In the Great Green Room

by Amy Gary

  * * *

  When they returned to New York, Margaret made preparations for France and life on a boat. She met with her publishers, picked up checks, and dropped off manuscripts. Lucille Ogle at Golden let her see Garth Williams’s art for the book that had come from watching Pebble try to save the shrimper’s sinking ship, The Sailor Dog. It was to be Margaret’s wedding present to him.

  Margaret loved Garth’s illustrations but asked that the name “Kitty” etched on the boat in the story be replaced with the name of Pebble’s boat, Mandalay. Margaret also turned in a revision of a book that was to accompany a clever song by Rube Goldberg entitled Willie the Whistling Giraffe. Rosemary Clooney, a popular singer whose songs were frequently heard on radio and jukeboxes, agreed to sing Willie. Margaret had written several songs she was sure would make popular adult records if someone like Clooney were to sign on to perform them. She turned over a batch of songs to a composer she met through ASCAP, including one she was particularly fond of called “I Like People” that Golden planned to package with a book. She knew that one had jukebox potential.

  At Harriet’s office, Margaret delivered signed contracts and copyright registrations for her latest songs. The will Harriet had prepared for her was ready to sign, although she had to give Margaret the disappointing news that the United States Coast Guard had turned down her request to be buried at sea. The Coast Guard had sent a mocking letter, declaring that this was the first time they received such a request, which couldn’t be granted because it was against public policy. They suggested Harriet tell her client to make other arrangements.

  While in France, Margaret had plans to meet with the beloved French composer of the Babar musical, Jacques Prévert. She hoped to compare notes on writing music and get his advice on writing for the stage and screen, a new frontier for her. She had corresponded with Jacques the year before when they were part of a publishing experiment. They both wrote books based on the same photographs by Osa Johnson, a famous wildlife photographer, which had been published simultaneously in French and English, but the stories they created to go along with the photographs were completely different.

  * * *

  Margaret and Pebble planned to sail where they wished without a final destination or timetable, which made packing a challenge. She bought some clothes for France at Bloomingdale’s and ordered six months of her prescriptions from the apothecary. At last, she was ready to set sail.

  Dot and her children accompanied Pebble to the dock to see Margaret and Crispian off. They boarded the ocean liner with Margaret and walked up and down the ship’s long hallways in search of Margaret’s cabin. When they finally found it, a steward explained he would take Crispian each morning and evening for a walk around the boat and then feed him on the deck. Margaret told Laurel he was a special dog. After all, he had his own book, and they had to treat him like a celebrity.

  As tugs pulled her boat away from the docks she knew so well, Margaret’s friends and lover waved good-bye to her from the docks. There were tears in her eyes. Her life would never be the same. She confessed to Dot that she didn’t think she would ever return to her old life in New York. After being on Cumberland with Pebble, New York City felt like a phone booth.

  * * *

  Although some of Margaret’s friends questioned the wisdom of taking Crispian to France, Margaret knew it was the right place for him. Walter Varney, the manager of the château where she would stay, was the one other person in the world who loved the cantankerous Crispian as much as she did. He would take great care of her dog. He had once had his own Kerry blue, and he knew how obstinate that breed of dog could be. On the boat during the way over, Margaret trained Crispian to understand basic commands in French. She had no idea how long she would be gone on her extended honeymoon, and she wanted him to know the language.

  Her hotel, Château Barlow, had once been a castle. It sat atop a hill in the ancient village Èze and had one of the best views of the French Riviera. The owner, Samuel Barlow, was a music producer. He had visited this hillside town and had fallen in love with the crumbling old castle. He turned the ancient building into a rambling hotel that became a mecca for musicians, writers, painters, and actors—one never knew who might be dining or staying at his famous hot spot.

  The twists and turns of the hallways and the multitude of windows reminded Margaret of her book The House of a Hundred Windows, which featured a cat peering out from the many different windows of a castle onto famous paintings. Margaret picnicked on the hillside, staring down at the Côte d’Azur that sparkled below. She was eager to join Pebble every time she looked at the sea. She understood why he said the sea was uncomplicated. Unlike land, you knew your adversaries, and it was always a clean fight.

  * * *

  One night at a dinner with Walter and his friends, Margaret was invited to go sightseeing in Italy and to stay at a palace in Florence. She was short on funds, but another dinner companion offered to loan her the money needed for the excursion. She traveled to the palace, located along the Arno River. She wrote to her sister that Crispian chased cats all around the palace and that she was very near the pension where they had stayed with their mother before going to Brillantmont.

  On the train back to France, Margaret’s side began to ache. She thought it might be an ovarian cyst, something she had experienced before. The pain usually passed after a day, but by the time she arrived at the station in Èze, her pain was unbearable. Instead of returning to the Château Barlow, she went directly to a hospital in Nice.

  She was examined and told to prepare for a possible surgery. Symptoms of an ovarian cyst and appendicitis are similar, and the doctor wanted to wait a day to see if her pain would pass. If not, he would operate in the morning. Margaret hurriedly put things in order. Her checking account was overdrawn, and she had no money to pay the hospital or the man who had loaned her money to travel to Italy. She asked Walter to send her father a telegram asking him to deposit money in her checking account. Bruce Brown, however, didn’t like or trust Walter. He told Margaret he thought the man was a crook. Besides, Bruce also was quite sick—far too ill to go to the bank. Margaret cabled Roberta asking for the money, and her sister sent it right away.

  Margaret wrote a codicil to her will naming Pebble her closest of kin and dashed off letters and telegrams to editors and friends. Dr. Daviau performed surgery the next day and found that a cyst was not the issue but that Margaret’s appendix was about to burst. Once it was removed, he placed it in a jar that Margaret kept by her hospital bed. He ordered her to lie still while she recovered.

  Margaret knew that staying in bed after surgery wasn’t recommended. Blood clots could form if a patient didn’t get up and move around. She questioned the doctor’s orders and called her physician in America to ask him to intervene. He tried, but to no avail. Even after two more calls to her doctor in the States, the order for absolute bed rest remained. Margaret was irritated but tried to be as friendly as possible with the doctor and hospital staff. Dr. Daviau brought her wine from his own cellar. She also charmed the stereotypically strict nurses to let Crispian in for a short visit. Walter was attentive to her every need and brought her meals from local restaurants. He moved her bed to an open window so she could watch a parade passing by.

  The hospital’s nurses were nuns, and their caps with wings extending from either side reminded Margaret of Babar’s adventures. She spent her recuperation time writing letters and working on manuscripts. This health scare had made her all the more eager to begin her new life with Pebble as soon as possible. She dispatched a postcard to Monty Hare, telling him about her appendectomy; other than that, she said, she was having a marvelous time and doing well. In a postscript, she wrote that she was having two boxes of Michael’s papers delivered to him.

  On the morning of November 13, Walter arrived at the hospital early in the morning to help move Margaret to his hotel. She would complete her recuperation at Château Barlow and then meet Pebble in Panama. He had chosen a lo
cation for their wedding on the island of Saint Thomas and set sail to meet her plane.

  The nurse came in to prepare Margaret for release and asked how she felt. Margaret pulled back her bedcovers and kicked her leg up can-can style and said, “Grand!” But then, she immediately collapsed. A blood clot that had formed in her leg had broken free and cut off the blood supply to her brain. To the nurse and Walter, it appeared as if Margaret had suffered a stroke. She regained consciousness briefly, but her words were unintelligible.

  Walter dashed off telegrams to Pebble and Margaret’s father at 8:15 A.M. to let them know Margaret was seriously ill. He told them she had suffered an embolism but promised to send them an update the next day. Two hours later, though, he issued another telegram to tell them Margaret had died.

  The business of an American dying overseas was handled by the American Consulate. Their crisply written telegrams and letters were practiced in sympathy, formality, and efficiency. Walter Varney was willing to accompany Margaret’s remains back to the United States, but funds would have to be wired. The codicil to the will Margaret had written almost two weeks before requested that she be cremated and her ashes spread at her beloved Only House.

  The thank-you letter Margaret had written to Roberta for sending her money arrived a few days later. Margaret had promised to pay her sister back in December. She had joked that she was grateful for the money because it meant that if the surgery didn’t go well, at least she wouldn’t die a pauper.

  * * *

  Pebble arrived in port expecting to meet Margaret. Instead, he was handed Walter Varney’s telegrams. For almost a month, he stayed on his boat, deep in mourning. He didn’t have the heart to go on with his journey, so he returned to New York. He moved into Cobble Court with plans to stay there until the lease expired.

  Dot took care of shuttering the Only House. When Margaret’s possessions arrived from the American Consulate in France, it was Pebble’s mother who sorted Margaret’s clothes and forwarded the gifts Margaret had bought for her friends. On Margaret’s stationery, Pebble wrote a letter to her father, telling him how honored he felt to have loved her and to have been loved by her. He said that Margaret had been a rare individual, the kind that comes along only once in a long, long time. She would never really die because she lived on in him, and through her books, she would live on in many, many other people. The next year, Pebble left Cobble Court. He returned to his boat and the uncomplicated sea.

  Epilogue

  After Margaret’s death, Bruce Bliven joined a group of Margaret’s friends for a dinner to memorialize her. Her Birdbrain Club, editors from different publishing houses, and beagling club members gathered, but when the dinner was over, Bruce knew they would never gather together again. Margaret had been the architect of the web that connected them; without her, there was little to keep them united.

  * * *

  Roberta and Bruce had been named executors of her estate and were suddenly thrown into the middle of Margaret’s copious business affairs. Deadlines and decisions were heaped upon them. Some of Margaret’s collaborators finished songs and books of hers that were in progress, but most of her projects were stalled by the lengthy probate of Margaret’s will. It took almost five years for the courts to sort out the contracts, copyrights, and value of Margaret’s publications. At that time, Goodnight Moon was earning very little per year, so they estimated the value of the book to be $200, and it would be another twenty years before the New York Public Library would add the book to its stacks. At last tally, the book has sold more than forty-eight million copies.

  * * *

  The clipping service Margaret had hired years before forwarded her obituary from dozens of newspapers to Roberta. They were stamped as “No Charge” along with the date. Because Margaret had been Michael’s literary executor, Roberta and Bruce had to settle Michael’s publishing affairs, as well. When boxes of Michael’s manuscripts were delivered to Roberta, she contacted Diana for help. Diana told her to burn it all—there was nothing worth keeping.

  * * *

  Margaret’s prediction that Diana’s lack of self-confidence would derail her acting career was correct. Diana’s candid autobiography, Too Much, Too Soon, detailed her troubled marriages, addiction to alcohol, and life in the shadow of a domineering mother. Diana never received another film role after her mother died, but her autobiography was made into a movie and was said to be the inspiration, in great measure, for The Bad and the Beautiful, a blockbuster that won five Oscars. Diana died at the age of thirty-eight from an overdose of alcohol and Seconal. The week before she died, she made news when four policemen removed her from the audience of a Broadway theater for being drunk and unruly.

  * * *

  Margaret’s relationship with Bill Scott had never fully mended. Other than the single manuscript she was required to give him in the settlement, she never turned over another story to him. Bill tried to arrange a scholarship in her memory, but that never came to pass.

  * * *

  The illustrators and authors Margaret worked most closely with all had long, successful careers in children’s books. Clem and Edith “Posey” Hurd collaborated on more than seventy-five books. The ones they worked on with Margaret remain their bestselling publications. Their son, Thacher, is a bestselling and award-winning illustrator. He had the idea to put his father’s art for Goodnight Moon onto a poster and sell it. That idea eventually turned into A Peaceable Kingdom, a successful company dedicated to placing independent artists’ work onto a variety of paper products.

  * * *

  Garth Williams went on to illustrate Charlotte’s Web and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series. His name, like Margaret’s, was not as well known as his work.

  * * *

  Dot lost her best friend, but it felt like she lost her sister. She kept Margaret’s spirit alive in stories she told her children. Her daughter, Laurel, distinctly remembers seeing the fairy under the toadstool, dancing the hula with Margaret while wearing a grass skirt fashioned from kelp, and how her godmother declared a handful of champagne corks to be boats as she tossed them into Laurel’s bathwater. For many years, Laurel had no idea that her godmother was famous or that her real name was Margaret—she only knew her as Goldie. Unlike the millions of children who can only imagine themselves to be the bunny in Goodnight Moon, Laurel knows the comfort of scrambling up Margaret’s leopard-skin step stool onto that big bed with its red comforter. With awe, she recalls the view of the moon from Margaret’s wall of windows and how it seemed to hang in the sky only for her.

  Dot wanted to write a biography of Margaret and contacted all the members of the Birdbrain Club to collect their memories of Margaret. The members of that group were loyal to Margaret to the end. When journalists and potential biographers began asking questions about Margaret’s relationship with Michael, they collectively agreed to lie. It would be many years before Bruce Bliven broke his silence and shared the truth of his friend’s love life. Dot never found a publisher for her biography.

  * * *

  When a photograph of Lucy Gaston lounging on a yacht in the Caribbean was published in a 1949 issue of Life magazine, Bill Gaston penned a clever letter to the editor exclaiming his gratitude that his soon-to-be former wife was not suffering as much as her divorce lawyers declared. He kept that letter pinned to his wall the rest of his life. After Margaret died, he begged Leonard Weisgard to sell him the portrait he had painted of Margaret. Leonard refused.

  * * *

  Margaret’s estate faced additional problems when Walter Varney returned to the United States the next year with Crispian. The Kerry blue had become very aggressive after Margaret’s death and was attacking other dogs. He also bit one man’s leg and another’s hand. Margaret’s will stipulated that Roberta would inherit certain royalties if she agreed to care for Crispian, which Walter knew. After Margaret died, he asked Roberta if he could keep Crispian, and she agreed, unaware of the stipulation in Margaret’s will. Having g
ained custody of Crispian, Walter filed a claim to receive the publication rights originally granted to Roberta. The court refused his request. Roberta and Bruce Bliven believed Walter to be the source of a rumor circulating that Margaret’s copyrights would be contested, which was unfounded, but the damage had been done. Publishers thought it too risky to purchase Margaret’s remaining work. As the probate of the will dragged on, even the pending contracts for manuscripts were canceled. Many of Margaret’s publishers believed it impolite to edit her work without her consent. At a loss for what else to do, Roberta neatly packed the hundreds of onionskin manuscripts into a sturdy trunk and stored them away.

  * * *

  Cobble Court still stands today in Greenwich Village. In the late 1960s when the owner decided to demolish the house to build a nursing home, the current tenants couldn’t bear to see it disappear, so they paid to have it relocated to a vacant lot on Charles Street. A flatbed truck transported the house to the quaint little street on the West Side of the city. The chimney of the fireplace that inspired the one in Goodnight Moon still crowns the quirky little house, and the same cobblestone dots the entry.

  * * *

  Jessica Dunham, Margaret’s Bank Street colleague and friend, was inspired to gather evidence of the amazing mind that lay behind Margaret’s books before that brilliance was forgotten. With the assistance of Dot and Roberta, Jessica wrote to all of Margaret’s publishers and collaborators, asking them to submit anything of Margaret’s they had to the public library in Westerly, Rhode Island. Margaret and Jessica had spent time together picnicking around the picturesque little town, and Jessica thought Margaret would have liked the idea that her work had found a permanent home at the elegant Carnegie library. Editors, illustrators, and publishers willingly complied, turning over dummy books, manuscripts, and a smattering of letters to be housed at the library.

  The collection of materials and a full set of Margaret’s publications was dedicated at Westerly in 1957. Louise Seaman Bechtel, who had worked with Margaret at Bank Street, spoke on behalf of many of Margaret’s colleagues, who had contributed letters, manuscripts, and their own memories of their beloved friend. In her remarks, Louise said she was not bringing a formal wreath of roses in honor of Margaret; such a thing would not have been representative of the woman she had known. For Margaret, only wild roses would do because although she had been cultured, she had also been a savage, untamed spirit.