The Mansion of Happiness

by Jill Lepore

  6. Phyllis Dain, The New York Public Library: A History of Its Founding and Early Years (New York: New York Public Library, 1972), 300–305.

  7. Masten, “The Central Children’s Room,” 551. George Hutchinson, In Search of Nella Larsen: A Biography of the Color Line (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 171–77. Mary Strang, “Good Labour of Old Days,” Bulletin of the New York Public Library 60 (1956): 540. Sayers, Moore, 68–69. The first registration book was still around in 1986, as it was part of the seventy-fifth-anniversary exhibit. See “75th Anniversary—Children’s Room,” Box 18, NYPL Archives, Branch Libraries, Donnell Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.

  8. Sandburg’s testimonial can be found in Box 5, Unnumbered Folder: Commentary About Anne Carroll Moore, ACM Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.

  9. It would have taken anyone else 250 years to do for children what Moore did in twenty-five, Carl Van Doren once told her. Carl Van Doren to ACM, October 14, 1931, Box 4, ACM Papers. Sayers, Moore, 30. ACM, My Roads to Childhood, 23. Leonard S. Marcus, Minders of Make-Believe: Idealists, Entrepreneurs, and the Shaping of American Children’s Literature (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008), 133. Strang, “Good Labour of Old Days,” 543.

  10. Ursula Nordstrom to Katharine S. White, June 26, 1974, in Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom, collected and edited by Leonard S. Marcus (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), 356–57. “One averted one’s eyes if possible. I remember when I was a child and something awful happened on the street, you know, one didn’t look. Absolutely didn’t look—and ACM and Stuart, well, it was like a dreadful accident, a horse fallen down.” The Moore-White fiasco is reported, in brief, in “Anne Carroll Moore Urged Withdrawal of Stuart Little,” Library Journal 91 (April 15, 1966): 2187–88, and School Library Journal 13 (April 1966): 71–72. Julie Cummins, “ ‘Let Her Sound Her Trumpet’: NYPL Children’s Librarians and Their Impact on the World of Publishing,” Biblion 4 (1995): 97–98.

  11. Clyde E. Keeler, The Laboratory Mouse: Its Origin, Heredity, and Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931), 4–6; on mice and heredity, 7–18. Karen A. Rader, Making Mice: Standardizing Animals for American Biomedical Research, 1900–1955 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004). For biographical details on White (hereafter EBW), see Scott Elledge, E. B. White: A Biography (New York: Norton, 1984).

  12. Katharine Sergeant White (hereafter KSW) to Louise Seaman Bechtel (hereafter LSB), undated day in 1941: “Andy remembers of Mt. Vernon that he was not allowed to draw from any of the children’s shelves until he reached a certain age. He didn’t like it.” Box 43, Folder 658, LSB Papers, Archives and Special Collections, Vassar College.

  13. EBW, “A Winter Walk,” St. Nicholas Magazine 38 (June 1911), 757. ACM also contributed, though this does not seem worth noting. See ACM, “Making Your Own Library,” St. Nicholas Magazine (November 1919), 44–46.

  14. Anne Thaxter Eaton, “Reviewing and Criticism of Children’s Books,” Bulletin of the New York Public Library 60 (1956): 559. But see also Richard L. Darling, The Rise of Children’s Book Reviewing in America, 1865–1881 (New York: Bowker, 1968), and ACM, “Writing for Children,” in My Roads to Childhood, 23. On the founding and early history of the Newbery, see Ruth Allen, Children’s Book Prizes (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998). The Newbery is administered by the Association for Library Service to Children, the descendant of the Club of Children’s Librarians, formed as part of the American Library Association in 1900. ACM was the club’s first chairman. See “History,” American Library Association, http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/missionhistory/

  history/index.cfm.

  15. Angell’s father read her Oliver Twist when she was seven and sent her to the Brookline, Massachusetts, public library, once a week, to choose two books for him. On KSW’s childhood reading, see Linda H. Davis, Onward and Upward: A Biography of Katharine S. White (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 22, 24. Like EBW, she won a silver prize from St. Nicholas—in her case, for a story about a spider, which is neat, when you think about Charlotte’s Web. I couldn’t find it, but I didn’t look for long. KSW’s memory of going to the library to pick out books for her father can be found in KSW to LSB, undated 1941, Box 43, Folder 658, LSB Papers, Vassar (“I had to do this because my mother was dead and my father had no time to choose his own books, but read anyway four nights a week”). She had, from childhood, especially adored Austen. “In my sillier moments,” she once wrote, “I think of Jane Austen as the perfect New Yorker writer.”

  16. EBW, “The Librarian Said It Was Bad for Children,” New York Times, March 6, 1966. EBW to Eugene Saxton, March 1, 1939, in Letters of E. B. White, rev. ed., ed. Martha White, original ed. Dorothy Lobrano Guth (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 183. He doesn’t call him “Stuart Little” until the revisions in 1938, as far as I can tell. And, for a while in 1944, he seems to decide to call him “Stuart Ames.” See the original manuscript of “Stuart Little,” EBW Papers, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University.

  17. Sayers, Moore, 171–74, 186. For three letters from ACM signed “Nicholas,” see “Nicholas” to LSB, December 4, 1927; undated; c. 1931; Box 33, LSB Papers, Vassar. ACM had stationery made with a woodcut illustration of Nicholas writing a letter, and for his return address: “Nicholas Knickerbocker, 476 Fifth Avenue, New York.” The letters are written, at least in places, as if written by Nicholas himself—“I’m the sorriest little Dutch boy you ever knew over your accident”; this from the letter with no date but that LSB has dated 1931.

  18. ACM, Nicholas: A Manhattan Christmas Story (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1924), 4–5.

  19. Sayers, Moore, 110, 124–25.

  20. ACM, My Roads to Childhood, 339, 365. Dorothy Parker, “Far from Well,” New Yorker, October 20, 1928, 98–99, and in The Portable Dorothy Parker (New York: Penguin, 1976), 518.

  21. KSW, “Books for the Babies,” New Yorker, December 1, 1934, 109–12; “Books for Boys and Girls,” New Yorker, December 8, 1934, 142–43.

  22. KSW to LSB, June 24, 1974, Box 43, Folder 662, LSB Papers, Vassar.

  23. Seth Lerer, Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).

  24. KSW, “Books for Younger Children,” New Yorker, November 30, 1935, 97; “Spring Books for Children,” New Yorker, May 13, 1939, 103.

  25. Reproduced in John Kobler, Luce: His Time, Life and Fortune (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968), n.p.

  26. Quoted in Alan Brinkley, The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century (New York: Knopf, 2010), 125.

  27. It included a description of where the magazine got its paper (“It is typical of the great NEW YORKER organization, that it owns and operates today the biggest paper forest in the world, covering 29,000,000 or so acres in Canada, Maine and northern New Jersey, under the close supervision of THE NEW YORKER’s field superintendent, Mr. Eustace Tilley”). There’s also the visit to the Punctuation Farm (“The periods are set out in shallow pans under glass in early Spring, and carefully watered; and after six weeks of sunshine each sends down a tiny root no bigger than a bean (,) which is called a comma”). Corey Ford, “The Construction of Our Sentences,” New Yorker, October 10, 1925; “Securing Paper for THE NEW YORKER,” New Yorker, August 15, 1925; “The Magazine’s Punctuation Farm,” New Yorker, October 17, 1925.

  28. Quoted in Roy Hoopes, Ralph Ingersoll: A Biography (New York: Atheneum, 1985), 116.

  29. Wolcott Gibbs, “Time . . . Fortune . . . Life . . . Luce,” New Yorker, November 28, 1936. “Magazine Proposal: True Crime” dated 1937–38, Box 24, New Yorker Records, New York Public Library. On the rivalry, see Jill Lepore, “Untimely,” New Yorker, April 19, 2010.

  30. “Cancer Army,” Time, March 22, 1937. C. C. Little, “A New Deal for Mice: Why Mice Are Used in Research on Human Diseases,” Scientific American 152 (1935): 16–18. See Rader, Making Mice, 135
, 152–53.

  31. Luce quoted in Brinkley, The Publisher, 214, 219, 222–23.

  32. The letter is reprinted in the issue itself. The Editors, “This Announcement,” Life, April 11, 1938. These remarkable pictures, the editors promised, “will be printed on the four centre pages, easily removable if you wish. The final decision must, of course, be yours.” The issue was vetted by the U.S. Postal Service before it was published. P. T. Prentice to Mr. Hinerfeld, April 6, 1938, “Birth of a Baby” file, Time Inc. Archives.

  33. P. T. Prentice to Mr. Larsen, memo, April 16, 1938, “Birth of a Baby” file, Time Inc. Archives. The plan, including the proposed band taped around newsstand copies, is detailed in Roy E. Larsen, “Random Thoughts on Use of ‘Birth of a Baby,’ ” typescript, March 24, 1938. On the letters, see copies in the Time Inc. files and also O. P. Swift to Walter K. Belknap, “Birth of a Baby Letter to Newspapermen,” memo, April 2, 1938; Swift to Belknap, “Birth of a Baby Woman’s Letter,” memo, April 2, 1938, “Birth of a Baby” file, Time Inc. Archives. The magazine kept careful track of readers’ response. See Anna Goldsborough to Mary Fraser, “Unfavorable letters received on ‘The Birth of a Baby,’ ” memo, June 7, 1938; Anna Goldsborough to C. D. Jackson, “Unfavorable letters received on ‘The Birth of a Baby,’ ” memo, June 13, 1938, “Birth of a Baby” file, Time Inc. Archives.

  34. “She is the star”: John Thorndike to Sheldon Luce, memo, April 4, 1938, “Birth of a Baby” file, Time Inc. Archives.

  35. “The Birth of a Baby,” Life, April 11, 1938.

  36. G. Sugarman to Mr. Longwell, April 6, 1938, memo, “Birth of a Baby” file, Time Inc. Archives.

  37. Dr. George Gallup, “America Speaks,” Atlanta Constitution, April 22, 1938. Geraldine Sartain, “The Cinema Explodes the Stork Myth,” Journal of Educational Sociology 12 (November 1938): 142–46; quotation on 144.

  38. Reports of bans can be found in a scrapbook of news clippings at the Time Inc. Archives, but for a list of cities, see Paul Young to C. D. Jackson, April 15, 1938, memo, “Birth of a Baby” file, Time Inc. Archives. “The Birth of a Baby,” American News Trade Journal, May 1938. UP Wire Service, April 8, 1938, “Birth of a Baby” file, Time Inc. Archives. William R. Matthews, editor and publisher, Arizona Daily Star, to Life, telegram, April 8, 1938, “Birth of a Baby” file, Time Inc. Archives. UP Wire service, April 8, 1938, teletype, “Birth of a Baby” file, Time Inc. Archives. “Wide Ban on ‘Life’ for Birth Pictures,” New York Times, April 9, 1938. See also “Childbirth Photos Held Not Obscene,” Atlanta Constitution, April 9, 1938, and “ ‘Life’ Ban Spreads to Pennsylvania,” New York Times, April 10, 1938.

  39. Dr. George Gallup, “Public Opposes Ban on Pictures Showing the Birth of a Baby,” press release, American Institute of Public Opinion News Service, April 22, 1938, “Birth of a Baby” file, Time Inc. Archives. “Publisher of Life Pushes Court Test,” New York Times, April 12, 1938. “Court Clears Life on Baby Pictures,” New York Times, April 27, 1938. Mr. Prentice to Mr. Larsen, April 13, 1938, memo, “Birth of a Baby” file, Time Inc. Archives.

  40. EBW, “The Birth of an Adult,” New Yorker, April 23, 1938. “America Speaks,” Atlanta Constitution, April 22, 1938. By the end of April, Larsen could declare, “Life has definitely turned the corner.” The magazine’s circulation quadrupled; soon it passed two million. In the first half of 1939, Life recorded its first profit, of nearly $1 million. Brinkley, The Publisher, 224–25. Circulation cartoon reproduced in Kobler, Luce.

  41. EBW to James Thurber, April 16, 1938, Letters of EBW, 164.

  42. EBW, “Children’s Books,” written in November 1938, as per One Man’s Meat (Gardiner, ME: Tilbury House, 1997), 19–24; appeared in Harper’s in January 1939. ACM, “Three Owls’ Notebook,” Horn Book (March 1939), 95, mentions it and tells every reader to read it—“the best critical review of children’s books of 1938 I have seen.” She also read it aloud to more than one hundred children’s librarians (ACM to EBW, January 16–February 2, 1939, EBW Papers, Box 143, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell [the date span is because ACM hesitated for two weeks before sending the letter]).

  43. ACM to EBW, January 16–February 2, 1939, Box 143, EBW Papers. EBW to ACM, February 15, 1939, in Letters of EBW, 182.

  44. ACM to EBW, May [?], 1939, Box 143, EBW Papers. ACM to EBW, February 28, 1939, Box 143, EBW Papers. ACM to EBW, February 18, 1939, Box 143, EBW Papers. In 1939, ACM also wrote to EBW on January 16–February 2, February 28, March 24, and on an unspecified day in May.

  45. EBW to Eugene Saxton, March 1, 1939, in Letters of EBW, 182–83. EBW to Eugene Saxton, April 11, 1939, in Letters of EBW, 184; and EBW to ACM, April 25, 1939, in Letters of EBW, 185.

  46. Gertrude Stein, The World Is Round (London: B. T. Batsford, 1939). KSW, “The Children’s Harvest,” New Yorker, November 25, 1939.

  47. KSW quoted (undated) in Editor’s Note in Letters of EBW, 217.

  48. See the original of EBW to ACM, February 15, 1939, in Box 5, ACM Papers, which includes this paragraph: “Our house is a little more orderly, now; we gave away most of the review copies at Christmas, and can now make our way about the rooms. We gave quite a few to a small library in this village, where they were much appreciated, I think. Thanks again for your letter. I will try to get to work on the book. Meantime, please save shelf space in your library, public though it may be, for a copy of ‘Quo Vadimus? Or The Case for the Bicycle.’ ”

  49. “What I wonder is whether there are Carnegie funds available for such a library if it were made a free one and to whom I should write to ask about this.” Miss Dollard, White carefully told Moore, was a “dear old lady,” but she hadn’t cataloged a book since 1912 and “won’t let people she doesn’t like come in the place.” KSW to ACM, November 26, 1939, Box 5, ACM Papers. Moore, apparently, was unhelpful, telling White that Carnegie funds would not be forthcoming and that the library could never succeed without a professionally trained librarian. I have not been able to find ACM’s reply to KSW, presumably in late 1939 or early 1940. It is not in any of the archives I’ve checked. But KSW’s letter of February 7, 1942 (Box 5, ACM Papers), refers to Moore’s response. I suspect the correspondence ceased entirely then, until ACM resumed it on February 1, 1941: “Mr. White and I are supposedly compiling an anthology of American humor and thought it would be fun to have a section in it on humor and children’s literature” (KSW to ACM, November 26, 1939, Box 5, ACM Papers).

  50. ACM to EBW, February 1, 1941, Box 143, EBW Papers. EBW to ACM, March 2, 1941, Box 5, ACM Papers. (This letter is not in the Letters.) ACM wrote to EBW on February 1 and March 6, 1941. KSW to ACM, February 7, 1942, Box 5, ACM Papers. See also KSW to ACM, January 13, 1943.

  51. KSW to ACM, February 7, 1942, Box 5, ACM Papers. See also KSW to ACM, January 13, 1943, Box 5, ACM Papers. On KSW’s continuing work with the library, in the next decades (the Whites moved back to Brooklin, year-round, in 1957), see, e.g., KSW to LSB, January 16 and February 11, 1953, and LSB to KSW, February 6, 1953, Box 1, KSW Papers, Special Collections, Bryn Mawr.

  52. KSW to LSB, undated day in 1941, Box 43, Folder 658, LSB Papers, Vassar.

  53. Subtreasury: Editors’ introduction to a section called “For (or Against) Children”: “Our first idea was to collect a section on humor from books written for children. We gave it up because, except for ‘The Peterkin Papers’ and ‘Uncle Remus,’ we did not find much humor in early juvenile literature, and the humor in modern books for children is for the most part picture-book humor. So this turned into a section quite as much about children as for them. Incidentally, it also has a good deal to say about parents.” EBW and KSW, eds., A Subtreasury of American Humor (New York: Coward-McCann, 1941), 303. Ross’s memo about EBW’s Life circulation parody: “We have oceans of evidence that our parody of the birth-of-a-baby feature in Life was generally, probably unanimously, appreciated in advertising agencies and that our Luce profile was, too.” Box 964, New Yorker Records, NYPL. There followed much debate over whether this
would annoy the New Yorker’s own advertisers. Ross insisted, “I don’t see who can get mad except Life (which is already mad).” Luce’s wife’s underwear: Ross to Eric Hodgins (at Fortune), March 27, 1940, Box 25. Covering the war: Ross to EBW [May 1941], in Harold Ross, Letters from the Editor: The New Yorker’s Harold Ross, ed. Thomas Kunkel (New York: Modern Library, 2000), 154.

  54. KSW to ACM, May 31, 1944, Box 5, ACM Papers. Davis, Onward and Upward, 141–45. “I have no trap, no skill with traps, / No bait, no hope, no cheese, no bread.” Elledge, E. B. White, 250–52. On the manuscript evidence for the speed of the writing, see Peter F. Neumeyer, “Stuart Little: The Manuscripts,” Horn Book 64 (1988): 593–600. Marcus, introduction to Dear Genius, xvii–xxii.

  55. Also: “she mounted such campaigns against people and against books. She was absolutely ruthless,” Frances Clarke Sayers (hereafter FCS), “Small Felicities of Life,” in FCS Oral History, October 19, 1974, transcript, Center for Oral History Research, UCLA, 135–39. Less candid but still bitter reminiscence can be found in FCS, “You Elegant Fowl,” Horn Book 65 (1989): 748–49.

  56. FCS, Moore, 242. ACM also refused to review Stuart Little for Horn Book. It may have been Louise Bechtel who had solicited this review; at the time, Bechtel was associate editor.

  57. Editor’s Note, Letters of EBW, 252. More useful: Ursula Nordstrom, “Stuart, Wilbur, Charlotte: A Tale of Tales,” New York Times, May 12, 1974. For KSW’s view that Nordstrom’s article didn’t go far enough in vindicating EBW, a vindication that KSW rather urgently wanted by this time, see KSW to LSB, June 24, 1974, Box 43, Folder 662, LSB Papers, Vassar: “She was asked to write it and had a dreadful time with it as they made her do it over and over and in the end changed wordings and added stuff she did not want in there. But she did at least manage to tell a part of the A. C. Moore story. I guess she did not dare correct all the errors in the biography of Miss Moore by Frances Clarke Sayers. . . . Miss Moore had made altered copies of all the anti-Stuart letters she wrote me.” But KSW applauds Nordstrom: “What amazed me in Ursula’s piece is that Miss Moore had the nerve to order Ursula not to publish the book. Ursula and Harper had a lot of courage to go ahead with it under these head-on attacks by the most famous children’s librarian, and supposedly the best critic of juvenile literature. Critic, my eye!”