Margaret Wise Brown

by Leonard S. Marcus

  There were drafts of at least four new Noisy books, including one called “The Smelly Noisy Book,” for which Margaret had investigated the possibility of impregnating the book’s pages with a variety of scents. Had she lived long enough, each of the five senses would doubtless have been equally well provided for.

  There were unfinished attempts at manners books and notes for a great many “social studies” books in the Bank Street here-and-now vein; a story-poetry-recipe anthology to be called “The Potato: A Root”; a set of travel books about various European cities and towns, including one about her beloved Dingle in Ireland, called “The Town that Climbs a Hill”; a collection of equine songs and verses called “A Horse of Course”; and a book titled “How Now Owl? A Book of Children’s Questions, Answered by an Owl, Translated from the Owl by Margaret Wise Brown.”

  Taking a leaf from the popular turn-of-the-century novelty books of Peter Newell, Margaret had made a dummy for “The Cardboard Egg,” whose hero was determined to escape from the book’s pages—whether by “scrambling” or by other means—to become a “real egg.” Margaret had punched egg-shaped holes in each page of her cardboard mock-up to indicate the hero’s escape route.

  Perhaps the most notable experiment in book design to turn up among Margaret’s papers was “North South East West,” a “story in all directions.” Square pages had been cut along their diagonals to form sets of four triangles, one triangle for each point of the compass. Spiral bindings on all four sides of the square held the triangular sections down to a common backing, and each section could be opened and read separately in any order, in a kind of Dutch-door arrangement. Margaret’s story concerned a young bird eager to learn what lay beyond his home in each of the world’s four corners, an array of possibilities that her four-part design ingeniously mirrored.

  Margaret’s musical interests had taken her in a great many directions as well. At the time of her death, she was well along in her plans to have several Golden Books set to music for release in record form. On her return from her Pacific crossing, Burl Ives was to have visited her at the Only House to discuss various projects of this kind. She had also sketched the outlines for two song books, “Singing Stories: Stories to Be Sung and Songs to Be Told,” which was to have consisted of traditional and original lullabies and ballads; and a second such collection to be called “The Youngest Singing Stories.” In her notes for these treasuries, Margaret had also raised the possibility of designing radio and television programming based on the books.

  She had made notes for television versions of a number of her published titles, including Wait Till the Moon Is Full and The House of a Hundred Windows. Margaret’s idea for adapting her books to the new medium was essentially to exploit the interactive possibilities of the text to their fullest, replacing straight narrative whenever possible with direct questions for the viewer to wonder about and answer.

  In a television series for preschoolers called “The Monkey Man and His Monkey,” for which Margaret had written a proposal, a hurdy-gurdy man was to have told stories and entertained his simian companion. The running joke of the show was to have been that the man “assumes as he tells [his monkey] stories and sings his songs, that the two of them are broadcasting to young monkeys all over the world.” Margaret wrote, “I am sure that children would be very amused by all this secret joking with them and that each child would think it . . . his own joke with the Hurdy-Gurdy man.”68

  There had also been plans for a dramatization of Two Little Trains for small children to perform at school (detailed notes had been prepared for this). Margaret had made scattered notes for a musical comedy, “The Life of the Dream.” Also among her papers was her treatment for a ballet version of The Dark Wood of the Golden Birds, a project she had apparently abandoned by the time of Michael Strange’s death.

  In addition to her unpublished short fiction for adults, scores of unpublished poems were found. Most were lyrics, many were on the themes of love and the fleeting nature of time. In more than a few, rhyme was used selfconsciously to the point of overpowering the content. Among the best of these poems was one with a title borrowed from Tennyson, “The Unquiet Heart”:

  Bind the winds, o bind them

  And still this heart of mine

  Drain the seas, o drain them

  And still this heart of mine

  But the seas and the winds you cannot bind

  And it will not be still, this heart of mine.69

  On November 29, 1956, the Margaret Wise Brown Collection, consisting of a nearly complete set of her published works and files of assorted personal papers, manuscripts, book dummies, and related material, was dedicated at the Memorial and Library Association of Westerly (Rhode Island). The Westerly library had been chosen at the suggestion of Margaret’s friend, Jessica Gamble Dunham, who knew it to be well endowed and who, as a resident of nearby Old Mystic, Connecticut, would be available to watch over the collection. At the dedication ceremony, Louise Seaman Bechtel gave the principal address, making use of her notes for the Horn Book article she had abandoned when the Life profile of Margaret appeared. She offered the assembled gathering an affectionate but canny appraisal of her late colleague and friend.

  “I suspect,” suggested Bechtel, “she enjoyed that wide arena of her publishing world in the same sporting spirit as that which took her off to hunt with the Buckram Beagles.”70 Margaret, she said, “enjoyed any contest of wits.” The critic took sharp exception to the “rather fantastic picture” of Margaret “concocted” by Life and proceeded to relate her own impressions of this “laureate of the nursery” and “engaging friend” who, though “adult and sophisticated in many ways,” had “never lost . . . a present sense of the real and the dream worlds of her childhood.”

  “Once she said to me,” Bechtel recalled, “‘In the back of my head, I keep busy; in the front of my head, I am slow and stupid. She had once received a list of current projects from Margaret headed “Books Under Construction.”

  Over the years Bechtel had become aware of Margaret’s unfulfilled literary ambitions and, like Lucy Mitchell, believed that at the time of her death Margaret may have been close to a turning point in that and other aspects of her life. “I love to think of her at Eze,” she said, “seeping in impressions of that beautiful old world and the sea spread out below, wondering whether she would now, in a new life at home, turn at last to writing for adults.”

  Such speculation was perhaps inevitable in the case of a creative artist who died so young, was charismatically beautiful, and had already accomplished so very much. Margaret herself had proceeded through life ever wary and aware of “mysterious clock time,” the relentless running of the clock, but she had also tried to remain philosophical about the future. Late in her career, in her first Book of Knowledge essay, she observed, “Writing for children is for me a happy accident. I still don’t mean to and I always mean to stop when it is natural for me to do so. But I am grateful to the world of children’s books for remaining one of the purest and freest fields for experimental writing today.”71

  Margaret was being modest. It was she as much as anyone who had made the children’s book world a vital creative enterprise in her time. But claiming credit for herself had rarely been an overriding concern of hers. With Margaret, the book came first—the picture book as experiment. Everyone who worked with her came to appreciate this, and there was much truth in Clement Hurd’s remark that “all Margaret’s main illustrators did their best work in her books.”72 She had always needed to include others in her own fascinating game. As “Laureate of the Nursery,” “Child’s Best-Seller,” and “Writer of Songs and Nonsense,” Margaret made collaborators of old friends and chance acquaintances alike. Time and again with them and by the dazzling reach of her own brave and buoyant art, she made timeless books about the simple things that children love.

  Acknowledgments

  This book could not have been written without the generous assistance and cooperation of many peopl
e who allowed themselves to be interviewed, who responded to questions by letter, lent research materials in their possession, or (in several instances) did all of these things. In particular, I wish to acknowledge the help of: William Albin, the late Augusta Baker Alexander, Dorothy A. Bennett, the late Barbara Biber, the late James Black, Johanna Boetz, Penelope Bordon Boone, Marion Ristine Bowes, Polly Schoyer Brooks, B. Gratz Brown, Jr., Billy Brown, the late Mary Steichen Calderone, Charles Carpenter, Joan Clarke, the late Margaret Cousins, Ray Dennis, Katherine A. Dilworth, the late Lucienne Bloch Dimitroff, Frank and Betta Dobo, Jessica Gamble Dunham, the late Gerold Frank, the late Josette Frank, the late Anne Fuller, James P. Gaston, Morrell Gipson, Mrs. J. Wooderson Glenn, the late Luther Ward Greene, Mary Guiheen, Montgomery Hare, the late Marguerite C. Hearsey, the late Peter Heggie, Betty Husting, Sarah Kerlin, Frank E. Kilroe, the late Ruth Krauss, David C. Lamb, Elizabeth and Condie Lamb, the late Adrian Lambert, Claudia Lewis, the late Dorothy R. Luke, Inez Camprubi Mabon, James MacCormick, Richard Mack, Virginia Mathews, Ilse Mattick, John G. McCullough, J. P. Miller, Eileen Moriority, the late Martha Huguley Naftel, Priscilla Newhall, Mrs. Hoffman Nickerson, John H. Niemeyer, the late Ursula Nordstrom, the late Lucille Ogle, John Oelsner, Leonora Alexander Orr, the late Julia Lamar Parish, the late Adelaide Dana Parker, Ted Scott Peckham, Ellen Pettit, the late Mary Phelps, the late Harriet F. Pilpel, Nancy Pittman, Jeffrey Potter, the late Wallace B. Putnam, Richard and Josephine Reeve, Colette Richardson, Elizabeth M. Riley, Dorothy Wagstaff Ripley, Joseph D. Ryle, the late Margaret P. Scott, the late William R. Scott, Art Seiden, Judith Shahn, Jane Thurston Shepard, Esphyr Slobodkina, Ellen Tarry, Yvonne Thomas, the late Charlotte Tiplady, Alvin and Blossom Tresselt, the late Susanna P. Turner, Gloria de Veyrac, Jeanette Connolly Waddell, Sophie Shoumatoff Ward, Dorothy Warren, Elizabeth Watson, the late Garth Williams, and Charlotte Zolotow.

  I wish to offer special thanks to Roberta Brown Rauch and Bruce Bliven, Jr., co-executors of Margaret Wise Brown’s estate, for permissions granted and for memories, insights, and information shared.

  I thank James Stillman Rockefeller, Jr., for making available original source materials, for relating his memories of Margaret Wise Brown, and for allowing me to visit the Only House.

  Special thanks also to Leonard Weisgard and the late Phyllis Weisgard, who submitted good-naturedly to what proved to be the longest interview conducted for this book, a series of intensive conversations spanning eleven consecutive days.

  I gratefully acknowledge the many helps and kindnesses extended to me by the late Clement Hurd and the late Edith Thacher Hurd. They gave freely of their time and knowledge and, by accompanying me on my visit to the Only House, helped make a productive experience an unforgettable one as well. I also wish to express my gratitude to Thacher Hurd and to Marilyn E. Marlow for their generous help.

  Institutional archives consulted as part of my research are acknowledged in the Notes. I wish, however, to express here my appreciation to David J. Panciera, former Executive Director, Memorial and Library Association of Westerly, Rhode Island, for his friendly and gracious assistance over nine years of periodic visits to the Margaret Wise Brown Collection of books and papers.

  Friends and colleagues who took an early interest in this project or offered encouragement at critical moments along the way include: Everett F. Bleiler, R. Cat, Tin Shue Chin, the late Elizabeth Cleaver, Susan Hirschman, Gary C. Karshmer, Fran Manushkin, and Susanne Suba. I especially wish to thank Deanne Urmy for her steadfast support, sound judgment, and good fellowship.

  An Ingram Merrill Foundation grant-in-writing was helpful in supporting my preliminary research and writing, and is acknowledged with gratitude.

  I thank my friends at the Writers Room, Inc., New York, where I found the quiet to write portions of this book.

  I wish to thank the editor of the original Beacon Press edition, Wendy J. Strothman, and my copy editor, Chris Kochansky, for their interest in my work and for their high professional standards. My sincere thanks, too, to Doris Cooper and the staff of Quill Books, William Morrow and Company, for granting my book new life in the form of the present edition. Special thanks also go to my agent, George M. Nicholson of Sterling Lord Literistic, for his friendship and his dedication to publishing, and for his unflagging efforts on my behalf.

  Finally, I thank my mother and family and remember my late father for their love and encouragement over many years.

  Bibliography

  The Works of Margaret Wise Brown

  BOOKS (FIRST AMERICAN AND BRITISH EDITIONS)

  Animals, Plants and Machines. Written with Lucy Sprague Mitchell. Illustrated by Clare Bice. Boston, New York: D. C. Heath & Co., 1944.

  Baby Animals. Illustrated by Mary Cameron. New York: Random House, 1941.

  The Bad Little Duckhunter. Illustrated by Clement Hurd. New York: W. R. Scott, 1947.

  Big Dog, Little Dog. Written as Golden MacDonald. Illustrated by Leonard Weisgard. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1943.

  The Big Fur Secret. Illustrated by Robert de Veyrac. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1944.

  Big Red Barn. Illustrated by Rosella Hartman. New York: W. R. Scott, 1956.

  Black and White. Illustrated by Charles G. Shaw. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1944.

  Bumble Bugs and Elephants: A Big and Little Book. Illustrated by Clement Hurd. New York: W. R. Scott, 1938.

  A Child’s Good Morning. Illustrated by Jean Chariot. New York: W. R. Scott, 1952.

  A Child’s Good Night Book. Illustrated by Jean Chariot. New York: W. R. Scott, 1943.

  Christmas in the Barn. Illustrated by Barbara Cooney. New York: T. Y. Crowell, 1952.

  The Color Kittens. Illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1949.

  Country Noisy Book. Illustrated by Leonard Weisgard. New York: W. R. Scott, 1940.

  The Dark Wood of the Golden Birds. Illustrated by Leonard Weisgard. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950.

  David’s Little Indian. Illustrated by Remy Charlip. New York: W. R. Scott, 1956.

  The Dead Bird. Illustrated by Remy Charlip. New York: W. R. Scott, 1958.

  The Diggers. Illustrated by Clement Hurd. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961; London: Hamish Hamilton, 1961.

  Doctor Squash, The Doll Doctor. Illustrated by J. P. Miller. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1952.

  Don’t Frighten the Lion! Illustrated by H. A. Rey. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1942.

  The Dream Book: First Comes the Dream. Illustrated by Richard Floethe. New York: Random House, 1950.

  The Duck. Illustrated by Camilla Koffler (as Ylla). New York: Harper & Brothers, 1953; London: Harvill Press, 1953.

  Farm and City. Written with Lucy Sprague Mitchell. Illustrated by Fleur. Boston, New York: D. C. Heath & Co., 1944.

  The First Story. Illustrated by Marc Simont. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1947.

  The Fish with the Deep Sea Smile. Illustrated by Roberta Rauch. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1938.

  Five Little Firemen. Written with Edith Thacher Hurd. Illustrated by Tibor Gergely. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1948.

  Four Fur Feet. Illustrated by Remy Charlip. New York: W. R. Scott, 1961.

  Fox Eyes. Illustrated by Jean Charlot. New York: Pantheon Books, 1951; London: Collins, 1979.

  The Friendly Book. Illustrated by Garth Williams. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1954.

  The Golden Birthday Book. Illustrated by Leonard Weisgard. Racine, Wis.: Western Publishing Co., 1989.

  The Golden Bunny, and Seventeen Other Stories. Illustrated by Leonard Weisgard. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1953.

  The Golden Egg Book. Illustrated by Leonard Weisgard. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1947.

  The Golden Sleepy Book. Illustrated by Garth Williams. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1948.

  Goodnight Moon. Illustrated by Clement Hurd. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1947; Kingswood, Surrey: World’s Work, 1975.

  The Hidden House. Illustrat
ed by Aaron Fine. New York: Holt, 1953.

  Home for a Bunny. Illustrated by Garth Williams. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1956; London: Hamyln, 1961.

  Horses. Written as Timothy Hay. Illustrated by Dorothy Wagstaff (as Wag). New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1944.

  The House of a Hundred Windows. Illustrated by Robert de Veyrac. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1945.

  The Important Book. Illustrated by Leonard Weisgard. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949.

  Indoor Noisy Book. Illustrated by Leonard Weisgard. New York: W. R. Scott, 1942.

  The Little Brass Band. Illustrated by Clement Hurd. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1955.

  Little Chicken. Illustrated by Leonard Weisgard. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1943.

  The Little Cowboy. Illustrated by Esphyr Slobodkina. New York: W. R. Scott, 1949.

  The Little Farmer. Illustrated by Esphyr Slobodkina. New York: W. R. Scott, 1948.

  The Little Fat Policeman. Written with Edith Thacher Hurd. Illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1950.

  The Little Fir Tree. Illustrated by Barbara Cooney. New York: T. Y. Crowell, 1954.

  The Little Fireman. Illustrated by Esphyr Slobodkina. New York: W. R. Scott, 1938.

  The Little Fisherman: A Fish Story. Illustrated by Dahlov Ipcar. New York: W. R. Scott, 1945.

  Little Frightened Tiger. Written as Golden MacDonald. Illustrated by Leonard Weisgard. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., 1953.

  Little Fur Family. Illustrated by Garth Williams. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1946.

  Little Indian. Illustrated by Richard Scarry. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1954; London: Golden Pleasure Books, 1964.

  The Little Island. Written as Golden MacDonald. Illustrated by Leonard Weisgard. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., 1946.

  Little Lost Lamb. Written as Golden MacDonald. Illustrated by Leonard Weisgard. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1945.