When Michael was on breaks from her tour, Margaret left the apartment to stay at Cobble Court or the Only House. Alternatively, Michael took up residence at the Colony Club. That summer, friends came and went, but Margaret wasn’t her usual self. She was brusque with Clem and Posey when they came to visit and often spent her days writing alone or working on the new house she planned to give to Michael.
She was still friends with Bill Gaston, but their love affair was over. He and his boys visited regularly, but her nights were spent alone. The sound of her pencil scratching on paper, the wind outside, and the crackling fire were often the only things she heard except the chatter in her head. She was too sentimental, she decided. And still overweight. It was time to cut out sugar, fat, and starch from her diet. She limited herself to only half a bottle of wine each evening.
She kept busy converting the new house into a writing studio. She had a window added to the back of the house, framed like a picture. It showcased the forest like a live painting. She painted the exterior of the house but miscalculated how much paint the job would entail. There was only a smidgeon of paint remaining and a whole wall left to cover, so she used the last of it to paint the same fish her sister had drawn years before for the cover of Margaret’s The Fish with the Deep Sea Smile right onto the bare wall.
The cottage was charming and airy, even though it was small. Margaret had a great deal of work to finish that summer. In addition to writing books, she recorded the melodies of her latest songs and sample radio shows on a wire recorder she kept in the house. She was working on two articles about writing for children, and both were due soon. The first was for Hollins’s alumnae magazine and the other for Grolier’s Book of Knowledge. The Grolier’s series was the very one that had lined her shelves as a child. Margaret’s parents had revered the books, and she knew her father would be proud of his daughter for contributing that piece. He could no longer doubt that Margaret had lived up to the standards of his illustrious family. She hadn’t fought in wars or argued on the floor of Congress, but she was leaving her mark as her ancestors had before her. She was no longer just a writer of silly stories and songs. She was an expert on how to write children’s literature. The Book of Knowledge would say it was so.
When Margaret was hired to write a monthly children’s page for Good Housekeeping magazine, her name became more widely known to the public. The magazine introduced Margaret to its readers as a modern, pretty woman who happened to craft her works in a fairy-tale hideaway. The editor painted a perfect picture of Cobble Court as a little house aglow by firelight and ruby-red kerosene lamps—exactly the type of place from which children’s stories should come.
She also was asked to submit a menu to be included in The American Woman’s Cook Book, along with other notable women, such as Mrs. Calvin Coolidge and Lillian Hellman. Margaret’s menu for a “Lunch under the Apple Trees” featured a recipe for root soup to be served with a salad of umbrella mushrooms and sliced avocados.
The tumultuous relationship with Michael had strained Margaret terribly. On top of that, Margaret would have to find somewhere to live away from Michael, who was on tour until the end of the year. Cobble Court was uninsulated and too cold for New York’s winters. Likewise, it would have been impossible to survive the brutally frigid Maine temperatures at the Only House in winter, so she would have to find an apartment when Michael returned.
She distracted herself by staying busy with her writing. She had eight other books in the works for five different publishers. She recently had an article published on how to select the proper book for a child. In it, she encouraged parents to find stories told in simple words about familiar things. The color of the sky, the feel of rain, even tables and telephones might be commonplace to parents, but to children, everything in the world is new and wildly exciting. She believed frightening fairy tales should be avoided for younger children who had yet to learn what is real and what is not. To them, a witch or goblin is as real as a horse or chicken. Older children, depending on their environment, understood the difference between fantasy and reality; they could enjoy those stories without harmful results. It was important for children to find the fun and adventure in folktales and legends since they were based in nature and were often a window into human nature. Word patterns, rhymes, and rhythms were also something she suggested parents look for in a book because they mimicked children’s playful language. Sudden changes and sharp contrasts in sound kept their attention, and it delighted them to hear a cat meow or a train go pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. Stories should be short—no more than ten or fifteen minutes—unless the readers involved the children in the stories through questions, which gave them a chance to be part of the narratives. Margaret explained that the purpose of books for young children was not so much to educate them as to echo their laughter and sadness, to capture the reality of the world they loved. Children were sensitive to subtle overtones and rhythms and eager to hear them reflected in stories, songs, and poems. She believed that unless parents encouraged those senses, they became blunted by the age of five. Literature gave them back their own world and kept the keenness of their senses alive.
Margaret’s circle of publishing friends had dwindled. Leonard was busy with his new wife and the Hurds with their young son, Thacher. Margaret was spending more time with composers than illustrators, editors, or book publishers these days. She no longer went to Bank Street to test her material. Margaret used her neighbor’s boys and her goddaughter, Laurel, as her guinea pigs.
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When she was asked to write a version of the Christmas story for one of her publishers, she went to visit Dot. Margaret had no idea what animals did at night in a barn, so in Bank Street fashion, she wanted to observe their nocturnal activities firsthand.
Dot’s barn was sturdy enough to keep Margaret from freezing, although it was a cold November night in Connecticut. Dot bundled Margaret up in a huge raccoon fur coat and made a comfy nest of blankets and sweet-smelling clover hay in one of the stalls. The Ripleys’ herd of fawn-colored Swiss cattle curiously sniffed their new barn mate as night settled in. Two cats slept next to Margaret’s head, but their purrs didn’t drown out the constant digestive noises of the cows or the loud urination of the horses that made her dream of Niagara Falls.