Biblical Beefcake by Dirk!

Adam in the Garden of Eden, or: Mowgli grows up!

I thought that title might get your attention! And no, this isn't the scene at the offices of Hungry Tiger Press, but an illustration of Adam in the Garden of Eden from a book of Bible stories illustrated by Oz book illustrator Dirk Gringhuis a few years before he illustrated Hidden Valley of Oz (1951).

Marian's Favorite Bible Stories was first published in July 1948 by Erdmans Publishing company of Grand Rapids, Michigan. The stories are adapted by the titular Marian M. Schoolland. Dirk supplied a dozen full page color plates like the one above. The book stayed in print for decades and eventually got a new pictorial cover design which certainly looks like more of Dirk's work to me. The back cover of this latter edition says: "The pictures are new and exciting, with all the appeal of full-color paintings, and are done by a nationally-known illustrator of children's books."  The adaptation contains sixty-three stories. Surprisingly it jumps from Daniel in the Lion's Den straight into the New Testament.

I wonder if Dirk enjoyed painting Bald Eagles? He has placed one in the Garden of Eden, and you'll see a few more flying in to watch Sampson wrestle a lion down below.

Cover used on some later printings of the book.

I have seen this book on eBay many times but only recently broke down and purchased one. Copies are usually on sale for less than ten dollars. The book also has illustrated endpapers that are very reminiscent of Dirk's Hidden Valley illustrations.

I had initially hoped there might be a picture of David slaying Goliath and I thought I might make a cute blog post referencing Jam doing battle with Terp the Terrible. But Dirk didn't choose to illustrate that scene, which seems a bit odd, but so be it. We'll have to settle for some Biblical beefcake!

Sampson wrestles the Cowardly Lion.

The Mystery of Dirk's Castle

I just finished reading Mystery at Skull Castle by Dirk Gringhuis. I suspect a few of my loyal readers may be rolling their eyes and mumbling to themselves, "Boy, that David sure has eclectic taste in choosing his Ozzy reading matter."

Perhaps I do, but this book, written and illustrated by the illustrator of Hidden Valley of Oz (1951), has more than a few bits that I think you'll find interesting.

To begin with, the book was published by Oz publisher Reilly & Lee in 1964. I had not realized that Dirk had done more work for Reilly & Lee after illustrating Hidden Valley. But what makes the book even more interesting is that the "castle" in the story is based on the castle at Castle Park in Holland, Michigan, where the Oz Club held its Ozmopolitan Convention each year from 1967 to 1984. I attended the Castle Park Oz conventions from 1980 through 1983.

Photo of Castle Park in 1984 by Eric Shanower.

To be honest, I am surprised that so few Oz fans seem to know about Dirk's Mystery at Skull Castle. He himself seems to have told Fred Meyer about it and it is mentioned in the Dirk interview in the Autumn 1971 Baum Bugle. A year or two ago I was reading that issue of the Bugle, saw the reference, and immediately went online and bought a copy.

The book is not actually set in Holland, Michigan, but in a fictional Michigan town called New Vollendam which is just a stand-in for the town of Holland. The castle of the book's title was built in 1870 by "non-Dutch outsiders or 'Yankees,' a suspicious lot not to be trusted and given to dancing, fiddling and putting on airs. No honest Dutchman would have thought of building such a place. Designed to be used only in summer, it was a shameful waste of money."

The real castle at Castle Park was built as a residence for Michael Schwartz and his family. It was completed in 1894. But the Schwartz family moved away within a year and the real castle lay abandoned for a year or so before being purchased in 1896 as a summer camp for kids. You can read a much more detailed history of the real Castle Park here.

In the story the castle was a social hot-spot for one glorious summer, until one evening in September it was struck by lightning and burnt to the ground, only the ominous tower remaining. The action of the book supposedly takes place in 1880, ten years after the fire. I'll come back to that in a bit.

A fine photo of Dirk Gringhuis from the jacket of the book.

The book is set up as a late-nineteenth century, Hardy Boys-style mystery with lots of Dutch immigrant detail: Dutch slang, Dutch foods, etc. The story begins rather well, but soon the story of Dutch Hardy Boys devolves into a sort of Dutch Scooby Doo. The two teenage protagonists, Bram and Piet, are characterized by totally ineffectual and nonsensical behavior.

I don't really feel like going into the plot, but I guess I must. If you find it as tedious to read as I find it to write, skip ahead a paragraph: The boys are secretly saving money to purchase a new buggy for Piet's uncle. They move their savings to the old burnt-out castle for safekeeping. While at the castle they find a stash of jewels and seconds later meet Major Willoughby, supposedly the long lost heir to the man who built the castle, and his East Indian servant, Singh. The Major cons the boys into leaving their money in the same niche that the jewels were in and tells them to keep quiet about the discovery. In the end Major Willoughy is a phony and the jewels in the castle are fakes that the major leaves as substitutes when he steals the real Dutch Crown Jewels that just happen to be on display in New Vollendam, Michigan! Bram's ten-year-old cousin Bertram witnesses the theft and yells the news to anyone within ear-shot. But Bram and Piet vouch for the Major, so no one listens to Bertram. Since Bram and Piet can identify the fake jewels, the Major and Singh take the boys prisoner, tie them up in the old Castle, and plan to kill them.

Piet and Bram

This is problem number one: Bram and Piet are stupid and oblivious. They are gullible to every idiotic suggestion and notion the Major tells them. They ignore the truth even when little Bertram is telling them flat out he just watched the Major steal the jewels. Even after they manage to escape their bonds in the castle they don't run for help in town but allow themselves to be cornered on the shore of Lake Michigan where they cower until Piet's uncle solves the mystery (he recognized the red mud of the castle grounds on the major's wagon wheels) and comes down to the shore where he hears the commotion and shoots the Major. In a children's mystery, shouldn't the main characters be the ones to find the solution? Not only do Bram and Piet not solve the mystery, their primary goal at the beginning comes to nothing, since the uncle has no interest in a new buggy.

Now if the plot is a problem, it is nothing when compared to the novel's horrendous editing issues. In the book's first eighteen pages it is explicitly stated that the time period of the story is 1880.

Now in 1880 it still stood. A blind tower staring sightlessly across the timeless water of Lake Michigan. A mute monument to folly, the villagers said. . . . This suited young Abram Van Dam perfectly.

But on page 18 the book is suddenly set in 1897. Bram has been defending Piet's uncle but Bram's mother won't hear of it:

"Well, it's time he realized it's 1897 not 1847 when he came over on the boat." Mrs. Van Dam turned her back and headed for the kitchen.

The action of the novel lasts only two or three days, not seventeen years! I suspect Dirk means for the action to take place in 1897. In addition to the quote above, he explains the New Vollendam town fair is celebrating fifty years since its founding in 1847.

Also, a number of elements in the story demand the 1897 date: the boys listen to a cylinder-playing juke box via listening tubes. The New Vollendam marching Band plays "Stars and Stripes Forever," which premiered May 14, 1897. Apparently, New Vollendam was on the cutting edge of 1890s pop-culture! None of these date specific inventions or compositions is integral to the plot. Did Dirk add them and decide to change the date of the book from 1880 to 1897 to make historical sense? Possibly. But Dirk had a solid knowledge of the Dutch immigrants in Michigan. Indeed, it is the focus of several of his other books. It's a mystery to me why he ever introduced the date of 1880 into this story.

And this brings us to another Dirk Gringhuis/Castle Park connection. Many Oz fans that attended the conventions at Castle Park will recall that there was a bar in the basement. The walls were adorned with drawings by Dirk Gringhuis showing the history of Holland, Michigan. In 2012 the Oz Club held a convention in Macatawa, just down the road from Holland. A few of us spent an afternoon over at the old Castle and I took some mediocre cell-phone photos of Dirk's drawings in the bar.

Dirk Gringhuis artwork from the bar at Castle Park, Michigan.

In the one above, "Building Holland's First Home - 1847," we can see further evidence that the book's New Vollendam closely mirrored the real Holland's history. Both were founded in 1847. The half-century celebration in the story almost certainly indicates that Dirk meant it to take place in 1897.

Below is another of Dirk's Castle Park drawings, "Welcoming New Settlers - 1847."

Dirk Gringhuis artwork from the bar at Castle Park, Michigan.

But this still leaves the question as to how the book can be so explicitly set in 1880 for the first eighteen pages. The date references are not typos as they're all story specific details that establish two contradictory dates. Frankly, it seems like Reilly & Lee may have typeset an early draft or a combination of two different drafts of the manuscript. This is further evidenced by a few other glitches that made it into the published book. On page 179 Bertram has the line:

"Never mind about that," shrilled Bertram. "How about the buggy?"

Which is immediately followed by the line:

"What about the buggy?" shrilled Bertram.

Clearly one of the lines of text shouldn't be there. Someone on the Reilly & Lee editorial staff was slacking off. At the end of the book the two boys are still rather fond of the fraudulent Major. Bram says: "I sort of hope he gets off. He did save our lives when Singh wanted to use his knife. Even though he isn't a major, maybe not even English."

Huh? I totally missed this "saving of lives" part and can't find it in the book still. So who can say what happened? My guess is that Reilly & Lee used some wonky draft of Dirk's manuscript.

However, I can pin one odd bit directly on Dirk. At the festival parade Bertram decides to play a little joke and sucks on a lemon, which causes chaos in the marching band when the members' mouths begin to pucker up, thus ruining the music. I found this event preposterous. Aren't the musicians looking at their charts? Aren't they looking at who is marching up ahead? At the band leader? At anything other than a ten-year-old boy sucking a lemon? And the entire brass band sees Bertram and becomes incapacitated?

I stopped reading the book and told Eric about it. Surprisingly, Eric said, "I think Dirk stole that from a Robert McCloskey book called Lentil." When I looked at a copy of Lentil (1940) a few days later, there was the scene much as Dirk had written it. Coincidence? If only poor Dirk had been able to write and draw as well as Robert McCloskey.

I wish the book had been better. There was such an interesting series of connections between this Oz book illustrator and "the Castle" where we used to hold Oz conventions. And it's sort of sad that no one tried to get Dirk to attend the Ozmopolitan Convention. He lived all his later years in East Lansing, Michigan, where he died in March 1974. He could have attended any of the Castle Park cons from 1967 to 1973. But the Oz Club has a long history of missed opportunities. But that is another blog for another time.

Rats!

Not everyone has lived with an Oz character. But in the early 1990s I did. And I don't mean Eric Shanower; I mean Eric Shanower's pet rat, Percy - the Personality Kid.

Percy came to live with us after Eric was hired to illustrate Rachel Cosgrove Payes's The Wicked Witch of Oz. Percy was to play a large part in the book, and Eric felt strongly that one reason Percy had not been much loved in Hidden Valley of Oz was because Hidden Valley illustrator Dirk Gringhuis drew the original Percy (in Eric's words) "like a deformed guinea pig."

Dirk's Percy form HIDDEN VALLEY (1951)

Indeed, Dirk's Percy is almost uniformly ugly and unappealing. His paws are elongated and formless, his head often perched on top of his torso like a furry darning egg. Dirk seems never to have consulted rat anatomy or any rat photos. Occasionally Dirk's Percy is a bit more rat-like - but often he's just weird - especially when Dirk had to draw Percy in a non-rat-like posture, such as walking on his hind legs or riding in Jam's collapsible kite.

Eric determined to redeem Percy, to make him both look like a real rat and to make him a likable character.  Percy was to play such a large part in the book that Eric thought photo research would not properly suffice, so he headed to the pet store and bought a rat. At the pet store Eric watched the assortment of rats, checking out their personalities, finally selecting "Percy" from the ratty riff-raff.

Eric sketched Percy, taught Percy to "pose," after a fashion, by  placing food on top of the cage so Percy would stand on his hind legs. So not only did the illustrations of Percy in Wicked Witch look a lot more like a real rat - but the personality of this "real" Percy came through as well.

One thing to note about drawing rats from life is that male rats have rather large balls. Eric wanted to remain true to life, so there is a good deal of rat-scrotum in the book, though Eric kept poses as clean as possible for the most part, as in the fine illustration above.

The picture I remember the most about was the title page/frontispiece spread. Eric had drawn a life-sketch of the real Percy sleeping and decided to use it in the book. He then decided that it would be a fine title-page spread and he could fill up the space, and sort of tell a little story, if there were a lot of rat paw-prints. Eric needed some reference for rat prints so he dipped Percy's feet in blue watercolor and let him walk around on white paper. Eventually Eric got some good prints and Percy got a rat treat.

I think Rachel was pleased that Eric got a real rat to help him with the book. Rachel much liked rats. Eric got Percy in July 1992, and we had him for about seven months. Percy succumbed to a respiratory infection in early 1993. No rat ever had a better memorial than The Wicked Witch of Oz. So long, kiddo!

Illustrations from THE WICKED WITCH OF OZ copyright © 1993 Eric Shanower. All rights reserved.

Happy Birthday, Rachel Cosgrove!

Today, December 11, 2011, would have been Rachel Cosgrove Payes's 89th birthday.

In the summer of 1979 I finally obtained a copy of her first book The Hidden Valley of Oz (not a first edition) and after reading it I wanted to write Rachel Cosgrove and get my book signed. I wrote Fred Meyer, then secretary of the Oz Club, for her address, but he warned me she'd probably not answer as she hated Oz and hated Oz fans. But he sent me her address and I decided to try my luck.

Click to Enlarge

I got an immediate reply from Rachel and she couldn't have been more charming. She even doodled little pictures of her characters Percy and Spots from Hidden Valley at the bottom of the letter. She happily agreed to autograph my book and signed the letter "Oz forever!"

It turns out she didn't dislike Oz or dislike Oz fans - she disliked Fred Meyer. When the Oz Club was founded in the late 1950s Fred had written to Rachel asking if she'd like to join. She politely declined for various reasons, including having two young children to raise. But Fred kept badgering her - and he really kept badgering her to send him a copy of her then-unpublished second Oz book, The Wicked Witch of Oz. She finally had to read him the riot act - asking him to leave her alone - something that I'm sure she could do quite well! And Fred wrote her off as an Oz hater.

Now, Rachel did indeed have a problem understanding grown men devoting their lives to Oz. She repeatedly said, "Oz is for kids." Rachel also had great trouble comprehending what she called "the collector mentality." But to some extent these were just sound bytes Rachel would toss out. Anyone who makes herself a Wicked Witch of the South costume (pointy hat included) and delights in showing off her silver high heels (as silver slippers) must have a big streak of Ozzy fandom running through her veins. 

So back to that first letter from 1979. I sent Rachel my copy of Hidden Valley and she signed it. We struck up a pen-pal sort of correspondence, exchanging a couple letters a year and birthday and Christmas cards. In early 1985 I was going to be in New York State and I wrote and asked if I might pay her a visit. She said she'd be delighted. Rachel was living in Shrub Oak, New York, about half an hour north of NYC. She welcomed me in, we talked for a bit, she showed me the shelves that held copies of all of her books (almost forty titles at that time), and we also looked at her research library which she used in writing the gothic romance novels she wrote in her latter years.

Rachel Cosgrove Payes in her living room, January 1985.

The most surprising thing about the visit was finding Rachel had a bad foot. She had fought a serious battle with cancer a couple decades before, and the experimental chemo that saved her life dissolved some bones in her foot. She got around fine, and her foot never stopped her from doing extensive world travel or going dancing with her husband Norman. I had acquired a first edition of Hidden Valley by this time and I brought it along, hoping she would sign it. She happily agreed to do so.

We continued to exchange notes on occasion - especially after I started attending NYU. But in the summer of 1990 our relationship kicked into higher gear. Eric Shanower and I had just started living together and suddenly Eric was asked by the Oz Club to illustrate Rachel's Wicked Witch of Oz. The Oz Club had just gotten the rights to reprint Hidden Valley of Oz, too. Rachel decided to attend the Munchkin Convention that year and her Ozzy renaissance began. She and Eric wrote back and forth quite a bit while he was illustrating the book, Rachel became a regular at the Munchkin Convention, and in 1994 I asked her to write something Ozzy for the first issue of my forthcoming anthology Oz-story. A few months later a long short story arrived in the mail, "Percy and the Shrinking Violet."

Eric, Rachel, and David at the OZ-STORY No. 1 Publication Party - June 1995

She wrote me another story, "Spots in Oz," for Oz-story No. 3. She and Norman had become good friends. Eric and I held publication parties for each issue of Oz-story and Rachel and Norman always came. Rachel often brought little hand-made gifts and bottles of wine, she baked Hidden Valley muffins for us, she went to a lot of trouble to track down a refrigerator magnet set she thought Eric and I needed - it was a Michelangelo Statue of David magnet complete with removable Santa suit! It's on our current refrigerator still. Every few weeks Eric and I would get a letter (sometimes addressed to our dog) and Rachel would have scribbled some complaint about writing, clipped a cartoon, and thrown in some coupons for something she thought we might need. Rachel was no longer the Royal Historian of Oz - she'd just become a good friend.

Happy Birthday, Rachel.

Dirk Gringhuis in Oz

Over the years I have tried to explore the non-Oz work of the various Royal Historians and Imperial Illustrators of Oz. The Hidden Valley of Oz (1951) was illustrated by Dirk. And like most people, I never had any great fondness for Dirk's illustrations in Hidden Valley.

The pictures are sloppy, the anatomy of the animals (especially Percy the rat) is preposterous, and the book just isn't particularly attractive - though I like Rachel R. Cosgrove's story quite well.

Dirk's last name is Gringhuis - but the illustrations for Hidden Valley are credited simply to Dirk. I initially thought, "Well, with a last name like Gringhuis, no wonder he chose to only use 'Dirk.' " But that wasn't the case. On all of the other books he illustrated (and sometimes wrote) he always used his full name. Perhaps Dirk really disliked his work on the Oz book and chose to distance himself from the project.

Much of Dirk's other illustration work is better than his work for Hidden Valley. We can take a look at a few things in the coming months.

While I couldn't locate any original Oz book art by Dirk in the Tiger Den, I can share the image above, which is a large print produced by La Presse Militaire in Lansing, Michigan, in 1963. The image of Chief Pontiac is printed in black ink on a rough watercolor-like paper. But this copy of the print was watercolored by Dirk and then signed.