Margaret Wise Brown’s Unexpected Life & Death
Image from The Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery. "Philippe Halsman photographed Brown one year before Goodnight Moon was released and a few years after she began living with her life partner (playwright and actress Blanche Oelrichs). This portrait reveals Brown’s preference for handwriting her manuscripts using a quill pen."
“Quietness is an essential part of all awareness. In quiet times and sleepy times, a child can dwell in thoughts of his own, and in songs and stories of his own.”
The prolific author of favorites such as Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny was a surprise to learn about this week, not at all a dowdy, white-haired nana rocking softly in a chair but a vibrant spirit, described as “mercurial” and “mystical” by her friends, who died strangely before her 43rd birthday.
From the time of her earliest days, Brown was stubborn, independent, and a little curious. When she was angered as a child, she’d hold her breath until she turned blue and the nanny dunked her head into icy water. She skinned one of the family’s pet rabbits after it died and declared the possibility of becoming a “lady butcher” when she was grown.
Instead, Brown began to publish children's books. In 1946, she was named by Life as the "World's Most Prolific Picture-Book Writer".
“I don’t think I’m essentially interested in children’s books. I’m interested in writing, and in pictures. I’m interested in people and in children because they are people.”
Margaret Wise Brown by Consuelo Kanaga Brooklyn Museum
But Brown continued to defy societal expectations, living in a way that was often deemed strange and with a penchant for extravagance and chasing her eccentricities. She bought a home without plumbing or electricity on an island of Maine that could only be reached by rowboat and had chairs with all the legs shortened to make the room feel bigger. She installed a door to nowhere on the second floor of her home, labelled “Mind the View”. She engaged in stormy romances often, most notably with performer Blanche Oelrichs aka Michael Strange until Strange’s death of leukemia in 1950.
Margaret Wise Brown's Maine cottage, dubbed "The Only House"
In 1952, Brown was European solo traveling when medical complications brought her to emergency surgery in Nice. Brown quickly recovered from the appendectomy and was so elated to be discharged that when the rounds nurse came in to check on her, she high-kicked her legs into the air, can can style. The flamboyant high kick dislodged a blood clot and Brown blacked out and died.
Brown’s then fiancé attended to her final wishes, including having a headstone engraved with the epitaph she wrote for herself: Margaret Wise Brown / Writer of Songs and Nonsense. Beneath it, her loved ones added: Dear Margaret, You gave us all so much - a chance to love, a place to rest, a window into living.
Image sourced from http://www.vinalhavenhistoricalsociety.org/images/newsletter_2016.pdf
