 1954 (to Bertram Lippincott); 26 Jan 1956 (to Blanche Caffiere); and 2 July 1956 (to Blanche Caffiere)

  MacDonald, Betty, Anybody Can Do Anything, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1950

  MacDonald, Betty, I’m an Optimist! Farm Journal, January 1956

  MacDonald, Betty, Money and I, Cosmopolitan, June 1949

  MacDonald, Betty, Onions in the Stew, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1955

  MacDonald, Betty, The Egg and I, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1945

  MacDonald, Betty, The Most Unforgettable Character I’ve Met, Reader’s Digest, July 1949; An Unforgettable Character, Reader’s Digest, February 1954

  MacDonald, Betty, The Plague and I, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1948

  MacDonald, Betty, Their Families, Town Crier magazine, 1933. Discovered by Paula Becker in the archives of the Seattle Public Library.

  News Record (Vashon), 13 Feb 1958 (death of Betty MacDonald)

  Newsweek, May 16, 1955 (review of Onions in the Stew)

  New York Times, 1946, 1948

  Oregonian, March 1903 (Sydney’s wedding)

  Oxnard Press Courier, 24 July 1955 (death of Robert Heskett)

  Pageant magazine, October 1949 Vol. 5 No. 4 (story, Take a Lesson from Betty MacDonald)

  Port Townsend Leader

  Roosevelt High, Alumni records

  Royer, Bob Our Norwegian Boys Move on After the 1926 Rose Bowl (about George Guttormsen) http://www.thecascadiacourier.com/search/label/Cascadia

  S’Klallam tribal history, https://www.pgst.nsn.us/land-and-people-and-lifestyle/history

  Seattle Post-Intelligencer

  Seattle Daily and Sunday Times, 1919-1982

  Seattle Times, 16 Sept 1951, 26 Nov 2006 (Blanche Caffiere obituary)

  Seattle Weekly, 4 March 2008 http://www.seattleweekly.com/2008-03-05/news/how-puget-sound-s-last-pirate-gave-us-a-creaking-sinking-ferry-system/

  Sone, Monica, Nisei Daughter, University of Washington Press, 1979

  Starbuck, Susan, Hazel Wolf: Fighting the Establishment, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002, 112-116. historylink.org Essay 8801

  Stars and Stripes, July 1951 (death of Robert Heskett)

  State of
Washington King County Clerk’s Office, Elizabeth B. Heskett v. Robert E. Heskett Final Decree of Divorce, 8 March, 1935

  State of Washington King County Superior Court, records

  Stivers, George L., MD, Closing of Tuberculous Lung Cavities by Intrapleural Pneumolysis, N Engl J Med 1933; 208:469-479 March 2, 1933 DOI: 10.1056/NEJM193303022080901, New England Journal of Medicine

  Strenuous Life For 1924, The Roosevelt High School yearbook

  Stubbs, Frederick D., Closed Intrapleural Pneumolysis in the Treatment of Pulmonary Tuberculosis (A Preliminary Report of Forty Operations), J Natl Med Assoc. May 1939

  Sunday Herald-Boston, 22 March 1903 (Sydney’s wedding)

  Sunday Oregonian

  Tate, Cassandra, historylink.org Essay 598 (about Burton and Florence James)

  University of Washington, records

  U.S. Federal Census, records

  vashonhistory.com

  Vashon-Maury Island Beachcomber, Joan MacDonald Keil obituary, 28 July 2004

  Vashon-Maury Island Beachcomber, MacDonald’s centennial reminds Vashon of her place on the Island, 26 April 2008

  Vogel, Michelle, Marjorie Main: The Life and Films of Hollywood’s ‘Ma Kettle’, McFarland & Co Inc, 15 Jun 2011

  Walker, Nancy, Humor and Gender Roles: The ‘Funny’ Feminism of the Post-War World II Suburbs, American Quarterly, Spring 1985, Volume XXXVII, Number 1