Willard Espy, (1910-1999)

Well… here it is!  The perfect example of my addled and forgetful mind of recent years.  I had a great idea for a blog — something earthshaking and memorable, no doubt, and wrote the title just as the phone was ringing.    The call must have been important — or at least attention-getting enough that, when I returned to my blog-writing, I had no idea what earthshaking news I had been about to impart.

I think my blog was to be about “The Scribbling Aunts.”  That’s what my venerable (and very successful author) uncle, Willard Espy, called his two great aunts — sisters of his maternal grandfather, Daniel Sidney Richardson.  Dan, himself, was a poet of note in California in the late 19th century — a friend of Ambrose Bierce and Joaquin Miller and, I think, of Samuel Clemens, as well.  Willard never called him “scribbling” anything — but didn’t speak highly of his poetry, either.

My Great-Grandfather, Daniel Sidney Richardson (1851-1922)

The eldest scribbler, wrote Willard, was Mat. After a disastrous first marriage she had to write frantically for newspapers and magazines to keep herself and her children fed, clothed, and roofed…

The most inveterate scribbler on the distaff side was Aunt Shae, source of most of my anecdotes about how a minister’s children grew up in California.  Her outlets included “Golden Days,” “The Portland Transcript,” “The San Francisco Examiner,” “The Interior,” “The Congregationalist and Boston Recorder,” and “The Youth’s Companion,” then known as “The Companion”…  During this period  she made shawls for a living… It was then, too, that she wrote most of her  articles and stories.  They added little to her income; a handwritten list at the back of her scrapbook shows that her lowest fee for a story was $1 and her highest $6.

Joaquin Miller (1837-19130

My grandmother always felt that Willard was “the most Richardson” of her children — a reference, no doubt, to his interest in writing.  She never, however, described him as her “scribbling son.”  Perhaps I shall refer to him as “the scribbling uncle” now and then…  As in what’s sauce for the goose…  I can only hope that his words about the scribbling aunts were meant as complimentary, not derisive.  Like so many of my thoughts about my nearest and dearest — I wish I’d pursued them then and had not waited until surmisal is all that’s left!