WT: In the materials you gave me last time, there was one short story, which I read, by F. Draco, called "Ghosts of the Gods," which takes place on an island off Crete. There was a letter along with that. It appears as though you were contacted by the National Endowment for the Arts about 1983. It was some kind of writers' project, and F. Draco as well as other writers around the country were asked to submit. You submitted that along with two other things I found very interesting. One was "Full Circle," which was about your remarriage to Bill. And then something titled "I AM." It was interesting that F. Draco was listed among the writers for this National Endowment for the Arts project ...
JD: I was furious because Julia Davis had been writing for a long time and she'd never been [chosen] and here came F. Draco and immediately was nominated, which made me really angry. Because he didn't know one thing that I hadn't taught him. [laughs] Not one thing.
WT: Since he seems to have a life and personality of his own ...
JD: Well, he was mostly off adventuring. He didn't write very much.
WT: Do you have a biographical sketch of F. Draco in your head?
JD: Well, he was mostly rushing around adventuring, and he just wrote occasionally. And then HE was recognized when Julia Davis had not been recognized and he didn't know one thing that I hadn't taught him! Not one thing! You can understand. I'm not a feminist, but you can understand that I was angry.
WT: I was trying to place, in 1983, particularly since they seemed to be interested in short stories, where they were coming from, because, from what I understand, most of the F. Draco stories were published in the 1950's.
JD: I don't remember. By the time you're 92 you can't discriminate very much between things that happened in the 30's, 40's, and 50's. Time sort of scrunches up.
WT: You described him in "Ghosts of the Gods" as a war correspondent.
JD: So what. 103
WT: I was trying to reconstruct some kind of alter ego.
JD: Well, all three of my husbands were in the OSS, so that's apparently the kind of man I like. So of course, F. Draco participated a little bit in those experiences.
WT: That particular story, "Ghosts of the Gods," ...
JD: I'm glad you found that because I always liked that story. I though I'd lost it here.
WT: With this National Endowment for the Arts Project in 1983, apparently the materials you submitted were accepted for publication but were never published through that grant. Do you remember it ever being published?
JD: I don't remember it being printed. I remember that story, and there was another story that neither you nor I have ever found by F. Draco, and it was about a man down in the Caribbean. And he was trying to get on with the natives. It was in the early days of the Caribbean, before there were many tourists. The only thing I can remember about that story is. When he came there they were observing some kind of religious something, and in the course of it he was sacrificed. And I remember the way the story ended. "There was nothing to be found but the dead and rotting body of a steer." This was a steer that he'd brought to entertain them. And that was F. Draco, because he would write things that Julia Davis wouldn't write. And she didn't want to be mixed up with him, because he was always out travelling and he just wrote when he felt like writing and he didn't write very much either. [laughs]
WT: He's ... in the process of trying to track him down in this correspondence, there was something you sent into them as a biographical sketch. You had mentioned in 1983 recent stories in Redbook and Cosmopolitan. Those may be F. Draco stories?
JD: I think so, because I don't think Julia Davis ever published in either one [laughs].
WT: It's kind of frustrating because when you look in the indexes you normally look through to find short stories, they don't list Cosmopolitan or Redbook. They list The Smithsonian, The Atlantic ...
JD: Draco wrote for them! [Cosmopolitan and Redbook] [laughs] I don't know what you're going to make out of this, but that's your department. I'm not involved. [laughs]
WT: I think people might like to read a collection of your short stories. Frankly, I like your Julia Davis short stories better than your F. Draco short stories. 104
JD: Of course. F. Draco was sort of an aberration. And I used to wake up with a story in my mind. It didn't belog to F. Draco or Julia Davis. It just happened to be the choice of the morning. Oh, Julia Davis was a much more serious writer. F. Draco was not a serious writer. He just did that when he was home from his adventures.
WT: We talked before about you publishing a series of articles after your trip to Russia. Is it possible that those articles from Redbook and Cosmopolitan have some of that material in them?
JD: How do you expect me to remember? I went to Russia. I had a fine time in Russia. I came back and wrote a very few things about it. I tried to publish a long thing about it. It wasn't accepted because things were like that [she moves her hand up and down, meaning politically things were unsettled]. I can't remember every thing I wrote or move I made. I'm a professional writer. You know that. [laughs]
WT: I'm just trying to be a professional detective. [She laughs] Whatever crumbs you drop along the way I'll pick up.
JD: I think it's very nice of you. But I can't imagine why you're interested. I never published a book that made the best seller list. I did publish books that stayed in print for 40 years. So I think that's something.
WT: There's a lot of writers who can't say that. I've had most of the material I've gotten from you typed up.
JD: Mercy, I say, and I mean exactly that. Save me. [laughs]
WT: There's quite a bit. [Turns pages in typescript]
JD: Good grief! [laughs]
WT: It's all you. Can you tell me about this one? ["I AM"] How you came to write that.
JD: Well, I wrote that for Jimmy Carter. He had this daughter, Amy. And he was having Amy sit with him at state dinners, you know. It was not very well received in those days, but I thought it was nice to have Amy there. And I wrote this just for the fun of it.
WT: I wondered there if you had been possibly drawing on some of your own experiences. 105
JD: I'm really horrified to tell you that I'm starting to work on a new novel. Whether it will come out, I don't know. In the morning, I try to wake up ... I used to wake up about six and write for a couple of hours without disturbance. Well now they've changed the time and I'm trying to adjust to the time. I work up this morning and I had no ideas. Then about nine or ten I began to have ideas, so I wrote until about two. I'm not working the way the planets go around the sun. So whether this will ever turn out to be a novel, I don't know.
WT: What's this one about?
JD: It's about a young man who's sent over here to inherit from his uncle. And that happened to my own ancestor here, but I've fictionalized it. And the little boy is like other little boys I've know who were sent to an uncle into situations they didn't understand and found difficult. And the uncle is like other people I've known who meant to do the best by him but had not idea what he was facing. Who knows? It may come off. It may not.
WT: That's a good start. You could use a few days of uninterrupted time to get your draft together.
JD: I don't seem to get the time. I don't understand it. I live alone. I have a warm, loving friend downstairs and two bedrooms upstairs that are empty tonight. (They weren't empty last week. Three different couples stayed there.) I just don't seem to have the uninterrupted time. Now in the old days when I was writing and had children at home, it was different. They would go to school and I would leave too. And I would have a room where I went. It could be a room in a friend's house who was away, or it could be a place that was for rent. All I needed was a typewriter and a pad and pencil and a chair and a desk. And that's all I used when I wrote. I'd go there from nine to one and then I'd come home for lunch. And I had no disturbance. Now I can't say that.
WT: Well it's nice to have friends who like to keep in touch, but it's probably an interruption.
JD: And I have helpers who help to do the things, and then they have to have some supervision. But I am starting to write again, probably ineffectively. We'll see.
WT: It's always good to try. Within the next week I'm going to try to have your play "Possession" retyped, and there are a couple of pages that are missing from that. I'd like to give you a copy of that and if you could fill in a couple of pages of dialogue ...
JD: Oh yes, I'm sure I could.
WT: It's a shame to have 99% of a play there and two pages missing. 106
JD: My manuscripts have not been taken care of because nobody's done it.
WT: Well, you move around too, and things get misplaced and lost ...
JD: And I've always said as a writer I needed a good little wife, but I never had one. I had three pretty difficult husbands, all of them contrary. Any one of whom I would remarry if I could get them back.
WT: I've got some of your poetry in here. Maybe from looking at them you can recall situations ...
JD: I thought I had some upstairs, but it hasn't shown up. I think these two are the same one.
WT: There were a couple in there that looked like variations on the same poem.
JD: [Reads] ... It's lucky his grandpa could hustle." [laughs].
WT: Is that about Ramon?
JD: No that's about my mother's brother, a McDonald. [Looking at another poem] That one was written from Ramon, who had so many girls.
WT: There were two of them that I thought were probably related.
JD: They're related, but they're different aspects. I think you should keep both of these. This line says "Splinter of God, whirling in space,/ Never to have a resting place. / Never to build save on the sand...." That line is "Whirling in space, never to know a resting place." This is my Ramon, who has now found a resting place and who is now coming next Monday.
WT: Is he a musician now?
JD: Well now he is trying to be a writer. He didn't want to be a writer because his father was a very famous writer in Spain. He did have a lot of musical talent. When I was first working with him he wanted to be a musician. And then he dropped me a note from the top floor to the balcony saying he no longer wanted to be a musician. This [poem] is from him to his girl friends. [Reads] Well now he's married a lovely woman who is coming with him Monday and she understands him. But these were comments along the way. [Reads the next version of the "Splinter of God Poem] "Seeker" it should be, not "searcher." I think this [the second one] is 107 the final version. [Readers further] I like this "Epilogue" "Grandchildren are more fun than frogs, but given my druthers I'll take dogs." I do have as you've seen by now a nasty sense of humor. I didn't write much poetry. I think you got most of it.
WT: That's good. I was afraid there was this treasure trove of hundreds of poems.
JD: I never wrote hundreds. I just wrote the occasional poem.
WT: But after 91 years that adds up to a lot of poetry.
JD: [laughs] Not a lot but a creditable amount. [Reads on. Comes to poem about giving up ...] This one should have a P.S. I did give it [gardening] up. [Reading on] These I remember. Some of the others I do remember now that I've seen them.
WT: There was one there I wanted to ask you about.
JD: There's one you haven't got there, and the only one that was ever published, and it was published in the ... what was the name of the ... it was a writers' publication. It was very prestigious to get into. You haven't gotten it have you? Now I can hear only the sea gulls crying Only the long wash of the water on the sand. Now I can see only a white sail flying Down the horizon to an unknown land. Audible silence, followed without hearing, Tangible shadow, lost to sight and touch, Only in dreaming can I reach your hearing. Found, lost, forgotten, and remembered over much.
WT: Do you remember the title to the poem?
JD: I think it was "Lament." I wrote it a long time ago.
WT: Can you tell me about this one, "Commentary." 108
JD: This was watching the changes in the valley. This other one was the only one I ever published. Story magazine ... I think that was it. [The poem just quoted was not the one that was published. Repeats verses.]
WT: What was the occasion for that?
JD: [Laughs] I'll never tell. [Laughs.] I've told you the things I'll never tell you. "Tangible shadow lost to sight and touch... Audible silence lost to sight and touch. Only in dreams can I reach your hearing. Found, lost, forgotten, and remembered over much."
WT: I wanted to talk to you about the way in which you balanced your career, children, and husbands over a long period.
JD: It was never a balance. It was a struggle.
WT: From what you've told me, in your first marriage, your husband appears to be very supportive of your writing. Is that correct?
JD: Very much.
WT: And that was during the period that your wrote off your six obligatory children's novels.
JD: Well, I signed the first thing, but by the time I wrote the whole thing, we'd divorced and so forth. I just had this to work off. And I mean work.
WT: As far as your opportunity to write, when you talked about the ability to go away and have a place to write. Did you have a good atmosphere for writing during that time?
JD: Well, I had to go somewhere and do it. Different places. All I wanted was a place I could sit down and know I wouldn't be disturbed.
WT: When you were living with your first husband you were living in New York?
JD: We were living in New York and in Canaan in the Berkshires. It was still New York, but it was right on the border from Stockbridge. 109
WT: Around 1933 or 1934 was when you took the job at the adoption agency and then you married Paul. And I believe you were working on The Shenandoah.
JD: I think I was working on something else.
WT: That would seem to me, as far as having a lot of things going on in your life, when you were married to Paul West, there were a lot of things going on. You had Nina and Ramon. Was Paul West, Jr. staying with you?
JD: He came. And also I had Bill and Mary left over from the earlier experience with the adoption agency.
WT: So there were five children circling around your house while you were trying to write. What kind of an atmosphere was that? Was that why it took you so long to get The Shenandoah out?
JD: That slowed that down a bit. Also I was driving my aunt while I was doing research for it and we had an automobile accident and she lost her right arm. It was horrible. It was one of the two or three times in my life when I would have liked to have committed suicide, but I couldn't because I had to stay with her.
WT: And she recovered and was very active.
JD: Tremendous. Tremendous.
WT: She seems to have been a remarkable woman.
JD: I'm going to do, I hope, just about her, a piece that I'll try to sell to a magazine. I haven't done it yet. Now I'm working on this novel. I have to write. As soon as I could make the scratches on the paper, I started to write. I could show you some day. I've got some here. My first little stories. As soon as I could get those things to mean something. I don't remember learning to read because, I learned to read before I was four. By the time I was four I could read anything. My grandmother just pointed out a word and in a history of Egypt or whatever and said "That means that." I can't remember learning to read, but I do remember learning to write. As soon as I could do it, I began to write my own stories. I think I was meant to be a writer.
WT: Was there any writer when you were a child that you wanted to be like? 110
JD: My first stories were very imitative. First about queens and princesses and then about the "Just So" stories. I wrote "Why the Pig has a Curly Tail." I think I still have that. I wrote that when I was about eleven.
WT: When you were a teenager you might have been exposed to some of the women writers like Kate Chopin.
JD: I read everyone. By that time I read every known writer of that era.
WT: Back to the busy time with the five children plus working at the adoption agency. It's amazing you could find time to write anything.
JD: Well I had to do it because I had to pay for their education.
WT: And during that time then, at least from 1942 on, Paul was in the service. He went into the service after Pearl Harbor?
JD: He went into the OSS and he was dropped behind the lines in Greece and for eighteen months I didn't hear from him. During that time, my son Bill and my Spanish children and his son were living at home out in West Virginia because the house was occupiable. And before that we had sold our land in Bedford and house in order to allow him to go into the army. And I had all those children. And we went back to a little apartment in the top of a house I had and it was very uncomfortable. And when my aunt died we moved back to West Virginia at Clarksburg and they went to school there. And I was fine. It worked out all right. There was a certain amount of adjusting.
WT: Was Paul supportive of your writing?
JD: I don't remember. I don't think he gave a damn.
WT: You both had your own jobs ...
JD: I took the job in the adoption agency. We got married because he had a job that paid $50 a week and I had one for $35. Big fortune. So we could get married on that.
WT: Raising lots of kids on that. 111
JD: Well, we didn't have lots of kids. They came later. I did have two left over from .... Oh don't try to understand my family. You'll never get it straightened out.
WT: Did any of the children get to spend time with the McDonalds at Media?
JD: Well Louise was one of them. And Bill, my oldest son was very fond of my uncle Marshall.... Don't try to understand my family. I do and that's enough. They all come back to visit except the one who is dead. So I must have done something right.
WT: Your husband Charles [Chip], at that point Nina and Ramon were grown and moved away?
JD: Yes. And then here came Erin who said "Can I come and live with you?" Because her mother had said "Get out." But you don't say to your thirteen-year-old daughter, "Get out." I never did and I'm sure you never did. You might be tried by your thirteen-year-old daughter. You might wish "What in the world can I do?" But you don't say "Get out." Her mother did. She came to us and said "Can I live with you?" and so she has moved to California and I see her at Christmas. I have a loving relationship with all of my children. My father said "Julia has a good mind, but her heart is mush." And I wish he were alive today and I would explain to him the heart has paid off better than the head. It has. I'm not a well known writer, although my books have stayed in print, but I'm a very successful mother. They all come back, and they are darling to me. They call me once a week. They couldn't be sweeter. And they are all doing what I wished they would do, which was to make their own place in life and be independent. Because I had to tell them all, there were so many of them, "I'll educate you as much as you will take and then you're on your own. You've got to make your own way." So they all grew up with that idea. But they didn't lack for love. Because I loved them. And I tell them now, "You did as much for me as I ever did for you." Because I'm a very motherly woman. I needed children and I couldn't have them.
WT: One of the things that seems to go through both your writing and your life is, on the Davis and the McDonald side, particularly the McDonald side, a long series of men who end up going off somewhere to do something heroic or adventurous and they leave the women at home to do all the hard work: raise the family, run the plantation, take care of the children, make a living. In a sense it seems like, when they had a choice between family and career, they have said (and in some cases the characters in your novels). The men are saying "I'll take the career and you, wife, are going to have to take the family." It seemed as though you had to deal with both. You had a career and a family at the same time.
JD: Men and women are different. If you ever lived on a farm, you know you cannot make a bull out of a cow. And you cannot make a ewe out of a ram. Men and women are different. And that's why some of the new feminists annoy me so much because they are trying to prove they are just the same. They are not. They will never be the same. Work with animals, which everybody 112 who worked on a farm as I did when I was growing up. You can try to make a bull out of a cow or a cow out of a bull, but you can't do it. And we're all animals, you know.
WT: But you did seem to be able to have both a family and a career.
JD: Well, each one suffered from the efforts of the other. I think the career suffered more. I'm not sure. I think now that I'm not a terribly talented writer. I'm a good writer, a conscientious writer. But if I'd been an Eudora Welty type of writer, then I would not have wanted a family. I would have wanted to just write, write, write, write, write. I didn't. I wanted both and I let the family win because they were alive. I might have been a better writer, but I don't think I had all that much talent. I don't think I was a George Elliot or a George Sand or, going back to the earliest women. I just don't think I have that much talent.
WT: There were things you wrote about, for example Lucy in your trilogy, and the fact that your second novel about Lucy, Brindle the Wind, did not sell well, and ...
JD: It didn't, and yet I still like it.
WT: Tell me if I'm overstating the case here. It seems as though, I think that novel is important for what it said....
JD: I thought so too.
WT: But at the time, I would guess you had a choice. You could have written a third Lucy novel with Lucy taking charge of everything ...
JD: I did write a third Lucy novel ...
WT: But she was essentially in the background. If Lucy had continued to grow into the forefront, you wouldn't have sold the book.
JD: No. Not that. She had thrown her opportunity to be the controlling influence away out of her compassion. You can't throw it away and get it back.
WT: What interested me in the third novel was the potential there for, with Angus off in Mexico and the oldest son June off in Mexico and Madame McLeod now dead, there's really a vacuum at the McLeod plantation in terms of male leadership. Even 113 though the South and all the traditions are there sort of propping things up, in a way it's a situation in which Lucy has to deal with everything going on.
JD: Well, you know, Steve Benet, who was a great friend of mine, who asked me to write The Shenandoah, in his John Brown's Body, he wrote about Southern women as well as I've ever seen them written about, "Always, always to have the charm That makes the gentlemen take the arm. But never the great unseemly spell That makes strange gentlemen love too well Unless you were married and settled down With a suitable gentleman of your own." And then it goes on ... "And run the gentleman's whole plantation In a manner befitting the female station." That's what I come out of.... They did.
WT: It seemed to me that, in the 1950's, that if your second novel with the emphasis on Lucy was not a great seller, then another one along the same vein probably would not have sold very well either. Is that ...
JD: By then I was interested in getting the son off to war and the Mexican War.
WT: That one seemed to be quite popular.
JD: Yes, but today it might have done better.
WT: That's why I was asking if I was overstating the case by ... if you look back through the history of writers and painters, you see many of these people who starved in attics for years and years writing whatever it was they thought was important but never sold. Living on practically nothing and then after they died someone discovered them and decided they were really important and now their work is selling in the millions of dollars. Yet at the time when they were starving or working for very little, they had to 114 make a conscious decision about whether they were going to make a living for themselves or their family or just write whatever it was they wanted to write.
JD: I wrote what I wanted to write. And that's why I didn't write very much. I did manage to educate my children, but I certainly didn't make a living. No. I wrote the third book, not because the second book was unsuccessful. I'm sorry about that. But I wrote the third book because Lucy had come home and I had to reestablish her with her family and I had to get into the Mexican War. So there wasn't any "Was I writing this to sell?" I never. One year in my life I tried to write to sell and out of that year I sold the one poem that I quoted to you. "Now I can hear only the sea gulls crying..." That was the one thing I wrote in that whole year [that sold]. Editors said "Write this." I tried to write it. They didn't publish that. That one year, I tried hard because I needed money for the children's education, to write what the publishers said to write and it wasn't successful except for that one poem. Of course nobody told me to write that. I did publish it and got ten dollars for it. And after that I said "Obviously I can't do that," so I went back to writing what I wanted to write.
WT: It seems then that, aside from a couple of the very early books you wrote under contract, you were writing pretty much what you wanted, right?
JD: Absolutely. And even after the second book about William Tell, then even to get out of that contract I wrote what I wished to write about. I wrote Stonewall Jackson, Remember and Forget, but it was my way. I can't write somebody else's way. I'm sorry. That's very stupid because if I could write me a best seller today, fine.
WT: There are lots of formula writers out there but I'm not sure in the long run that they will be remembered as great writers.
JD: I'll never be remembered as a great writer either, because I'm not.
WT: Well, I think you've got several good novels and good short stories and some very solid historical work that's going to be remembered.
JD: Oh, I'm a solid writer. I'm not a great writer. But that's all right because another thing I wanted to do was bring up children and that's been extremely successful from my point of view. They're darling. Ramon and Judy are coming next week. He wanted to come when I was ill and I told him it was no use because he would have just sat here. And he could have come earlier, but he said he'd wait until now until Judy could come with him. I love Judy. He's now found the right woman. 115
WT: I wondered if you could fill me in of some of the details from your first play. The one you wrote at Barnard. You were starting to tell me about part of the plot ...
JD: It was a play about West Virginia mountaineers coping with modern life. And the son was drafted into the army, World War I. And his mother came up and talked to my aunt, who had a Sunday school, and she said "Why don't we line 'em up on this side of the river and shoot them as they come out of the water?" Well, that was pretty hard to do. And then eventually her son Selby had to go. And they all came down to see him off. He leaned out of the train (this is true) and said "I'm a-gonna get 'em." And they said, "Get who?" "The fellow they're sending me after." The play was along that line. It was chosen to be performed at the end of the play writing series. It was done by Bronx Jewesses at Barnard. It was funny. It was so far from the feeling of it that I was just sitting in the back row and dying laughing.
WT: Was this the one that you mentioned had three women in it at three different times in their lives?
JD: No, that was a different one. And that one I can't find either. It was three women, just after adolescence. In the springtime, middle life, and old age. And they had taken three different paths. And that was written much later. That was the one Brock Pemberton optioned it, but then he died. Not because he'd optioned it. [laughs] He died and it was never produced. I've lost that one too.
WT: Is that one that may have gone through your agent?
JD: I can't remember.
WT: It sounds as though you've written four plays at least. The West Virginia mountaineer play at Barnard. The one about the three women and three different times in their lives.
JD: They said at that time "Who cares about women when they're sixty?"
WT: Today it would be a best seller.
JD: But I did show how these three very different women went along. One was an intellectual, never married. One was a charmer, married, remarried. And I don't remember what the third one was. And then, you have my play Possession?
WT: That's the one I'm transcribing now. 116
JD: That was about, she wasn't a relative but she married a relative in the Davis family. And her sisters-in-law always thought she had murdered him. But I don't think she'd really murdered him. I just think she allowed his drink to be found in the bottle she put her lye in. And that was never produced either.
WT: Was that written before The Anvil?
JD: Oh, much.
WT: You said in Possession, the husband died. The first one died in 1914, according to the play.
JD: Her first husband died under suspicious circumstances. He was a great drunk. He was the love of her life. She'd run away to marry him, and it turned out he was a drunk. A real alcoholic, and he died under suspicious circumstances. And then she married an aged senator who had wanted to marry her the first time but she refused him. He gave her a great deal of financial help. He had a daughter with whom she made friends and she was suspected of having forged his will. She wrote up his will. And then after that she learned his relatives were going to sue her for theoretically having forged his will, and at the time she had in her pocket a pardon from the governor of the state, whom she was about to marry. This is all true. They didn't finally bring it to court because they knew she had the governor's pardon. And then she married the governor. And she used to say, she had married once for love, once for money, and once for power. And give her money every time. But that was when she got to be a very old lady and she used to visit her son in Clarksburg. And they would have nurses for her. And she began to talk very freely in her old age. They'd get the nurse from Pittsburg and when the nurse made a friend in town they'd discharge that nurse and get another nurse so that what she was saying wouldn't pass all over town. And I did make her into a play. But I never had it done because my very dear cousin, who's over there in the hall (now dead), she was his grandmother. He said if I ever published it while he was alive he'd never speak to me again. We were like brother and sister, that particular cousin. Because we were the only two artists in a famous family. I wrote and he painted. We were very close, very loving, about six months apart. Grew up together. And so I never did publish it. And then I wrote the John Brown. Four plays. I wanted to be a playwright because when I first started writing I resented the long hours you have to spend alone. Now I love them. Now I fight for them. But at that time I resented it because I'm a friendly person. I like to be around people. So I wanted to be a playwright because a playwright is involved with a lot of people. But I was an unsuccessful playwright.
WT: It's one thing to write a play and another thing to get it produced.
JD: It's terrific. I was very close to it a couple of times. It was a big thing in playwriting, a big organization. And they optioned one. And then Brock Pemberton optioned one and died. So I never had a big play produced except when John Brown went back to New York, and that was produced. The John Brown they had in New York was a young method actor, and he made himself look like the 117 apocalyptic picture of John Brown with a long beard, wild hair. When he said "I'm worth more now to die than to live," he sounded like an old man who said "These eggs aren't right, take them back and do them over." Really. It was a ghastly failure because he did not project the fanatical power of John Brown. Now when we did it down here, my first John Brown was a retired Marine colonel (they were all amateurs), a retired marine colonel. And when he said "I'm worth more now to die than to live," he knew what he was talking about. He had considered the options and he had made his decision. And so had John Brown. He was a very good John Brown, very convincing. Here was a man that was so dedicated to a certain idea that he was quite willing to put his life on the line, which a Marine colonel has to be. And he conveyed that. But this young man absolutely had no idea. It was a thing he was doing. I knew it was going to be. My producer, Charlie Wood, he was the one who did the first here and then he did the second here and then he died. But in New York it was a disaster. It was off "off Broadway," but the actors didn't have any idea what they were talking about.
WT: So it didn't run very long?
JD: Two weeks. It got ... I do have reviews of it somewhere.
WT: I read some of the reviews generally good.
JD: Yes and no. Yes and no.
WT: Part of the comment on it seemed to be a problem that plays of this nature seem to have. One critic said that the play spent too much time in the first act setting the scene, and I don't know how you get around that because unfortunately a lot of people don't have the vaguest idea what Harpers Ferry and John Brown is all about. You can't just walk in and start the trial ...
JD: Here it is. Of course, down here we did it in the courthouse where he was tried. It was very successful, and then this new opera company has done it one time, not nearly as well. Because we stuck to having a jury and the jury box. And most of the people in our first performance were related to people who had been in the original "act" if you may call it that.
WT: So they had grown up with the tradition.
JD: And the Marine colonel who was John Brown was very convincing, and everybody else was convincing too. The descendant of the prosecuting attorney became the judge, and everybody really knew what they were talking about and produced it with good effect.
WT: I'd like to see it happen again. 118
JD: Well, the opera company here did it once not too long ago. It wasn't as good as the first two times we did it. Because the first two times Charlie Wood put it on. We did get descendants of people who had really been in it, and the Marine colonel as John Brown, who was wonderful. When he said "I'm worth more now to die than to live," he said it as a man who had considered the options and made his decision. He didn't do it with any great fanfare, but he did it with entire knowledge of what he was saying.
WT: I imagine a lot of people who either acted in that or read the play bring a lot to it that probably wasn't intended to be there in the first place.
JD: And the son of the prosecuting attorney was the prosecuting attorney, the grandson. The whole thing had a great deal of authenticity. People knew what they were talking about. And they tried it again. Apparently the Opera House doesn't want to be bothered again.
WT: I guess when you're dealing with volunteers rather than a paid company, you have to somewhat ...
JD: Oh, yes. And you have to do it in two weeks in October because we should do it in the courthouse when he was tried. But we had to do it in August when the court is not sitting. The first two times we did it for two years, we had two weeks in August when the court was not sitting and we could use the courthouse. And that gave it a certain authenticity.
WT: It seems to me that there are enough people coming into Harpers Ferry and trying to absorb the whole John Brown experience that it could run every summer and get a good attendance. And I'm sure there are actors who would not mind coming into the Shenandoah Valley and spending the summer playing "The Anvil" for three months.
JD: Well, work on it. I'm too old to work on it.
END OF TAPE