Once Margaret realized she needed to be writing about the world from the perspective of a child, ideas for stories and poems seemed to simply flow out of her. She often woke with a headful of them and had to scribble them down before they left her head again. When she completed her manuscripts, she immediately brought them to the classroom to be tested. Children were ready and honest critics if they weren’t concerned with pleasing the adult who was reading to them, so she never told them she was the author. She knew they would pretend to like it to spare her feelings. If given the chance, children were quite capable of detecting minute flaws in a manuscript and pinpointing where a story went astray. Margaret soon learned that if she watched their eyes and looked for their jaws to go slack, it meant she had succeeded. In their imagination, they were no longer in the classroom, but had stepped into the world of the story.
It wasn’t serious literature, but Margaret’s talent impressed Lucy, who offered her coauthorship on the Dutton reader. Lucy found that all she needed to do was steer Margaret toward a subject and she could write about it. Lucy may have created the Here-and-Now style of writing, but this young girl gave it wings.
Seven
1936–1937
Ahead of a boat
Across the sea
There is always another land.
There is land for a boat to come from.
There is land where a boat will go.
The ocean is empty
And the ocean is wide,
But still the sailors know
On the other side
Is the land where the boat will go.
There is always a land to come from
And a land where the boat will go.
“BOATS”
Story Parade
The job at Bank Street allowed Margaret to move back to the city. She shared an apartment with a friend in a town house on West Tenth Street in Greenwich Village—across the street from where Mark Twain once lived. On weekends, she hunted with the Buckram Beagles if weather allowed. A friend that lived across the hall was a fellow beagler and a Spanish socialite. She helped smooth some of Margaret’s brusque social tendencies. Margaret’s mind raced, and she frequently forgot much of what someone had just said to her. Margaret dedicated herself to giving all her attention over to listening when someone else was talking.
She was dating Charles Cocke, the grandson of the founder of Hollins, and brought him to dinners at her sister’s home. Even Basil approved of the gentle, kind man. He was an engaging conversationalist and, like Margaret, enjoyed everything the city had to offer. They went to plays, museums, and restaurants. She envisioned how her life would be if they were married and living in Virginia. She thought he might make her happy, but she worried about what living so far away from New York would mean for her writing career.
*
In her desk drawer, Margaret kept a collection of notes and ideas for picture books or stories and poems that wouldn’t fit in the reader that she and Lucy were writing. Before the end of the year, Margaret had drafted manuscripts for almost a dozen books in various stages of polish. Before leaving on a beagling trip to Virginia, she impulsively stuffed a couple into an envelope and sent them off to an editor she had recently met who worked at Harper & Brothers.
Since 1917, the national beagle field trials had been held in Aldie, Virginia. On the five-hundred-acre farm, the Buckram Beagles’ hounds competed to improve their club’s standing and the breeding value of their beagles. Footraces for the hunters also were held. The Buckram’s beagles didn’t bring home any titles, but Margaret won her race, earning her the title of the fastest female runner in the sport.
After the field trials, Margaret went to Richmond and ran into a fellow Hollins alumna. The girls took an impromptu trip to their old school to attend Sunday chapel. Once on the Hollins campus, they also went wading in Carvin Creek, picked dandelions, and saw the first robins of the spring. Margaret was tickled to run into a former professor, who feigned alarm at seeing his ex-students, nicknaming them Bad and Worse. It delighted Margaret that she was labeled only the Bad.
The visit to Hollins invigorated Margaret and renewed her soul. She was happy enough with her life. She had become close friends with the other teachers and writers at Bank Street, who had nicknamed her “Brownie.” She was especially close to Edith “Posey” Thacher, another teacher, and Rosie Bliven, a Bank Street volunteer. Rosie and her erudite son, Bruce, regularly invited Margaret to their literary gatherings in their apartment. Rosie was well connected in New York society, and Bruce was a remarkably talented writer. He and his friends were some of the most prestigious young writers in Manhattan. Margaret sometimes joined jazz revelries, playing with more passion than talent, but her band members didn’t care. It was all in fun. Margaret’s life in the city was full and interesting, but being in Virginia away from the city’s hectic pace reminded her that New York wasn’t the only place she could live.
She wondered if settling down somewhere like Virginia would doom her chances of being a writer. Stepping back into a place you loved didn’t necessarily mean you weren’t moving forward. And she really did like Charles. Maybe she could be happy being married and living near Hollins. Margaret’s vacation came to an end with these questions swirling around in her head.
Despite her doubts about her future, the young teacher returned to work at Bank Street feeling strong and invigorated. The vacation had renewed her, and she was quite proud of her national championship as a runner. Another triumph was soon hers, too. While she was away, the Harper editor had read her manuscripts and had loved her writing. Waiting on Margaret’s desk upon her return was a letter offering to publish one of her stories as a picture book. Best of all, the editor asked to see other stories Margaret had written.
Before long, Margaret held her first advance check in her hand. She headed for the bank, glancing at this little piece of paper that made it official: she was an actual author. She had been writing poems and stories for the Dutton reader, Another Here and Now Storybook, but that was part of her job at Bank Street. It wasn’t a separate book that earned royalties and would be illustrated in full color. This book would have her name printed on the cover.
Margaret stopped at the flower cart near her apartment for her weekly bouquet. The apartment’s living room walls were painted the same bright green as the library in her family’s home but lacked the luxuries of that house—it was old and cold. There was no hot water for a bath, but Margaret liked being on her own again.
Seeing the profusion of color and scents on the flower cart thrilled her. It was spring in the city once again. She looked down at the check in her hand and then up at the flowers. She was now a real writer. She hoped there would be many more book advances in her future, but there would only be this one first advance, and she wanted to make it memorable. She wanted to celebrate! She decided she’d throw a party unlike any other and convinced the vendor to take the check in exchange for delivering the entire cart of flowers to her apartment.
*