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HISTORICAL RESEARCH REPORT on EDNA FERBER ' S VISIT to BATR, NORTH CAROLINA by Michelle F

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HISTORICAL RESEARCH REPORT on EDNA FERBER ' S VISIT to BATR, NORTH CAROLINA by Michelle F -HISTORICAL RESEARCH REPORT ON EDNA FERBER ' S VISIT TO BATR, NORTH CAROLINA by Michelle F. Lawing HISTORICAL RESEARCH REPORT ON EDNA FERBER ' S VISIT TO BATH, NORTH CAROLINA By Michelle F. Lawing June 29, 1979 TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface I. Edna Ferber's visit to Bath, North Carolina II . Illustrations A. Julie Neumann and Jacob Charles Ferber, ca. 1880 B. Louis and Harriet Neumann C. Edna Ferber as a reporter on the Appleton Crescent and as a high school senior D. Illustration of Emma McChesney E. Edna Ferber and Winthrop Ames F. Bath~ North Carolina, ca. 1924 G. Palmer-Marsh House H. Palmer-Marsh Cemetery I. Interior and exterior views of the James Adams Floating Theatre; Charles Hunter and Beulah Adams J. James Adams grounded in Dismal Swamp Canal; Beulah Adams in later life; James Adams being towed down the Dismal Swamp Canal K. Newspaper advertisements for the James Adams L. James Adams Floating Theatre Broadside 1. 1928 2 . 1931 M. Florenz Ziegfeld N. Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern III. Bibliography PREFACE For several days in 1925, Edna Ferber, a popular American novelist, was a guest in the small town of Bath, North Carolina. She was waiting for the arrival of the James Adams Floating Theatre, a North Carolina show boat. Information Miss Ferber acquired during her brief visit to North Carol ina was incorporated into her novel, Show Boat. The book, a best-seller, eventually evolved into a Broadway play and several motion pictures . This report, and the background information it contains, explains the influence Bath and the James Adams Floating Theatre had on Edna Ferber and her novel, Show Boat . • . Edna Ferber was considered the greatest American woman novelist of her 1 day by the critics of the 1920s and 1930s. She published twelve nove ls, twelve volumes of short stories,and numerous plays during her lifetime . Her early years as a newspaper reporter sharpened her keen powers of obser- vation and provided her retentive mind with a kaleidoscope of images, per- sonalities, and experiences which were later interwoven into the fabric of her writing. Rudyard Kipling, in a 1931 letter to Nelson Doubleday, referred 2 to Edna Ferber as "a historical painter." Her canvas was the printed page on which she captured the color and vibrancy of the American working class. Her best known works include the popular Emma McChesney short stories, Come and Get It, Cimmarron, Giant, Show Boat, and the 1925 Pulitzer Prize winning novel, So Big. 3 Miss Ferber was born August 15, 1885 . Her father, Jacob Charles Ferber, was a native of Oyslo, Hungary. He emigrated to the United States when he was seventeen and worked for a number of years on a large farm owned by his family. The " gentle and irascible" Hungarian married the "high-spirited .. 4 and self-willed" Julia Neumann of Chicago, Illinois, around 1880. · The young Jewish couple set up housekeeping in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where Jacob opened a dry-goods store. Their first child was a daughter named Fannie. Julia Neumann Ferber, anxious for a son, prematurely named their second baby Edward Victor Ferber, She changed the name to Edna when the child, a girl, was born. The family left Kalamazoo around 1889. Jacob sold his prosperous store ~n order to invest his money in Chicago. He hoped to profit from the increase of business during the 1893 World's Fair held in that city. While in Ch icago the Ferbers lived with Edna ' s grandparents, Louis and Harriet Neumann. 2 Edna was very fond of her grandparents, especially her grandfather, whom 5 she described as "stage struck." After the evening dinner, Grandpa Neumann would entertain the children with a large box he had made into a miniature theater, complete with moving cardboard scenery and characters. He would, sometimes, enact a play; but, the performace more often would be an opera. He knew and sang entire scores in French, German, and Italian. Grandpa Neumann's characterizations fostered in Edna a life-long excitement and love for the theater. Jacob Ferber was unsuccessful 1n finding a business location in Chicago. After a year of looking he gave up and invested his money in a store in Ottumwa, Iowa. The small town, flanked by the muddy Des Moines River, was situated in a farming and coal mining district. Edna described the co~unity as "a sordid, 6 clay and gully town . .. unpaved, bigoted, anti-Semitic, and undernourished." The Ferbers lived in Ottumwa from 1890 to 1897. Edna remembered those seven • years with a great deal of bitterness; yet, through it all, she and her family attended the theater. It was their escape from the unfriendly Iowa town. Edna exhibited a talent and enthusiasm for public speaking in Ottumwa. She eagerly participated in her school's Friday afternoon recitations and for a short while took elocution lessons . Her favorite pastime was "playing show" 7 in the Ferber woodshed theater. She was a voracious reader, unconsciously accumulating a vocabulary she would draw upon during her literary career. Oddly enough, as a child, Edna never wrote anything beyond her assigned school lessons. The impoverished, anti-Semitic Ottumwa community had little to offer a Jewish businessman. Jacob Ferber had difficulty making ends meet, even with his wife, Julia, helping him. His business problems were compounded by an eye disorder, atropy of the optic nerve. He spent many years and a considerable amount of money traveling to specialists 1n an attempt to stave off the in- 3 evitable blindness . Feeling they were on a sinking ship, the Ferbers sold their Ottumwa store and returned, briefly, to the Neumann household in Chicago. Their next home, in Appleton, \~isconsin, was the antithesis of Ottumwa, Iowa. Edna and her family felt welcome in the friendly, prosperous community. She remembered it fondly in later years and wrote: If Ottumwa had seemed like some foreign provincial town in its narrowness and bigotry, Appleton represented the American small town at its best. A sense of well-being prevaded it. It was curiously modern and free in the best sense of the words. Cliques, ma l ice, gossip, snobbishness-­ all the insular meannesses--were strangely lacking in this thriving community. Trouble, illness and death were to come upon us there in the next few years, but sympathy and friend­ ship leavened them and made them bearable.B In Appleton, Edna took advantage of any opportunity to demonstrate her elocution skills. Her greatest triumph came during her senior year of high school when she won the Wisconsin State Declamatory Contest. Her recitation was Richard Harding Davis ' s "The Littlest Girl," a story about a stage child. Edna returned from the contest to find "the entire high school and most of the town at the depot, together with the two complete fire ~ engine companies who had been called to control the gigantic blaze of the bonfire which had been 9 lighted in the school athletic field" in celebration of her victory. Edna considered attending the Northwestern University School of Elocution at Evanston, Illinois, after she graduated from high school. She wanted to be- come a stage actress; however, she did not have any money of her own and her family could not afford to send her to school . Jacob Ferber was almost blind and very dependent on his family. His wife, Julia, was managing their Appleton store completely on her own . A family argument over the lack of pocket money sent Edna in a rage to the office of the Appleton Daily Crescent where she talked Sam Ryan, the editor, into hiring her for three dollars a week. In 1902, seventeen year old Edna Ferber began her professional career ~n writing as the first woman reporter on the Appleton Crescent. She covered a 4 regular news beat in this placid ~isconsin community for a year and a half. Her Crescent experience taught her "to r ead what lay behind the look that veiled peoples faces . how to sketch in human beings with a few rapid words, ... Lho~7 to see, to observe , to remember; Lsh~/learned, in short, 10 the first rules of writing. •• The Crescent's city editor left Appleton to return to his home and pre- vious job in Milwaukee, \~isconsin. He turned his job as the Appleton corres­ pondent for the Milwaukee Journal over to Edna. However, her new responsibility did not last long. The new city editor did not like Edna and fired her while she was on vacation. She spent the summer unemployed and unhappy until Henry Campbell, the managing editor of the Milwaukee Journal, called and offered her fifteen dol­ lars a week as a reporter on the Journal. Edna accepted and spent the next four years in Milwaukee. The job was very demanding and had a debilitating effect on her health, forcing her to return to her family in Appleton. While she was regaining her strength, she ~egan her first novel, Dawn O'Hara, a story of a Milwaukee newspaper woman. Unlike Edna, the heroine was romantic, beautiful and Irish, with an insane husband, a lover, and a New York past. Edna sent the book to numerous women's magazines, but it was always returned looking more dog-eared than when it had left. Undaunted by Dawn O' Hara ' s repeated rejections, the young author began her first short story, "The Homely Heroine." After her father's death 1.n 1909, she completed the story and sent it to "Everybody's Magazine" where it was immediately accepted. Julia Ferber and her daughters spent the year following Jacob's death preparing to leave Appleto9, Wisconsin. They sold their store and all their household furnishings .
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