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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 gained 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.
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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.
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