Touring the Thurber House

Laura Maylene Walter (00:00):
All right, listeners <laugh>. I'm in the ghost bathroom. If you can hear that slight echo...just waiting to see if I feel a ghost. I do not <laugh>, but you know, ghosts might not like recording equipment. That's fine.

Laura Maylene Walter (00:25):
Hi everyone. Welcome to Page Count. I'm your host, Laura Maylene Walter, and we have a special episode today because we are in Columbus onsite at the Thurber House to learn a bit more about the writer James Thurber. I'm here today with Don Boozer, the manager of the Literature department at Cleveland Public Library and the Ohio Center for the Book Coordinator. Don, so glad you're here with us today.

Don Boozer (00:50):
I'm looking forward to the tour.

Laura Maylene Walter (00:51):
I am also here with Leah Wharton, who is the Thurber House Operations Director, and will be providing some more information for us. Leah, welcome to the podcast and thanks so much for having us.

Leah Wharton (01:01):
It's great to have you guys here.

Laura Maylene Walter (01:03):
And finally, we're here with Steve Andersson, who is a docent with the Thurber House.

Steve Andersson (01:08):
Thank you for having me.

Laura Maylene Walter (01:10):
And maybe we could just start by asking who was James Thurber? Give our listeners an overview.

Steve Andersson (01:15):
Well, James Thurber was one of America's greatest humorists and cartoonists. He's right up there with Mark Twain. So James Thurber lived in this house from 1913 to 1917, and he wrote comedic pieces as well as drawing great cartoons. And he is a national treasure. And we have his house right here in Columbus. It's wonderful.

Laura Maylene Walter (01:39):
So again, we're here to get a tour of the Thurber House and we're going to take our page count listeners with us. We're going to just dive right in and get started. So let's take it away,

Don Boozer (01:49):
Literally standing inside the front door, so.

Steve Andersson (01:51):
So come on in.

Laura Maylene Walter (01:52):
All right.

Steve Andersson (01:53):
Come on in. This is the parlor. This is where the Thurber family would entertain guests. The Thurber family themselves didn't spend a lot of time here. Father Charles, mother Mary Agnes, who was nicknamed Mame, and two brothers, William the older, and Robert the younger. And they were all close in age, just year or two apart. So this house is where James Thurber lived when he was a student at Ohio State. It is said to be haunted for three reasons. This house was at the northwest corner of what used to be called the Ohio Lunatic Asylum. People did their best in the 1800s to take care of the mentally ill. The place burned down in 1868. Seven women lost their lives in the fire and some say that their ghosts haunt this house. So after the Thurbers lived here, this is a rental house, they moved to different places on the east side of Columbus.

Steve Andersson (02:51):
Subsequently, it fell into disrepair. And by the late 1970s, early 1980s, it was ready for the wrecking ball until some visionaries who had financial resources came together to say, come on, we have a national treasure here. We need to rebuild this place. And they did. They renovated Thurber House. And so we were open in 1984 as a national treasure...a national landmark. Here we are. And so if you look around on radio, what you'll see, what you will see is authentic period furniture and wallpaper. So Robert Thurber, the younger brother, was alive when they renovated Thurber house. And he came in and he said, you know, this is where the furniture went. This is what the wallpaper looked like. And so we have a good approximation of what this house looked like when James himself lived here.

Don Boozer (03:51):
And you were saying that whenever you were doing the wallpaper, that you were peeling off layers and layers and he's like, oh, that's the one!

Steve Andersson (03:56):
Robert said, "That's the one." The younger brother. Yes. Yes. So what you've got is a pretty good approximation. We really do.

Laura Maylene Walter (04:03):
And listeners, we'll be sure to try to include some photos on an accompanying blog post because you have to see this wallpaper. It is, I was going to say it's not quite a fever dream, but it's like a classy fever dream. But it's beautiful. It's gorgeous.

Don Boozer (04:16):
Brilliant.

Steve Andersson (04:17):
Yeah, I wouldn't want it in my house, but you know, there it is. There it is. So if you look around, you see beautiful Victorian architecture, heavy woodwork, authentic wallpaper. And in the corner, one corner we have a Victrola in the other, we have a piano. And nearly every room has a coal burning fireplace. That was their heating. And then if you look over the window or the door, that was their central air conditioning, the transom. And one thing I always point out to people in this room is that particular light fixture. In those days they were in transition, the gas went up, the electricity went down, and James made gentle fun of his mother. And you'll see it on a plaque inside. But she thought that when an electric light bulb was unplugged from the socket, the electricity would leak all over the house.

Steve Andersson (05:10):
Such was James's sense of humor.

Don Boozer (05:12):
And a lovely little park outside the window, too.

Steve Andersson (05:14):
Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Leah Wharton (05:16):
Yeah, It's actually called Thurber Park. And that's where our Unicorn in the Garden is located.

Steve Andersson (05:20):
That's right.

Leah Wharton (05:20):
If you've read the James Thurber short story.

Steve Andersson (05:22):
His most famous fable.

Leah Wharton (05:23):
Yes.

Laura Maylene Walter (05:23):
So for our listeners who have not yet read the unicorn fable, it's an interesting take on marriage is how I view it.

Steve Andersson (05:32):
Oh it is, oh it is.

Laura Maylene Walter (05:32):
But could either of you either summarize it or maybe...

Steve Andersson (05:36):
James likes to describe the battle between the men and women. Some call him a misogynist, but he really wasn't. What he does in this fable is talk about a woman and a husband. He says he saw a unicorn in their garden and his wife says, oh, you got to be nuts, come on. And so she calls the police and a psychiatrist on the husband. They ask him, did you tell your wife there was a unicorn in the garden? And he says, of course not. A unicorn is a mythical beast. And so they lock up the wife and take her away. So the husband in this myth gets his way. Comic.

Laura Maylene Walter (06:16):
Such a heartwarming story... <laugh> of forced institutionalization.

Steve Andersson (06:21):
Oh yes. Oh yes.

Laura Maylene Walter (06:21):
But I love the unicorn statue out front. So visitors, if you come to Columbus, come to Thurber Park, it's a golden statue. And the unicorn is eating flowers, which is in the fable.

Steve Andersson (06:31):
Based on Thurber's own drawing. So that's based on a James Thurber cartoon. So our next room is the living room. This is where Thurber's family would've spent a lot of time. And one of our...my favorite props is this telephone. So if you look at his phone, James Thurber has a cartoon based on it and the woman is reclining on a couch. And she asks, well, if I call the wrong number, why did you answer the phone? <laugh> Thurber's typical sense of humor. One of the great things that Thurber House does is publish a journal called Flip the Page. Flip the Page is a journal of Central Ohio teenage writers. And I've been so proud because I've had my own students published here.

Laura Maylene Walter (07:24):
Really? Oh, that's great.

Steve Andersson (07:26):
Yeah, so it's one of the great things that Thurber does. We are not just a museum to Thurber's memory, but we do active work with young people, with adult writers.

Steve Andersson (07:35):
And then this is the alcove. So the north alcove is where James Thurber's dad, Charles, would come to sleep occasionally to get away from his three rambunctious boys. And we have pictures on the walls of the houses where Thurber lived. He was born at 251 Parsons Avenue, which was torn down to make way for I-71 highway. And the other house I point out is this one in Falls Church, Virginia. When James was a little boy, there he suffered the accident that would shape the rest of his life. So he and big brother William were out in the backyard playing with a toy bow and arrow. William says, James, turn around. I'm going to shoot you in the back.

Steve Andersson (08:20):
So James turns around and he wonders, what the heck is taking William so long? So he turns around just in time for the toy arrow to smash into his left eye. A week later they had to have it taken out. They put in a glass eye and eventually his right eye, his good eye went blind. Conditioned, called sympathetic ophthalmia. So he had five surgeries in about 1940. But for the last 10 years of his life, he was blind. He could not draw anymore. He dictated his stories to his wife or secretaries. But he said very famously in an interview that the imagination never goes blind. And he could still write.

Laura Maylene Walter (09:07):
Yeah.

Steve Andersson (09:07):
He still had the inspiration for his stories.

Laura Maylene Walter (09:10):
I read that he could write up to 2,000 words in his head and edit it in his head before saying it. Is that right? I can't imagine.

Steve Andersson (09:17):
He had a prodigious memory. And I talk about this during his days at Ohio State. And so one of his psychology professors actually had an experiment and he read a passage that, okay, student, how many should this can you recall? And Thurber was phenomenal at recalling.

Laura Maylene Walter (09:33):
Wow.

Steve Andersson (09:34):
So he had a great memory. He really did. And then the second reason Thurber House is haunted is because of that guy over there on the wall. Thomas Tress. He was a jeweler who lived here before the Thurbers lived here. He rented it. And in 1904, he and his wife are upstairs getting ready for dinner and he pulls out a revolver from his drawer and his wife says, don't point that thing at me. And he says, oh honey, it's not loaded. To prove his point, he shoots himself fatally in the chest. So they bring him downstairs and he died there in the parlor. And that's what people think also haunts Thurber House.

Laura Maylene Walter (10:14):
Gun safety, everyone <laugh>.

Steve Andersson (10:15):
Exactly. Exactly.

Laura Maylene Walter (10:17):
Also, listen to your wife.

Steve Andersson (10:19):
You know, you know. And so we have pictures up here of what else do...some of the writing workshops we have for adults and for students. And they sell out every summer. You know, parents are looking for quality activities for their children, and they come here to Thurber House.

Laura Maylene Walter (10:36):
And what can you tell us about the Thurber Prize?

Steve Andersson (10:39):
Oh, come on into the next room.

Laura Maylene Walter (10:41):
Oh, alright. Great segue.

Steve Andersson (10:44):
Yes, yes, yes. So this room was originally the dining room. And you see examples of Thurber's cartoons up on the wall. And over here we have books from the Thurber Prize for American Humor. It's a big one. Last year the winner was THE GUNCLE by Steve Rowley. Year before that it was DEACON KING KONG by James McBride. This is a big event here in Columbus.

Laura Maylene Walter (11:08):
Yeah.

Steve Andersson (11:08):
You know, we love it. Every year. This is the 23rd year.

Laura Maylene Walter (11:11):
Wow, nice.

Steve Andersson (11:11):
23rd year. Yeah. Yeah.

Leah Wharton (11:13):
It's the first year too we're introducing a new cartoon award this year. So it's the first ever Thurber Prize for American Humor in Cartoon Art that will be also awarded this year.

Don Boozer (11:23):
Oh, that's great.

Laura Maylene Walter (11:23):
Oh, fantastic.

Steve Andersson (11:24):
Yeah, yeah.

Laura Maylene Walter (11:24):
And speaking of cartoons, so this room is now, it appears the gift shop. Lots of good stuff.

Steve Andersson (11:29):
This is the gift shop.

Laura Maylene Walter (11:30):
We will...

Steve Andersson (11:31):
Used to be in the dining room,

Laura Maylene Walter (11:31):
Carry on with interview instead of just shopping. But it looks great. Can you talk a little bit about his career with The New Yorker and illustrating?

Steve Andersson (11:38):
His first wife Althea encouraged James to go to New York to further his writing career. So after college, after Ohio State, he was a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and a code clerk in Paris, France, right after the war. And then he came back and he worked here for the Columbus Dispatch. But Althea, his wife said, go east young man. And so he went east and he got a job with the New Yorker Magazine. He shared an office with E.B. White. Harold Ross, the editor hired him on the spot. First as a business manager and then as a writer. And so it was E.B. White who would scoop up Thurber's drawings off the floor, <laugh> ink them in and said, you got to publish this guy as a cartoonist. People made fun of his drawing, sometime. There was a woman who wrote in and said, my son can draw just as good as you. And Thurber wrote back and said, well, he probably can, but he just hasn't been through as much.

Don Boozer (12:38):
Fair enough.

Steve Andersson (12:39):
And then Dorothy Parker, one of his contemporaries, described his figures as "unbaked cookies". They had this blobby appearance.

Laura Maylene Walter (12:49):
<Laugh>, I like that. Yeah.

Steve Andersson (12:50):
If you look at his cartoons, all the men are bald. All the women have hair <laugh>. So very simple but very profound at the same time. Thurber's cartoons have a lot to say about the human condition. They really do.

Laura Maylene Walter (13:03):
Is there anything you can tell us about how he drew, even as his vision started to fail? At a certain point, he must have stopped. How did he work with that?

Steve Andersson (13:11):
He did. I'll show you...

Laura Maylene Walter (13:12):
Oh, okay great.

Steve Andersson (13:13):
His last drawing upstairs.

Don Boozer (13:14):
Oh wow.

Steve Andersson (13:15):
1951. It was a Time magazine cover. It was a self-portrait. And it was yellow on black, just like street signs.

Laura Maylene Walter (13:22):
Oh, so he could see it.

Steve Andersson (13:23):
Because it's such a high contrast, but he could very quickly sketch things out. There was an article about him that I saw over at the Ohio State University Library, and he started drawing one thing, ended up doing another, it took him six minutes. He just had that natural talent, he could do it. So here in the gift shop, we have Thurber books that are still in print. Quite a lot of them. And a couple of newer ones about his life here in Columbus. We have some used books, t-shirts, tchotchkes, Muggs, you name it.

Laura Maylene Walter (13:51):
And was it MY LIFE AND HARD TIMES? Is that the book that includes stories from his time when he lived here in this house?

Steve Andersson (13:58):
Yes. Yes.

Laura Maylene Walter (13:58):
Okay.

Steve Andersson (13:58):
That's the book that really put him on the map. And so what makes Thurber House very special is because James Thurber himself wrote stories about his life here. Now they're exaggerated, they're humorous.

Laura Maylene Walter (14:10):
Yeah.

Steve Andersson (14:10):
But they happened right here. "The Night the Ghost Got In," "The Night the Bed Fell," "The Car We Had to Push." All of these in university days. All of these stories happened when he was right here. Now he published it in 1933. So it was after he was at Ohio State.

Don Boozer (14:27):
But his time here is obviously pivotal in his life...

Steve Andersson (14:30):
Oh yeah, oh yes.

Don Boozer (14:30):
...and he remembered it. And so the fact that this house is still here and dedicated to him is great.

Steve Andersson (14:34):
So much so.

Laura Maylene Walter (14:34):
Yeah. It's amazing.

Steve Andersson (14:35):
Yeah. Oh yes. Back here was the original kitchen. Mrs. Thurber, she would bake chocolates for families who had been bitten by one of James Thurber's dogs.

Don Boozer (14:50):
<laugh>

Steve Andersson (14:51):
He owned a dog named Muggs, a foul-tempered Airedale. And when Muggs would bite people, they didn't shoot the dog, they didn't file lawsuits...they baked chocolates.

Laura Maylene Walter (15:01):
Ohhhh.

Steve Andersson (15:02):
So James says, during his life, he believes forty...4-0 families were given chocolates <laugh> by Mame Thurber. Crazy stuff.

Laura Maylene Walter (15:11):
So Muggs is an Airedale.

Steve Andersson (15:12):
Airedale. Yes. You'll see a picture of him upstairs.

Laura Maylene Walter (15:14):
Okay. Because a lot of the classic dog that we see from Thurber looks like, more like a Basset or like a...yeah.

Steve Andersson (15:19):
Oh they're friendly, yeah.

Steve Andersson (15:21):
He did draw a picture of Muggs. And that picture has become a statue in the Thurber grave site.

New Speaker (15:29):
So James is buried here in Green Lawn, so there you go. There you go.

Laura Maylene Walter (15:32):
Oh wow, yeah. He looks fierce.

Steve Andersson (15:34):
The caption for the original picture was "Nobody quite knew what was the matter with him."

Laura Maylene Walter (15:39):
<laugh> Ohh!

Don Boozer (15:41):
Just misunderstood, I'm sure.

Steve Andersson (15:45):
Yes, yes, yes. As we go up the back stairs, this is the second reason, third reason that Thurber house is haunted. In 1915, James Thurber believes a ghost got in. His dad and his brother were in Indianapolis. And James was up in the bathroom. His brother was in the bedroom, and he started to hear footsteps around this very dining room table. And he thought, ah, my dad and my brother are home. And then he heard the steps coming up and down the stairs. And he looked out from the bathroom, didn't see anybody. Until his dying day he believes a ghost got in.

Steve Andersson (16:21):
Come on upstairs, take a look at the wall. These are pictures of authors who have come to Thurber House.

Laura Maylene Walter (16:27):
Oh, amazing.

Steve Andersson (16:28):
Throughout the years. Toni Morrison...

Laura Maylene Walter (16:29):
Wow, Toni Morrison.

Steve Andersson (16:29):
Garrison Keillor, Burgess Meredith, Art Buchwald, Christopher Buckley, all kinds of authors.

Laura Maylene Walter (16:35):
And dogs too! <laugh>.Some of them are pictured with dogs. Do you have a dog, Steve? Do you have a dog, Leah?

Steve Andersson (16:42):
I do. I do.

Laura Maylene Walter (16:43):
What kind of dog do you have?

Steve Andersson (16:44):
Her name is Piper. She's a black lab. I have had her here to sniff out ghosts.

Laura Maylene Walter (16:49):
Yeah...?

Steve Andersson (16:50):
She didn't sniff a thing. She went to sleep on James' bed. <laugh> So, eh. But here are pictures...good for radio, about what James Thurber's house was like during the renovation. And then here's the original bathroom. I don't know that that's the original bathtub or the toilet, but everything else.

Laura Maylene Walter (17:08):
And this is where he heard the ghost first.

Steve Andersson (17:10):
The ghost!

Laura Maylene Walter (17:11):
May I enter the ghost bathroom? Okay. All right. Listeners, I'm in the ghost bathroom. If you can hear that slight echo...Just waiting to see if I feel a ghost. I do not, but you know, ghosts might not like recording equipment. That's fine. Don, would you like to enter the ghost bathroom? Tell us...maybe you detect some activity that I could not.

Don Boozer (17:35):
I feel a chill.

Laura Maylene Walter (17:38):
<laugh> So Leah, do you have a dog?

Leah Wharton (17:39):
I don't have a dog. I have cats, as do many of us who work at Thurber House.

Laura Maylene Walter (17:43):
I have cats, too. I get it. I love dogs, too. But cats. Yes. Cats, cats.

Leah Wharton (17:47):
Couple of us have dogs.

Laura Maylene Walter (17:48):
Did Thurber...Was he okay with cats? Or is he just more of a dog person?

Steve Andersson (17:51):
More of a dog person.

Leah Wharton (17:52):
Definitely more of a dog person.

Laura Maylene Walter (17:53):
But he wasn't anti-cat...Or was he anti-cat?

Steve Andersson (17:56):
No...

Laura Maylene Walter (17:56):
Okay.

Steve Andersson (17:56):
No, I wouldn't say that.

Laura Maylene Walter (17:57):
You don't want to turn me against him. <laugh>

Steve Andersson (17:58):
No. Not at all. As we come in here, this was the guest room. Only bedroom without a fireplace. And the night the ghost got in, mother, according to Thuber, thought that burglars were here. So she opened a window in this room and there was a house in that lot below us. And she threw the shoe through the neighbor's window to alert them that burglars had got in. And the man was so distraught, he said, we're out of here. We're going back to Peoria <laugh>.

Laura Maylene Walter (18:30):
What do you guess it was? Do you think it was a ghost? An intruder, an imagination?

Steve Andersson (18:35):
Yeah...Leah interviewed me, to be a docent. And she said, do you believe in ghosts? And I said, no, but I'm afraid of them. I have never felt a presence. But a lot of employees and volunteers have.

Laura Maylene Walter (18:49):
Really, yeah?

Steve Andersson (18:49):
Interesting stuff. Yeah.

Laura Maylene Walter (18:51):
What kind of things have people...or have you, have you detected anything Leah?

Leah Wharton (18:55):
Nothing, you know, definitive has personally happened to me, but I've been in the building when some really interesting things have happened. We have all kinds of stories that could go on for days, but, you know, writers and residents stay in our third floor apartment. It's actually a modern apartment up there.

Steve Andersson (19:08):
Yep.

Leah Wharton (19:08):
They've reported hearing footsteps in the second floor hallway and going up and down the stairs. We've had writers and residents and other guests standing in the parlor and they see a man behind them in a collared shirt.

Don Boozer (19:19):
<laugh>.

Leah Wharton (19:19):
We've, you know, had groups in here who've caught EVPs. So, electronic voice phenomenon on their recorders of noises that no one heard in person. We've had, you know, sightings of orbs floating down this hallway right here.

Laura Maylene Walter (19:33):
Imagine when we get back to Cleveland, I listen to this recording and I hear a ghostly voice. Like...

Don Boozer (19:38):
I was just going to say that!

Laura Maylene Walter (19:38):
"Give up your cats. Get a dog instead!"

Don Boozer (19:42):
<laugh>

Steve Andersson (19:44):
Another thing I point out when we are in the guest room is the breadth of James Thurber's talent. Here in the suitcase is a kind of raggedy copy of MANY MOONS. He wrote five children's books. MANY MOONS won the Caldecott Medal for 1944.

Laura Maylene Walter (19:58):
Oh, wow.

Steve Andersson (19:58):
Now it was a different artist who illustrated it.

Laura Maylene Walter (20:01):
Yeah.

Steve Andersson (20:01):
Because he was going blind. And over here you have a poster of a play he put on for Broadway, produced by Burgess Meredith, a good friend of his, one of the few friends who came back for the burial of his ashes here in Columbus. But this play was based on his work and it won the Tony Award for 1960. Caldecott, Tony...Thurber was a talented man.

Laura Maylene Walter (20:24):
Absolutely.

Steve Andersson (20:25):
Very talented man. And the next stop is the main event. This is James Thurber's bedroom.

Laura Maylene Walter (20:32):
Writers, you're going have to know I went immediately to the Underwood typewriter.

Steve Andersson (20:36):
Okay. So!

Laura Maylene Walter (20:36):
So tell us about that.

Steve Andersson (20:37):
So people say, who know more than I do that this was the very typewriter he wrote on at the Columbus Dispatch when he was a reporter. Yep. And we say, don't touch it, but you can't destroy it. So kids come in here and they...

Laura Maylene Walter (20:50):
<laugh>

Steve Andersson (20:51):
And you just unloosen them. It's fine. So behind you is James's high school graduation picture. East High School class of 1913. The building doesn't exist anymore. It's been torn down. New one there on Broad Street. This is his graduating class. And this...

Laura Maylene Walter (21:07):
Muggs!

Steve Andersson (21:07):
Is Muggs! The dog who bit people. Yes. So he went to Ohio State, bit of a wallflower at first, but then he met Elliot Nugent. He was a writer. And Virgil Damon became a physician and delivered James's only child.

Laura Maylene Walter (21:25):
Aw.

Don Boozer (21:26):
Wow.

Steve Andersson (21:26):
And Rosemary is still alive. She lives in Michigan. She's about 92 years old. I've met her a couple of times, such a gracious woman. And then when Robert was helping people understand how the furniture went, he said this is exactly where the bed went. It's the only place you could put a bed, at an angle.

Laura Maylene Walter (21:44):
Right. It's like twin bed. And it is at a sort of slanted...

Steve Andersson (21:47):
You have an angled wall. Authors who come to Thurber house are invited to sign James's closet.

Laura Maylene Walter (21:53):
Oh, wow. That's so cool.

Steve Andersson (21:54):
There they are! You'll see pictures, you'll see signatures, people you'll know.

Laura Maylene Walter (21:58):
Is that a cat? Someone drew a cat. I don't know if that was, you know, sign of a...a statement.

Don Boozer (22:03):
I see an "arf" and I see a "woof".

Laura Maylene Walter (22:07):
<laugh> This is all about cats versus dogs, apparently.

Steve Andersson (22:10):
Oh yeah. Here we have the yearbook.

Leah Wharton (22:13):
Yearbook, yes. Ohio State yearbook 1916. There are a couple of years down here, but yes.

Laura Maylene Walter (22:18):
And what did he study at OSU? And he didn't finish, is that correct?

Steve Andersson (22:22):
No, he did not. Because he was blind in one eye and he couldn't complete the compulsory military drills. And he writes about it.

Laura Maylene Walter (22:29):
So wild. Yeah.

Don Boozer (22:30):
He didn't he graduate because he couldn't do the military drills?

Steve Andersson (22:33):
That's right. He also kind of blew off his classes <laugh>.

Don Boozer (22:36):
Oh, well. That could contribute to it, I suppose. Yeah.

Laura Maylene Walter (22:38):
In addition.

Steve Andersson (22:39):
The second year he went there, he didn't go to classes. Instead he would go downtown the library or the university library and just read books. Or he'd go see the films, see the theater. But he soaked up so much. He had a great memory. And when you read his works, he is so literature bound in some ways he knows his stuff. So no, he didn't graduate. Ohio State offered him a honorary degree. That was during the McCarthy years. And he said, I don't like your position and I refuse. Well, they did give him a posthumous degree after he died. I think it was 1997, somewhere in there.

Laura Maylene Walter (23:16):
They were going to give him that degree one way or another.

Don Boozer (23:19):
Well, it certainly sounds like he had an education on his own too.

Laura Maylene Walter (23:21):
Right.

Steve Andersson (23:22):
Oh my gosh. Yes. This is a picture of the Scarlet Mask Club.

Laura Maylene Walter (23:25):
Oh, what's that?

Steve Andersson (23:26):
And that's a humor writers' group at Ohio State. This particular picture was after James was student there.

Laura Maylene Walter (23:34):
Do you know if they had any ceremonies where they wore masks and had some kind of secret code or handshake?

Don Boozer (23:41):
That's part of the mystery!

Laura Maylene Walter (23:41):
That would be, that would be a secret.

Steve Andersson (23:44):
This is Robert's bedroom, so go figure. The little brother gets the biggest bedroom.

Laura Maylene Walter (23:50):
<laugh>. Ah, seriously.

Steve Andersson (23:52):
Robert was a great athlete himself, captain of the baseball team at East High School. And so all the pictures, all the memorabilia you see on the walls, are Robert's own possessions. He gave them to Thurber House. That guy, you know who he is?

Laura Maylene Walter (24:07):
No.

Steve Andersson (24:08):
That's Chic Harley. Chic Harley was a contemporary of James Thurber at East High School. And Ohio State. Harley was such a good runner, they had to build Ohio Stadium to accommodate all the fans. Thurber rewrites his old pal in UNIVERSITY DAYS. And he renames him Bolenciecwcz. And he says, although Bolenciecwcz wasn't as dumb as an ox, he wasn't much smarter.

Laura Maylene Walter (24:32):
Ouch. <laugh>.

Steve Andersson (24:34):
Thurber's making fun of his old friend.

Laura Maylene Walter (24:37):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow.

Steve Andersson (24:37):
And if you go to his gravestone in Union Cemetery. It's as tall as I am. You know, big oval top. And there's a quote by James Thurber carved in the bottom.

Laura Maylene Walter (24:47):
Not that one though, right?

Steve Andersson (24:48):
No, no, no. <laugh>. Not that one. From here we backtrack. You've got a number of wonderful family pictures on the wall. And then this little bedroom belonged to William, the older brother, the guy who shot his eye out...by accident. That's William. That's his wife. We have original drawings here on the wall. Glad to show those off.

Laura Maylene Walter (25:11):
Do you know how his brother felt about shooting his eye out?

Steve Andersson (25:14):
You know, they had a good relationship throughout their life.

Laura Maylene Walter (25:17):
Yeah.

Steve Andersson (25:17):
James never blamed his brother. He said, hey, it was an accident.

Laura Maylene Walter (25:20):
Yeah. He turned around. Yeah.

Steve Andersson (25:22):
Yeah, yeah. And he was angry at the doctors who didn't immediately respond. And they took that eye out a week later, maybe things would've been different had they taken it out right away.

Laura Maylene Walter (25:33):
Yeah, I was just thinking, I mean, it depends on their relationship, but I could see, especially if they really got along like decades later, joking, like...

Steve Andersson (25:39):
They did. They did.

Laura Maylene Walter (25:39):
You don't get to have this extra slice of whatever the cake. Because you shot my eye out <laugh>.

Steve Andersson (25:45):
Yeah, yeah. But no, he never blamed his brother for it.

Laura Maylene Walter (25:48):
Yeah.

Laura Maylene Walter (25:48):
He didn't you know, it was an accident. Truly an accident.

Don Boozer (25:51):
You can edit this out. But I actually, my friend shot me in the back of the neck with a toy arrow. What I remember is his mother holding my head under the faucet in the bathtub washing the blood off the back of my head.

Laura Maylene Walter (26:00):
Oh my gosh. We're absolutely not editing that out. And in fact, maybe we should pause and tell childhood trauma stories. My brother knocked out my two front teeth with a hairbrush when I was a child by accident.

Don Boozer (26:12):
Oh my heavens.

Laura Maylene Walter (26:12):
They were my baby teeth. But you know, they didn't grow in for maybe a year or two. I had no front teeth. And he also lovingly convinced me to jump off an outdoor staircase and said I could fly. And I broke seven bones in my foot. <laugh>.

Don Boozer (26:25):
Oh, I'm glad I was an only child.

Laura Maylene Walter (26:26):
So I feel James Thurber and I might have some things in common.

Don Boozer (26:30):
<laugh>

Steve Andersson (26:30):
And when I was in Sunday school, my dad was a minister. We went on a trust walk and I was blindfolded and my partner walked me into the side of the church.

Leah Wharton (26:39):
Oh my gosh.

Steve Andersson (26:39):
And blood was oozing down my forehead for hours, you know, I was like, like, ah, whatever.

Laura Maylene Walter (26:44):
You can't get through life without some scars.

Steve Andersson (26:46):
No way. No way. This is a favorite piece of artwork of mine. I was here giving a tour and a retired gentleman and his wife came in and he looked at that and he said, my friend Sidney Chafetz made that. So here we have a wood cut of James Thurber. And Sidney Chafetz was a world renowned artist at Ohio State...renowned for his woodcuts. And here we have one of James Thurber.

Don Boozer (27:11):
Wow.

Steve Andersson (27:12):
So the things I learned.

Laura Maylene Walter (27:13):
Yeah, that's amazing.

Steve Andersson (27:13):
From people's amazing who come through is just amazing. And there's a very authentic picture right there. The ghost on the stairs.

Laura Maylene Walter (27:19):
The ghost by the way, is reading something by James Thurber. Exactly. The rooms keep opening up. I love this house. Yeah.

Steve Andersson (27:29):
Oh, they do, they do. This is our final bedroom. This was the parents' bedroom. Not the biggest, but they had the view the of the park.

Laura Maylene Walter (27:36):
Yeah.

Steve Andersson (27:37):
So we have a timeline of James Thurber's life. We have a couple of his New Yorker covers. He drew six overall. And there's his first wife, Althea. And you can see over the fireplace, the scale on which James had draw when he was going blind.

Laura Maylene Walter (27:53):
Yeah, it's very large, listeners. It's...

Steve Andersson (27:55):
Huge.

Laura Maylene Walter (27:55):
What is that four feet by...

Steve Andersson (27:58):
I would say..

Laura Maylene Walter (27:58):
Five feet?

Steve Andersson (27:59):
Four by three.

Laura Maylene Walter (27:59):
We'll get pictures.

Don Boozer (28:00):
Go ahead and stand in there and we'll get a picture so we get some scale.

Steve Andersson (28:01):
When James was going blind, he wore this gadget called a Zeiss loupe. And so there's a picture of him using it. And it's a magnifier used by jewelers and clock makers. And James said it made him look like a welder from Mars <laugh>.

Laura Maylene Walter (28:20):
Wow.

Steve Andersson (28:20):
And the Time Magazine cover, is the last he ever did. That's the self portrait 1951. Great article of him. And we have some Tony Award-winning stuff here. We have foreign language editions over here.

Laura Maylene Walter (28:32):
Do you know...the Time cover, his last illustration...did he know it was his last? Did he announce, "I can't illustrate anymore"? Or was it more that that just happened to be his last?

Steve Andersson (28:42):
I think it just happened.

Laura Maylene Walter (28:43):
Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Andersson (28:43):
I don't know that he was conscious and knows this is the last I can do.

Laura Maylene Walter (28:46):
Yeah, right.

Steve Andersson (28:47):
And then here's the chair.

Laura Maylene Walter (28:48):
Wow.

Steve Andersson (28:50):
That we know was...

Laura Maylene Walter (28:50):
It's a rocking chair.

Steve Andersson (28:51):
It's a rocking chair. Once upon a day, there was a delivery boy who came to Thurber House and the parents couldn't afford the delivery. And they said, would you take this chair as a payment? And the boy said, "Yeah. Okay." So when Thurber house was opening, an old man came to the door.

Laura Maylene Walter (29:08):
Oh my gosh.

Steve Andersson (29:09):
And said, would you like your chair back? <laugh> True story.

Laura Maylene Walter (29:12):
Amazing.

Steve Andersson (29:13):
You know, charming story. But yeah, that is the one chair we know was here during the time of the Thurbers. And under the glass, you have some original glasses. Here's the Scarlet Mask Club that he wrote for.

Laura Maylene Walter (29:26):
I see a mask.

Steve Andersson (29:28):
Here's a letter he wrote home.

Laura Maylene Walter (29:30):
The handwriting is so neat and even.

Steve Andersson (29:33):
In those days. And then if you go to Ohio State, I've been there a couple of times. And I've gotten to see some of his drawings. And so he wrote in black pencil on yellow paper and eventually he couldn't see what he was writing. And so you can barely make out the writing. There's huge scrawls. But his writing just went to pot.

Laura Maylene Walter (29:53):
Yeah.

Steve Andersson (29:54):
You know, and he couldn't draw anymore. So he had to dictate. This is a nice little facsimile of his college notebook. So if you look through here, these are some sample pages of what he was writing when he's at Ohio State. And the actual notebook when you go to see it at Ohio State is much smaller. It's only like yay big.

Laura Maylene Walter (30:14):
Are there stamps behind you?

Leah Wharton (30:16):
They were issued in 1994. James Thurber, 29 cents for postage.

Steve Andersson (30:22):
And this is sort of where I end the tour. But there you see his gravestone in Green Lawn Cemetery. So the last year of his life, James' behavior became very erratic. He had a brain tumor, he suffered pneumonia, he had blood clots and eventually he died. He was only 66 years old. Cremated him, brought his ashes back here and buried him in his mother's plot in Greenlawn Cemetery. And this was James's second wife, Helen. They got along well. They really did. And when he went blind, James called her "his seeing eye wife". She helped manage his affairs, his finances, and so on. And then he wrote a story called THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY, which was made into a 1940 film, 1947 film with Danny Kaye. And then in 2012, it was, what was his name, Ben Stiller.

Laura Maylene Walter (31:15):
Oh, Ben Stiller.

Steve Andersson (31:16):
And when the original movie came out, Thurber turned to his brother and said, did you get the name of the guy who wrote that film? Both of them taken liberties with the story, but...

Laura Maylene Walter (31:24):
Sure.

Steve Andersson (31:25):
You know, it's okay.

Laura Maylene Walter (31:25):
As Hollywood does.

Steve Andersson (31:26):
Sure, sure.

Laura Maylene Walter (31:27):
Yeah. Do either of you have suggestions for our listeners who maybe aren't familiar with Thurber, haven't read his work, where should they start? In your opinion.

Steve Andersson (31:36):
The place to start is THE THURBER CARNIVAL.

Laura Maylene Walter (31:38):
Okay.

Steve Andersson (31:39):
It's still in print. You can buy it right downstairs. But that's from 1945. And it's a collection of his work up till that time. Cartoons, short pieces. It's his greatest hits. So that really gives you a great idea of what James Thurber was all about.

Leah Wharton (31:56):
It also includes MY LIFE AND HARD TIMES in its entirety.

Steve Andersson (31:59):
Yes. Yes.

Leah Wharton (31:59):
So that's another great starting point for Thurber. Great introduction. That's actually my favorite Thurber work.

Steve Andersson (32:04):
And then the last thing I show people, here's a flower on his gravestone. Well, that comes from a work of his called THE LAST FLOWER. And it's a 1939 anti-war parable. And he dedicates it to his daughter Rosemary, in the hope that her world will be better than ours. So the last page of the book has that flower on it, and Thurber had it carved on his gravestone.

Don Boozer (32:32):
That's so touching. I always find it so interesting to go to places where somebody lived and you could really get a sense of how they, since this was so pivotal in his life and his writing and everything, just to sort of be in the same place is always sort of a goosebumps sort of feeling.

Steve Andersson (32:44):
Yeah.

Don Boozer (32:44):
At the Ohio Center for the Book, we like to promote comics and cartoons as a medium of expression. And Thurber is such a good example.

Laura Maylene Walter (32:50):
I did notice outside the house, it looks like there are dog statues.

Steve Andersson (32:54):
Dog statues.

Laura Maylene Walter (32:55):
Can you tell us about those?

Leah Wharton (32:56):
Yeah, that's what we call the dog garden.

Laura Maylene Walter (32:58):
Okay.

Leah Wharton (32:59):
So those are life size, essentially reproductions of James Thurber drawings of what we call the Thurber dog. Kind of a mixture of a Bloodhound and a Bassett hound. So that's the dog you see him draw most often. So the dog's out there bouncing a ball on its nose, just like the Thurber drawing and snipping the grass. And so that's a fun place. People will go in there and sit and it's a cool photo op too.

Steve Andersson (33:20):
What I can tell you in my years of being a docent is that seldom does a weekend day go by when we don't have visitors. People are always coming here, which is really encouraging. There really are a lot of people who know about James Thurber, other people who know nothing, and they will pick up a copy of THE THURBER CARNIVAL. Learn more about Columbus's great American humorist.

Don Boozer (33:41):
Such a great reminder too of just the rich, deep literary heritage that Ohio does have. Somebody who had such an impact on, you know, the New Yorker. Born in Columbus, Ohio.

Steve Andersson (33:51):
And then, you know, think about this too. Once upon a time James was quoted as saying, "When I hear clocks chiming in my dreams, they are the clocks of Columbus." So he never lost sight of Columbus, Ohio. He loved this town. He would poke gentle fun at it, but he loved it.

Don Boozer (34:10):
I keep thinking of the ideas of him going blind between him and like Beethoven going deaf and that sort of thing. And he was still able to create, which just still boggles my mind.

Steve Andersson (34:18):
Yeah.

Laura Maylene Walter (34:19):
Right. That the imagination can't be held down. I love that.

Don Boozer (34:21):
Exactly.

Steve Andersson (34:22):
That's right. Other artists have gone blind. They've lost their senses, but they can still create. And that's what James Thurber did. What I think is so brilliant about James Thurber is that he can make light of serious issues in life. So he was a great parody writer. So of things in his own time. His first book was, IS SEX NECESSARY? And he wrote it with E.B. White. Well, it's not necessarily about sex, it's a parody of psychoanalysis in the 1920s, all these books. So he can poke fun at what's going on, and it has a deeper underlying meaning to it. So he could see the humor in serious things in life. And that's one of the things I love about Thurber. He really does bring that out. I'll say this too, Thurber credits his father who is a political secretary with his precise writing and his mother for his sense of humor.

Steve Andersson (35:11):
She was a practical joker. There was a true story apparently that James writes about when they were living in a different house, not here. So they had aunt Mary over who hated dogs. Well, the Thurbers had two dogs. And so what does Mrs. Thurber do? But she goes around the neighborhood and gathers up 16 more dogs. So they have 18 dogs in the cellar. And she says, aunt Mary, would you please put this plate of food down for the dogs and open the door and feed them? And Mary says, all right, I will. And she opens the door and boom, 18 dogs come flying out and she's chasing them out of the house with a broom.

Laura Maylene Walter (35:44):
Oh my God.

Steve Andersson (35:45):
Hysterical stuff. So James does give a lot of credit to his parents.

Laura Maylene Walter (35:49):
Yeah.

Steve Andersson (35:49):
You know, for his own talent.

Laura Maylene Walter (35:50):
I love this woman. That is hysterical.

Steve Andersson (35:53):
Oh, she's great. Mame was great.

Laura Maylene Walter (35:55):
This tour has been fantastic. Any parting words to leave with our listeners about visiting the house? What are your hours of operation?

Leah Wharton (36:04):
Yeah, so we're open four days a week, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday from 1:00 to 4:00 PM. You can just drop in any time. Most days we have guided tours available, but not everyday. But every single day we're open, we have self-guided tours available. So admission is $5. So stop by sometime next time you're in town, we'd love to see you.

Steve Andersson (36:23):
I would just say read James Thurber, look at his cartoons. He is so good. He really is.

Laura Maylene Walter (36:28):
Thank you both so much. This was a delight. And listeners, read James Thurber, or at least pet a dog and play a prank on someone. And I think he would be honored. Thank you so much.

Laura Maylene Walter (36:48):
Page Count is presented by the Ohio Center for the Book at Cleveland Public Library. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and leave a review for Page Count wherever you get your podcast. Learn more online or find a transcript of this episode at ohiocenterforthebook.org. Follow us on Instagram @ohiocenterforthebook or find us on Facebook. If you'd like to get in touch, email ohiocenterforthebook@cpl.org and put "podcast" in the subject line. Thanks for listening, and we'll be back in two weeks for another chapter of Page Count.