The Miracle & Tragedy of the Dionne Quintuplets
Page 29
“They can do that in Russia” and “Do you think the quintuplets could have lived”: “ ‘God Picked Us,’ Says Dionne; ‘He Will Do What Is Right,’ ” Toronto Star, March 1, 1935.
“I know that we are not the smartest”: “Dionnes Revise View of Hepburn Position,” North Bay Nugget, March 6, 1935.
“Special Guardian” and “natural guardian”: The Dionne Quintuplet Guardianship Act, 1935.
“to go back to my farm” and “All we want is a chance”: “Dionnes Oppose State Control of Babes,” North Bay Nugget, March 11, 1935.
“to prevent professional, quick-talking exploiters,” “We don’t want them exhibited,” and “You must protect the father and mother”: “Dionne Bill Moves On; Price Fears Parents Bereft of Children,” Toronto Star, March 12, 1935.
“I never saw such drastic legislation”: “Dionne Guardians’ Bill Draws Attack,” Indianapolis Star, March 15, 1935.
“Extreme cases require extreme measures”: “Dionne Bill Moves On.”
“Who would like to have their children taken away” and “If the bill goes through”: “Quintuplets’ Mother Plans Direct Action.”
“hateful”: Leroux diary, March 3, 1935, and mid-March, 1935 (precise date not noted by Leroux).
“I often wonder”: Louise de Kiriline, “Should They Have a State-Mother?” Chatelaine, June 1936.
“bitter controversy”: “Quintuplets’ Mother Plans Direct Action.”
“The Dionne quintuplets nearly caused a riot”: “Quintuplets’ Mother Plans Direct Action.”
“What a mess” and “The trouble is”: Leroux diary, March 18, 1935. (Note: Nurse Leroux’s dating of this entry is almost certainly mistaken, as the North Bay Nugget reported the Dionnes’ move to the hospital on March 15.)
“eloquence”: Britt Jessup, interviewed in The Dionne Quintuplets.
CHAPTER 15
“extraordinarily adequate”: Hunt, The Little Doc, 283.
“You know it is only just good luck”: de Kiriline, “I Nursed the Quintuplets: Part Two.”
“the continent’s best known baby doctor”: The Dionne Quintuplets, 1978.
“To the whole world”: William Blatz, The Five Sisters: A Study in Child Psychology (London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd.: 1939), 187–188.
“bickering or misunderstanding,” “peevish and petulant,” and “Now there is the strictest rule”: Lotta Dempsey, “What Will Become of Them?” Chatelaine, June 1937.
“not only the physical hygiene”: Allan Roy Dafoe, “Warns Against Picking Babies Up Needlessly,” Toronto Star, February 9, 1935.
“It is necessary to control even your voice”: Marguerite Mooers Marshall, “The Hidden Lives of the Quintuplets,” Liberty, January 4, 1936.
“The babies were never picked up”: de Kiriline, “I Nursed the Quintuplets: Part Two.”
“a kind of gold standard”: Eunice Fuller Barnard, “Science Designs a Life for the Dionnes,” New York Times Magazine, October 10, 1937.
“There, surrounded by a retinue”: Barnard, “Science Designs a Life for the Dionnes.”
“that the care and effort”: Blatz, The Five Sisters, 187.
“Then all at once the enormity”: Louise de Kiriline, “I Nursed the Quintuplets: Part Seven,” Chatelaine, January 1937.
“The work was made easy”: “Rendons les Dionelles à leur mère,” La Patrie, February 15, 1936.
“The hospital is a sanitary glass cage”: Lee B. Hartshorn, “Quintuplets Entertain,” The Nation, June 19, 1935.
“We had to be cautious”: Cecile Michaud in Berton, The Dionne Years, 116.
“no longer friendly”: Griffiths, “Mrs. Dionne, Troubled and Worried.”
“Don’t you come up those steps”: “Refused Mother of Quintuplets View of Babies,” Ottawa Journal, May 25, 1935.
“I am glad that my babies”: Griffiths, “Mrs. Dionne, Troubled and Worried.”
“brusque drama”: “Refused Mother of Quintuplets View of Babies.”
“They felt that they had been ousted”: Berton, The Dionne Years, 65.
“She is very excitable”: Leroux diary, June 1, 1935.
“I made a conscious effort” and “Mrs. Dionne is a charming woman”: “Rendons les Dionelles à leur mère.”
CHAPTER 16
“As a burnt child dreads the fire”: Lillian Barker, “Dionne Wins Control over His Five Girls,” America, October 25, 1941.
“They tell lies about us”: Evelyn Seeley, “Green-Eyed Monster Rises over Quintuplets’ Cradles,” Pittsburgh Press, May 24, 1935.
“unspoiled, clean-bred stock”: “Quintuplets’ Life Chances Better Far from Cities,” Toronto Star, January 8, 1935.
“primitive”: Marguerite Mooers Marshall, “How the Dionne Quintuplets Are Getting Rich,” Liberty, September 28, 1935.
“ramshackle”: Stephen Slesinger, The Story of the Dionne Quintuplets (Racine, WI: Whitman: 1935), 6; Roy Tash, “Shooting the ‘Quints,’ ” The International Photographer, December 1935.
“dingy”: Marshall, “How the Dionne Quintuplets Are Getting Rich.”
“the miserable Dionne shack”: De Kruif, 285.
“unpretentious”: Slesinger, 6.
“modest”: “The Quins: The Story of the Famous ‘Dionne Quintuplets,’ ” Pathé, 1934.
“decidedly handsome” and “A kitchen apron”: Barker, The Quints Have a Family, 33.
“From the very day the quints were born”: Barker, The Quints Have a Family, 34.
“printed unkind and untrue things” and “Whether you let me”: Barker, The Quints Have a Family, 36.
Most Famous of Mothers One of the Unhappiest: Lillian Barker, “Most Famous of Mothers One of the Unhappiest,” New York Daily News, May 26, 1935.
“Tell him, tell him”: Gibbs, “Mrs. Dionne Retains Faith in Births.”
“emphatic way” and “lightning-quick intelligence”: Barker, “Most Famous of Mothers One of the Unhappiest,” New York Daily News, May 26, 1935.
“daily torture” and “Separation by death”: Lillian Barker, “My Life and Motherhood,” Des Moines Register, September 8, 1935.
“more and more a crucifixion”: Barker, “Most Famous of Mothers One of the Unhappiest,” New York Daily News, May 26, 1935.
“How could I…present myself”: Barker, “My Life and Motherhood”; see also “Irate Dionne May Not Go to Quints’ Party,” Detroit Times, May 26, 1935, Lucile F. Nobach scrapbook, North Bay Public Library.
“To every one who has ever done”: Barker, “My Life and Motherhood.”
“So many people don’t understand” and “Don’t, I beg you”: Barker, “Most Famous of Mothers One of the Unhappiest,” New York Daily News, May 26, 1935.
“perfectly disgusting,” “almost unthinkable,” and “Baby Lorraine might have lived”: “Should Parents of Dionne Quintuplets or Canadian Government Rear Famous Tots?” Des Moines Register, September 1, 1935.
“I’m sure I could have raised them all”: Marshall Smith, “Her Quintuplets Starved to Death 40 Years Ago!” El Paso Herald-Post, November 26, 1935.
CHAPTER 17
“the happiest, least complicated years of our lives” and “We had everything we wanted”: Brough, We Were Five, 55.
“a compendium of Lilliput luxury”: Eunice Fuller Barnard, “Home or Science? The Dionnes’ Case Debated,” New York Times Magazine, October 17, 1937.
“a certain gladness”: Brough, We Were Five, 70.
“The overwhelming memory”: Brough, We Were Five, 58.
“Above all else, we had each other” and “We were a club, a society”: Brough, We Were Five, 56.
“We had bicycles, we had dolls”: Annemarie O’Neil and Natasha Sotynoff, “Sisters Triumphant,” People, May
4, 1998.
“They were not supposed to”: Cécile Dionne, interviewed in Miracle Babies.
“But I do remember”: Annette Dionne, interviewed in Miracle Babies.
“We knew that there was one visitor”: Brough, We Were Five, 55.
“A normal child, a mother presses to her breast”: Ellie Tesher, “We’ll Keep on Fighting, Dionne Sisters Promise,” Toronto Star, March 2, 1998.
“It was not possible,” “They were always there,” and “a kind of composite mother”: Brough, We Were Five, 55.
“To a child, a mother is only”: “Dionne Quins Face Third Birthday as Miraculously Normal Children,” Winnipeg Tribune, May 28, 1937.
“Always, those babies clamoured”: “Tragedy of the Young Dionnes,” Maclean’s, January 1, 2000; see also “Note by D.A.M. during week of January 24, 1937,” Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, W. E. Blatz Collection, Box 36.
“In the nursery itself”: Doreen Chaput, interviewed in The Dionne Quintuplets.
“We didn’t know at that time”: Tesher, The Dionnes, 109.
CHAPTER 18
“the baby show”: Allan Roy Dafoe, “Butcher’s Meat Basket Quintuplets’ First Crib,” Toronto Star, January 10, 1935.
“Visitors still coming by the hundreds”: Leroux diary, April 2, 1935.
“The babes seem to feel the excitement”: Leroux diary, April 8, 1935.
“It wasn’t a public you wanted to turn away”: Dorothy Millichamp, interviewed in Full Circle: The Untold Story of the Dionne Quintuplets, BBC1, 1998.
“We are showing the babies”: Leroux diary, June 15, 1935.
“The babes clap and coo”: Leroux diary, June 11, 1935.
“snaps and crackles”: Jane Williams, “Dollars Flow In but Papa Dionne Still Angry About Famed Quintuplets,” Ithaca News-Journal, September 16, 1936; see also Brough, We Were Five, 48.
“Not only did those babies ‘play up’ ”: Yvonne Leroux, “The Five Unluckiest Children,” handwritten draft circa 1939, Leroux-Davis fonds, Archives of Ontario, microfilm reel 3650. (Note: a condensed version of this essay was published in Liberty magazine under the byline of Marguerite Mooers Marshall on January 27, 1940.)
“When you know people have driven”: Allan Roy Dafoe, “The Quintuplets: Trick Screen to Hide Visitors,” Pittsburgh Press, April 7, 1936.
“Sometimes it seems to me”: “Come On, Let’s Sing,” Colgate-Palmolive-Peet CBS radio broadcast, December 23, 1936, Leroux-Davis fonds, Archives of Ontario, microfilm reel 3650.
“eighth wonder of the world”: de Kiriline, “Should They Have a State-Mother?”
“inspired immediate confidence”: “Corbeil Quintuplets Reach 108 Hour Age; Improving Rapidly,” North Bay Nugget, June 1, 1934.
“How will they be prepared”: Alfred Adler, “Separate the Quins!” Cosmopolitan, March 1936.
“In city after city”: “ ‘Separating Quints’ Reacts on Adler,” Toronto Globe, February 29, 1936.
“Why not divide Dr. Adler”: “Humorist vs. Psychologist,” Marion (Iowa) Sentinel, August 13, 1936.
“He was sore”: Berton, The Dionne Years, 126.
“But to use them as a dumping place”: de Kiriline, “Should They Have a State-Mother?”
“Whether they like it or not”: Chester Matthews, “Will They Be Radio Stars Tomorrow?” Radio Guide, April 18, 1936.
“We have found”: “Expropriating Dionne Land Due to Failure to Agree, Says Croll,” Toronto Star, February 10, 1936.
“These children are the treasures of the world”: “Providing Ample Playground for Dionne Quintuplets,” Toronto Star, February 15, 1936.
“Those babies have a right”: “Taking Dionnes ‘Out Of Goldfish Bowl’ Says Croll,” Toronto Star, February 10, 1936.
“blurred silent shadows”: Henry Albert Phillips, “The Quints,” Woman’s World, November 1936.
“This at first seems like cold-blooded exploitation”: Blatz, The Five Sisters, 61.
“One cannot help but feel”: William Blatz et al., “Routine Training,” in Collected Studies on the Dionne Quintuplets (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1937), 8.
CHAPTER 19
“Couldn’t even get across the road”: Callander gas station attendant, interviewed in The Dionne Quintuplets.
“A line, orderly and quiet”: Willis Thornton, “Let’s Visit the Quintuplets,” Pittsburgh Press, August 24, 1936.
“Already legend has endowed these pebbles”: Betty M. Snyder, “In Canada You See the Quints,” Baltimore Sun, September 20, 1936.
“passion pebbles”: Bruce McLeod, “My Neighbors the Quints,” Maclean’s, December 1950.
“Up and down the restless line”: Snyder, “In Canada You See the Quints.”
“seemingly filled with a common sense of awe”: Phillips, “The Quints.”
“It was like viewing a litter of kittens”: Mrs. Pat Thompson, interviewed by Barbara Sears, Pierre Berton fonds, McMaster University.
“breathtaking”: Virginia Irwin, “Getting Famous with Dionne Quintuplets,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 17, 1936.
“Right along there, ladies”: Snyder, “In Canada You See the Quints.”
“Take a last look now, and hop it!” “I thank my Almighty God,” “We drove 590 miles to see this,” and “Long before you cover the 21/2 miles”: Thornton, “Let’s Visit the Quintuplets.”
“Quinstore”: “Quinstore Ready to Serve Visitors,” North Bay Nugget, May 27, 1935.
“long and patient”: Wolfert, “Eternally Drawn Shades.”
“He has been the butt of yokel humor” and “Leave your car for a minute”: Snyder, “In Canada You See the Quints.”
“sprang up like dandelions”: Tesher, The Dionnes, 50.
“We had a big house”: Jack Adams, interviewed in Miracle Babies.
“Everything here was new”: Thornton, “Let’s Visit the Quintuplets.”
“The Dafoe Hospital, the Dionne homestead”: Snyder, “In Canada You See the Quints.”
“People are coming in here”: “Quintuplets at Play,” Pathe News, 1936.
CHAPTER 20
“the famed quintuplets go about their daily routine”: Thornton, “Let’s Visit the Quintuplets.”
“Of course we knew”: Brough, We Were Five, 62.
“I remember that we laughed”: Annette Dionne, interviewed in Miracle Babies.
“Those one-way screens were, in truth, two-way screens”: Brough, We Were Five, 12.
“Most of the time we yelled and shrieked”: Brough, We Were Five, 61.
“the children would scamper through the gates”: Blatz, The Five Sisters, 64.
“They couldn’t see them”: Berton, The Dionne Years, 163.
“But most of the time”: Blatz, The Five Sisters, 61.
“To the observer at first glance”: Claire Tremblay and Jacqueline Noël letter of March 1938. (https://crccf.uottawa.ca/passeport/IV/IVB1d/IVB1d01-3-4-1.html).
“uncooperative”: Jocelyn Moyer Raymond, The Nursery World of Dr. Blatz (Toronto: University of Toronto Press: 1991), 139.
“almost pathological”: Raymond, 140.
“the dirty man”: Jacqueline Noël diary, July 25, 1938, Bibliothéque et Archives Nationales du Québec, Jacqueline Noël Collection, P574.
“If you go near him, Little Jesus will cry”: Berton, The Dionne Years, 171.
“Daily the children run to the adult”: Tremblay and Noël letter of March 1938.
“the thrill of my childhood,” “awestruck,” “stiff, sterile nurses,” and “I had the eerie feeling”: Gladys Bailey, interviewed by Barbara Sears, April 14, 1976, Pierre Berton fonds, McMaster University.
“As the Venetian blinds are raised”: Barnard, “Science Designs a Lif
e for the Dionnes.”
“only as long as they are unconscious of it”: Phyllis Griffiths, “Showing of Quints May Be Ended This Year,” Los Angeles Times, May 20, 1938.
“The children’s health and education come first”: Phyllis Griffiths, “Old Ex-Judge Guards Quints,” Los Angeles Times, May 23, 1938.
CHAPTER 21
“human nuggets”: Brough, We Were Five, 64.
“The Dionne Quintuplet fund”: David Croll radio broadcast in Miracle Babies.
“a case of jitters and general irritability” and “Life in a ‘goldfish bowl’ ”: “Life in ‘Goldfish Bowl’ Too Much for Dionnes; Colds Are Aggravated by Bad Case of Jitters,” Pittsburgh Press, August 13, 1937.
“We poked our heads through cardboard Valentine hearts”: Brough, We Were Five, 64.
“Picture-taking sessions were as good as parties”: Brough, We Were Five, 65.
“For publicity’s sake we were called on”: James Brough, “Dear Quints…With Love from the Quints,” McCall’s, February 1962.
“Every small event, they needed a picture”: Yvonne Dionne, interviewed in Full Circle.
“The gifts were all empty boxes”: Cécile Dionne, interviewed in Miracle Babies.
“We were obliged to do so many things”: Cécile Dionne, interviewed in Full Circle.
“fool antics” and “active as a bunch of crickets”: Tash, “Shooting the ‘Quints.’ ”
“Not even for all the millions”: Fred Davis,“My Quintuplet Scrapbook,” Pittsburgh Press, February 5, 1936.
“We’ve been having grand days”: Letter of Nora Rousselle, March 10, 1938, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, W. E. Blatz Collection, Box 35.
“Moving picture staff most cooperative” and “amusing, coaxing, directing and interfering”: Memorandum to Dionne Staff, September 1936, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, W. E. Blatz Collection, Box 36.
“They can’t live the normal life of ordinary individuals”: Dempsey, “What Will Become of Them?”