"My Mother - Some Vignettes"

Sydney M. Williams

August 10, 2011

Note from Old Lyme

“My Mother – Some Vignettes”

“I conceived a memorial to Youth – a plunging horse, riderless, nostrils quivering,
his mane and tail on fire, and every muscle taut, but collected; free from silken reins

of convention, just the symbolic spirit of dynamic youth, unguided and confident.”

                                                                                                     Mary B. W. Hotchkiss
                                                                                                     At Foxcroft School, Virginia
                                                                                                     Winter, 1936 and influenced
                                                                                                     by the death of George V.

Despite raising nine children, horses always came first in my mother’s life. Art, especially sculpture, was not far behind; however, her interest in sculpturing gradually gave way to the demands of family and every day life…and horses She grew up in New Haven, in her grandfather’s house, behind which was a stable. Her grandfather had a coachman, Taylor, who had been born a slave. Horses were the only world Taylor knew. My mother spent hours in the stable where he infused in her a love for the animal – a love that lasted the rest of her life. In 1974 she wrote a letter to her children and grandchildren, entitled “Horses, and What They Have Meant to Me.” In that letter she writes, “The day I was married I got up at daybreak and went for a long ride alone with ‘Charmer’ and my dogs ‘Peter’ and his son ‘Brutus’. The day after Papa died, though it was December, I saddled ‘Star’ and rode to the top of the hill alone. There, the storm clouds that bleak December morning suddenly opened up, and the rising sun lit the edges of the black clouds. I patted ‘Star,’ and knew I could make it.”

She did. Mama died on the same date as did my father (December 2), twenty-two years later. Though her knees had given out and she had trouble walking, she continued to ride up until her death. The ‘Brutus’ tombstone, which she carved when he died in 1941, now rests in our garden in Old Lyme. For me, that marble slab is a link to the past, and provides a sense of the continuum of life.

“Cottage on beach;” so reads the location on the paper certifying her birth in East River, Connecticut on July 21, 1911. That location was repeated by my mother three or four times in a wonderful interview conducted by a former sister-in-law, Sue Martin about a year before my mother died in 1990. East River, in the southwestern section of Madison, is where she spent many happy days of her youth. My grandfather had bought about forty acres, including the cottage on the Sound around 1910. In 1918 the cottage was torn down and a larger house was built, which he named ‘Wyndham,’ my grandmother’s middle name. Holidays, weekends and summers were spent there. She kept her horses in a barn my grandfather had built. Early on, almost all the roads in the area were dirt (including the Post Road.) Those dirt roads became the venue for my mother and her friends, as they rode their horses for miles. In the1974 letter to her children, she wrote about her first horse, ‘Tippy’, given to her when she was eight. “She shared my moods, gave me mobility and taught me self-reliance and independence.”

It was from ‘Tippy’ that my mother learned that our actions have consequences. “One fall night,” she wrote, “’Tippy’ died of pneumonia. My world shattered. I had been swimming her in Long Island Sound…It was my fault and it took a long time before I could even mention her name.”

In the winters, the family lived in New Haven with her grandfather in a large house at the top of Hillhouse Avenue. The place is still there and now houses the admissions office and staff offices for the Yale School of Business. My great-grandfather bought the house in 1888, later adding a wing, doubling its size. He lived there with his son, my grandfather. His wife, my great-grandmother, had died in 1902. So, when my grandmother arrived from Tennessee in 1907, a bride of eighteen, she took charge of a large staff led by a Scottish butler, Dallas, who my mother described as being “good to us even though we were mean to him.” Another household figure that my mother always remembered was Pit, an Englishwoman that had helped raise her mother in Tennessee and in Washington, D.C. Pit came to New Haven when my grandmother married and remained with her until she died. Pit apparently was a fierce defender of my mother and her siblings (an older brother and two younger ones) whenever the need arose, which happened with some frequency, for the children were noted for misdemeanors, like firing BB guns at passing horses and bicyclists.

The third member of the staff that my mother remembered with great fondness was the afore mentioned Taylor. Every couple of days Taylor would exercise the horses. When she was about ten, my mother convinced Taylor that the seven mile trip from their home to the Hamden Hall School, where dancing lessons were conducted, would be the perfect distance; so that is how she would arrive – wearing a white pinafore, seated in her grandfather’s carriage, driven by a man who had been born a slave. I have a copy of a photo of her sitting in the carriage in front of 55 Hillhouse; she is wearing her white pinafore and a white hat; Taylor is sitting erect, whip in hand; the two horses look alert. Perhaps she is off to dancing lessons? It seems so incongruous to me today, for in truth she hated dresses, both as a child as well as an adult. My mother was always more tom boy than a child who played with dolls. Seventy years later, in an interview with my brother Frank’s then wife Sue Martin and while seated at the dining room table in the New Hampshire farmhouse where she raised her own family, she said “reviewing my life is like reading somebody else’s biography, to think about my childhood and how I was brought up.”

Her grandfather, my great grandfather, died in 1930 and the house was sold shortly afterward. Its sale hastened by the fact that my mother’s father had invested heavily with Ivar Krueger, best known as the Swedish Match king and whose financial fraud was only surpassed by that of Bernie Madoff in 2008.

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As a child and young woman, my mother was creative. She wrote light and amusing poetry. The last few lines of “Lauretta, a race Horse”, written when she was about nine, read:

The home stretch now, before the eyes of the noble

Horses lay.

She passed the Queen, and took first place, and

There she planned to stay.

Lauretta entered the stable as proud as a horse

Could be.

For she kicked the Queen to kingdom come

And that was the cause of her glee.

I have a half dozen, framed Christmas cards my mother designed and sent out, a custom that continued into her early married years. They are pen and ink – usually black and red. They are simple, line drawings with a modern and elegant simplicity. Most, but not all, include horses. Hanging on a wall in our mud room is a double framed 13 inch by 16 inch combination poem and drawing she did in 1941, entitled “Ode to October”, the birth and wedding month of her parents. It begins and concludes with the refrain:

October is a happy month,

A month of love and song,

Of being wed and giving birth

And dancing all day long!

In 1936 at the age of 25, she had privately printed a short poem she wrote and illustrated entitled, “Muldoon Mouse”.

On the bottom step of our house

There lives the most wonderful mouse

He isn’t at all like his aunt,

She swishes her tail, and he can’t.

A year earlier, she had been in competition to illustrate a novel, Young Entry, for the author Gordon Grand. The editors of Derrydale Press selected the (then) well known illustrator of sporting books, Paul Brown. But Gordon Grand had brought my mother’s illustrations in for consideration. In 1936, while teaching at Foxcroft, she ends the letter I quoted at the start of this essay: “So I shall go on, firm in the belief that Nature, the art of God, consciously or unconsciously must be the keystone to the art of man.”

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With her mother and two youngest brothers, she took a trip in early 1924 through the Panama Canal. They sailed from New York on the S.S. Kroonland, then owned by the Panama Pacific Line. While her brothers were (or became) sailors, my mother’s interest in horses kept her a ‘land lubber.’ She writes to her grandfather in early January: “Passing Cape Hatteras it was quite rough and I felt a little queer, as though I would give a million dollars to be on land again.” But, at the same time her mother writes her father-in-law: “We have had a marvelous passage! Hardly a bit of motion, even off Hatteras.” I have a framed memento of that trip. Among the passengers was the creator of the comic strip “Reg’lar Fellers”, cartoonist Gene Byrne. It is a cartoon of two of his “Fellers,” one saying to the other, “Don’t say nothin’ if I tell ya! I got a SWELL new goil named MARY HOTCHKISS”

In the fall of 1926 she went to the Foxcroft School in Middleburg, Virginia, a place she came to love. The school had been founded by Miss Charlotte Noland in 1914. Miss Charlotte, as she was known, was still there when my sister entered the school in 1954. Foxcroft is close to Washington, where my grandmother had lived for several years, but more importantly to my mother she could bring her horse, as Middleburg is in the middle of Virginia hunt country. Besides riding, she played field hockey, basketball and was generally popular. She returned to the school in 1934 to teach art.

Instead of college, following Foxcroft she enrolled (along with a Foxcroft classmate) in Madame Boni’s school in Rome. Despite living in Rome and being married to an Italian, Madame Boni was French. The seven girls at the school – four Americans, two English girls and one from Scotland – were expected to speak French at all times. Madame Boni’s was, in the vernacular of the day, a finishing school.

Mama also spent a year in Sweden. Ivar Kreuger, the co-founder and head of Kreuger & Toll, committed suicide on March 12, 1932. Kreuger & Toll controlled the Swedish Match Company and its U.S. arm, the International Match Company. Following Mr. Kreuger’s death, fraud was discovered. Price Waterhouse was asked to examine the books of Kreuger & Toll. They determined that a quarter of a billion dollars in reported assets never existed (the equivalent of $4 billion today.) Additionally, a $150 million in forged Italian banknotes were found in Kreuger’s private vault. The Irving Trust Company was named trustee for the bankrupt International Match Company. My grandfather had come to know Kreuger, was seduced by his spiel and ended up losing most of his money. At any rate, my grandfather was asked by the Irving Trust to go to Sweden to represent their interests. For my mother, at the age of 21, so unencumbered by worldly worries, the trip was a wonderful opportunity to return to Europe, to travel, to ride and to study art. They lived for a year in Greta Garbo’s apartment – Ms. Garbo having been a close friend of Ivar Kreuger.

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It was art that brought my parents together. In the summer of 1936, they had both gone to the studio of George Demetrious in Gloucester, Massachusetts to study sculpture. My mother’s first cousin Mary Blagden had studied under Mr. Demetrious the previous fall in Philadelphia; the plan was that they would both go to Massachusetts. Her cousin, though, went off to Europe, so my mother went alone. The group was small, about eight all together, but included my father, Sydney. She spent that summer in Gloucester and then, along with my father and some of the other students, went to Boston where Mr. Demetrious taught during the winter. The summer of 1937 saw them back in Gloucester. Sometime that summer my parents realized they were in love. In a letter Mama wrote her mother, she tells her that Sydney proposed. She writes, “…unless you have any good or strong objection I’m beginning to realize it [my answer] will be ‘yes’.” On September 26, 1937 their engagement was announced.

They were married on May 28, 1938 at Center Church in New Haven. It was in the midst of the Depression, and my grandfather, unknown to his family, had gone into debt to maintain his lifestyle. The reception was held at “Wyndham,” their home in East River. Unusual for the time, my mother’s five bridesmaids and matron of honor came from six different states, including Texas and California. After a short honeymoon, they moved into the house in Peterborough, New Hampshire where they would live for the next thirty years, interrupted only by the war when my mother returned to Connecticut while my father was overseas.

The house in New Hampshire belonged to my paternal grandfather. It was (and is) a farmhouse on property that was part of a summer place he owned. It was far different than what she had been used to. The house had plumbing, but no electricity and was heated by a woodstove. It was four miles from the village and, at the time, at the end of a dirt road. (I have often wondered about my grandmother’s reaction when she first came to visit!)

But it was a perfect place for struggling, young artists who had chosen to isolate themselves from a world that appeared to be going mad. It was a place to forget the Depression, which was in its ninth year, and to hide from the clouds of war gathering ominously over Europe. They concentrated on their sculpture. Most of the pieces she made were of horses, modeled in clay; a plaster mold was created from which emerged the finished product in Plaster-of-Paris. After Mama died, my brother Stuart, who suffers from a syndrome known as Prader-Willi, encouraged the copying of her many pieces in bronze. One of her pieces, “South Wind”, a horse nuzzling her foal, now sits in the Grand Prix Seminar Room, given in her memory, at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington. (Her youngest son, my brother George, is a member of the U.S. Equestrian team and has represented the United States in international competition, winning fifth place at the 2003 World Cup in Sweden.)

Children started arriving; my sister Mary in April 1939 and then me in January 1941. By the time my brother Frank was born, the U.S. was engulfed in a world war. My father, at the age of 33 and the father of three, was drafted into the Army in the early spring of 1944. My mother, small children in hand, returned to Connecticut to her parent’s home. That August, before my father was shipped to Italy with the 10th Mountain Division, another child, Betsy, was born.

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After the war it soon became apparent that sculpturing and my father’s small income would be insufficient to support the number of children they intended to raise: Charlotte was born in July 1946; Jenny in 1948; Stuart on December 2, 1950; Willard in the spring of 1952 and George in September 1955.

The decision to produce toy animals was serendipitous. My mother, as a sculptor and lover of animals, was surrounded by cats, dogs, chickens, ducks, goats, horses and, later, peacocks. She wanted toy animals for her children that would be realistic, yet durable enough to survive. Her father, having spent his career in the rubber business, urged my parents to use rubber as a medium. Working in clay and then creating a rubber animal from a rubber mold proved inexpensive and productive. The first toy animals were made in our kitchen using the oven in the wood stove to “bake” the molds. Their first rubber animals accompanied me to kindergarten at Miss Lindeman’s school in 1947. The first ones sold were through the New Hampshire League of Arts and Crafts. Within a year, they came to the attention to a man named Murray Shapiro who ran Educational Equipment Company of New York. The business was run in conjunction with the Bank Street Nursery School. By 1949, 4200 pieces were being produced for the school.

My mother always kept the right perspective regarding the business. In her personally typed 1955 annual report, Mama and Papa Williams are shown as the owners, with the nine of us listed as shareholders. Liabilities include “no trip to Stowe” and “Papa’s worn out suit.” Assets included a “new shareholder” (George) and a “pony cart.” The report instructed the shareholders that the way to receive “larger dividends” was through “investments,” by which she meant “dishwashing,” “barn cleaning,” “house sweeping” and “baby tending.” “All of these investments are encouraged for the sole purpose of allowing the owners to invest their time in increasing the profits for all concerned, both monetary and pleasurable.”

Operations moved to the second floor of a large red shed that stood between our house and barn and three women were hired to trim and paint the figures. My mother designed and made the clay figures; my father produced the rubber molds using a process he developed. By the mid 1950s seventy-five different figures were being produced – puppets, hobby horses, farm and domestic toy animals, a series of wild animals and the people figures to accompany them. By this time they were being sold in every state, plus Alaska (not yet a state.) They were sold in Europe, Japan and the Middle East. My mother took special pride in a television appeal by Helen Keller for funds for the blind. The clip showed blind children playing with Red Shed Rubber Animals.

In January 1969, a month after my father had died, my mother was interviewed in Family Circle. She said: “We could have started a factory operation. But we believed in our way of life – the kind of life that made it possible for my husband to be a sculptor. We are artists, not industrialists.” After he died, the rubber animal business gradually faded away; my mother returned to what she loved best, horses and the teaching of riding.

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My father died at the age of fifty-eight on December 2, 1968, leaving my mother (57) with the sole responsibility for caring for the three children still at home: Stuart (18), Willard (16) and George (13). The four older of us were married and beginning families. Charlotte (22) would be married the following spring and Jenny (20) was at college. My mother was instrumental in the ultimate success of the three youngest. George became a member of the U.S. Dressage Team. Willard founded and is the owner-operator of the Toadstool, one of New England’s pre-eminent independent bookstores. Stuart, who as I mentioned earlier suffers from Prader-Willi Syndrome, became a successful artist. He has exhibited in New Hampshire, Boston and New York. His work is on display at the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, NH. As the years went on, Stuart was my mother’s constant companion. She once told him that she could not have survived without him. He kept her company when loneliness threatened.

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A 75th birthday party was held for my mother at my sister Mary’s home in Henniker, New Hampshire in July of 1986. All of her children and grandchildren were there. She composed a poem (with apologies to Lewis Carroll) to mark the occasion:

“You look old Granny Williams,” the

Young ones all cried.

“And your hair has become very white,

But still you insist you’ll continue to ride.

Do you think at your age it is right?”

“Yes I do and I will,” Granny

Williams confessed.

“’Til the judge up above rings the bell,

Then I’ll enter at ‘A’ and ride my

Last test.

And I’ll pray that I will really do well.”

I’ll halt squarely at ‘X’ and heave

A great sigh,

Since my hair has become very white,

Tip my hat to the judge, then I’ll bid him goodbye,

And I’ll slowly fade out of sight.”

But not yet; never fear, I’ll continue

To ride,

Though my hair has become very white.

I’ll just climb on my horse and

I’ll flow with the tide.

For I think at my age it is right.”

She continued to teach riding and to ride herself, though her knees, which had long been a problem, made walking difficult. In fact, the morning of the day she died she gave a lesson.

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My mother was far from perfect. As children, we soon learned that our place came behind that of her favorite animals. Her admonishing letters, when we were away at school, could be hard to take; though, in retrospect, her advice was generally appropriate. Diplomacy was not her strong suit. If she did not like someone, she had difficulty hiding her feelings. She was more sympathetic than empathetic. But she was unique. Mama was talented, as an artist and horsewoman, and she had a mind of her own. She was, as one of her nephews once said, guided by her own star. Not once did I ever hear her utter a harsh word about her father whom she loved deeply, despite his financial reversals. The evening “Mitzi”, our Shetland pony, died in the early 1960s Mama was in the barn, “Mitzi’s” head cradled on her lap, as she breathed her last. My mother taught hundreds of young people, not only how to ride, but how to love and care for horses. She raised nine children, all of whom have done well in their individual ways.

The last time I saw her was an evening in Peterborough and all of her children were there except George. She wasn’t that old – seventy-nine – but she seemed tired, but also quietly content. My wife, Caroline, noticed and spoke to her as we were leaving. She told her she had never seen her looking so much at peace. She died in her sleep less than thirty hours later.

We are all placed on earth for a relatively short time. People leave their mark in various ways, some through gifts of great art and architecture, others through philanthropies and literature and others simply through the gift of life they provide their descendants. My mother traveled a great distance, some would say from “riches to rags”, but she would disagree (as do I.) Her legacy left the world a richer place for her presence. Early on, she recognized that life is a gift. Some people let events control their destiny. Others, like my mother, seize life and make it work for them. The events that cost her father his fortune were beyond her control; she never let setbacks deter her pursuit of the life she chose – horses, art and family.

The memory of my mother is etched in the minds of all who knew her, including her many students. Her love of horses is reflected in my brother George’s chosen career as a dressage rider of international repute. It is reflected in my two sisters, Betsy and Jenny, who have lived with horses since they left home, teaching new generations the love of riding. Her love for art is mirrored in Stuart’s creations, and her pieces sit in the homes of her children and grandchildren, as well as in the horse museum in Lexington. Her many heirs – her more than sixty children, grandchildren and great grandchildren now living, those who inherited her genes – will forever keep her spirit alive.