TO KATE, WITH ADMIRATION

By Sally Rowe Joy

The name Kate Douglas Wiggin has been familiar to me since childhood as the author of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and The Birds’ Christmas Carol. I knew her as “a Maine author” but have only come to know her as a personality in the past year. I went to the State Library one day intending to borrow the autobiography of Mark Van Doren. As I reached for that book, however, a small red one to the right caught my eye—Yours With Love, Kate by Miriam E. Mason. It was an easy-to-read biography of Kate Douglas Wiggin with illustrations by Barbara Cooney. I finished it in two days and went back for the heftier Wiggin biography her sister Nora had written. Next I read Mrs. Wiggin’s story in her own words: My Garden of Memory. And there was still one more to go. Kate Douglas Wiggin’s Country of Childhood by Helen Frances Benner. I’m truly glad I read them all and in the order in which I did so.

Kate Douglas Wiggin was born in Philadelphia, not in Maine, though both her maternal and paternal grandparents lived in our state. In print, the story essentially begins at the time of Kate’s mother’s second marriage. She had spent her “several years of widowhood” mostly in Portland, Maine, with her two little girls. Her new husband, Albion Bradbury, was a physician with residence and practice in Hollis, Maine. Kate was seven when they married; Nora was three. A year later, a baby brother, Philip, was added to the clan.

Kate was always outgoing and energetic. She had a wonderful sense of adventure and admirable social skills. She made friends easily. A highlight of her early life involves a train trip from Portland to Boston with her mother. Charles Dickens had done a reading in Portland the night before and her mother and aunt had attended. Kate wished she, too, could have heard him, but she understood that the expense could not be justified. However, the next day Mr. Dickens was traveling to Boston on the train she was on, and she saw an opportunity to speak to him. He was impressed to find that at her young age she had read his books for herself—all but the two she told him the family did not yet own but intended to purchase while they were in Boston. When she admitted skipping “the very dull parts,” he laughed heartily and invited her to tell him about “those parts.” She did so, apparently with no thought that this might be less complimentary to the great author than the rest of their conversation.

Kate was, for the most part, homeschooled by her stepfather. When she was thirteen, however, her parents decided that some more formal education was in order. Nora refers to her sister’s schooling as a “rather desultory education.” She attended Gorham Seminary in Maine; then Wakefield High School in Massachusetts; then Morison Academy in Baltimore, Maryland; and finally, Abbott Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. While she was in Andover, her family moved to California because of her stepfather’s failing health and the doctor’s belief that the change of climate might prolong his life. At the end of the school year, Kate made the long journey west by train to join them.

Her stepfather invested what money he and his wife had in real estate in Santa Barbara, fully believing it would appreciate in value. It did not. And in spite of the move, he died just a few years after their relocation.

After his death, the family was in financial trouble. Most of their land holdings were forfeited because they couldn’t make the mortgage payments. During this time, however, Kate sold a story to St. Nicholas magazine for $150. She also made the acquaintance and gained the friendship of a seventy-year-old woman by the name of Caroline Severance who was interested in bringing kindergartens to the United States. Mrs. Severance recognized Kate’s potential as an educator. She offered her free room and board in her home if she would come to Los Angeles and attend a nine-month kindergarten training school.

After her training, Kate and Nora opened a kindergarten in a rented building close to their home. Many people interested in the kindergarten movement visited their school. A year later, Kate was asked to organize the first free kindergarten west of the Rocky Mountains (in San Francisco), and the Silver Street Free Kindergarten came into being.

Samuel Bradley Wiggin of Massachusetts, a young attorney who had first met Kate when she was fifteen, followed her to California. They were married in December of 1881. She relinquished her teaching job to her sister Nora and moved back east with her husband. But she continued to be actively involved in the California Kindergarten Training School, which she and Nora had established in 1880. She made several trips a year to California to tend to business there. While she was on one of these trips in 1889, her husband, home alone in New York, died suddenly and without warning of cerebral apoplexy.

A few years later, Kate and her mother and sister moved back to Hollis. She writes in her autobiography: “The society in Hollis was unequaled at that time save that it lacked the masculine element. Almost all the men had died in the Civil War, gone West or left the little village for towns where there was more lucrative work to be found.”

Houses didn’t come up for sale there often, but a house they had once boarded in became vacant not long after their return. The owner had been renting it out. In spite of the fact that it was in sad disrepair, they wanted to own it from the moment it became vacant, and they managed to persuade the owner to sell. They named their home Quillcote. Repairs and renovations were done gradually as the sale of Kate’s writings and her public readings made funds available. The barn was also renovated and turned into a community center where sewing bees and dances were held, and plays were sometimes presented. In addition, Kate and Nora started a library in the town and donated 2,000 books to it. That library still serves the town of Hollis.

On a trip to Europe in 1894, Kate met George Christopher Riggs. They were married in 1895. He was an importer of linens, and the couple spent their springtimes in the British Isles, their summers in Maine, and their winters in New York.

Although married twice, Kate never had any children of her own. She continued to write and to give readings throughout her lifetime. One of her most loved creations is a play entitled The Old Peabody Pew. It was written first as a story—a romance with its beginnings in a small country church. She later wrote it as a script, and the play was acted out annually for many years in the little church where she had envisioned it. It has been “put on” in many churches over the years. It was presented by members of the Green Street United Methodist Church in Augusta, Maine, at their own church in 1989 and again at the Bunker Hill Baptist Church in Jefferson, Maine, in 1991. I’ve read both the “story” version and the script and am very favorably impressed by Mrs. Wiggin’s ability to dramatize the tale. It is a delight. People often used to show up at the Tory Hill Meetinghouse in Buxton, expecting to be shown the pew in question. A few were actually a bit miffed to learn that there was not really an “old Peabody pew” and that no one named Peabody had ever been on the membership records of the church.

The Maine State Library has copies of several of Mrs. Wiggin’s books that can be borrowed. Among these are The Old Peabody Pew (the story version), Susanna and Sue (a story whose setting is a Shaker village), The Romance of a Christmas Card, Timothy’s Quest, and New Chronicles of Rebecca.

When my father died this past December, I discovered among his belongings a copy of New Chronicles of Rebecca that had belonged to my mother’s mother. It was given to her when she was a young girl by her maternal grandmother. This is now among my personal treasures. My very favorite passage involves a minister inviting Rebecca (same character as in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm) to join the church. She tells him she can’t because she doesn’t “understand God quite well enough.” He laughs and tells her that is a good thing and ought not concern her. Then she tells him that the doctrines worry her. He tells her that too is okay, and she need not be distressed. When she then asks him if she is “the beginnings of a Christian,” he replies: “You are a dear child of the understanding God!” And we’re told that Rebecca repeats that over to herself “night and morning” so that she “can never forget it.”

Kate Douglas Wiggin died on August 24, 1923. Mr. Riggs destroyed most of the letters she had sent him over the years, not wanting them ever to be shared with the public. One, however, he gave to Nora and allowed her to include parts of it in the biography she wrote of her sister. This portion of it seems a most fitting tribute to the woman. “When my heart has ceased to beat, I should like to have lived so that you could slip these words under the coffin-lid that covers me: What she had she gave gladly—hoping it might somehow please, or help, those who had less. If it was little, at least she tried to multiply and fructify it by use; but were it little, or much, she wanted to show her worthiness to possess, by proving herself willing to serve.”

I suppose it really isn’t quite fair to say that Kate Douglas Wiggin has become my “friend” over this past year, but I feel that I’ve come to know her fairly well. I have certainly developed a sincere and lasting appreciation and admiration for her talent and her person. I feel truly privileged to have had the opportunity to read the several biographies as well as many of her creative writings.

 

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