Mamma I don’t know what to think, but Maude [sic] seems to think from the way people in San Diego talk that it’s all fixed between Rupe and me. Now that’s the first I knew about it and I’m mad. Do they expect to carry me off like a cave-dweller or have you performed one of those proxy-affairs in my infancy. I’m as peeved as I can be and it’s a good thing I don’t hold it up against poor Rupe or he’d get biffed in the eye by the next mail.
Bill Everett (Sam Hutchinson) in 1916, the year he and Marion were engaged
Collection of Marion Willard, reprinted with permission of Louise King
Marion camping on her honeymoon, 1919
Collection of Marion Willard, reprinted with permission of Louise King
Marion with her children, Ted, Willy, and Louise
Collection of Marion Willard, reprinted with permission of Louise King
In the summer of 1912, Rupe Andrews came back to Mankato for a visit, just as Larry does in the book. Like Larry and Carney, the young couple agreed they weren’t in love and Rupe returned to California. However, there was no “Sam Hutchinson” waiting in the wings—Marion didn’t meet her future husband until 1915, when she was a schoolteacher in Waseca, Minnesota.
Sam Hutchinson is based on William “Bill” Everett, the only son of the richest man in Waseca. Bill was an easygoing, fun-loving man who played the saxophone, enjoyed practical jokes, and didn’t worry about money. Like Sam, he rarely carried cash, and like Carney, Marion was horrified.
Shortly after they became engaged in 1916, Bill joined the Army Signal Corps Reserve. When the U.S. entered the war in April 1917, Bill was mobilized and didn’t return from France until 1919. One month after his return, he and Marion were married. True to form, he had forgotten to order flowers for her, so bought a lavish, last-minute cascade of two dozen cabbage roses that nearly hid the bride from view.
Not wanting to work for his overbearing father, Bill struck out on his own. He and Marion settled in Minneapolis, where they had three children. As Sam prophesies in the book, their eldest child was a boy, Ted, who was markedly gifted in music. All of the children took music lessons—daughter Louise even took voice lessons from Kathleen Hart, the model for Julia Ray. Marion continued to play the piano, sometimes accompanying Bill on his sax.
The Old Crowd—a reunion in California with old friends in the mid-1960s. From left to right: Bick Kenney Kirch (Tacy), Marion, Narcissa Fox, Maud Hart Lovelace, Tom Fox (Tom Slade)
Collection of Marion Willard, reprinted with permission of Louise King
The years of World War II were hard for Marion. Louise went to Vassar, fifty years after her mother, did; sons Ted and Willy joined the Armed Forces. In 1943 Bill died at age fifty-two of an aortic aneurysm. Less than a year later, Ted was killed in combat in France. Marion faced her losses stoically, as she (and Carney) had been brought up to do. She found comfort in Willy’s safe return from war and Louise’s happy marriage and children.
Reproduction of a photograph of a visit between Maud and Marion in California in 1970
Collection of Marion Willard, reprinted with permission of Louise King
When Maud wrote to ask for help with her Carney’s House Party manuscript, Marion responded to long questionnaires with details that show up in the book, such as her favorite dessert at home (“Boiled custard!”) and the pattern of her bedroom wallpaper in Mankato (yellow poppies). At the bottom of the letter, Marion scribbled: “I am enchanted with a doll buggy that I bought for [granddaughter] Caroline. I keep it in my living room and push it in off moments. Silly grandmother.”
Marion filled her golden years with family, music, and travel, especially to the Western states. She visited old friends from Mankato—including Maud, Rupe Andrews, Tom Fox (Tom Slade), and Connie Davis (Bonnie Andrews)—and continued to correspond with friends from childhood and college until the end of her life. She and Maud Hart Lovelace remained close, even after illness put a stop to visits.
Marion died in Minneapolis at the age of eighty-six on January 16, 1978. Her memory and her connection to Carney Sibley has been kept alive by her children and grandchildren, especially her daughter, Louise. One of the earliest members of the Maud Hart Lovelace Society in Minneapolis, Louise has been a speaker at several Betsy-Tacy events and conventions, drawing on her remembrances of Maud, Marion, and other people behind the book’s characters.
—Based on Future in a Handbasket: The Life
and Letters Behind Carney’s House Party
by Amy Dolnick. Copyright © 2002
by Amy Dolnick. Published by the
Maud Hart Lovelace Society.
About Winona’s Pony Cart
Beulah Ariel Hunt
Betsy-Tacy Society/Maud Hart Lovelace Archives
“Winona had black eyes that snapped and flashed with mischief. Her face was tanned, and a mane of black hair was always flying out behind her. She liked to be outdoors, to play wild games, and run, and climb trees.”
—From Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown
WINONA ROOT is the spirited friend of Betsy and Tacy. As she did with the rest of the Betsy-Tacy books, Maud Hart Lovelace based the characters and places in Winona’s Pony Cart closely on those she knew. Unlike the Betsy-Tacy books in which Betsy is the main character, Winona is the main character in Winona’s Pony Cart. This book was published in 1953, ten years after Winona first appeared as a character in Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown.
Lovelace used the character of Winona in several of the Betsy-Tacy books. Beulah Hunt was the inspiration for the young Winona Root in Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown and Winona’s Pony Cart. However, the character of Winona of the high school books was based on Mary Eleanor Johnson because Maud’s editors thought too many characters were being introduced into the series. Since Beulah Hunt belonged to a different crowd in high school, Maud reused the name Winona for her friend Mary Eleanor.
Beulah Ariel Hunt was born October 19, 1891, in Mankato, and was the daughter of Frank W. and Nellie Morse Hunt (Horace and Agatha Root). Beulah (or Betty, as she was called) had two older sisters, Bertha (Bessie) and Marion (Myra), both born in New York state.
The Frank W. Hunt home, circa 1895. Frank Hunt is standing on the left. Riding in the pony cart is Beulah with her sisters, Bertha and Marion. Beulah’s dog, Peter, is also in the picture.
Standard Historical & Pictorial Atlas & Gazetter of Blue Earth County Minn. (1895)
Her parents, Frank (1856–1928) and Nellie (1854–1937), were married in 1877 in Wilna, New York. They came to Mankato in 1887, and Frank and his brother Lewis started the Daily Free Press (Deep Valley Sun). In March 1902, Frank W. Hunt, Michael D. Fritz, and J. W. True purchased the Free Press Printing Co. Hunt was made president of the company, a position he held until retiring in December 1917.
The Hunts lived in a white house at the corner of Byron and Clark streets for more than forty-five years. Frank was one of Mankato’s most prominent citizens. His obituary stated: “Mr. Hunt was ever a kind father and husband.” His description in Winona’s Pony Cart was probably accurate:
He had black hair like Winona’s, and white teeth like hers, and perhaps when he was a little boy he hadn’t been dignified either. Certainly he always understood what made her [Winona] do the things she did. He had always helped her out when she got into fixes.
Nellie Hunt devoted her time to her family and her church: “Her [Winona’s] mother was very dignified. She was president of the Ladies’ Foreign Missionary Society. She was slender and frail and always beautifully dressed, with never a hair out of place.” For more than twenty years Nellie held a district office in the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Church and was active in the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. She is buried beside her husband in Glenwood Cemetery.
Beulah’s sister Bertha Hunt (1883–1962) did not marry. Marion married the Rev. Blaine Lambert and had three children: Frank, Lewis, and Louisa. (“Myra was planning to marry a minister. Not any special minist
er; she just liked ministers.”)
In 1952 Maud wrote in the Mankato Free Press: “Sometimes, if we were lucky, we went to a matinee at the Opera House; on passes, since Beulah’s father was the editor of the Free Press.” In Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown, Maud writes:
Frank W. Hunt
History of Blue Earth County (1909)
“Her father was a tall, important-looking man. Across his starched white vest he wore a heavy gold watch chain with a Knights of Pythias fob.”
—From Winona’s
Pony Cart
Winona Root did everything first. Just because her father was an editor, she had complimentary tickets—“comps,” they were called—to the circus, to the Dog and Pony Show, to the glass blowers, to the lantern slide performances, to all the matinees that played at the Opera House.
Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show was in Mankato in 1898, so Winona’s story about meeting him could very well have been true for Beulah.
Beulah and her dog, Peter (Winona and Toodles)
Blue Earth County Historical Society
Beulah graduated from Mankato High School in 1911. She attended Northwestern University and the University of Wisconsin, where she majored in psychology. She married Edwin K. IlgenFritz on November 13, 1914, in front of the bay window of the library at the Hunt house in Mankato. The couple had two daughters, Bonnie Jean and Beverly. Edwin worked for the Consumers Power Co. in Mankato. In 1920 the family moved to Illinois, and in 1930 they moved to St. Petersburg, Florida, where Edwin had taken a position with Florida Power. Beulah continued studying psychology in St. Petersburg and at the Sorbonne in Paris. She also volunteered as a psychology teacher and for the Red Cross.
Maud Hart Lovelace was honored in 1961 at Betsy-Tacy Days in Mankato. She spoke to a large crowd at Lincoln School and introduced those who figured as characters in the Betsy-Tacy books. In attendance were Marjorie Gerlach Harris (Tib) of Chicago; Frances Kenney Kirch (Tacy) of Buffalo, New York; Ruth Williams (Alice) of Port Orchard, Washington; Beulah Hunt IlgenFritz (Winona) of St. Petersburg; Mildred Oleson Cahill (Irma) of Waseca, Minnesota; and Mr. and Mrs. Jabez Lloyd (Cab and Irene) and Eleanor Wood Lippert (Dorothy), all of Mankato.
Beulah Hunt IlgenFritz died January 9, 1985, in St. Petersburg at the age of ninety-three.
—Based on Maud Hart Lovelace’s Deep Valley
by Julie A. Schrader. Copyright © 2002
by Julie A. Schrader. Published by
Minnesota Heritage Publishing.
About Illustrator Vera Neville
Vera Neville
Collection of Patricia Neville-Downe
VERA NEVILLE was born in Detroit, Michigan, on April 2, 1904. A year later, her family moved to Interlaken, New Jersey, where her father worked as a real estate developer. As a young girl, Vera took ballet, piano, and horseback riding lessons. She spent summers on her grandmother’s farm in Canada, where she fell in love with animals and began to craft little drawings of horses, cats, and mice.
The Neville family returned to Detroit in 1916, and Vera began to study art in earnest, taking lessons from Paul Honoré, an American artist known for colorful murals. After high school graduation, Vera moved to New York City and began her studies at the Art Students League. At the League, Vera sharpened her skills and talent, training under renowned American artists George Bridgman and Cecilia Beaux.
In 1928 Vera married fellow artist William B. Hamaker, and they settled in Greenwich Village. Vera first began working in fashion illustration and advertising art but later found steady employment as a children’s book and magazine illustrator. Her first children’s book, The Meddlesome Mouse, which she both wrote and illustrated, was published in 1931.
Over the next thirteen years, Vera illustrated many children’s books, including the comical Lazy Liza Lizard by Marie Curtis Rains; The Lonely Little Pig, a collection of animal tales; and Highway Past Her Door by Mary Wolfe Thompson, a young adult romance. Vera wrote and illustrated two books of her own, Little Bo and Safety for Sandy. She also drew the pictures for stories in children’s magazines, such as Child Life and Story Parade, as well as Christmas cards for the American Artists Group. Her illustrations of animals and children were delightful and lifelike, full of motion and detail.
In 1944, the Thomas Y. Crowell Company, publisher of the Betsy-Tacy books, needed a new illustrator for the high school series featuring Betsy and Tacy, which Maud Hart Lovelace had begun to write. Lois Lenski, the artist of the first four Betsy-Tacy books, declined to illustrate the new longer books as she preferred to work on stories for younger readers. Lenski mentioned Vera Neville as a possible artist for the forthcoming series. Vera was hired in 1945 to illustrate Heaven to Betsy, the first Betsy-Tacy high school story.
Vera’s illustrations of teenage Betsy and her friends were authentic to the 1900s era. She studied photographs of Maud Hart Lovelace and her friends to create the lovable pictures of Betsy, Tacy, Tib, Carney, Joe, Cab, and all of the other characters in the books. Vera researched fashion, furnishings, and household items to make her illustrations as realistic as possible. Readers fell in love with Vera’s charming and sometimes comical, sometimes heartbreaking depictions of Betsy Ray. The high school stories proved to be as popular as the younger Betsy-Tacy books, and Maud wrote a new one each year.
Vera Neville and Maud Hart Lovelace continued their partnership for ten years, which included the four Betsy-Tacy high school books, the Deep Valley books (Carney’s House Party, Emily of Deep Valley, and Winona’s Pony Cart), and the stories of Betsy’s adult years, Betsy and the Great World and Betsy’s Wedding. At the same time, Vera drew the pictures for several more children’s books, including A Lion for Patsy by Miriam Mason and Two Hundred Pennies by Catherine Woolley.
Vera illustrated one more children’s book, Pigtail Pioneer, in 1956 and then retired from the publishing world. She settled in Michigan and worked in her father’s real estate business. She passed away in March 1979.
Vera Neville’s remarkable artwork lives on in the Betsy-Tacy books as new generations of readers become acquainted with Betsy and her friends.
—Teresa Gibson
Sources: Patricia Neville Downe; Lilly
Erickson; Elizabeth Riley, Keynote Speech,
1997 Betsy-Tacy Convention;
Archives of the American Artists Group,
Smithsonian Institution
About the Author
MAUD HART LOVELACE (1892–1980) based her Betsy-Tacy series on her own childhood. Her series still boasts legions of fans, many of whom are members of the Betsy-Tacy Society, a national organization based in Mankato, Minnesota.
www.Betsy-TacySociety.org
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.
PRAISE FOR Maud Hart Lovelace
“There are three authors whose body of work I have reread more than once over my adult life: Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and Maud Hart Lovelace.”
—Anna Quindlen,
New York Times bestselling author
“Slipping into a Betsy book is like slipping into a favorite pair of well-worn slippers: It’s always a pleasure to live in Betsy’s world for a little while, to experience her simple joys but also her (thankfully short-lived) sorrows.”
—Meg Cabot,
New York Times bestselling author
“I reread these books every year, marveling at how a world so quaint—shirtwaists! Pompadours! Merry Widow hats!—can feature a heroine who is undeniably modern.”
—Laura Lippman,
New York Times bestselling author
“I read every one of these Betsy-Tacy-Tib books twice. I loved them as a child, as a young adult, and now, reading them with my daughter, as a mother. What a wonderful world it was!”
—Bette Midler, actor and singer
“Some characters become your friends for life. That’s how it was for me with Betsy-Tacy.”
—Judy Blume, beloved bestselling author
&n
bsp; “The Betsy-Tacy books were among my favorites when I was growing up.”
—Nora Ephron,
Academy Award-nominated writer-director
“I am fairly certain that my independent, high-spirited grandmother must have had a childhood similar to Betsy Ray’s…. As I read…I felt that I was having an unexpected and welcome peek into Granny’s childhood—a gift to me from Maud Hart Lovelace.”
—Ann M. Martin, creator and author
of the Baby-sitters Club series
“Family loyalty and the devotion of friends to one another…for me are the defining characteristics of the Betsy-Tacy stories.”
—Esther Hautzig, award-winning author,
former director of Children’s Book Promotion
for Thomas Y. Crowell Co., and publicist for
Betsy’s Wedding in 1955
“I truly consider Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown to be the finest novel in the English language! I will never love any other books as much as I love the Betsy-Tacy books.”
—Claudia Mills, children’s book author, winner of
the National Book Award and Golden Kite Award
“When I was growing up in the Bronx, I had lots of friends. But the girls I most enjoyed spending time with were Betsy, Tacy, and Tib…in the series by Maud Hart Lovelace…three girls full of good ideas, adventures and fun.”
—Johanna Hurwitz, award-winning
author of more than sixty popular
books for young readers
“Maud Hart Lovelace and her Betsy-Tacy series influenced me very much when I was a girl; I identified with Betsy, who wanted to be a writer, as well as the friends’ girl power.”
—Lorna Landvik,
New York Times bestselling author