112 Years Ago Today...

With a little bit of help from the wonderful staff at Middletown's Russell Library, I was able to locate the house where Kay was born, 112 years ago today. I had come across a biographical sketch which happened to mention that Kay was born in the home of her maternal grandparents, D. Ward and Mary Northrop. 

A 1900 Middletown telephone book was all we needed to locate the Northrops at 174 Church Street. Though we at first thought the house was no longer standing, a little more digging by the Russell Library staff revealed that the house had at some point been renumbered as 154, and is now owned by Wesleyan University.

D. Ward Northrop, ca. 1885

The Northrops were a prominent Connecticut family, all the way back to Revolutionary War days. D. (avid) Ward Northrop was born in Sherman, Connecticut in 1844.  He was graduated from Wesleyan University (Class of '68), opened a law practice in Middletown in 1870, and later became a judge. He subsequently held a number of important political posts, including Mayor of Middletown, and Secretary of State of the State of Connecticut (1883-85). D. Ward Northrop died of pneumonia in 1918.


Built in 1874, the Northrop house, though charming, seems remarkably modest compared to some of Middletown's other homes, especially when one considers that D. Ward Northrop was one of the city's preeminent residents.

The house is used today as student housing. I imagine that the exterior remains little changed since 1900; and the floor plan provided at Wesleyan's Web site would seem to indicate very little, if any, alteration to the interior, as well. Alas, the house was locked up for the summer vacation when we visited, so we didn't get to see the inside.  

But Kay didn't live there long; shortly after she was born (a month or two, it would appear), the family were living in Washington, DC, where Kay's father was employed as a housemaster and instructor at Washington School for Boys, now defunct.

RIP, KB

Today was the 60th Anniversary of Katharine Brush's death. A few friends and I drove up to Old Saybrook, Connecticut to visit Kay's grave in Riverside Cemetery.

Kay's ashes are buried next to her parents, and her brother Travis.

Time of Her Life

After work on her sixth (which would eventually be published as her seventh) novel stalled, Kay found herself unable to write. Anything. 

So she started doing finger exercises on the typewriter. Then, at the prompting of her publishers (at 2am in the Persian Room of the Plaza Hotel, if we take Kay at her word), she agreed to tell the story of her stories. What resulted was This Is On Me, a “hodge-podge autobiography, bubbly and easy to take throughout and really memorable in spots,” according to The American Mercury. 

The book owes its “hodge-podge” character to the fact that it is both autobiography and anthology, “interlarded” (to borrow Mercury's term) “with samples of pertinent literary work, including complete short stories.”

And though Time magazine felt the stories and sketches would not have been missed, their reviewer found This Is On Me “lively reading,” and “a welcome change from the usual preening of popular authors on How-I-Learned-To Write.” The critics, in fact, appear to have been quite unanimous in their praise; I have not found a single review that was less than glowing.

Parts of This Is On Me appeared first in Ladies’ Home Journal (beginning with the December 1939 issue) under the title Time of My Life. The Journal excerpts featured photographs that were not included when the book was published in the summer of 1940. This Is On Me was instead illustrated with simple line drawings by Susanne Suba. Suba was a successful and well-regarded artist and illustrator, but I think This Is On Me would be just that much more valuable as autobiography had the photos been retained.  

Left: This photographic timeline appeared in Ladies' Home Journal;

Above Right: Photo of a rather prim looking Kay from the book's dust jacket