The Emilie Loring Collection

“Stimulating and refreshing, an irresistible story ending on a high note of romance.” The Boston Globe

When last I wrote about As Long As I Live, I focused on its humor. (See: “Dialogue Sparkles in As Long As I Live” ) Today, we’ll enter the 1930s. As you know, Emilie Loring’s books are set in the year in which they were written, and As Long As I Live was written in 1936, published in 1937.

Craig Lamont, Inc.

Emilie’s son Selden was handsome enough to have been the model for many of Emilie’s leading men: tall and lean, with gray eyes and dark hair with a “rebellious kink” on one side. He was also a commercial artist, and Emilie borrowed details from his career to create Craig Lamont, the head of a Boston advertising agency, and Joan Crofton, a commercial artist.

“Mah-Jong has swept back into fashion…”

I knew only as much about “Mah Jong” as Emilie had written about it–which is to say, not much–but one college summer, I decided that I must get the game and learn to play it. I called store after store to no avail but finally found a manufacturer of the game in the warehouse district of Phoenix. After no little pleading, I convinced them to sell me a game–$14, as I recall–and left the wholesale office with box in hand.

I didn’t make the connection until today, but the date on my game is 1976/1977, and it says “39th Year.” This means that the National Mah Jongg League began 1937, the same year that As Long As I Live was published.

I don’t know what I expected for $14, but instead of smoothly carved and inlaid tiles, I got punch-out cardboard rectangles. That’s okay, I thought. I’ll get good at it first, and then I’ll treat myself to a fancier set.

I have hauled that cardboard game around for fifty years, and I still don’t play, but I just found Mr. Snyder’s Ma-Jung Manual on Google Books, and this little video is encouraging: Learn How to Play Mahjong in 2.5 Minutes

Have you tried?

Advent of the Indoor Shower

“She started her bath.”

It’s never a shower in an Emilie Loring novel, always a bath. (Remember Debby and the lilac bath crystals in Beckoning Trails?) That started me to wondering. When did built-in, indoor showers become popular?

I could so easily run off on a tangent here, but the short answer is that wealthy homes had showers quite early, but tub/showers and separate showers weren’t routinely built into middle-class homes until the 1950s. Joan Crofton’s parents had only recently moved into “The Mansion,” built in 1800. Perhaps it had a shower, or maybe it did not; either way, Joan (and Emilie, I venture to say) preferred a luxurious soak in the tub.

Dishpan Hands

“Her mother, in a lilac smock, was valiantly attacking the dishes in the sink with rubber-gloved hands.”

Our dishwasher stopped working on Friday morning, plunging us back into hand-washing and drying every dish, glass, pan, spoon… Oh, the memories! When I was growing up, one of us girls would clear the table, one would scrape and rinse, one would wash, and one would dry and put away the dishes. It was a workable system with four girls, and as each graduated, her tasks fell to the others until it was just my mom and I handling the day’s dishes, from table to cupboard.

None of us wore rubber gloves, but I can tell you who should have: my Grandma Bender. Grandma washed the dishes in water so hot that Judy and I truly could not pick them up to dry them until they had sat a bit. I imagined that it was because my dad was born during the 1918 flu epidemic, and Grandma had learned to be extraordinarily careful about germs.

But it wasn’t only that. Early dishwashing powders and soap shavings were harsh on hands, giving rise to the dreaded “dishpan hands.” The makers of Lux, a fabric soap, suggested that dishes be put to soak in a hot-water solution of their product, stirred occasionally with a dish wand, and then left to dry, clean and sparkling. No scrubbing, no dishpan hands.

“Just the thing for a mountain picnic”

“That blue tweed frock with the matching top-coat is just the thing for a mountain picnic.”

This always makes me smile. What would it be like to go to one’s closet and think, “Yes, that blue tweed is just right for a walk on the mountain today. Oh wait, I’ll wear the matching top-coat, too.” Joan Crofton’s life was clearly fancier than mine.

No brown bag or backpack for their picnic. No, they had a full-on picnic hamper.

It was a good thing, too. What a menu!

“Filets mignon, luscious mushrooms, parsley-powdered snowy potato balls, little bunches of asparagus tips tied with gay red pimento ribbons and the last perfect touch a shoulder-knot of watercress and infant carrots… Iced fruit juice cocktails and an appetizing variety of hors d’oeuvres preceded the filets piping hot, with sandwiches, thin and tangy. Followed a dessert of maple eclairs with fragrant coffee, rice with cream.”

I have no idea what a “shoulder-knot” of watercress would be. Anyone?

Again, Emilie’s book was right with her times. I found numerous suggestions in the 1930s newspapers for packing luscious picnic suppers, and I remembered how much my grandparents’ generation, which was the same as Emilie’s original readers, absolutely loved picnics.

Tourist Camps

“I’d love it, wouldn’t you? Love to take the trip leisurely and put up at tourist camps–I’ve never stopped at one and I’m crazy to–and at hotels often enough to shake the wrinkles out of my evening gowns. Thrilling’s the word for it.”

“Tourist camp” immediately brings to mind “It Happened One Night” with Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable. The idea of cross country automobile travel was still novel, an adventure, and to the wealthy, the camps were a small step above tent camping.

Shirley Temple

"'Every street I walk on
Becomes a lover's lane
When I'm with you, when I'm with you.'"

Do you see and hear Shirley Temple as you read those lyrics? Lines were added for her in the 1936 film, “Poor Little Rich Girl.” The diminutive girl with the bright eyes and curly hair was the top box office attraction in the mid-1930s, when As Long As I Live was published. The casting director who discovered her was Charles Lamont… Lamont? Hmmm… A coincidence?

The Loring connection here is that Shirley Temple’s previous film, “Now and Forever” (1934) with Gary Cooper and Carole Lombard was based on the story “Honor Bright” by Jack Kirkland and Melville Baker (Emilie’s nephew).

“A Formula is Like A Unicorn”

I originally thought that I might follow literary references in this book, as I had for Uncharted Seas, but As Long As I Live isn’t literature heavy. Instead, it’s culture-filled, and it was fun to look with fresh eyes at bits of things that I’d passed over before, to pay attention to the details that produced the book’s atmosphere. The difference between these two books underscores my conviction that no formula could produce an Emilie Loring novel, because each is different, reflecting interests she had at the time she wrote it. Nevertheless, I enjoyed these next observations.

A Celebrated Turnip

Because I’ve read this book so many times, I learned this bit of verse without knowing–or wondering–where it came from. I’ve chanted it to myself, “It grew and it grew and it grew behind the barn,” like I have also chanted, “Leg over leg, the dog went to Dover.”

I might never have looked it up, but I did for this post. As the story goes, “Mr. Finney’s Turnip” was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s first poem, written when he was just nine years old. Apparently, his teacher told him to write a composition, and when young Henry replied that he didn’t know how, the schoolmaster replied, “But you can think, can’t you?” “Oh, yes, sir,” replied Henry. “Well, just think about something and write down what you think and bring it back to me.” Henry went out behind Mr. Finney’s barn, and when he came back, he had written about a turnip he saw there.

Emilie quoted Longfellow rather frequently, so the poem being his didn’t surprise me, but the idea of it being young Henry’s first composition was sweet. Here’s the poem in its entirety.

Mr. Finney’s Turnip

Mr. Finney had a turnip,
And it grew, and it grew,
And it grew behind the barn,
And the turnip did no harm.

And it grew, and it grew,
Till it could grow no taller;
Then Mr. Finney took it up
And put it in the cellar.

There it lay, there it lay,
Till it began to rot ; 
When his daughter Susie washed it
And put it in the pot.

Then she boiled it and boiled it,
As long as she was able;
Then his daughter Susie took it
And put it on the table.

Mr. Finney and his wife
Both sat down to sup;
And they ate, and they ate,
Until they ate the turnip up.

Alas, the story of Longfellow’s “first poem” is false. The poet died in 1882, and four years later, his older brother Samuel published the two-volume Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in which he noted: “It may not be amiss to say, on Mr. Longfellow’s own authority, that some silly lines about ‘Mr. Finney and his turnip,’ which went the rounds of the papers a few years ago as his ‘first poem,’ were never written by him.” The Belfast, Maine Republican Journal said the same four years earlier (13 April 1882), referencing a letter from the poet, dated March 5, 1882 (two weeks before his death) and published in the April issue of the Children’s Museum, denying that he was the author.

Looking back for its origins, The Farmer’s Oracle published the story in all its particulars in 1864–a little boy doesn’t think he can write, the teacher sends him behind a barn to write about whatever he sees and thinks–but that telling made no reference to Longfellow by name; it only said that the boy “never dreamed he was to become a famous poet.” Ten years later, the story and the poet were indissolubly linked, and the myth grew and it grew (say it with me: “and it grew behind the barn”).

So there you have it–exciting for a moment and debunked soon thereafter. I’m still amused by the lines, whoever wrote them.

Patron Saint of Authors

“Nothing so strong as gentleness. Nothing so gentle as real strength.”

Emilie quoted St. Francis de Sales, the patron saint of authors, writers, and journalists, oft quoted for his wisdom about not judging oneself too harshly. Having been through the research, writing, and publishing gauntlet one time, however, this writer especially appreciates:

“The beginning of good things is good;
the progress, better; the end, best.”

For Persons Who Think, Persons Who Do Things

Curiously, Craig Lamont calls his mother “Sally Shaw” more often than he calls her “Mother.” It’s meant to sound like an affectionate nickname in the story, but I believe the real reason Emilie used the name Sally Shaw was to honor her Great-Aunt, who left her entire estate to Emilie’s mother.

Although she appears “old fashioned” in this photo–and never married–I like to think that Great-Aunt Sally’s personality was something like Mrs. Shaw’s at Silver Birches: “She is an up to the minute person–if ever there were one–though she’s a grandmother. We hear that her home is a mecca for artists, scientists, writers, politicians, for persons who think, persons who do things.”

The novel’s Sally Shaw is indomitable:

“Nothing irritates me so much as to hear a woman prattle that she can’t do this or that because of her age. Age isn’t a matter of years, it’s a point of view.”

“I don’t need men to make me happy. I like them but I’ve never met one yet who was as unfailingly interesting as my work.”

Trademark Emilie

Uncharacteristically, there is no reference to Alice in Wonderland in this book, and she hadn’t yet begun to use the phrase “happy landings.” Otherwise, the trademark wisdom and sentiments are here.

“Never mind, dear, never mind. Things will straighten out. Things have a marvelous, unbelievable way of straightening out.”

“‘No more birthdays’ should be every person’s slogan–after fifty.'”

"I'm a Kipling addict--that dates me, doesn't it--I read him over and over."
She voted for Charles Dickens as a satisfying hardy perennial and declared that by some trick of manner, or striking oddity of feature, he made even the most unimportant characters unforgettable.

“We stand for honor, integrity, loyalty, and ideals, with a heavy accent on ideals, with a heavy accent on ideals, but we can’t live your lives for you–we won’t even try.”

And Joan’s father, Davy Crofton, uttered Emilie’s hope for the 1930s: “Materialism, realism and skepticism have had their day and a bitter day it has been. Man will become again conscious of a soul and spirituality, and ideals and romance are handmaids of the soul.”

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I’m still itching to get at Emilie Loring’s gardens. Maybe next time… Meanwhile, fill your picnic hampers, and get out those Mah Jongg games!

Happy landings, everyone!