It is 1912, and a lonely woman in Vermont illustrates children’s books to take her mind off a stifling marriage. Three years later, she is an impoverished single mother, working as a mucker alongside grimy men in a lonely gold mine in the Sierra foothills. Three years after that, she is a nationally-known columnist and the highest-paid woman in the Hearst newspapers.
Who was this remarkable woman? The life story of journalist, artist, and memoirist Elsie Robinson is finally being told in full, thanks to the marvelous 2022 biography Listen, World!, by Julia Scheeres and Allison Gilbert. Our spotlight book today, one of Elder’s best children’s stories, has a small part in that tale.
Behind the Garden Wall is a delightful children’s book, with verses by Robert Wallace and illustrations by Elsie Robinson. Her artwork is replete with all manners of animals: geese, crows, rabbits, mice, guitar-playing frogs, dancing beetles, even mosquitos. Printed in three colors, it would still be a perfect book, 110 years after publication, to read to a young child.
Elsinore Justinia Robinson was born in 1883 in Benicia, California. Thirty years before, Benicia had briefly been the California state capitol—the old capitol building still stands—but by 1883 it had become a ‘frontier town’ with saloons and bordellos. When Elsie was nineteen, she met a visiting easterner named Christie Burnham Crowell, ten years her senior.1This and other biographical details are from Listen World!, by Julia Scheeres and Allison Gilbert, Seal Press, 2022
Elsie was eager to escape into the wider world, and Christie was on the rebound from the death of his first wife from an abdominal tumor at the age of 24. Their long courtship was spent convincing Christie’s parents to agree to the marriage: the devout Crowells thought her a sloppy, emotional teenager, completely unable to run a New England household. The Crowells finally agreed on the condition that Elsie spend a year at a nearby boarding school, where she would learn manners, household management, and the Bible. Elsie and Christie were married in his home town in Brattleboro, Vermont, and she gave birth to their son George in 1904. But George’s birth did not improve their marriage. When George developed asthma, Elsie pleaded to move to a warmer client for his health, but Christie refused. Elsie now realized that she was trapped: Christie would always be loyal to his parents first.
Elsie proceeded to put all her emotional energy into raising George, who was often home sick from school. She kept many children’s magazines at his bedside, including a brand-new title that would become his favorite: John Martin’s Letters. It was published by none other than Morgan Shepard, now living back in his home town of New York City after his years with Paul Elder in San Francisco. Elsie also began writing her own stories for George, and illustrated them with children and animals. She screwed up the courage to write to Shepard, asking whether her stories might be good enough to publish. She was astonished when Shepard replied, saying that yes, he’d very much like to publish her story, and more like it. Elsie began to write regularly for John Martin’s Letters in 1911 under the pseudonym “Comfy Lady.”
In 1912, Elsie was contacted by Robert Wallace, an inmate at the Brattleboro Retreat, a former insane asylum. He was trying to cure his alcoholism, in part by writing children’s stories, and he was looking for an illustrator. Elsie visited him at the Retreat, and they began working on a book together, which would become Behind the Garden Wall.
Elsie and Robert realized that they attracted to each other. They were also both married to people who paid little attention to them. As the book neared completion, they devised an escape plan. Robert wanted to get out of the asylum, and Elsie could file a petition to be a guardian. Elsie wanted to return to California, both for her son’s health and for her own sanity. Robert casually proposed a trip to California over a chess game with Christie, Elsie and George coming along to visit her family in Benicia. Christie agreed, oblivious of their scheme. Within a few weeks, Elsie, George, and Robert were on a train to California, never to return. Eventually, it became clear to Christie that Robert and Elsie were living together, and he initiated divorce proceedings. But for more on Elsie’s life story, you’ll need to read Listen, World!
It’s unknown why Paul Elder ended up publishing Behind the Garden Wall, but the most likely scenario is that Morgan Shepard referred Elsie to Elder, knowing that Elder had the means to properly publish and market the book. Once in California, Elsie and Robert wrote another children’s book, Within the Deep Dark Woods, published later in 1913, but by Blair-Murdock, not Paul Elder. Perhaps Morgan Shepard referred Elsie to both publishers and they agreed to do one book with each?
- 1This and other biographical details are from Listen World!, by Julia Scheeres and Allison Gilbert, Seal Press, 2022