by Ann Hulbert
“schoolhouse gifts”: Joseph S. Renzulli, “Reexamining the Role of Gifted Education and Talent Development for the 21st Century: A Four-Part Theoretical Approach,” Gifted Child Quarterly 56 (2012): 150.
first revision of Binet’s test: On Terman’s revising work, see Minton, Lewis M. Terman, pp. 46–51.
“the brightest child to whom he had ever given”: C. D. Cowell, “Material for a Biography.”
Even Henry boasted to his father: Henry Cowell to Harry Cowell, January 29, 1912, HCP, JPB 00-03, Box 18, Folder 7.
“Although the IQ is satisfactory”: Terman, Intelligence of School Children, pp. 246–47.
“only two things considered”: Lewis Terman, notes, HCP, JPB 00-03, Box 96, Folder 3.
“Henry Cowell was a very Ordinary man”: Lewis Terman, notes, dated February 1912, HCP, JPB 00-03, Box 96, Folder 3.
“St. Agnes Morning”: Liner notes for Songs of Henry Cowell, https://www.dramonline.org/albums/songs-of-henry-cowell/notes.
“Always he has worked mostly alone”: C. D. Cowell, “Material for a Biography.”
“the dirtiest little shrimp”: Hicks, Henry Cowell, p. 70.
“Adventures in Harmony”: Ibid., p. 44.
“hungry ocean in the human soul”: On Henry’s music for Creation Dawn, see ibid., pp. 49–52.
“the steadying hand of instruction”: Walter Anthony, “In the World of Music: Opera Star Will Sing in Concert,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 26, 1914.
the blunt view: Hicks, Henry Cowell, p. 57. The quotes are from Redfern Mason, “Work of Merit at Concert of Local Society,” San Francisco Examiner, March 6, 1914.
“useful to modest talent”: C. D. Cowell, “Material for a Biography.”
“but reasonable discipline”: Winchell, “Lad Shows Signs of Real Genius.”
“Whether anybody can teach this lad”: Anthony, “In the World of Music.”
He served as a conduit: Minton, Lewis M. Terman, p. 112.
“gone…far along his own lines”: Hicks, Henry Cowell, p. 67.
“dissonant counterpoint”: Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (New York: Picador, 2007), p. 521.
“There is a new race”: Ibid.
“You know how well”: Henry Cowell to Clarissa Dixon Cowell, October 31, 1913, HCP, JPB 00-03, Box 18, Folder 7.
“Oh, but he was a splendid comrade!”: C. D. Cowell, “Material for a Biography.”
“Everyone here composes”: Henry Cowell to Russell Varian, December 1916, in Hicks, Henry Cowell, p. 75.
the institute “cads”: Henry Cowell to Ellen Veblen, November 22, 1916, HCP, JPB 00-03, Box 18, Folder 10.
“the Keyboard Terror”: Ross, The Rest Is Noise, p. 147.
Terman published the Stanford revision: Minton, Lewis M. Terman, p. 48.
some sixty children in the Bay Area: Ibid., p. 95.
the future Nobel Prize–winner William Shockley: Joel Shurkin, Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley, Creator of the Electronic Age (London: Macmillan, 2006), pp. 12–13.
“string piano”: Hicks, Henry Cowell, pp. 110–11.
He aimed to supply data: On Terman’s postwar effort to expand his influence and on Genetic Studies of Genius, see Minton, Lewis M. Terman, pp. 95, 100, 110–15. Terman described the origins and growth of his research in Lewis M. Terman, ed., Genetic Studies of Genius, vol. 1, Mental and Physical Traits of a Thousand Gifted Children (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1925), pp. 5–17.
confident sense of specialness: Mitchell Leslie, “The Vexing Legacy of Lewis Terman,” Stanford Magazine, July–August 2000.
selection bias: Ann Hulbert, “The Prodigy Puzzle,” New York Times Magazine, November 20, 2005.
roughly fifteen hundred students: Terman, Genetic Studies of Genius, vol. 1, p. 39.
“the widespread opinion”: Ibid., p. 634.
85 percent of them had skipped grades: Ibid., p. 285.
“the majority of gifted children”: Leta S. Hollingworth, Gifted Children: Their Nature and Nurture (New York: Macmillan, 1926), pp. 136–37, 148.
By now an outspoken eugenicist: Minton, Lewis M. Terman, p. 147.
“The great problems of genius”: Terman, Genetic Studies of Genius, vol. 1, p. 641.
“The title is not meant to imply”: Burks, Jensen, and Terman, Genetic Studies of Genius, vol. 3, p. 4.
a peculiar effort to link: Catharine Morris Cox, Genetic Studies of Genius, vol. 2, The Early Mental Traits of Three Hundred Geniuses (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1926).
Eight-year-old Goethe’s literary work: Ibid., pp. 162, 217.
“persistence of motive and effort”: Ibid., pp. 217–18.
“so harnessed to the organized pursuit”: Leta S. Hollingworth, Children Above 180 IQ: Origin and Development (Yonkers-on-Hudson, N.Y.: World Book, 1942), pp. 237–38.
“rapid rise to international fame”: Burks, Jensen, and Terman, Genetic Studies of Genius, vol. 3, p. 324.
Even in music, the field best known: Ellen Winner, Gifted Children: Myths and Realities (New York: Basic Books, 1996), p. 278.
“One would hardly be justified”: Burks, Jensen, and Terman, Genetic Studies of Genius, vol. 3, p. 452.
“ ‘Mother,’ she said one day”: Lewis M. Terman and Jessie C. Fenton, “Preliminary Report on a Gifted Juvenile Author,” Journal of Applied Psychology 5 (1921): 178.
“heterosexual adjustment”: Hicks, Henry Cowell, p. 139.
“cultural defense”: Ibid., p. 141.
Terman’s twenty-five-year follow-up volume: Lewis M. Terman and Melita H. Oden, Genetic Studies of Genius, vol. 4, The Gifted Child Grows Up: Twenty-Five Years’ Follow-Up of a Superior Group (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1947), pp. 311–52.
“itself to me in a flash”: Sachs, Henry Cowell, p. 73.
“I was bristlingly modernistic”: Hicks, Henry Cowell, p. 145.
But his wide-ranging influence: Sachs, Henry Cowell, pp. 510–13.
the thirty-five-year update: Lewis M. Terman and Melita H. Oden, Genetic Studies of Genius, vol. 5, The Gifted Group at Mid-Life: Thirty-Five Years’ Follow-up of the Superior Child (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1959).
“my 1,400 gifted ‘children’ ”: Minton, Lewis M. Terman, p. 252.
“There are many intangible kinds”: Terman and Oden, Genetic Studies of Genius, vol. 5, p. 145.
William Hewlett and David Packard: Shurkin, Terman’s Kids, p. 224.
Fred also lured William Shockley: C. Stewart Gillmor, Fred Terman at Stanford: Building a Discipline, a University, and Silicon Valley (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004), p. 311.
made him a pariah: Shurkin, Broken Genius, pp. 212–25.
“the group has produced”: Terman and Oden, Genetic Studies of Genius, vol. 5, pp. 150–51.
“Two weeks ago today”: Lewis Terman to Henry Cowell, July 24, 1956, HCP, JPB 00-03, Box 15, Folder 26.
“I don’t know when I have received”: Lewis Terman to Henry Cowell, August 9, 1956, HCP, JPB 00-03, Box 15, Folder 26.
PART II DAUGHTERS AND DREAMS
Chapter 3. “A Renaissance of Creative Genius in Girlhood”
her father, Clarence: On Nathalia’s parents, see Nunnally Johnson, “Nathalia from Brooklyn,” American Mercury, September–December 1926, p. 59.
She beat time with her foot: James C. Young, “Child Poet Explains Her Lines ‘Just Come,’ ” New York Times, November 22, 1925.
“When she is writing”: “Girl Undismayed by Authorship Fuss,” New York Times, November 16, 1925.
“Nobody may come into this room”: Barbara Newhall Follett, The House Without Windows and Eepersip’s Life There (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927), p. 53. An ebook is available at https://sites.google.com/site/thehousewithoutwindows/download-books. Page numbers are from the PDF version.
“renaissance of creative genius”: “A Girl Who Is Famous in Two Continents,” Curre
nt Opinion 70, no. 5 (May 1921): 671.
“America has rushed into”: Louis Untermeyer, “Hilda and the Unconscious,” Dial, August 1920, p. 186.
decidedly not “parshial”: Daisy Ashford, The Young Visiters or, Mr. Salteena’s Plan (New York: George H. Doran, 1919), p. 25.
Prodigies thrive on receptive culture: See David Henry Feldman, Nature’s Gambit: Child Prodigies and the Development of Human Potential (New York: Teachers College Press, 1991), pp. 11–15.
“All the mother’s darlings in the country”: Squib from The Pittsburgh Press, June 2, 1926.
“drawing its substance directly”: Untermeyer, “Hilda and the Unconscious,” p. 188.
“How beautiful!”: Amy Lowell, “Preface,” in Hilda Conkling, Poems by a Little Girl (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1920), p. xii.
daughters of parents who were book lovers: Even Opal Whiteley, who claimed she was an orphan brought up by unbookish people, said her real parents had left her crucial books that—along with nature—were her teachers.
a generation reared on Peter Pan: Lisa Chaney, Hide-and-Seek with Angels: A Life of J. M. Barrie (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006), p. 230.
“off to Tahiti”: Untermeyer, “Hilda and the Unconscious,” p. 190.
her “songs”: Johnson, “Nathalia from Brooklyn,” p. 53.
He suggested she send them: Ibid.
“child would ever submit any work”: Nathalia Crane, The Janitor’s Boy and Other Poems (New York: Core Collection Books, 1974), p. 75.
“little, long-legged, bright-eyed child”: Edmund Leamy, “Nathalia Crane, Fourteen Years Later,” America, March 20, 1937, pp. 571–72.
“ ‘The History of Honey’ ”: Crane, The Janitor’s Boy, pp. 53–54.
“rhythmical, lilting production”: Ibid., p. 75.
“The Janitor’s Boy”: Ibid., p. 3.
“My candle burns at both ends”: Edna St. Vincent Millay, A Few Figs from Thistles (New York: Frank Shay, 1921), p. 9. The first edition appeared in 1920.
“lack of childishness”: Annie Wood Besant, “The Youngest of the Seers,” Theosophist Magazine 46, no. 2 (1925): 647.
“I sat down on a bumble bee”: Crane, The Janitor’s Boy, p. 27.
“The work was alternately juvenile and mature”: Louis Untermeyer, From Another World: An Autobiography (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1939), p. 290.
“nothing except that she is”: Quotations from Benét are from Crane, The Janitor’s Boy, pp. xi–xiii.
“Looking shyly out at the world”: “Seltzer Will Modify His Claims of Foreign Honor Given Nathalia Crane,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 11, 1925.
“Literary Storm Center”: Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 6, 1925.
“I am an ancient lady”: Nathalia Crane, Lava Lane and Other Poems (New York: Thomas Seltzer, 1925), p. 40.
“I am as much mystified”: “Publisher Urges Test,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 9, 1925.
“A poet is continually trying”: “Untermyer [sic] Tells Why He Believes Nathalia Has the Gift of Poesy,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 17, 1925.
“how a child could absorb so much”: “Child Poet Picks Big Words from Air,” New York Times, November 17, 1925.
Words “just come”: Young, “Child Poet Explains.”
“They always fit”: “Child Poet Picks Big Words from Air.”
“Nathalia, tell us what you know”: Johnson, “Nathalia from Brooklyn,” pp. 55–56.
“born upon the back of a menu card”: “Markham v. Prodigy,” Time, November 23, 1925.
He diagnosed Nathalia’s father: Clement Wood, “Nathalia Crane’s Poems Credited to Father in Clement Wood’s Analysis,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 22, 1925.
spare his daughter the ordeal: “Nathalia Crane’s Father Again Refuses Scientific Test of 12-Year-Old Poet,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 20, 1925.
dismissed the idea: The journalist George Currie would later write that, after having dinner with the Crane family, he concluded that Nathalia’s “vocabulary was that of a studious old granny, and that just when she was babbling something boringly puerile out would pop something amazingly grown up.” George Currie, “Passed in Review,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, January 27, 1936.
“The following is our way”: J. M. Barrie, The Little White Bird (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1913), p. 110.
“The windows were never opened”: Untermeyer, From Another World, p. 289.
the “new father” type: Ann Hulbert, Raising America: Experts, Parents, and a Century of Advice About Children (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), pp. 100–115.
“prematurely aged by lingering traces”: Johnson, “Nathalia from Brooklyn,” p. 58.
“The Cranes were at their best”: Untermeyer, From Another World, p. 289.
“I read them for hours”: Young, “Child Poet Explains.”
“this gifted girl”: “Girl Poet Receives Scholarship Here,” New York Times, September 27, 1925.
“moulded by well-meaning teachers”: Untermeyer, “Hilda and the Unconscious,” p. 190.
Nathalia responded like a pro: Nathalia Crane to Louis Untermeyer, September 22, 1925, Louis Untermeyer Papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark.
“In the darkness who would answer”: Crane, The Janitor’s Boy, p. 17.
“Through the wizardry”: Nathalia Crane, The Sunken Garden (New York: Thomas Seltzer, 1926), p. 11.
a Kiplingesque poem: “Miss Crane’s Poem on Lindbergh Wins,” New York Times, October 25, 1927.
she had written six books: By then, she was the author of The Janitor’s Boy, Lava Lane, The Singing Crow (1926), Venus Invisible (1928), and two novels, The Sunken Garden (1926) and An Alien from Heaven (1929).
Though nonplussed by her “phantasmagoria”: Untermeyer, From Another World, p. 296.
In Nathalia’s strange poem: Nathalia Crane, Pocahontas (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1930), pp. 20–21.
Another scholarship: Leamy, “Nathalia Crane, Fourteen Years Later,” p. 572.
“attention…toward the college entrance exam”: Nathalia Crane, speech at convention of Camp Fire Girls, January 2, 1936.
She quietly kept up: “Too Much Sweetness Kills Poems, Says Nathalia Crane,” Washington Post, August 13, 1934. “I work at them more now,” she said of her poems, “and I do a great deal more revising and correcting than I used to.”
“Nathalia at 22”: “Nathalia Crane Mourns Passing of Boro Landmarks,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, January 26, 1936.
“by turns unusually graceful”: From Louis Untermeyer’s foreword to Nathalia Crane, Swear by the Night (New York: Random House, 1936), p. 5.
“clairvoyant illumination”: Ibid.
“It may be an erratic genius”: Ibid.
Nathalia had puzzled Untermeyer: Untermeyer, From Another World, p. 298.
The reviews of one: See Paul H. Oehser, “The Minor Muse,” Washington Post, December 2, 1939.
a long poem, set partly in hell: Nathalia Crane, The Death of Poetry: A Dramatic Poem in Two Parts: And Other Poems (New York: Monostine Press, 1942).
“reverence for life”: Email message to Kathie Pitman, April 20, 2002.
“Remember you’re mine”: Helen Follett, August 23, 1914, Helen Follett Papers (hereafter HFP), Box 7, Folder 4, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Library.
a storybook about birds: Helen Follett, November 2, 1914, HFP, Box 7, Folder 4.
“Only—one does not know”: [Roy] Wilson Follett, August 11, 1914, HFP, Box 7, Folder 4.
“war, I suppose, has made us”: Helen Follett, September 1917, HFP, Box 7, Folder 4.
“caught on to the reading game”: Helen Follett, November 1917, HFP, Box 7, Folder 4.
Each claimed credit: Helen Follett, “Education via the Typewriter,” Parents’ Magazine, September 1932, p. 22; Wilson Follett, “Schooling Without the School,” Harper’s, October 1919, p. 701.
“piece of machinery”: H. Follett, “Education via the T
ypewriter,” p. 54.
her first typewritten letter: Ibid., pp. 22–23. See also W. Follett, “Schooling Without the School,” p. 701.
“educational scheme…as practically sound”: H. Follett, “Education via the Typewriter,” p. 54.
“Schooling Without the School”: Wilson quotes are from W. Follett, “Schooling Without the School,” p. 700.
“no shilly-shally affair”: Helen Thomas Follett, “Education à la Carte,” Pictorial Review, July 1929, p. 2.
“All the doors and windows”: H. Follett, “Education via the Typewriter,” p. 24.
“to be a bore to me”: H. Follett, “Education à la Carte,” p. 2.
“Let’s say something in words”: Helen Follett, p. 10 of typed manuscript in Barbara Newhall Follett Papers (hereafter BNFP), Box 5, Folder 1, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Library.
“the consuming passion”: W. Follett, “Schooling Without the School,” p. 704.
“As for me”: Helen Follett, p. 10 of typed manuscript in BNFP, Box 5, Folder 1.
Holdo Teodor Oberg: Stefan Cooke, ed., Barbara Newhall Follett: A Life in Letters (Farksolia, 2015), p. 12.
“Mention the exquisiteness”: Homeschooling notes from January 9, 1923, BNFP, Box 6, Folder 4.
“masses of stuff”: Barbara Newhall Follett, “In Defense of Butterflies,” Horn Book Magazine 9, no. 1 (February 1933).
evidence of ample reading: W. Follett, “Schooling Without the School,” p. 703, and B. N. Follett, The House Without Windows, p. 55.
wrote a magical fantasy: For an excerpt from Barbara’s story, see Stefan Cooke, “About Barbara Follett,” Farksolia, February 15, 2012, http://www.farksolia.org/about-barbara-follett/.
“little battered typewriter”: B. N. Follett, “In Defense of Butterflies.”
proper copyediting and proofreading style: B. N. Follett, The House Without Windows, p. 54.
When his students were reading Dickens: Harold Grier McCurdy, ed., in collaboration with Helen Follett, Barbara: The Unconscious Autobiography of a Child Genius (Durham: University of North Carolina Press, 1966), p. x.
“my native element”: Barbara Follett to Edward Porter St. John, July 3, 1925, BNFP, Box 1, Folder 4.