Oral history interview with Margret Craver Withers, 1983-1985 Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service. Contact Information Reference Department Archives of American Art Smithsonian Institution Washington. D.C. 20560 www.aaa.si.edu/askus Transcript Preface The following oral history transcript is the result of a recorded interview with Margret Craver Withers on November 15 and 29, 1983; and January 17 and 24, 1984. The interview took place in Boston, Massachusetts, and was conducted by Robert F. Brown for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. The Archives of American Art has reviewed the transcript and has made corrections and emendations. This transcript has been lightly edited for readability by the Archives of American Art. The reader should bear in mind that they are reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose. Interview ROBERT BROWN: This is an interview with Margret Craver Withers in Boston. This is November 15, 1983, Robert Brown, the interviewer. MARGRET CRAVER WITHERS: Margret Craver Withers. ROBERT BROWN: Why don't we begin with something about your childhood. Can you tell me a bit about it? You were born in Western Kansas, right? MARGRET CRAVER WITHERS: It's so long ago, Bob, I hardly know where to start, but I can't think there was anything very unusual about it. The most important thing in my thinking is the space and the grandeur of the high prairies, the great storms that would come up, and the drama of those things remain with me still. ROBERT BROWN: This was Pratt, Kansas, that you were raised? MARGRET CRAVER WITHERS: No, this was out west of Dodge City even, and in such a wild area, but my father was one of the men that laid out the cemetery many years after we went there. ROBERT BROWN: So it was hardly a town, was it? MARGRET CRAVER WITHERS: Oh no, it was hardly a town. My father was in charge of the lumber business and there was a post office, a grocery store, and that was about all, three or four little buildings. ROBERT BROWN: Your father was a businessman? MARGRET CRAVER WITHERS: Yes. He knew the lumber business and he had a lumber yard there, and you can imagine that very flat prairie, and much of it around, at that time, was real buffalo grass. [00:02:16] And I took the buffalo grass for granted until my mother sold the last piece we owned, that had the buffalo grass on it, and I felt as though a lot of early Kansas went with the sale of that little piece of land. ROBERT BROWN: That was the natural cover, wasn't it, buffalo grass? MARGRET CRAVER WITHERS: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. ROBERT BROWN: So much of it was not even plowed or grazed on? MARGRET CRAVER WITHERS: This was used as grazing, because there are little tiny seeds at the bottom of each little blade of grass, and it grows very low—as I have read, thirty feet of root system—the root system goes down 30 feet. ROBERT BROWN: Good lord! So it's extremely tough. MARGRET CRAVER WITHERS: Oh yes, oh yes. And it was a good thing, because during the Dust Bowl, when they found out how the winds could just pick up the earth and put it in the air, you knew nature knew what she was doing when she covered that area. ROBERT BROWN: Some of your earliest memories, then, are of the climate and of the landscape? MARGRET CRAVER WITHERS: Right, and the sky. And Robert Louis Stevenson, as I said, wrote the most beautiful early article or essay about the plains, and he called the sky the great Persian bowl, it turned out. [00:04:00] ROBERT BROWN: So there were very few people around. Were you—as a child I guess, that's the way you thought life was, was it? To be rather isolated? Or did you have a large family? MARGRET CRAVER WITHERS: Well, we were six, mother and father, the four of us, but no, I didn't think of it as isolation, because you could see so far there, you could see 20 miles in some directions, even though there were many arroyos and streams. But you could look down and see Mrs. Smith is going out her front door to her garden or whatever. ROBERT BROWN: From miles away. MARGRET CRAVER WITHERS: Miles away, that's right. And my sister at one time lived six miles away, on her wheat farm, and I could see when she would leave the house and go out to get in the car and some see us. So you see, there was great vision. ROBERT BROWN: Were you the eldest— MARGRET CRAVER WITHERS: Yes. ROBERT BROWN: —or were you in the middle? And was it a stern family, or what were your parents like? MARGRET CRAVER WITHERS: Well, I never heard my mother or father have an argument. If they discussed things about us, it was done in private. But they liked people. Both of them had found all kinds of joys in simple, daily lives. [00:06:05] It seemed to me, when I look back on it, as though my parents had no problems. Everything was smooth. ROBERT BROWN: Had they come out with the first generation to settle that area? MARGRET CRAVER WITHERS: Well, there had been settlers there for many years, but no, they weren't called early settlers, goodness. ROBERT BROWN: Where had they come from, your parents? MARGRET CRAVER WITHERS: My aunt went out—do you know what proving a claim means? ROBERT BROWN: It means settling on it until you— MARGRET CRAVER WITHERS: Correct. My aunt was a single lady with a lot of ideas, and she wanted to be an opera singer but she felt she had to take care of her mother and father. So she took me, and we went into Colorado to prove up a claim so she would have some land of her very own. And to see her, you'd never think she wanted land. She dressed very beautifully, exquisitely, and loved music and all this. But I can remember the howl of the coyotes, and I don't know whether wolves or not, but there was a lot of howling at night—in this tiny little cabin we lived in. ROBERT BROWN: This is when you were a little girl? MARGRET CRAVER WITHERS: I was five years old. So I feel like I was born right in the pioneering spirit of the place. [00:08:00] That was isolated. ROBERT BROWN: That was what? MARGRET CRAVER WITHERS: Isolated. And that was what I call barren, mostly because there was no traffic, no people. ROBERT BROWN: But your parents had come from where, the East? And they'd come to what was already an established little community? MARGRET CRAVER WITHERS: Oh yes, they came from Pratt. And it was—well, that was quite a metropolis. That was a large place, laid out—why, I don't know at that time, but certainly in the late 1880s—and the streets to this day are unusually wide. It would be about maybe a six-lane—the main street is like a highway. ROBERT BROWN: Well that's characteristic of a lot of those little settlements. Well, did your parents have an interest in—that you children be educated and follow your own vocations? MARGRET CRAVER WITHERS: They had very definite ideas about our education. They took our schoolwork seriously, but—and it was just a matter, of course you did your homework—like, you ate your supper and you did your homework, there was no discussion. If you had your homework done, then you could whatever else it was you had in mind. ROBERT BROWN: Did they encourage any interest you might have in the arts? MARGRET CRAVER WITHERS: No. The only one to encourage my art interests was an uncle. [00:10:04] He studied in Vienna and he was a surgeon. He liked anything I drew and he would often come and bring me things he wanted me to draw. ROBERT BROWN: Did he live nearby? MARGRET CRAVER WITHERS: He lived 60 miles away. ROBERT BROWN: So your family—there were members of your family who were highly educated and who were well traveled— MARGRET CRAVER WITHERS: Oh, yes. ROBERT BROWN: —and might open up a broader world to you? MARGRET CRAVER WITHERS: Well, I don't know that my world needed broadening. I just needed—I thought at that time all I needed to do was to gather some years. I always felt too young and I was very eager to be 18 and skipped along. ROBERT BROWN: We might think of it as isolated, but it really wasn't confining, was it? It was a time when, to be out there, you felt like the possibilities were limitless, I suppose. MARGRET CRAVER WITHERS: Right, because you had so little demands on your time, and you could read and play the violin and, you know, just have a really good time, I thought. ROBERT BROWN: And your parents had this optimistic attitude too, did they? MARGRET CRAVER WITHERS: Oh yes, oh yes. Someone said to mother one time, after I'd given a talk at the museum, how she seemed to have such a talented child, and my mother says, "I have four talented children." And she believed this—that each one of us had our own talents and they would be used.