A Chance Christmas Dinner with John Steinbeck in 1947

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A chance Christmas dinner with John Steinbeck helped set the course of a young man’s life as an adventurer and Pan American pilot who crisscrossed the world many times–and then wrote a book about it. Charles Cutting honored Steinbeck by using the year of their meeting in the title of his book, 1947 Europe from a Duffel Bag. The book, which is available on Amazon, also includes harrowing and insightful experiences as a pilot.

“I was born in Pacific Grove, California, February, 1930,” Cutting writes. “My father as a young man worked down on Cannery Row in Monterey near our home in Pacific Grove. These were the days when the author John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts were well known. Because of this connection, I heard stories of these two men and some of their life and times.”

Cutting’s father, F. Douglass Cutting, had gone through a divorce and died when Charles was 12, Charles’s daughter Susan said. Charles’s grandfather, Francis Cutting–a superb plein air artist and Impressionist of the period–stepped in to help raise Charles. Francis would often take the boy with him when painting scenes along the California coast. The boy would play while the grandfather painted the land and sea around them.

Charles’s favorite location was Point Lobos, now a state reserve south of Carmel, and thought by many to be the inspiration for another writer of note who had connections to the Monterey Peninsula–Robert Louis Stevenson. It has been said that a tale about a hidden treasure at Point Lobos led Stevenson to write Treasure Island. But Charles Cutting mainly remembers it for the time spent there with his artist grandfather. When Francis Cutting relocated his studio from Pacific Grove to Campbell, California, he brought Charles with him.

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“By 1946 I was attending high school in Campbell,” Cutting continued. “My girlfriend in those school days was a friend of one of John Steinbeck’s nieces. Through this connection in 1947 my girlfriend and I were invited for Christmas dinner at the home of Steinbeck’s sister [Beth Ainsworth, who ran a boarding house in Berkeley at the time].

“As it happened, John came in unexpectedly from his reporting job in Europe and joined us for dinner. We had a warm visit and discussion of his just completed life in Europe. I was intrigued with his description of current events and life on the continent.

“One year later, I graduated from high school. After completing a summer of work, I combined my summer’s pay with my life savings for a grand total of $400. I set out to see for myself what John Steinbeck had talked about during that Christmas dinner in 1947.”

So at the age of 18, with his possessions in a duffel bag, Charles Cutting was off to explore a continent still recovering from World War II. That exploration would continue through his long flying career, including tense times, such as this expressed in one of his poems as his jet begins its climb over the Outer Hebrides: “Still our four engines strained upward through the vast blue void/Sharp sudden spasm and this machine becomes a problem child . . . .”

A Chance Encounter with a Masterful Painting

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I met Charles Cutting by accident or, maybe I should say, by way of art. Driving home to Pacific Grove from San Francisco several decades ago, I stopped at the Red Barn weekend flea mart off Highway 101 to stretch my legs. I didn’t expect to find anything of interest; it was late Sunday afternoon and booths had been pretty well picked over. But in a large cardboard box I found an early 20th century oil painting of a cypress tree on dunes against a moody sky, likely painted in Pacific Grove’s Asilomar or at Point Pinos or nearby Pebble Beach. A beautiful painting, it was signed F.H. Cutting. Research showed that F.H. stood for Francis Harvey and that Cutting had exhibited prolifically, including the California Palace of the Legion of Honor and the Stanford Art Gallery, winning many awards in his lifetime.

Somehow, that led me to Charles Cutting. Or he contacted me when I inquired on the internet after his grandfather. Neither of us remembers exactly how it happened, but we got to know each other and Charles told me the Steinbeck story as well as stories of his career as a Pan Am pilot. Several years later, in 2007, he published 1947 Europe from a Duffel Bag. He once wrote me, “My encounter with Steinbeck was brief on that Christmas in 1947, but it did have an effect on my future life. I never forgot it.”

Celebrating Woody Guthrie’s Grapes of Wrath Connection

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“Woody is Just Woody,” an exhibition expressing the inspired connection between the author of The Grapes of Wrath and the folk singer Woody Guthrie, is on display through August 25, 2023, in the fifth floor art gallery of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library at San Jose State University. Organized by Peter Van Coutren, curator of San Jose State’s John Steinbeck collection, it features sculpture by Lew Aytes (see photo) and poster-size covers from foreign-language editions of John Steinbeck’s 1939 masterpiece. The exhibition is open to the public from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. weekdays and from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Saturdays.

For John Steinbeck, the Rains in Pajaro Hit Home

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The word pajaro means bird in Spanish, and Central California’s Pajaro Valley may have inspired the setting of John Steinbeck’s 1936 American strike novel, In Dubious Battle. But the town of Pajaro, California, in Monterey County—the setting of so much great literature by Steinbeck—seems closer in spirit these days to the rained out world of the Joads at the end of The Grapes of Wrath.

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In these tough times for Pajaro, it’s good to remember that the artist who painted the cover image of Steinbeck’s 1939 novel was born there in 1889. His name was Elmer Stanley Hader, and, like Steinbeck, he knew hard times in California. He survived the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, and he was alert to the field labor strife dramatized in Steinbeck’s fiction. His portrait of the Joad family—tired and tattered, overlooking California for the first time—takes its power, like Steinbeck’s masterpiece, from its empathy.

elmer-stanley-hader-berthaLike Steinbeck, Hader moved on from Monterey County. He pursued his art career, first in San Francisco, then in Paris and New York. His illustrations appeared in national magazines including Cosmopolitan, and he collaborated with his wife Berta in creating more than 30 children’s books and in illustrating many others. Together they won the coveted Caldecott Medal for their 1949 children’s picture book, The Big Snow. His painting for the Grapes of Wrath cover eventually sold for more than $60,000. He died five years after Steinbeck, in 1973. Both men passed away in New York, but neither forgot his California roots. Each would have profound sympathy for Pajaro today, flooded out by The Big Rain of 2023.

Lead image courtesy Los Angeles Times. For more on the subject, read “How a long history of racism and neglect set the stage for Pajaro flooding” in the paper’s March 20, 2023 edition.

Exploring Cannery Row Along the Pacific Crest Trail

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John Steinbeck preferred coasts to mountains, but the opposite is true of Joshua Powell, the artist-author of an artful new book, The Pacific Crest Trail: A Visual Compendium. Quoted in a February 20, 2021 Spokesman-Review profile by Stephanie Hammett, the Washington State resident said that he picked up a copy of Steinbeck’s 1945 novel Cannery Row while staying overnight with friends in Belton, California (pop. 22) in 2012. He kept the copy his hosts gave him in his knapsack, working his way along the 2,653-mile Pacific Crest Trail—and having an unexpected experience of discovery. “’I would pull it out and read it from time to time, maybe 10 minutes before going to sleep, but it ended up having a huge effect on my experience,’” Powell told Hammett, who added that Powell “started seeing connections between his hike and the plot surrounding the character of Doc in Cannery Row, an early thru-hiker of sorts himself.” John Steinbeck continues to sustain the young artist-author. “’That was kind of shocking to me, that this book I just randomly happened to find, by a very famous writer, actually had this direct connection to what I was doing,’ he said, explaining how he went from casually reading Cannery Row to tracking down every bit of Steinbeck he could find.”

Photo of Joshua Powell by Laura Goff courtesy of the Spokane, Washington Spokesman-Review.

Did John Steinbeck Know Patricia Michielssen or Her Painting of Cannery Row?

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“The Last Fish Hopper,” undated painting by Patricia Michielssen

I was given two astounding assignments early in my time at the Monterey Peninsula Herald, now the Monterey County Herald.

One was to review the Monterey Jazz Festival shortly after arriving on the job—as a general assignment reporter. The paper’s usual jazz critic was indisposed. I have no ear for music. So, I decided to depend on dramatic instinct, and it kind of worked. My judgments more or less synced with the renowned jazz critic Leonard Feather. But Feather, a jazz pianist, could tell you why something was good or missed the mark. I couldn’t, or not very well. The paper gave me a bonus anyway.

The other was to take over the popular weekly “On the Waterfront” column. It was a good deal. Every week I got a few hours to roam the waterfront on my own. News people love that kind of freedom. The beat included stopping in wharf bars and hitching rides on boats—once to board the famous Calypso and meet Philippe Cousteau. His father Jacques Cousteau, an ocean conservationist ahead of his time, was back in France. And it was fun to hear the fishermen tell stories. For instance, an old Italian fisherman named Nino told me of a seal leaping onto the deck of his little boat to pilfer just-caught fish. Nino exclaimed and gestured, “How much you pay to have a ride?” The seal thought about it, devoured a cod, and hopped off.

Then there was the piece I did with the headline “The Last Fish Hopper.” I didn’t know what a fish hopper was, and the one floating just off the shore was no longer in use. As I came to understand it, fish hoppers were left over from the great sardine-catch days Steinbeck and others wrote of. Fishermen clued me in. The fish hoppers had flexible underwater piping that connected to the canneries. Fishermen could dump catches from boat to hopper, and from there the sardines would be funneled into the canneries. The fishing boats then immediately headed out to gather more sardines.

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Detail from “The Last Fish Hopper”

All this came to mind when I first saw the painting shown here. It is almost surely a rare painting of Cannery Row from the sea. Even old photographs of the Row from a boat are rare, paintings triply so. The large wooden structure, on the other side of a grounded splintered boat, is an out-of-commission fish hopper. The painting captures the muted coastal light filtering through the mist, sunlight touching purse seiners close by the back of the Cannery Row buildings.

It is such a fine painting, I thought it must be by one of the famous Peninsula artists of the time. I was wrong. It was painted by a woman named Patricia Michielssen, who was born (1929) and died (2017) in Watsonville, California, 30 minutes northeast of Monterey. John Steinbeck’s sister Esther had a home in Watsonville. The author visited often. Maybe Esther and Patricia knew each other. Maybe Steinbeck knew Patricia. Michielssen also spent many of her years in nearby Moss Landing. The coastal light she caught in this painting would have been seen often in that town’s harbor.

Otherwise, all I’ve been able to find as further evidence of her talent is two drawings—a windmill and a sprawling oak. If told they’d been done by Andrew Wyeth, I would believe it. Michielssen’s obituary mentions that she was a fine pen and ink artist whose work was displayed throughout the Southwest, but says nothing more about her artistic accomplishments.

The Cannery Row painting is not dated. Given the year of the artist’s birth, it’s unlikely it was painted before the late 1940s. The abandoned fish hopper also indicates a later date. By the end of World War II sardines had almost disappeared from Monterey Bay. So, it came after Steinbeck’s time of living in California, probably in the 1950s, maybe even the 1960s. If Steinbeck did see it on one of his trips back home, I am sure he appreciated the mood it creates. Artists were friends all his adult days—and he knew a fine painting when he saw one. Especially when it was a place he loved.

And, of course, Steinbeck would have known all about fish hoppers.

Sketches of John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts Resurface in Carmel, California Collection

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Numerous artists drew, painted, or photographed John Steinbeck, but artistic images of his friend Ed Ricketts are relatively rare. This made the chance discovery of a drawing of Ricketts by Ellwood Graham—in a Carmel, California art collection that also includes Graham’s sketch of Steinbeck—especially exciting. Both drawings are discolored and have acid burn, but Graham’s lines are vivid and the impression in both, even before restoration, remains strong.

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In 1991 Graham penned his remembrance of doing the two drawings (shown here) around 1940-41, and in 1995 they were included in a Monterey Museum of Art exhibition, curated by Richard Gadd and called “Monterey Life: The Steinbeck Years.” Ironically, when I came across the pair on my first visit to a Carmel collector’s home several months ago I was writing The Willow Grave, a screenplay on Graham and his wife Judith Deim. Ricketts and Steinbeck are significant characters in the story.

“Doing John’s Portrait Was an Unusual Luxury” for Artist

Graham’s recollection of sketching Steinbeck was still fresh when he wrote this note:

Doing John’s portrait was an unusual luxury in this way. A portrait subject usually sits stiffly several times at best. But since John was present in my studio for hours of many days, I had ample time to exploit the project in many ways and mediums. This particular drawing was done in the manner of a technique called silverpoint – which attempts to suggest much with little, a simple clarity of line. This work is not true silverpoint but very similar in intent and result. I should have mentioned that the reason for this “artists” luxury was John’s longhand writing of “The Sea of Cortez.” Therefor several studies were made.

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Equally strong was Graham’s memory of sketching Ricketts:

The drawing of Ed was done quickly during a brief posing period. Later in my studio, and drawing on my memory and experience, a more complete three-dimensional work was done and I am quite certain hangs in the Steinbeck library in Salinas. I planned on doing an oil but that project was never accomplished.

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Ellwood Graham and Judith Deim—then going by her given name of Barbara Stevenson—were artists from St. Louis, Missouri, who made their way to California on Route 66 during the Dust Bowl days of the Great Depression. By chance in Los Angeles they met Gordon Grant, the California artist who was creating murals under the auspices of the Federal Art Project, and he hired them. They were working on the mural in the Ventura, California post office when—again a chance meeting—they met Steinbeck and Ricketts, who were passing through on their way to Mexico. Before parting, Ricketts and Steinbeck invited the young artists to visit Monterey, which, of course, they eventually did. Deim was to do her own portrait of Steinbeck (shown here). It is in the collection of the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies. Graham also did an oil portrait of the writer, but it was lost and its whereabouts are unknown.

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Newlyweds, Deim and Graham (shown with their children in this undated photo) met as students in the School of Fine Arts at Washington University and went on to distinguished careers in California and Mexicao. Deim exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Palace of the Legion of Honor, and the Patzcuaro Museum (she spent the last years of her life in Mexico’s Michoacan). Among many honors, she was the first artist given a solo exhibition at the Carmel Art Association, in 1946. Graham has work in the Whitney Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the De Young Museum, and the Monterey Museum of Art. Among dozens of exhibits and solos, he had work in the 1939 Golden Gate International Exhibition in San Francisco. Deim spent her last years in Mexico. Graham died in Oregon.

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An art dealer in Los Angeles who specializes in early modernism told me he knew Graham had a strong sense of his worth as an artist, “because when I find his old paintings, they usually have a pretty high price—for the time—on the reverse side.” Steinbeck and Ricketts believed in Graham and Deim’s talent; Steinbeck, for instance, felt easy enough in their presence to write while they painted him. Luck brought Graham and Deim to the attention of Gordon Grant in Los Angeles and Ricketts and Steinbeck at the Ventura post office. I, too, was fortunate to happen upon Ellwood Graham’s drawings in that Carmel collection.

Ellwood Graham’s recently rediscovered sketches of John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts courtesy of private collector in Carmel, California.

 

John Steinbeck? Mais oui!

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As a humorist I’ve learned that the best gags come from listening to people. Recently I broke one of my rules and picked up a couple hitchhiking on U.S. Highway 1, near Carmel, California. It turned out they were French and out to see the world, two things John Steinbeck liked most about life. When I asked them if they had read anything he wrote, the woman said oui! In France we read the raisins of anger! I liked her answer so much I put them up for the night and used the idea for “Life in the Grove,” the weekly cartoon I write for my home town newspaper, the Cedar Street Times.

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Photo of Keith Larson at 2019 Steinbeck Festival by Elayne Azevedo

Painted 50 Years Ago, Lost Portrait Comes to Light

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whitney-anthony-verdecannaThe lucky purchase by a young couple in Austin, Texas—of a lost portrait of John Steinbeck painted by an admirer 50 years ago—presents intriguing questions about the California author’s connection to Texas, the state he celebrated in Travels with Charley because, he said, his wife Elaine grew up there. Anthony Verdecanna, a specialist in mid-20th century furniture, and his wife Whitney, a musician, came across the elegantly framed find recently at an estate sale near Austin. The inscriptions on the back—“To Elaine Steinbeck” and “Virginia Boyd in Thailand 1969”—piqued their curiosity about its provenance. Following the trail of “Jenny Boyd,” the person who signed the work, they learned that the Virginia in the inscription was most likely the artist’s mother, Virginia Hawkins Boyd Connally, a pioneering physician in Abilene and the widow of Ed Connally, chairman of the Texas Democratic Party during the heyday of Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson. An eye-ear-nose-and-throat specialist whose first husband virginia-connally-NEW-editionwas named Fred Boyd, Dr. Connally was born in 1912 and died on March 31, 2019, leaving her daughter Genna Boyd Davis, an art education major in the 1960s, as her sole immediate survivor. Like a story by Steinbeck, the heroic narrative of Virginia Connally’s life presents multiple possibilities. Did she and Ed meet John and Elaine in Texas through the Johnsons, with whom the Steinbecks were friendly? Or was the writer’s generous portrait of Texas in the pages of Travels with Charley enough to win her affection—and the tribute of a devoted daughter’s painting, lost for 50 years until its discovery by yet another power couple from Elaine Steinbeck’s home state?

 

Artist’s Letter Recalls 1930s Life with John Steinbeck

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Seventeen or 18 years ago, maybe longer, the artist Judith Deim faxed me a long handwritten letter from near Lake (or Lago) Pátzcuaro in the Mexican state of Michoacán. It was a history of what she could remember, at around age 90, of her time in Monterey, California in the 1930s and beyond, the years of John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts and so many others. She told me deep into the missive (in no uncertain terms, which was Judith’s way), “None of this group are living now, so you are lucky to get this story.” I wouldn’t argue that for a second.

Judith Deim’s Eye for Steinbeck’s Circle Never Failed

judith-deimA woman of great talent and immense courage, she traveled Europe and Africa with three children—and sometimes with a band of gypsies—for 16 years. Her marriage splintered and she lost a daughter, a flamenco dancer who drowned off the coast of Spain, and her art, called Magic Realism, became dark. Yet she persevered, composing music as well as painting before dying, at the age of 95, in 2006. She was born Barbara Stevenson in 1911 in St. Louis, where her mother taught piano, and during the Depression she traveled Highway 66 with a fellow artist, Ellwood Graham. The pair met up with Steinbeck and Ricketts in Southern California, which led them to settle in Monterey, and Barbara Stevenson became Barbara Graham. The name Judith Deim came later.

In the late 1930s she created the painting, called “Beach Picnic,” shown above. It depicts a group of companions—including a pensive-looking John Steinbeck, a broad-shouldered Ed Ricketts, and Deim herself—under a night sky. She told me once that artists, photographers, and poets used to accompany Steinbeck when (as reflected in this painting) his friends felt he needed protection. Sometimes Charlie Chaplin would drive up from Los Angeles and join them. The portrait of Steinbeck by Judith shown below hangs in the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University. The one she mentions by Ellwood Graham—a nervous yet compelling effort—has been missing for years.

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Judith did not pass unnoticed. I and others wrote about her and her work was exhibited, including a solo show at the Carmel Art Association. The film about her by the award-winning director Irena Salina, “Ghost Bird: The Life and Art of Judith Deim,” was voted an audience favorite on the Sundance Channel. She had a mystical side, as shown in the transcript of the undated letter she wrote me, reproduced here for the first time. Her spelling and grammar required some touching up and she begins with a mistake—mentioning a mural in Santa Barbara which she may be confusing with one she and Ellwood worked on at the Ventura, California post office under the direction of Gordon Grant. But her perceptions of Steinbeck, Ricketts, and their circle are precise, and her eye, unlike her memory, never failed her.

Judith Deim inspired the story “Judith” in my book Steinbeck: The Untold Stories, as well an almost completed screenplay I’m calling “The Willow Grave.” Then again, she has always been inspirational. Her sons Daniel, a sculptor, and Benje, a guitarist, continue her creative legacy. Granddaughter La Tania is a world-renowned flamenco dancer, and another granddaughter, Tiffany (shown here painting Judith), is an oil painter and muralist who works with disadvantaged kids in inner-city Los Angeles. Tiffany’s art, like that of her grandmother, expresses duende—the quality of inspired passion described by Judith in the letter.

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Undated, Unpublished Letter from Judith Diem

Dear Steve—

Enclosed response to you [is] material for your article. We planned to record [the] interview with Vatche Geuvadjelian, a poet and painter, but the recording didn’t work (bad sound), so I dictated [the following for] Vatche, which he could write down far better than myself. I hope it will cover several of the questions [you] sent, improvised [with] little time to do it. Use what you wish.

I was working on a 1400-ft. mural in Santa Barbara with Ellwood Graham. I painted all the faces, sometimes mean, sometimes ugly, once in a while sweet. My work was finished [and] I left, where to? [on] the Monterey Peninsula. I met Virginia and Raymond Scardiglio; we liked each other; they invited me to live with them at their apartment in Carmel. They and 12 others of similar artistic interests were the nucleus of the group who met at Ed Ricketts[‘s] lab on Cannery Row in Monterey. There I met John Steinbeck, Ritchie Lovejoy, a writer; his wife Natalia Kashevarof, a Russian woman from Alaska; Dick and Francis Strong, Ed’s sister; Marjorie and Harold Lloyd; Henry Miller [who] came and went when his work permitted; Toby Street, John’s lawyer; and two or three others, thirteen all together. John Steinbeck and his great friend Ed Ricketts were the natural focus.

Carol Steinbeck made it possible, by working in a Relief office, for [John] to devote his time to writing. She was a wonderful country cook, with jars of preserves in all seasons. She was in rapport with all who came to the lab. She was a very important critic [of] his writing by demanding the best from him and [typing] all [of] his manuscripts.

Ed Ricketts was the ever-gracious host. He did his work, sending marine specimens all over the world. A great marine biologist, in the late hours he would disappear [in]to his lab on the ground floor and work. He loved paintings. I gave him one of an old farmwoman that he always kept above his chair, the only painting in the room.

Sometimes John spoke with me of the Big Sur. Going from the Little Sur country, his theory was [that] they were inhabited by poltergeists who were inimical to people invading the countryside and were the cause of [the] occasional disasters that occurred there.

I spent much time exploring that countryside. Sometimes I ran across the great poet Robinson Jeffers and talked with him about things he loved. His narrative poems were based on the tragic stories of people who lived in those canyons. One time I stayed behind my companions to explore an old cabin. Suddenly I felt all my strength being pulled out of me. I crawled with all my strength to get out of the cabin. I [lay] some time on a fallen tree before I continued on.

On the coast there was another well-known log cabin, run by Lolly and Bill Fassett. All [the] coast people and tourists, artists, [and] workers of the countryside gathered there. There was a bar and restaurant. Anderson Creek had been the old prison camp and had houses from the Second World War. Henry Miller and his good friends Elliott Sandow the sculptor, the Niemans, and Lilac Schatz, a fine painter, were working in these old prison houses.

A woman reporter from the Examiner [of] San Francisco came to interview all of them. They were hospitable, entertained her and showed her their work. [Then] the Sunday paper came out, devoting a whole page to the perverse [goings on and the] use of alcohol and drugs, so misusing their hospitality and their values as artists. The American Legion club members got together and planned to burn them out. [We] artists got up a petition and went to all the liberals of the community and succeeded in stopping this terrible plan.

Ellwood Graham returned to Monterey. We built [a] redwood house out of lumber we bought at an auction at Big Sur. Ellwood painted a lot of landscapes and had an experience [with] poltergeists on the Big Sur, where his canvases kept being torn from his easel even though there was no wind. He came back in a black rage, battling with the invisible. I told this story to a friend who had special photographic equipment [and] he went and took photos. The photos showed little floating light forms around the farmhouse. This related to what Steinbeck was saying about the canyons in Little Sur.

A trip was planned with two Italian brothers with their schooner to the Sea of Cortez. After much talk and discussion with the brothers they left. The idea behind the trip was for John to be inspired to write a book about the Sea of Cortez. On the trip Ed kept a log [of] everything that happened from day to day.

On their return [there was] much rejoicing, partying [and] storytelling at the lab. After a few days of this drinking and partying John felt it was time to get to work. He said, I have an inspiration. Why don’t you kids paint my portrait and I shall be forced to concentrate and get on with my book? He wanted Ellwood to have money to establish a studio. So we commissioned him to do his portrait, which he would buy whether he liked the result or not. He also wanted me to paint a portrait in any way I wanted. We celebrated his 40[th] birthday. At the time he was very proud of some Western boots he had bought for himself. He was a lot like a big child . . . . None of this group are living now, so you are lucky to get this story.

He did not like Ellwood’s portrait. [It] brought out an expressionist version of an alcoholic, which John was not. He liked my portrait very much but asked me to keep it as a souvenir, then added, “You might need it.” And I did. It was the only portrait of Steinbeck writing at his desk. I showed in on Cannery Row, where I met Steinbeck’s son [Thom]. He bought six accurately reproduced prints of the painting. I said, “I guess you like it.” He answered, “I like it because it expresses Steinbeck’s sinister side. I am having a difficult time surviving while his will waits until I [am] sixty years old to get it.” Right after the portraits [Steinbeck] suggested that he would pay for us to go to Mexico, and he said, “Go to Pátzcuaro and not to where all the tourists go.”

Pátzcuaro: in a Mexican boardinghouse with a beautiful doña. Raining and dark. At 7:00 p.m. a procession of men with torches. Very little, dim electricity, too low to read with. A dark and wild feeling, in the store windows jars of powder, of everything that humans desire: love, sex, babies, money. Only one outsider in town: a mad Englishman going in circles around the plaza without stopping. It was sad that the townspeople threw rocks to keep strangers out. But they did not throw rocks at us because I was very pregnant.

Lots of rain, and more rain. I got bronchitis and went to bed. Then the money that Steinbeck’s lawyer Toby was to send us did not arrive. The boardinghouse owner kept us going, then Ellwood went to the post office under the rain [and] returned cursing like I had never heard him before. The post office man had found the wire, but instead of paying him he had torn it right in front of Ellwood to little shreds. Finally we got paid, all in small coins. After a few days I got better and we took a boat to Janitzio, a small island in Lake Pátzcuaro. We got into the small motorboat with a married couple who still wore their wedding clothes.

By the time we got [to] the middle of the lake, storm clouds came and covered the sky. Then the motor stopped, the rain came thundering down, [and] the boat would not start, so there we sat, me coughing and soaked. In one hour a boat came and towed us to the island. A fish café [that] offered shelter played old songs [and] had an old Victrola. We were freezing so we danced, danced, and danced. I danced with [the doña] and Ellwood. I asked for a baño [and] her daughter took me to [a] totally flooded room. I made do [and] we stayed the night and [the] next day [took] a larger boat to Pátzcuaro. I had back pains [which] became serious, so we went to a doctor. He was in [the] midst of an operation but said that I had a serious infection that needed to be surgically cleaned. He finished amputating a leg in this rather dirty room [while] the nurse stripped me down and scrubbed me all over with this rather stiff brush. [The] next day [when] I was taken to be operated [on] the next operating table was full of guts and blood, [so] I bade this world goodbye. He put an old gas mask on my face and put me to sleep, 7 months pregnant. [The] next day he moved me out to the back of the station wagon because he had no room in the hospital of only one room.

Next stop Laredo, to pick up [a] money order. I stayed in the back of the car [while] Ellwood went to the post office. For an endless period of time he did not come back. Finally I struggled to get up and managed to go to the post office. He had been sent to the 5[th] floor and [the] postmaster was having him fingerprinted. On seeing me barely able to walk and very pregnant, he softened up and finally gave us the money.

We finally headed out to Monterey, Ca[lifornia]. But Ellwood started to run a high fever in the middle of Texas. We got ourselves in[to] a boardinghouse and contacted a doctor. First an old doctor [who] diagnosed malaria wanted to give him quinine, but the young assistant [who] wanted tests made in El Paso registered Ellwood into a hospital, very sick. [The] tests came back negative for malaria, but the old doctor insisted [on giving the] cure [for] this symptom. [When] the young doctor refused the older doctor appealed to my female intuition and I said, “Give him quinine.” In a few days he got better, but with big black-circled eyes.

Next [there was] a flood [and] a truck had to pull us out. Finally, [when] we got back with Steinbeck, who was anxious to see us back, [and] he took care of everything, including my delivery. There were celebrations in the lab with John and our friends. Pátzcuaro was inspiring and drew me back [in the] early [19]80s. I have painted a large number of paintings [that] I believe have “duende.”

Judith Deim

[P.S.] With so little time to write this [and] to get it off by Monday, I improvised spontaneously, trying to satisfy several inquiries [by this] subjective approach. If there is anything you would like me to elaborate on send a fax concerning it and I will fax back if possible. J.D.

“Beach Picnic” by Judith Deim courtesy of private collector. Portrait of John Steinbeck by Judith Deim courtesy Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies.

East Meets West in the Illustrations for Tortilla Flat

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A number of years ago an art dealer on the East Coast called me in Pacific Grove, California to say he had access to the original illustrations commissioned by Viking Press for the deluxe edition of Tortilla Flat. Would I be interested in buying? I found a copy of the 1935 novel that gave Steinbeck his first dose of security, glanced at the illustrations for the 1947 edition, and promptly phoned the dealer. I liked Steinbeck’s fiction, but I had no clue that I would write a book of stories about him. It was the art dealer and lover of art who said yes that afternoon. The illustrations for Tortilla Flat, by an artist named Peggy Worthington, were exquisite.

The inside cover flap of the book was sketchy about her life but accurate in explaining how well illustrations mirrored Steinbeck’s colorful text: “For this new edition, Peggy Worthington, the artist, has done seventeen paintings in oil, here glowingly reproduced as full color illustrations and jacket. She spent much time in Monterey, and has admirably captured the atmosphere of both the setting and the kind of people of whom Steinbeck wrote. The strong, primary, human quality of the story is expressed in her paintings, and the result is a thoroughly handsome book to give and to own.”

When I asked the dealer for information, he said that Peggy was an East Coast artist who was rumored to have been a student of Norman Rockwell, the most celebrated illustrator of 20th century. He added that she might also be known as Peggy Worthington Best, for she was married to Marshall Best, a senior editor at Viking.

It wouldn’t have been surprising if she got the commission through her husband. Best is mentioned several times in Jackson Benson’s biography of Steinbeck, though the editor and the author weren’t close. Steinbeck’s editor at Viking, Pat Covici, was caught in the middle when conflict occurred, and Best was Covici’s boss. Peggy Worthington Best didn’t appear in Benson’s book, or anywhere else that I looked, but I bought two of the illustrations anyway. One shows Jesus Maria Corcoran polishing off a jug of wine, to the dismay of Pilon and Pablo. The other depicts Danny and Dolores in conversation over a picket fence. I wish I could have bought more, but money was tight and the price wasn’t cheap.

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Both of the pieces I bought were included in the 1998 inaugural art exhibition of the National Steinbeck Center: This Side of Eden – Images of Steinbeck’s California, which I co-curated with Patricia Leach. From the Steinbeck Center in Salinas the show traveled to the Laguna Art Museum, accompanied by a brilliantly designed catalog by Melissa Thoeny and Glenn Johnson. The exhibition put our gallery on the map of Steinbeck’s California, and people started bringing in Steinbeck-related material—not just artwork, but letters and other important documents as well.

All of this eventually led to the book of short stories about Steinbeck’s life that I wrote and Steinbeck Books published in 2017. In 2008 we had created an exhibition featuring material brought in since 1998, along with the two illustrations from Tortilla Flat and other Steinbeck-related works of art. The title suggested by our friend Chris Carroll for the show—Steinbeck: Armed with the Truth—played on the idea of weaponry the way Steinbeck did when he wrote to a struggling novelist with the advice that “your only weapon is your work.” As in 1998, the show attracted a lot of attention. I still have Peggy’s picture of Danny and Dolores, but a buyer offered more than I could refuse for Jesus Maria, Pilon, and Pablo.

My curiosity about Peggy Worthington Best came to mind recently when I ran across collector copies of Tortilla Flat for sale online. Recalling the 1947 book blurb (“She spent much time in Monterey, and has captured the atmosphere of both the setting and the kind of people Steinbeck wrote of”), I realized how fully her art justified the praise. The clouds gathering over San Carlos Cathedral in one illustration, the mist drifting through the Monterey pines as the Pirate lectures his dogs, Danny and Dolores in front of her white board-and-batten cottage, so typical of Monterey and Pacific Grove past and present—everything looks seen.

Peggy must have kept a low profile when she visited. Assuming she came at or around the time of the Tortilla Flat commission, it’s possible that she (and perhaps her husband—though Benson doesn’t mention it) were hosted or helped by the author of the book she was illustrating. Less speculative than an encounter with Steinbeck in California is her relationship with an artist of equal stature in Massachusetts. This came to light recently, when a letter dated September 28 of 1961, addressed to “Peggy Worthington Best, Stockbridge,” came up for sale. The part quoted in the ad has the bones of a story by O. Henry: “Dear Peggy, since we are such good friends I just don’t want the news to reach you second hand. Molly Punderson and I are going to be married. I guess everyone in town will probably know this before long. I know you’ll be pleased for me.”

The seller of the letter in question is asking $1,000. A note to Peggy from the letter’s author sold for $250 or so some years ago. He had taken classes from Peggy in Stockbridge or Cambridge (versions differ) because his art had become tight and he wanted to loosen up. And he often sketched with Peggy. Who was the note-writer who wanted to brush up on his technique with the illustrator of Tortilla Flat? His name was Norman Rockwell . . . and he studied with her, not the other way around. Peggy Worthington may have been an East Coast artist, but East meets West in her work. Through it she came into contact with great artists on both coasts, including Norman Rockwell and John Steinbeck. Given time, who knows what other names will emerge.