ART AUCTION | HvS Art Being Auctioned

Hilda van Stockum (1908-2006), "Pears in Window"
 (1987). Images copyright by the Estate of
Hilda vanStockum Marlin, administered
 by Boissevain Books, LLC. 

March 28, 2021—Art by Hilda van Stockum is periodically auctioned.

(Update: Her art was auctioned also August 5, 2021.) 

Details may be found here: https://bit.ly/31smTCg 

and here: https://www.askart.com/auction_records/artist/133397/artist.aspx;. 

Copyright to all images is held by the artist or the artist's estate for 70 years after the death of the artist.

The artist's estate is managed by Boissevain Books LLC. The managing partner and president is currently John Tepper Marlin, the artist's son and one of the artist's six children, five of them living (in four countries, on three continents). Email teppermarlin@aol.com.

Hilda van Stockum Marlin died in 2006. Rights enure to her estate until 2076. https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-duration.html.

ORSON WELLES | He Was in My Dad's Dublin Crowd

Young Orson Welles

April 5, 2021—Orson Welles was the topic of the next event at 192 Books and the Paula Cooper Gallery, at 22nd Street and Tenth Avenue in Manhattan, on March 25. The location (a block away from where Alice and I live in New York City) is at 192 Tenth Avenue

David Thomson authored of more than twenty-five books, including The Biographical Dictionary of Film, biographies of Orson Welles and David O. Selznick. Thomson has used his biography of Welles as a base for a more comprehensive review of the history of movie directors, The Light in the Dark.

Michael Barker interviews. He is co-president and co-founder, with Tom Bernard, of Sony Pictures Classics, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. Previously he was an executive at United Artists (1980–1983) and co-founder of Orion Classics (1983–1991). This talk is recorded— https://mailchi.mp/192books/david-thomson-in-conversation-with-michael-barker-1243200.

A Family Connection

Orson Welles has a connection to my parents, Spike Marlin (1909-1994) and his then-fiancée Hilda van Stockum (1908-2006). My father was a student at Trinity College, Dublin and my mother was a student at the Dublin School of Art in 1931, when Welles, 16 years old, got a part at Dublin's Gate Theate playing the Duke in a new play, Jew Suss. Stories of Welles's early days in Ireland are brilliantly told here: https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/movies/genius-in-the-making-orson-welles-in-ireland-34237664.html.

One evening Welles came to dinner— a week early. Probably it was a confusion over the word “next” as in “next Thursday” (...but not this Thursday). Even then, Welles had made himself famous (his theater career began at 16 in 1931), and my mother was in conniptions. She pulled a dinner together... . 

The life of Orson Welles has been the subject of three recent documentaries. https://scriptmag.com/features/it-depends-is-your-story-idea-safe-one-shared-idea-three-unique-films. My sister Lis tells the story that our Dad Spike (and maybe Hilda, says my sister Brigid) were having breakfast in New York City when Welles suddenly said, “Must go, I am getting married this morning!" His first marriage was in 1934, so it must have been to Virginia Nicolson, to whom he stayed married until 1940. He married Rita Hayworth in 1943 and stayed with her until 1947. He married Paola Mori in 1955 and stayed with her until 1985. His biography lists two "partners": Dolores del Río (1940–43) and Oja Kodar (1966–85). He seems to have been serially monogamous until 1966. All that must be in Thomson's biography.

Six of the Trinity Crowd in Dublin, 1930-32

These are his contemporaries that Orson Welles glommed onto in Dublin:

• John Cyril Donnelly. Born in Dublin, Ireland on 2 Apr 1912 to John Herbert Donnelly (1876-1956) and Gertrude Mabel Robinson (1885-1982). He passed away on 29 Jun 1948 on Pershing Av, Lima, Peru. 
• Christopher ("Christo") Gore-Grimes.
• David Grene, who went to the University of Chicago. One of his sons is at Trinity College, Dublin and the other has a band focusing on Irish music. Alice and I have met the latter. David was deeply distressed, says his son, about Willem’s love affair with the Provost’s daughter Pic Gwynn.
• Ervin Ross ("Spike") Marlin, who married Hilda van Stockum. They had six children, one of whom is your blogger (#5, second youngest). 
• Owen Sheehy ("Skeff") Skeffington. He wrote a book. When Spike was in Dublin during the war, working for the OSS, he looked up Skeffington. Lis says that when she started at Trinity, Skeffington “gave us an introductory lecture. He said everyone loves Ireland because Ireland has never done anything for another country so nobody owes it anything.”
• Willem van Stockum, brother of Hilda van Stockum (my mother), who married Spike Marlin. He had a love affair with Pic Gwynn, who wanted to marry him but was overruled by her father, Trinity College Provost Edward John Gwynn. https://www.tcd.ie/provost/addresses/2018%20-%202019/2019-02-07-Launch-Gwynn-Family-Papers-%27A-Splendid-Tradition.php. (A father could do that kind of thing then.) Gwynn was doubtless concerned about someone taking his daughter away to Holland or the United States. That was the objection of Marconi's Irish mother to the marriage of Guglielmo Marconi to Inez Milholland (they were engaged for months). In a twist of fate, Willem's uncle Eugen married Inez instead of Marconi (she proposed to Eugen on a boat in 1916; Marconi said that Eugen was better suited to her). Inez said later, "The radio is wonderful but on reflection I wouldn't want to be married to one." Willem never married. He volunteered for air force service when his country was invaded and he trained in Canada. He piloted a bomber during the week of D-Day. A monument has been erected in France, near Laval, to him and his crew.  The story of Pic and Willem is well told in Time Bomber by Robert Wack (2014), for example on pages 27, 84-85. https://www.amazon.com/Time-Bomber-Robert-P-Wack/dp/0984523286

CATHOLIC WRITERS | Hilda van Stockum (1908-2006)

Hilda, probably Christmas 1944, with her children.
From right to left, clockwise: Olga, Sheila, John,
Brigid, Randal. Lis was Catherine in the second
and third books of the Canadian trilogy. Photo ©
by permission of Estate of Hilda van Stockum.

[The following is an excerpt from Walter Romig, The

Second Book of Catholic Authors, 2012. Romig was born in 1905 so he would be 116 years old in 2021. This is a scanned version of the book via HathiTrust. Google describes it the book as being in the public domain. Since the comments by Hilda van Stockum are as of circa 1944, the book must have appeared around that time.]

A YOUNG FRIEND of mine, around nine years old, when asked at school to write about her past life, began dramatically: 

“I was born in the slums of Amsterdam while my heartless mother was enjoying herself in Pans.”

Nothing as exciting happened to me. I was born in a comfortable house in Rotterdam in 1908, with both my parents very much in attendance and suitably impressed. In fact, I have learned that they made quite a fuss over me. 

My father was an officer in the Royal Dutch Navy, and we moved about quite a bit. That may have been the reason I didn’t go to school until I was ten years old and already knew how to read and write. I read so voraciously, in fact, that I knew all about school long before I went there, and the day that I was first told to stand in the corner was a red-letter day for me! I’ve tried to express this delight in my book Pegeen, where a little girl also goes to school late and enjoys experiencing what she had so often read about. 

Another happy day was when I first discovered that I could write down my own stories. I immediately began a long tale [p. 304 of book] about two little girls called Mientje and Cateau, their adventures interrupted by sums and grammar and punctuated with inkblots. However, what worried me most was the cramp in my fingers I got from writing. Being only eight at the time, the physical effort was greater than the mental, and I remember wondering whether grownups also had to go through such agony whenever they wrote. 

In the first years of my life my mother spoke English with me. Her mother was Irish and had spoken English with her. Later on, when my brothers were born and Dutch nurses came into the house, my mother stopped talking English with us and I forgot a great deal of it. But I believe the ease with which I express myself in English is due to the fact that it was my chief language as a baby. 

My parents were not Catholic; I was the first in both families to come back to the Faith. The first time I felt an interest in the Catholic Church was when I was six years old. My father and mother never talked to me about religion, but they once left me to be cared for by a Catholic nurse who had pictures of Christ in her bedroom. I didn’t know who He was and asked about Him; so she put me on the bed and talked to me for an hour. She was terribly shocked that I should be so ignorant, and seemed to blame my parents, so I did not love her, but the story she told impressed me. A little later, I got a children’s Bible and I said I wanted to go to church. My parents, both agnostics, sent me with the servants to the village church: a whitewashed, chilly affair with nothing that would appeal to a child. There was only a black-coated man talking a long time in a peculiar voice. I decided that I had been fooled; it wasn’t a church at all; and 

I didn’t ask to go again. 

But one day when I was walking with my mother, we passed a Catholic Church, and I immediately dragged my mother inside. 

“This is a church!’* I cried, sniffing the incense. “This is what I meant; this is where God is!’’ Mother thought it all very dangerous and unsuitable and quickly hurried me away. [p. 305 of book] 

Before I went to school, my father used to give me geography lessons with an orange and a candle. I remember being exceedingly troubled at the idea of becoming an angel and flapping around between all the big round worlds in a space that never ended. The way my father talked about it, I calculated that 

there wasn’t much chance of my ever meeting another angel except once in a thousand years or so, and even when you did meet one there wouldn’t be much to do but sit on one of those round worlds and have a chat. Even if you fell off it made no difference, because there wasn’t anywhere to fall to. I remember being so troubled about it that I had to get out of my bed and go to my parents to be consoled. They were playing chess together and looked very cosy and comforting. They convinced me that my fears were more funny than tragic. 

Of course there isn’t space enough to tell all that happened in my life so far, but it seems to me the best thing will be to tell roughly what events brought me into the Church. You see, most other Catholic authors are born Catholics and have to tell how they became authors; but I was born with an ever-wagging tongue, and can more fitly describe how I became a Catholic. 

When I was sixteen, we moved to Ireland, and there, of course, I came in close contact with the Catholic Church. I attended the art school in Dublin and argued about philosophy with the other students. I read Freud and Shaw and Dostoievsky and interested myself in the Montessori system of education. Presently I heard that there was a Montessori school in Waterford, and I wrote a 

letter to the Mother Superior of the convent which ran the school, asking if I might see it. I got a kind letter back, inviting me to come, and so one day I walked up the driveway to the convent door. 

I was eighteen then. I wore a bright red dress, close cropped hair, and was gaily swinging my round straw hat by its elastic band. I never saw such merriment as when the Sisters caught sight of me. When they had laughed their fill they explained that they had expected and dreaded the arrival of an elderly, severe-looking schoolmistress, with pince-nez and notebook. [p. 306] 

They couldn’t believe their eyes when they saw me ambling up the driveway. It was a great relief to them; and they promptly proceeded to spoil me. I was a vegetarian in those days, and so they pressed lettuce and fruit on me every hour, for fear I would waste away in front of their eyes. They let me help with the housework, and in the evenings I sat in the room where the novices weren’t even allowed and talked my head off to a circle of appreciative listeners. This visit made a deep impression on me. 1 hadn’t known nuns could be so natural and so merry, and their cordiality and gifts touched my heart. When the Mother 

Superior gave me a badge of the Sacred Heart to wear I carried it about for a long time until it got lost. 

When I was nineteen, I went back to Amsterdam to study art, and there, in a library, I found G. K. Chesterton, who has since been my guiding light among mortals. I bought all his books, and felt how the sweeping broom of his intellect was cleaning the attic of my mind. 

In 1931, 1 went back to Ireland and met my husband, who was then studying at Trinity College, Dublin, and a friend of my brother’s. We married in 1932, and he went off to America, his native country, to get a position, and send for me when he had things settled. While he was gone, I came in contact with what is called “the Oxford Group,’’ and experienced an emotional conversion. I thought I had discovered the secret of life, and made a fool of myself trying to convert fellow Christians to my own recent immature faith; but I was blissfully ignorant of that, 

and very happy. It was around that time that I wrote A Day on Skates (1934). After a while, I discovered that the Oxford Group was good as an irritant to startle you out of your own groove, but entirely unfit as a daily spiritual guide. So I searched among churches, and chose one that wouldn’t be too particular about dogma, landing in the Episcopal church. But the Episcopal church has many mansions, and as I practiced religion and grew in wisdom, I wandered higher and higher until I became a bigoted Anglo-Catholic. Those were the days when I would poke my head into a church and sniff. I could tell whether it 

was “high” or “low.” 

[p. 307] In February, 1934, I arrived at last in New York, where my first baby [Olga—Joan in The Mitchells trilogy] was born in November of the same year. When she was three months old, my husband got a position with the gov- 

ernment [he was hired by Henry Morgenthau for the Farm Credit Administration] and we moved to Washington, D.C., where my four next 

babies were bom and where my widowed mother came to join us. 

Meanwhile, even the Anglican church proved unsatisfactory and distressingly illogical; so finally, in 1939, the light dawned and I became a Catholic. The Cottage at Bantry Bay, and, Francis on the Run, its sequel, were written in the Anglican days. They were inspired by an Irish family which I knew very well. The three later books, Kersti and Saint Nicholas, Pegeen, and, Andries, were all written after I entered the Church. My mother entered a year after I did and just before the Nazi invasion of Holland, which gave her the strength to bear that 

terrible blow. 

I feel very fortunate and very happy, and I hope in some way through my books to give children a feeling for the beauty of life and its fun. And also its holiness. And the only advice I have for Catholic authors is to love God and neighbor as much as they can. For without love, nothing is ever created. 

Original Editor's note: Hilda van Stockum is, in private life, Mrs. Ervin Marlin. Her later books for younger readers, illustrated by the author, include Kersti and Saint Nicholas, 1940, Viking; Pegeen, 1941, Viking, Andries, 1942, Viking.

Blogger's Note: I am John Tepper Marlin, considerably older than I was in the photo at two years old in 1944; I was Timmy in The Mitchells trilogy. I live in New York City and East Hampton, New York; and Vero Beach, Florida. Olga (Joan) lives in Nairobi, Kenya. Brigid (Patsy) lives in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire,  England. Randal (Peter) lives in Ottawa, Canada. Sheila (Angela) lived outside of Watford, Hertfordshire, England, but sadly is deceased, leaving four daughters and their families. Lis (Catherine) lives in London.  If you want to reach any of my living sibings, contact me at TepperMarlin [at] aol.com. I am also Hilda van Stockum's executor and handle rights including permissions for reproduction of her art and writing. Most of her 25 books for children are still in print and under copyright until 2056. English-language editions are published by Bethlehem Books, Purple House Press and Boissevain Books. Translations of her books are available in French, Danish, Dutch, Hebrew, Japanese, Portuguese and German. She has also translated books from German and Dutch into English—and her French was pretty good as well. 

MONTESSORI | St. Anthony's School, London

Maria Montessori

November 15, 2020—My sister Sheila Marlin O'Neill was a Montessori-trained teacher who started several Montessori Schools and maintained them until her death. Her Montessori-trained children (fourth generation, since Hilda van Stockum's mother was also Montessori-trained) have continued one of the schools, at Garston Manor near Watford.

I have been interested in the chain of Montessori training. Sheila and Lis both went to Sion Hill in Blackrock, Dublin, where the Dominican Sisters used Montessori methods (see below). 

One of the trainings that Sheila took was at St. Anthony's School in London. Such a school exists (https://www.stanthonysprep.org.uk/about/our-history/) but it is not run by a religious order (it seems to have been owned by two different private equity firms in succession and is now owned by Alpha Plus).

Here is an excerpt from a book about Montessori Schools and training, which refers to Sister Stephanie, O.S.F. (Order of St Francis) as Headmistress of St. Anthony's School and is Honorary Secretary of the Catholic Montessori Guild. I would love to know more about her.

Maria Montessori believed that game-playing was at the heart of learning. It took a while for teachers in religious schools to get used to the idea that game-playing had a place in a  Catholic education. More here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0034408800750308

Here is an explanation (from 2012!) why I am looking for Sister Stephanie and the story of St. Anthony's School: https://hildavanstockum.blogspot.com/2012/07/copy-of-missing-montessori-book.html.

I am also trying to contact the Council of Catholic Montessori Schools.

MOTHER'S DAY | An Appreciation for Hilda van Stockum

With Mom in 2005, when she was 97, the
year before her death.

May 10, 2020 (Mother's Day in the USA)—We celebrated Mother's Day today. That always-on-Sunday celebration was invented in the United States by Anna Jarvis. Her mother had held Mother's Friendship Days to reunite families and neighbors separated during the U.S. Civil War. Her daughter, Anna Jarvis, carried on the torch.

On May 10, 1908, the first official Mother's Day celebrations took place in the United States. That's also when three-month-old Hilda was on a boat with her parents to Java. (In 1914, Woodrow Wilson designated the second Sunday of May as Mother's Day.)

So, in a year when my Mom would have turned 112, our family's honoree today was Alice Tepper Marlin. Our daughter Caroline made a magnificent dinner for us to share. As we are hunkered down to avoid spread of the coronavirus, it was a good time for reflection.

Caroline with her Mom, Hachikō and John.
Artwork by Brigid Marlin. Photo by SL.

Alice and I remembered to each other our joint vivid experiences of our mothers in the past half-century (the 49th anniversary of our meeting was in March). Alice was especially grateful for our long vacations with the Marlin children and grandchildren: "Hilda and Spike organized the vacations so that the cousins would get to meet one another, form memories and bonds," she says. "Hilda favored the simpler life, self-reliance, home remedies for ailments, family time."

Caroline added: "She encouraged children to exercise their imagination. They were provided with writing and painting materials and they made things. They had performances."

In this time of "social distancing," when people must stay away from events and shopping where people congregate, we are thrown back on our own resources. The Marlin children, and then the grandchildren, had a chance to work on common vacation projects. I especially remember our vacations at Rosturk Castle in Mulranny, County Mayo, Ireland, especially as I have learned more about the man who had the idea for the castle, Colonel Vaughan, and started building it in 1867. He was from a one-time recusant Catholic family. Of the 13 Vaughan children who grew up in Courtfield, Ross, Herefordshire, six became priests and five became nuns. Another interesting vacation spot we spent summers in was Skibbereen, in southwest Ireland, when all the young cousins were thriving. Other memorable vacation homes were in Robin Hood, Maine; a vineyard villa in the hills outside of Florence; and a French chateau in la Ferté St Cyr.

Alice loved all these vacations. She missed out on big family gatherings in her childhood because her only sibling left home to go to Bryn Mawr College when Alice was eight. She also had an intellectually gifted mother, who went to Barnard College and then earned an advanced degree at  Columbia University. Alice's mother was a scientist. She chose the Baldwin School for Alice after much research, and instilled in Alice a respect for learning, especially science.

Mom's skillful understanding of what children need probably originated from her own mother, who was sent scads of instructions by her own Irish mother when she brought HvS to the East Indies when she was a few months old. HvS had six children to practice on, and was trained by Maria Montessori, who established a training center in Dublin. Mom was very proud of the book she did for Montessori course, and told me several times how much she misses having the book she did as part of the course. She thinks she loaned it to someone connected with a Sisters of Loreta convent in Dublin and somehow it was never returned. We have a bad copy of the book, and would dearly love to get back the original to republish it.

I intend to keep writing more about HvS, and her Dutch-Irish mother (Olga Boissevain), and her Irish mother (Emily Heloise MacDonnell). My niece Christine Schintgen would like to do a biography of HvS as a literary lion in the children's book field. I would like to focus on Hilda van Stockum as a correspondent with and about her family during World War II.

HvS to Spike | Paris, Oct 1, 1954

BIRTH | Feb 9–Hilda van Stockum (110 in 2018)

Hilda (73) and Spike (70) in
1971.

February 9, 2018–Hilda van Stockum was born 110 years ago.

She died in 2006, at 98.

Her obituary was in The New York Times and many other newspapers. 

Her family still misses her.

DOGS | What Trump Doesn't Get (+Video of Pres&1stDog)

Hilda van Stockum's book about a girl who finds
a dog and takes it home. Not for the faint-hearted.

January 9, 2018 – There's an Op-Ed piece in today's New York Times by Jennifer Weiner saying that Donald Trump doesn't understand dogs. 

(For video of the President and First Dog, belonging to a neighbor, see Comment below.)

He is the first President since Thomas Jefferson (who did not, apparently, lack for human companionship when he wanted it) not to have had a pet. 

Ms. Weiner argues, pretty effectively, that Trump doesn't understand dogs because his recorded references to them are all pejorative.

Trump's attitude sounds like that of W. C. Fields, born William Claude Dukenfield: "Any man who hates dogs and babies can't be all bad." But Leo Rosten claims that quote was actually first made as his comment about W.C. Fields during a 1939 roast at the Masquer's Club in Hollywood in 1939 (Rosten in The Power of Positive Nonsense, 1977).

Ms. Weiner might have used the comment attributed to President Harry S. Truman: “If you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog.” But she probably didn't because upon examination this quote is also misattributed, though it is a line in the 1975 play Give 'Em Hell Harry. The Truman Library questions whether Truman ever said it – Harry and Bess actually gave away two dogs that they received as gifts. According to a post by Barry Popik, the quote was used back on November 19, 1911 in a classified ad on the second page of the Philadelphia Inquirer: "If you want a friend, buy a dog." The United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co. used this as its slogan.

William Safire, in Safire’s Political Dictionary (Oxford University Press, 2008 ), remembers (p. 635) former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld adding to Truman's alleged dictum: “Better make it a small dog, because it may turn on you also.” 

My late friend Seton Shanley, who bred dogs in East Hampton, had a bumper sticker that said: "The more people I meet, the more I like my dogs."

My mother loved dogs and it was a family tug-of-war because my father did not. Eventually after the sixth child arrived he approved of our getting a dog in Montreal. Trusty was the center of our lives for several years, until we left for Europe in 1951 and had to leave her  behind with a friend.

Dogs are featured in many of my Mom's books, but especially Patsy and the Pup, which our dog Hachikō enjoyed reading. Another of her books focused on a dog was Rufus Round and Round, which is a fictionalized story of a dog I once had. She uses the true story of the roundup by the Nazis of Dutch pet dogs for army use to show the heartlessness of the occupiers of World War II Holland, in her most widely read book, The Winged Watchman. Dogs are everywhere in her paintings and illustrations.

President Trump should get a dog, but given his attitude toward dogs, I'm not sure the rescue agencies should let him have one.

HILDA'S ADVICE TO WRITERS | Letter to ERM, March 13, 1946

Hilda van Stockum painting for her class at the
Trapp Family Lodge, Stowe, Vt., about 1948.

Dec. 25, 2017 – HvS here chortles over surprising  questions about writing from wannabe writers. One of them seemed to think that the needed trick might be in the type of paper she writes on. It is posted here for the first time, just typed up from the original handwritten letter by my son Jay as a Christmas gift to me. John (aka Timmy Mitchell)

Hilda Marlin
3728 Northampton Street NW
Washington, D.C. 15

March 13, 1946

Dearest Husband,

Your presents were brought yesterday and I don't think you've ever bought us anything that was such a hit. The crucifix is beautiful and so is the Sacred Heart picture. Of course Jesus's face is not one hundred percent satisfactory, but how could it be? I only know too well how difficult it is, but it is at least dignified, artistic and in your good taste – a picture you can honor. And perhaps, in time, I shall even get to like the face, for it is not an insignificant or insipid face. 

The medals touched us all very much. You selected them with great love and care – Saint John the Baptist for Johnny (though his patron saint is really Saint John the Evangelist), Saint Therèse of the Infant Jesus for Olga (though her patron saint is Saint Teresa of Avila [Carmelite nun and mystic, born between Christopher Columbus’s discovery of America and the beginning of the Reformation- JTM]. It would have done for Brigid because she took Therèse as her Confirmation name, but she fell in love with The Blessed Virgin, so she took that). Saint Robert for Randal is correct, and he was very pleased with it. So is Saint Cecilia for Sheila and Saint Elisabeth for Lissie. 

I think I shall have to take Saint Michael for no one else wants him and I can use him very well, battle as I have to with the Devil in many forms. I was also very touched with the brooch – The Virgin and Child surrounded by my children. Very appropriate. Only what if I get twins next? You shall have to give me another brooch. 

You have never given me a present that pleased me so well. I have rearranged the pictures in my room to do justice to the Crucifix and Olga now gets the Crucifix May [Massee] gave me. If you should manage to be in Paris again I should like a French and Latin missal. It might be useful in Canada. I've lost my own missal and they seem to make such beautiful art in Paris, perhaps you can get me a really artistic one. I wish we could go to Paris! I am terribly happy with your presents.

We also liked van Heuven very much. He is in trouble, though, for he has thrown up the job he took on account of his mother, who hated his being so far away for six years and now he has got to have a job and he hoped you could get him one at PICAO [the Provisional International Civil Aviation Organization, of which Spike was Secretary]. He is going to see you when he gets back to London. He seemed a more mature and thoughtful person than Biereus. Biereus reminds me a little of the other Biereus I knew (Wim).

Hans Brinker (World Publishing Co.) arrived and looks very nice. I think the colored pictures reproduced beautifully. I also talked before a professional writer's club and had a roaring success. They were in fits of laughter.

There was one lady who asked me a silly question.

"What do you think of ‘Angela’ for a dog's name?"

"It depends on the dog,” I said.

"Oh, it's a sweet dog, but my son won't allow it to have that name."

"Maybe he is embarrassed, walking around with a dog called Angela," I suggested, and everybody roared. 

There was a school teacher who said she had wanted to write all her life but never got so far. I told her to keep a diary of what went on in her class to make a start. 

"Oh!" she said intensely. "Oh! Is that how you do it? Do you use a looseleaf notebook or a plain? Or would a five-year diary be better?" She clutched at me as if I were a lifebuoy, and the questions I had to answer convinced me that it is most unlikely that she'll ever write a best-seller. To tell you the honest truth, I rather wondered what she taught the children. But she was touchingly grateful for my advice. 

Of course I told my usual repertoire of how I started to write and used birth control on my books – and how I became a citizen and said [when asked by the immigration officer why she hadn’t reported that she had a second child when she applied for citizenship a year earlier–JTM]:

"If you wait any longer I'll have three.” 

But there was one part that made them almost faint with laughter and that was especially for the benefit of aspiring writers. I said that you often asked me what I found to write about my most ordinary children and that I told you they'd be no use unless they were ordinary. And I went on to say that the things you gossiped about in real life, and envied and thought thrilling were boring and unconvincing in literature – that it was the normal that is needed in books rather than the abnormal. 

"So," I said, "the duller the life you lead, the less brilliant your companions, the more humdrum your surroundings, the less exciting your occupations, the more successful your books." 

And that was such a paradox to the aspiring writers they simply gasped for breath. Well, I was in my blue heaven. 

Otherwise, I'm a drudge. I managed to make some kind of dinner for Mr. van Heuven but the oven door broke and what with all my temperamental children I have quite a time of it. But I refuse to get flustered and we're very happy, thank you.

Did I tell you that Johnny said: "Jesus is a sport, isn't He?"

Today he said: "I wish Mammy was small, then I could knock her down." 

He came to bring me an onion out of the garden.

"Do you like onions?"

"No," I said. "But when I was a little boy I did." Profound silence.

Then – triumphantly: "You never were a little boy! A little girl you mean!" 

He showed me his doll [my sisters promoted gender-neutral play – JTM]. "I want it to be real,” he said.

"I can't make it real." I told him.

"Then who can?" he asked.

“God," I said.

"Then how do we get it to God?" he said.

Granny. Olga Boissevain van
Stockum, about 1948. (She
died in 1949.)

Randal is getting better. Doctor Deyrup says if we hadn't caught it just then he would have had pneumonia. Yet she had been three days before and judged that he wasn't very sick and if I hadn't checked the symptoms so much she might not even have come again. But I didn't like the sound of his cough. An ordinary cough has a liquid sound – and a croupy cough is a bark. But this was a falsetto cough with a nasty twang, completely dry. It sounded like sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. We really were anxious about him. 

Miffy told a horrible story about a man he knew who had what they thought a "mild" case of flu and suddenly developed kidney complications, was rushed to a hospital and only saved through liberal application of Penicillin. 

Mother said, so tragically: "I don't want to lose a grandson as well as a son, and especially not one who continually reminds me of Willem."

But thanks be to God he is all right now. If all goes well he may get up tomorrow and on Friday I have to take him to Group H[ealth] for an X-ray of his chest. [Randal turns 80 next month, and has six children – three girls including his eldest and youngest, and three boys.–JTM]

Very fondest love from 

Your wife.

AUCTIONS | Hilda van Stockum Art to Be Sold

Image © by the Estate of Hilda van Stockum, shown here by
special permission.

The art-pricing site askART has just announced that one or more items of Hilda van Stockum art will be auctioned in the near future.

For more details go to the askART site. Full information will require a subscription.

Meanwhile, 33 pieces of art by Hilda van Stockum have been collected together on the Arcadja art-pricing site. To see the prices, a "Pro" subscription is required, but several pieces of art are shown with prices attached.

Here are some recent HvS art works that have been auctioned:

Hans Brinker drawings for the World Publishing edition. Ironically, the artist in this case was a Dutch native, but the author of the famed book (which invented the legend of the boy with his finger in the dike) never even visited Holland. Auctioned by Susanin's, Chicago, March 19, 2016, Lot 7072.

Wildflower with Beech Leaves (1992). Leslie Hindmin, Chicago, March 19, 2014, Lot 2712.

Pears in a Window. DeVere's, Dublin. November 27, 2013, Lot 2. These pears look a lot like the ones in the HvS Europa stamp, although the background is different. Could pears last through two sets of "sittings"? DeVere's auctioned another HvS art work on May 14, 2013.

Another auction house that deals in HvS art: Adams (Dublin).

Another art pricing site: Artprice.

Related Post: Archives and Galleries of Hilda van Stockum

ST NICHOLAS | It's His Day – Buy "Kersti and St Nicholas"! (Updated Dec. 6, 2017)

"Kersti and St Nicholas" – slightly modified by the author's
children to make the book accessible to another generation
of families. The illustrations are classic.

December 5, 2017 – It is St Nicholas Eve, my mother's favorite day of the year when we were growing up. She would put up a Christmas tree and then get out her St Nicholas costume.

With great fanfare at dusk she would arrive as St Nicholas, meting out appreciation for all the good things the children did and remonstrating, in a stern but kindly way, about some example of deeds less admirable.

She did such a good job of it! I remember being so impressed with the deep knowledge St Nicholas had of our family. How could he know so much about so many families?

The next morning we would find our stockings hanging full of small gifts, and sometimes a piece of coal with an explanation, a reminder of some egregious malfeasance or nonfeasance. I was stunned. St Nicholas kept track! Who knew?

Hilda van Stockum herself is full of morality. She came down hard on her evil characters, like Leendert in The Winged Watchman. Some librarians found it disconcerting that Kersti managed to persuade St Nicholas to deviate from his normal mission of giving presents only to good children. In Kersti we find a St Nicholas who listens to pleas and can be merciful. The question of the librarians is where mercy ends and injustice begins.

The unexpected turn of the plot surely reflects the impact on van Stockum of Hitler's ruthless invasion of the Netherlands in May of the year of publication, 1940. 

That was van Stockum's country of birth and most of her relatives were deeply threatened. Many would die because they worked in the Resistance. Some died of hunger. One of her two brothers died during the war piloting an RAF plane to fight Hitler. The other brother died of an illness contracted in Holland during the war.

This is a "Speculaas Moulin" – a Dutch windmill 

cookie, with almond and ginger spices. In 

Belgium they are called "Speculoos" cookies. 

They are a specialty of St. Nicholas Day.

One can understand why at that time van Stockum was yearning for benevolence from those with the power to dispense mercy. 

The book Kersti and St Nicholas was originally a hard-cover book published by Viking. The reprint edition is a paperback. Her children edited the text slightly to ensure that the good children did not suffer from the mercy shown to naughty children. 

The illustrations in the book are universally admired, and every year the products offered by Boissevain Books get a little better as reprint technology improves and our ability to ensure quality increases.

Here is a review of the reprint edition:

A beautifully illustrated book for the Holidays about Kersti, a mischievous little girl who is always misbehaving, much to the dismay of her six older sisters and parents. As St. Nicholas Day approaches, Kersti worries that she won't receive any gifts and sets out on an adventure. First published in 1940, this new edition has been abridged and adapted by the author's family to make it more accessible to young readers today. – Fantastic Fiction.

The book has a rating of 4.8 out of 5 on Goodreads and 4 out of 5 on Amazon. So:

• Read three chapters free (with our permission) at the St Nicholas Center website. 
• Then buy the book from Amazon or from us, the publisher (and get on our email list).

More about St Nicholas

St Nicholas is the patron saint of millers and sailors, Holland and New York City. St Nicholas appears the evening before his feastday, i.e., the evening of December 5.

Above is a photo of a cookie my wife Alice Tepper Marlin purchased in Belgium. It is a St Nicholas Day specialty. It has a windmill on it because it's a specialty of Holland and other low countries threatened by floods.

First published in 1962, The Winged Watchman
 has sold 55,000 copies in reprint since 1997.
 It has been optioned for a movie and a 
television mini-series.

Hurricane Sandy a year ago shut down much of New York City and reminded us of the Dutch skill at keeping out water. Much of Holland is at or below sea level and the windmills pump out the "polders", the areas surrounded by dikes (Dutch embankments).

The Port of Rotterdam is a great example of Dutch engineering to keep water at bay. It is also where my Hilda van Stockum was born. Her father was a naval captain and she grew up near ports and naval bases. Her book, The Winged Watchman (1962), was republished in 1997 after 20 years being out of print. It has sold 55,000 copies in the reprint version, has been optioned for a movie, and is currently under option for a television miniseries. The book by my mother has special relevance in light of Hurricane Sandy, which caused most of its damage because of flooding and caused most of the lost economic activity because of the electricity outages.

The story is about a family that lives in an old windmill during the Nazi Occupation. Two boys aged 10 and 14 join the Resistance. The book shows how the windmill did their work when the electric mills were starved for fuel during the Dutch famine.

New York City has lost the skills of its Dutch colonists and Hurricane Sandy did major damage to the areas of NYC near water. If the Dutch were still in charge this might not have happened. Bring 'em back!

Seal of the City of New York. Note windmill 
"wings" and two beavers.

The Dutch first came to New York when the Dutch East India Company in 1609 sent English navigator Henry Hudson to explore the river now named after him. He went far north into what is now Canada and wrote back to his sponsors that beavers lived on the river in abundance. A Dutch settlement, New Amsterdam, was founded in Manhattan largely to support trapping beavers and sending them to Europe for women to wear. The New York City coat of arms has two beavers on it as well as a four windmill wings in honor of the Dutch settlers.

The Dutch have been facing these flooding problems for many centuries. Their world preeminence in building windmills to pump out water also made them experts in making sails for the mill wings and this helped make them a global naval power for a time.

After the English took over the Dutch colony in 1664, they renamed it New York. The city grew most rapidly when the Hudson River became the gateway not only to upstate New York but also, after the Erie Canal was built, to the Great Lakes.

The Dutch have developed many kinds of technology to deal with today's challenges to their flood-threatened system of polders. New York needs to get their advice. The Winged Watchman provides both a history of the importance of windmills in Dutch history and an education in the ways to deal with flooding.