Category: Arts & entertainment

This is the last in a series of four posts about 14 famous writers featured in the Amherst Writers Walk. See end for links to previous posts.

By Nick Grabbe

Three writers who lived parts of their lives in Amherst made major contributions to our understanding of Native Americans.

Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885) lived at 249 South Pleasant Street until her early teens. The house, which is across from Amherst College, was built in 1830. Jackson was born Helen Maria Fiske two months before Emily Dickinson, and the two writers became friends later in their lives.

Jackson lost her parents when she was a teenager, and after leaving Amherst, she lost her husband and her two sons. She expressed her sorrow in poetry that was published anonymously in the Atlantic and other magazines. She also wrote several novels, using pseudonyms instead of her real name. Her novel “Mercy Philbrick’s Choice” is thought to depict Amherst, disguised with the name “Penfield.” She remarried in 1875, changing her last name for the second time. She lived in Colorado, but returned to Amherst to visit Dickinson in 1876 and ’78, urging her friend to submit a poem to a journal. Unlike Dickinson, Jackson avidly sought publication of her writing.

In Boston in 1879, she heard a lecture by Chief Standing Bear of the Ponca tribe that awakened her to the injustices suffered by indigenous people. She worked as an agent for the Department of the Interior, and then she exposed the violation of treaties and documented the corruption of government agents and settlers in her 1881 book “A Century of Dishonor.” This time, she used her real name, and she sent copies to every member of Congress.

But she’s best known for her 1884 novel “Ramona.” It focused on an orphan of mixed parentage and the struggle for land in Southern California. “Ramona,” which was inspired by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s monumental “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” had sold 600,000 copies by the mid-1940s. Focusing on oppression of native tribes and Mexicans, it was so popular that tourists sought out the places it described. “Ramona” was made into a movie starring Loretta Young in 1936.

Jackson wrote a 56-page report on the treatment of native tribes in Southern California, and a bill incorporating her recommendations passed the Senate but died in the House. On her deathbed, she wrote to President Grover Cleveland urging him to address “the wrongs of the Indian race.”

She also corresponded with W.E.B. Du Bois during the final two decades of her life. She died the year before Dickinson did.

Charles Eastman (1858-1939) was the first major Native American author to write about the tribes from their own perspectives, and the first Native American to be certified in Western medicine.

He grew up in Minnesota as a Santee Dakota but also had English and French ancestors. He graduated from Dartmouth (where there’s still a fellowship named for him) and received a medical degree from Boston University.

Eastman (also known as Ohiye S’a) was a government physician in Pine Ridge, S.D. when he witnessed the Wounded Knee massacre. While caring for the wounded, he met Elaine Goodale (1863-1953), a poet, social worker, educator and Massachusetts native. They were married in 1891 and had six children.

In 1902, Eastman wrote his first book, “Indian Boyhood.” Describing his 15 years of training in hunter/warrior ways, it was very popular and was translated into many languages. It also portrayed the harsh realities of famine, disease, confrontations with other tribes, and conflicts with white settlers.

After Eastman had a dispute with a government agent, in 1903 the couple left the Dakotas and moved to Amherst, where they lived at 850 Belchertown Road. He led a project to choose surnames for Sioux to protect their property rights, renaming about 25,000 people.

Elaine started helping him with his writing. Charles wrote short stories about Sioux customs, articles for the Boy Scouts of America magazine, and a book about religious beliefs of the native tribes (though he converted to Christianity). He was one of the founders of an organization that sought to improve conditions on the reservations and protect the tribes from injustice.

In 1914 Eastman published “Indian Scout Talks,” a guide for Boy Scouts and Campfire Girls on how to make bows and arrows, tepees and canoes, and how to survive in the wilderness. He managed one of the first Boy Scout camps. In a 1915 book, he provided an overview of the history, customs and beliefs of the native tribes.

Elaine Goodale Eastman managed her husband’s many public appearances and wrote books of her own, but they received less recognition. She started a day school on the Dakota reservation in 1886 and was appointed superintendent of Indian education for the Dakotas in 1890. She published books of poetry, several novels, and a biography of the founder of a school for Native Americans. Her memoir of her time as a teacher, “Sister to the Sioux,” was published posthumously.

Charles and Elaine Eastman separated in 1921. One possible reason was tension stemming from Elaine’s belief that the native tribes should seek assimilation with white society, while Charles emphasized observing their cultural traditions. Charles Eastman published no major works afterwards, which is perhaps an indication of how much Elaine’s help contributed to his success.

Upon Charles’s death, Elaine Goodale Eastman acquired his manuscripts and published his work on Sacajawea, the Shoshone woman who traveled with Lewis and Clark. She is buried in Northampton.

The last house on the Amherst Writers Walk is at 170 Market Hill Road, where poet Robert Francis (1901-87) lived. The two-room house, where Francis lived simply for 47 years, is known as “Fort Juniper,” because of that tree’s near-indestructibility.

Francis moved to Amherst in 1926 and taught English at the high school but only lasted there a year. He supported himself by writing, for such publications as the New Yorker and Saturday Review, and by teaching violin.

He wrote six volumes of poetry, a novel and an autobiography called “The Trouble with Francis” that touched on his frugal lifestyle and his struggle for recognition. “My specialty has been not to earn much but to spend little,” Francis said.

His poem “The Pitcher” is popular with baseball players and coaches. His last book, which included his journals from 1931 to 1954, was called “Traveling in Amherst.”

His friend Robert Frost called Francis “of all the great neglected poets, the greatest.” Like Frost, Francis wrote poems about nature and filled them with hidden meanings.

Robert Francis gave readings at the Jones Library, laid out an herb garden in back of the building, and had a study on the third floor. Special Collections has his correspondence and personal effects, as well as essays Francis wrote in The Atlantic and Christian Science Monitor.

It is remarkable that so many celebrated writers have called Amherst home at some point in their lives. As a writer myself, I have felt buoyed by this tradition, and by becoming more acquainted with the people in this series. By visiting these houses and learning about these writers, to paraphrase Thoreau, I have traveled widely in Amherst.

The Amherst Writers Walk was created by the Historical Commission. Other posts in this series:

Part One: Ray Stannard Baker, Eugene Field, Mary Heaton Vorse and Norton Juster

Part Two: Emily Dickinson and Mabel Loomis Todd

Part Three: Howard and Lilian Garis, Shirley Graham Du Bois and Noah Webster

This is the third in a series of posts about the Amherst Writers Walk, a self-guided tour of the houses where 12 renowned writers lived. Here are links to Part One and Part Two.

By Nick Grabbe

When they moved to Amherst in 1950, they were the most popular and prolific writers of children’s books in the U.S.

So when Howard Garis left his house at 97 Spring Street and walked around town, groups of children would often follow him and ask him to tell them a story, or just stare at him. That’s because he was the famous author of more than 15,000 Uncle Wiggily stories between 1910 and 1962. They were collected in 79 books and had sold over 15 million copies by then.

The books are still available and have been translated into many languages. Uncle Wiggily Longears is an engaging elderly rabbit who wears a top hat, uses a cane, and gives children a sense of optimism and adventure. Howard Garis (1873-1962) was so famous in 1950 that his arrival merited an announcement in the local newspaper.

Uncle Wiggily board games and toys sold in the millions, and the name entered popular culture. An Uncle Wiggily book is featured in “Forrest Gump,” and the familiar name has been used by a rock band and a chain of Baltimore ice cream shops.

Garis’s earlier publishing achievements were broad and astounding, but didn’t gain him the fame and fortune of the Uncle Wiggily stories. That’s because he and his wife Lilian Garis (1873-1954) were ghostwriters for a syndicate that gave them measly compensation, considering the popularity of their books.

Garis wrote the popular Tom Swift books about a boy scientist and tinkerer; Apple Computers co-founder Steve Wozniak called Tom Swift his role model. He also wrote the Baseball Joe and Camp Fire Girls books and many others, using a variety of pseudonyms. It is said that he worked every day but Sunday and could turn out a book in six to eight days. He wrote over 300 books for the syndicate.

Howard and Lilian Garis both wrote books about the Bobbsey Twins under the pseudonym Laura Lee Hope. The books feature an upper-middle-class family with two sets of twins, ages 12 and 6. There have been 72 books in this series over 75 years (1904-1979), and the Garises wrote the first 27 of them.

Lilian, a former suffragette, met Howard when they both wrote for the Newark Evening News. Lilian wrote hundreds of books between 1915 and the early 1940s, about girls named Judy Jordan, Nancy Brandon and others. She also wrote books under her own name, as did Howard.

But Lilian Garis fancied herself an expert on stocks, and she invested their savings in the market, which crashed in 1929. The Uncle Wiggily books secured their financial security.

Their son Roger was also a writer, and had some success in magazines and scripts for early television. But he struggled with mental illness and difficulty getting out of the shadow of his famous parents. His daughter, Leslie Garis, wrote a poignant memoir in 2007 called “House of Happy Endings” about growing up in the house on Spring Street in the 1950s with her parents and grandparents amid her father’s mental disintegration. It shows how deep sadness can lie behind a facade of idyllic serenity.

The house, on the corner of Spring and Dickinson Streets, was known as “The Dell” and was frequently visited by poet Robert Frost, a close friend of Howard Garis. It was built in the Craftsman and Revival styles. It is now the headquarters of Five Colleges Inc.

Shirley Graham Du Bois (1896-1977), who married W.E.B. Du Bois when he was 83 and she was 54, was a notable writer and activist also. When her husband died in 1963, she gave his papers to the University of Massachusetts and was a visiting lecturer there. She lived at 30 Boltwood Avenue, now the Lord Jeffery Inn, in the 1970s.

While a student at Oberlin College, Du Bois wrote and produced an opera in 1932 called “Tom Toms: An Epic Story of Music and the Negro.” It attracted 10,000 people to the first performance, 15,000 to the second, including the Ohio governor. She is said to be the first African American to write and produce an opera with an all-black cast. The score was lost but was rediscovered in 2001.

Between 1932 and 1975, Du Bois wrote six plays and 14 books, including biographies for young adults of botanist George Washington Carver, poet Phyllis Wheatley, Frederick Douglas and Booker T. Washington. She wrote a play called “It’s Morning” about an enslaved mother contemplating infanticide. She used theater to tell black women’s story from their perspective.

Du Bois was also one of the first field secretaries of the NAACP and organized branches all over the country. She defended people protesting racial injustice on a military base. Because she was a member of the Communist Party, her work didn’t get as much attention as it deserved. She ultimately emigrated to Africa, dying in Beijing, as a citizen of Tanzania.

One of her last novels, “Zulu Heart,” included a sympathetic portrait of whites in South Africa despite racial conflict there.

The third house on this part of the Amherst Writers Walk isn’t there anymore. Noah Webster, the dictionary pioneer and standardizer of the American version of English, lived at 46 Main Street from 1812 to 1822.

Webster wanted Americans to have a national identity separate from England’s, but that was difficult because in the late 18^th century there were many regional dialects.

In 1783 he published what became known as “The Blue-Backed Speller.” It taught children spelling rules and simplified words. He took the “u” out of English words like “colour” and “honour,” removed a “g” from “waggon, kicked off the “k” in “musick” and reversed the final letters of “theatre” and “centre.”

Webster spent almost 30 years compiling his dictionary. He introduced distinctly American words, many derived from native languages, such as skunk, squash, hickory, opossum, lengthy, Congress and caucus. In all, he added about 5,000 words to the language. He died in 1843 without having sold many copies, in part because it cost $15 to $20, which was then an enormous amount.

Webster also was an advisor to George Washington, wrote his own edition of the Bible, and counted houses in major cities, leading to the first census. There’s a statue of him on the Amherst College campus.

The Amherst Writers Walk began in a course at the University of Massachusetts on public history. It was realized by the Amherst Historical Commission, funded by Community Preservation Act funds, and installed by the Department of Public Works in 2021,

By Sarah Marshall

In case you missed it – the Drake announced that its grand opening will be Thursday, April 28. Celebrated jazz violinist Regina Carter will kick off the first series with performances at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. The following evening, Israeli artist Gili Yalo will combine Ethiopian, soul, funk psychedelic, and jazz styles, also in two shows. On Saturday, April 30, famed signer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III headlines. Fever-pop duo Home Body and Nova One will electrify the room on Sunday, May 1. Tickets available at www.thedrakeamherst.org.

On Tuesday, April 26, the Northampton Jazz Workshop will feature Gary Smulyan with the Green Street Trio at the Drake’s soft opening, a free event. The Jazz Workshop will be at the Drake every first and third Tuesday of the month, featuring a guest artist and an open jam session.

Located on the second floor of the Amherst Bank Building at 44 N Pleasant (formerly home to the High Horse), the Drake’s space has been completely transformed with state-of-the-art lighting and audio installed by Klondike Sound, and a Steinway Grand piano courtesy of Amherst College. The venue is open to all ages. For 21+ patrons there is a full service bar featuring craft cocktails, wine and beer. The venue will feature both seated and dance floor configurations and will be available to rent for private events.

The Downtown Amherst Foundation (DAF), a 501(c)3 nonprofit, is the driving force behind this venture, whose mission is to bring arts and culture to Downtown Amherst. The Drake will present nightly entertainment from nationally and internationally recognized performers under the purview of Laudable Productions, known for presenting successful music festivals, concerts, and other cultural events across the Pioneer Valley.

Envisioned as a true community based venture, The DAF is collaborating with the Art and Music departments of Amherst College, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Amherst-Pelham Regional High School to offer students, faculty, and alumni musicians the opportunity to perform live in an intimate space. Once a month, proceeds from the new “FEED BACK LIVE” series will be donated to a local nonprofit. Many community and education forward series will be announced soon.

Founded on a vision of diversity and inclusivity for both performers and audience, and adopting its name from the original Drake, a storied Amherst bar which closed in 1985, the Drake will welcome local residents of all ages and attract visitors coming to hear top talent in an intimate and familiar space.

By Nick Grabbe

Many famous writers have called Amherst home, and the Amherst Writers Walk is a self-directed tour of 12 houses they lived in. This post is about five of these writers, who lived in four houses that can be seen in a 30-minute walk. A later post will be about other writers whose houses are on the tour.

118 Sunset Avenue

When Ray Stannard Baker moved to Amherst in 1910, he was 40 and already a famous writer, with a reputation for exposing corruption and inspiring reform through his magazine articles. He had also published a book that was the first examination of America’s racial divide written by a prominent White journalist.

Baker came to Amherst with a secret identity. Starting in 1906, he published a series of articles and books, using the pseudonym “David Grayson,” that became very popular and were translated into many languages. The narrator of these books is an educated man who lives on a farm and likes to walk around preaching a gospel of kindness and hospitality. There was intense speculation about who wrote the “David Grayson” books, and in 1916 Baker admitted that it he was the author. At the time, these books were much more widely read than the poetry of Emily Dickinson or Robert Frost.

Baker was close to Woodrow Wilson and traveled in Europe during World War I as an unofficial envoy of the President. In 1919, he headed the American press bureau at the Versailles peace conference, and later wrote a multi-volume biography of Wilson that won the Pulitzer Prize. He wrote most of it in the Jones Library.

Baker was a library trustee from 1929 until his death in 1946. The library has 300 books and 9,000 manuscripts in its Baker collection. At UMass, there is both a Baker Hall and a Grayson Hall. The house at 118 Sunset Avenue is now Alpha Tau Gamma fraternity.

Here’s Baker, writing as David Grayson:

“The great point of advantage in the life of the country is that if a man is in reality simple, if he love true contentment, it is the place of all places where he can live his life most freely and fully, where he can grow. The city affords no such opportunity; indeed, it often destroys, by the seductiveness with which it flaunts its carnal graces.”

43 Sunset Avenue

In 1916, the same year Baker revealed that he had written the David Grayson books, Robert Frost (1874-1963) came to Amherst College to give a reading of his poems. He joined the faculty in 1917 and lived in Amherst off and on until 1938. He lived in this house on Sunset Avenue from 1931 to 1938. Earlier, he lived in a house on Main Street that was moved to make way for construction of the police station.

The cantankerous Frost quit his teaching job at the college in 1920 after a dispute with the president, but returned in 1923. From 1926 to 1938 and from 1949 to 1963 he had a more informal relationship with Amherst College. Frost regarded teaching as a distraction from writing his poetry, which gained world renown for portraying the New England landscape and people in ways that evoked universal themes.

Frost won four Pulitzer Prizes, and in 1961 read a poem at President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration.

The Amherst College library is named for Frost, and there is a statue of him on the campus. The Jones Library has 12,000 letters, manuscripts, photos and audio recordings in its Frost collection. You can listen to a reading Frost gave at UMass in 1961 here. The 47-mile Robert Frost Trail runs between South Hadley and Wendell.

The house where Frost lived at 43 Sunset Avenue is now privately owned. Here is the final stanza of Frost’s poem “Two Tramps in Mud Time”:

“But yield who will to their separation,/My object in living is to unite/My avocation and my vocation/As my two eyes make one in sight./Only where love and need are one,/And the work is play for mortal stakes,/Is the deed ever really done/For Heaven and the future’s sakes.”

219 Amity Street

A childhood spent in the intellectual ferment of Amherst can inspire future writers. Eugene Field (1850-1895) and Mary Heaton Vorse (1874-1966) were journalists who spent parts of their young years in this 24-room house on the corner of Lincoln Avenue. The house is now divided into apartments.

Field wrote for newspapers in Kansas City, Denver, St. Louis and Chicago. He was known for his light, humorous articles, which were reprinted in papers all around the country.

But he is best known for writing poetry for children, including “Wynken, Blinken and Nod,” a lullaby-like poem that has inspired marble statues, paintings and a Disney short film. He was so beloved in the Midwest that there are more than 30 elementary schools named after him. There’s a statue of him in Denver. Called the “Poet of Childhood,” Field also wrote (anonymously) a book about a 12-year-old boy who was seduced by a woman in her thirties.

The Jones Library houses articles, correspondence and manuscripts written by Field.

“Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night/Sailed off in a wooden shoe,/Sailed on a river of crystal light/Into a sea of dew./’Where are you going, and what do you wish?’/The old moon asked the three./
‘We have come to fish for the herring-fish/That live in this beautiful sea;/Nets of silver and gold have we,’/Said Wynken, Blynken and Nod.”

Mary Heaton Vorse, who spent part of her youth in the same house (at a different time), was a child of wealth who traveled extensively with her family. As an adult, she became a journalist who advocated for women’s suffrage, civil rights and pacifism.

She covered numerous strikes, including by textile workers in Lawrence, Mass., Passaic, N.J. and Gastonia, N.C., auto workers in Flint, Mich. and coal miners in Kentucky. She also participated in labor protests and was put under surveillance by the FBI. She was a war correspondent in Europe in 1918-19.

In 1962, she was the first recipient of the United Auto Workers’ Social Justice Award. She was widowed twice and lived her later years in Provincetown, where she continued her advocacy of progressive causes.

Vorse described herself as “a woman who in early life got angry because many children lived miserably and died needlessly.” Here’s something she wrote in her 80s:

“When I was young, Life said to me, ‘Here are two ways – a world running to mighty cities full of the spectacle of bloody adventure, and here is home and children. Which will you take, the adventurous life or a quiet life?’ ‘I will take both,’ I said.”

259 Lincoln Avenue

Norton Juster (1929-2021) was fighting boredom while serving in the Navy in 1954, so he started writing stories for children. In 1961, he wrote “The Phantom Tollbooth,” with illustrations by Jules Feiffer, about a boy named Milo who is bored with the world and drives his car through an imaginary tollbooth and experiences a series of adventures. Feiffer, who later became a famous cartoonist, described his friend as “mischievous.”

Juster said he was inspired by a conversation he had with a boy about infinity while waiting in line at a restaurant. “The Phantom Tollbooth” has sold over five million copies and been adapted into a stage musical.

Juster was also an architect, like his immigrant father, and was a professor of architecture and environmental design at Hampshire College from 1970 to 1992.

Unlike these other writers, many current Amherst residents have had personal interactions with Juster. When he signed my son’s copy, he didn’t just write his name but also wrote “To Alex.” Juster also wrote “The Dot and the Line,” which is commonly used in schools and, like “Tollbooth,” has been adapted into a film.

Juster lived in the house on Lincoln Avenue from 1982 to 2007. He describes the inside of it in detail in “The Hello Goodbye Window.” The house is now privately owned.

The Amherst Writers Walk grew out of a UMass course on public history, was created by the Historical Commission, and funded through the Community Preservation Act. Here is a link to the commission’s website on the Amherst Writers Walk.