Thurber Tonight: Part 1 of "Lavender with a Difference" -- presenting the irrepressible Mary Fisher Thurber

In this 1890 gathering of the Frioleras, a social club of young Columbus married couples, says Thurber, "The pretty girl standing in the middle is my mother."

"Aunt Mary whammed her way from room to room, driving dogs ahead of her. When the last one had departed and the upset house had been put back in order, my father said to his wife, 'Well, Mame, I hope you're satisfied.' She was."

-- Thurber, in "Lavender with a Difference"

by Ken

As we've already established in our reading of "Gentleman from Indiana" (Part 1 here, Part 2 here), the piece on his father from Thurber's "Photo Album" series of recollections of people who had played memorable roles in his and his family's history (gathered in book form as The Thurber Album), which first appeared in The New Yorker of June 9, 1956, the companion piece on his mother appeared shortly thereafter, in the issue of July 28, 1951.

After the furor "Gentleman" had caused with the Columbus Thurbers -- the author's younger brother, Robert, and their mother -- when Robert accused his brother of turning their father into a "Hoosier halfwit," his New Yorker editor for the series, fiction editor Gus Lobrano, took the precaution of sending an advance proof of "Lavender with a Difference" to the family. To Thurber's considerable relief, his mother liked the piece.

It's a long one, though, and for our consumption I've split it into three non-quite-equal pieces, which take us from Mary Fisher Thurber as the young mother of three small sons (William a year-plus older than James, Robert two years younger than James) in our Part 1 to the long-widowed but still irrepressible 85-year-old Mame of our Part 3.


TO READ PART 1 OF "LAVENDER
WITH A DIFFERENCE," CLICK HERE


THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY TONIGHT,
WILL CUPPY TONIGHT, and WOLCOTT GIBBS TONIGHT):
Check out the series to date

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