Bertha Damon
Bertha Damon | |
---|---|
Born | Bertha Louise Clark January 4, 1881 Chester, Connecticut, U.S.[1] |
Died | June 18, 1975[2] El Cerrito, California |
Other names | Bertha Clark Pope |
Education | Pembroke College |
Spouse(s) | Arthur Upham Pope (m. 1909–c. 1920; divorced), Lindsay Todd Damon (m. 1928–1940; death) |
Bertha Clark Pope Damon (1881–1975) was an American humorist, author, lecturer, and editor. She wrote the best-selling humorous memoir Grandma Called It Carnal.
The composer Ernst Bacon dedicated two songs to Bertha Damon.[3] Benjamin Lehman, English professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said she “had a real talent for gathering people around her, and that she "was so great a wit that we were all delighted periodically into really uncontrolled laughter.”[4] Well-known writers who were part of her circle include Stella Benson,[5] Witter Bynner, Oscar Lewis, Winfield Townley Scott, and Marie de Laveaga Welch. She was also active in the Sierra Club and wrote accounts of some of its camping trips for the Sierra Club Bulletin.[6]
Biography
Bertha Louise Clark was born in a small town,
She became a close friend of
After a trip to Europe in 1922, she opened the Old World Shop in Berkeley, selling European antiques and Oriental rugs until 1925.
In 1926 she wrote an account of "The High Trip of 1925" in the Sierra Club Bulletin.[13] In 1927 she traveled by automobile to Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico, with Albert Bender and Ansel Adams.[14]
In 1928, she married Lindsay Todd Damon (1871–1940), who was an English professor at Brown University from 1901 to 1936.[15] They bought a house on 250 acres of land near Alton, New Hampshire and spent much of each year there, where she created extensive gardens. Soon she was president of her local garden club and then president of the New Hampshire Federation of Garden Clubs. After her book Grandma Called It Carnal became a best-seller, she was a popular guest lecturer to women's clubs and other groups. She generally returned to Berkeley for part of each year, and spent even more time there after the death of her husband in 1940. She died in nearby El Cerrito, California in 1975 at the age of 94.[16]
Books
- (as Bertha Clark Pope), editor (with George Sterling, uncredited): The Letters of Ambrose Bierce (Book Club of California, 1922; Gordian Press, 1967). Includes letters by Bierce, "The Introduction" by Pope, and "A Memoir of Ambrose Bierce" by Sterling.
- Grandma Called It Carnal (Simon and Schuster, 1938)[3], review describes her experiences being raised in a Connecticut village by an eccentric grandmother who combined Victorian notions of propriety with a great admiration for Henry David Thoreau and an aversion to modern inventions.
- A Sense of Humus (Simon and Schuster, 1943), [4] published in England as Green Corners (London: Michael Joseph, 1947), focuses on her adult life in the 1930s in rural New Hampshire, where she became an enthusiastic gardener and enjoyed getting to know some of the local characters. It includes much humor as well as serious passages. "Ruffled Paws," the chapter about cocker spaniels, has appeared in more than one anthology.[17]
References
- ^ Ship passenger list, Honolulu, 28 March 1928, National Archives
- ^ "California Death Index". Ancestry.com. Retrieved 2 February 2022.
- ^ "American Art Song". Archived from the original on 2018-02-07. Retrieved 2012-08-01.
- ^ a b Benjamin H. Lehman, “Recollections and Reminiscences of Life in the Bay Area and Beyond,” 1969, p. 47.
- ISBN 978-0333393178) contains considerable information about Bertha Damon.
- ^ "With the Sierra Club in 1914," Sierra Club Bulletin vol. 9 (January 1915), pp. 247-257 [1]; "The High Trip of 1925," Sierra Club Bulletin vol. 12, no. 3 (1926).
- ^ "Bertha Damon". Wilson Library Bulletin. 18 (2): 106. October 1943.
- ^ Siver, Noel (July 20, 2005). "Pope, Arthur Upham". Encyclopaedia Iranica Foundation. Archived from the original on 2010-04-10. Retrieved 2021-09-10.
- ^ Directory of Secondary and Normal Schools for the School Year ... California. State Board of Education. 1916. Retrieved 12 June 2014.
- ^ "Remnants of a Dream" website "PPIE found remnants". Archived from the original on 2015-01-13. Retrieved 2012-08-01., retrieved 31 July 2012.
- ^ David Magee, The Hundredth Book, 1958, pp. xii-xiii. The Letters of Ambrose Bierce was reprinted in 1967 by Gordian Press.
- ^ Classified ad, Berkeley Daily Gazette, 29 January 1925, p. 12.
- ^ Sierra Club Bulletin 12:3 (1926), pp. 213-223.
- ISBN 0821222414, p. 71.]
- ^ Encyclopedia Brunoniana
- ^ William Whittingham Lyman, "Faculty Member at Berkeley," typescript memoir, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. She appears in Oakland area phone directories with a Berkeley address from 1959 to 1973 and nearby El Cerrito in 1974.
- ISBN 0896584534).