Title : "Dear Ted, What has happened to us? I don't know. I feel myself in a spiral, going down down down..."
link : "Dear Ted, What has happened to us? I don't know. I feel myself in a spiral, going down down down..."
"Dear Ted, What has happened to us? I don't know. I feel myself in a spiral, going down down down..."
"... into a black hole from which there is no escape, no brightness. And loud in my ears from every side I hear, 'failure, failure, failure...' I love you so much ... I am too old and enmeshed in everything you do and are, that I cannot conceive of life without you ... My going will leave quite a rumor but you can say I was overworked and overwrought. Your reputation with your friends and fans will not be harmed ... Sometimes think of the fun we had all thru the years ..."
That is the suicide note of Helen Palmer, the first wife of Theodore Geisel AKA Dr. Seuss. Here's her Wikipedia page. She was born in Brooklyn, he was born in Massachusetts, she went to Wellesley, he went to Dartmouth, and they both went to Oxford, where they met.
She later stated, "Ted's notebooks were always filled with these fabulous animals. So I set to work diverting him; here was a man who could draw such pictures; he should be earning a living doing that."...
For about a decade following World War II, Ted worked to feed a booming children's book market... [relying] heavily on the encouragement and editorial input of Helen. In fact, throughout much of his career, he relied on her support. After realising that her husband was having an affair, Helen committed suicide in 1967 with an overdose of barbiturates after a series of illnesses spanning 13 years. ...
About Helen's death, Ted's niece Peggy commented: "Whatever Helen did, she did it out of absolute love for Ted." Secretary Julie Olfe called Helen's death "her last and greatest gift to him." Eight months later, in June 1968, Ted married Audrey Dimond, with whom he had been having an affair before Helen's death.
That links to a 2000 article in the NYT:
Audrey Dimond was married with two children when she fell in love with Ted Geisel. Mr. Geisel, 18 years her senior, was also married. In the wake of their affair, Mr. Geisel's wife, Helen, committed suicide, causing, as Mrs. Geisel puts it, ''a rather large ripple in the community of La Jolla.''
Mrs. Dimond divorced her husband to marry Mr. Geisel, 64, and when she did, her daughters, 9 and 14, were sent away to school.
''They wouldn't have been happy with Ted, and Ted wouldn't have been happy with them. He's the man who said of children, 'You have 'em and I'll entertain 'em.' Ted's a hard man to break down, but this is who he was. He lived his whole life without children and he was very happy without children. I've never been very maternal. There were too many other things I wanted to do. My life with him was what I wanted my life to be.''
Did you know and remember this story? I didn't. Had I read it in the NYT back in 2000? I must have, but it was shocking news to me when I encountered it as I was poking around on Geisel's Wikipedia page this morning after blogging about the current to-do over the man.
Thus articles "Dear Ted, What has happened to us? I don't know. I feel myself in a spiral, going down down down..."
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