Many thanks to William Myers, Mary Davy, Sally Young and Sue Davis for their ongoing research collaboration; specifically to William for providing a scan of the original document, and in turn many thanks to Peter Binckley and Patricia D'Arcy "Trish" Binckley (1951-2007), at the source.]
Mother was now living in California, in Santa Rosa. An old friend, Senator Thompson of California, when not in Washington lived with his family in Santa Rosa. He had got Mother a position there as town librarian. His sister, Mrs. Huie lived in San Francisco. It was a friendship of many years standing.
My grandparents Michel when young had moved to Louisville, Kentucky and Mother was born there [in 1836 -- M.J.B.] [corrected: February 16, 1838]. The Thompsons lived there and became intimate and beloved friends. When Miss Thompson married Dr. Huie, Grandmother dressed her for her wedding. The bride and groom went west in a covered wagon, arriving in San Francisco when it consisted of only a few houses and the Spanish Mission Dolores.
My grandparents did not stay in Louisville, but grew homesick and returned to Virginia and Mother grew up there. Though she loved Virginia, she was always proud of being born in Kentucky. It's a fine old State, too.
I went to Lynchburg and had a class there. Mother had left me her kiln and her china painting class and I rented a very tiny one story house on Church Street for a studio. I boarded at Mrs. Jordan's a block or two away. The house was full and all I could get was half a big room, sharing it with a school teacher. She was out all day at school, and I was out all day at my studio.
In the evenings she went to a big revival going on in the town, often staying there till midnight. I went out with the unregenerate, so to speak, some of my young friends, or they came to see me in the parlor. So, though we slept in the same big bed, we seldom saw each other awake. When I'd get home she'd be in bed asleep, or vice-versa. She went out early in the morning and I later.
There was but one key to the room and we arranged that the one going out last should put the key in the drawer of a table in the hall downstairs. But she often forgot and took the key with her, and I couldn't get in my room. Then I had to go to the revival where I'd find her laboring with a sinner and looking very holy. She'd be hurt at the interruption, but I got the key.
One of the boarders was a musician, Theodore Presser. He edited a musical magazine named The Etude [The Etude], which still survives, I believe. He had a piano in his room which he pounded louder than I had ever heard a piano pounded before. He must have played with his fists.
One day I saw a book on our table and being a bookish creature, picked it up and glanced through it. It was an anthology and to my amazement, I came across some little verses I had written when we lived in suburban Chicago, called "Clouds." Verse was never a form of expression with me. In all my life I never wrote but very few bits of verse, very trifling ones. I happened to be looking up into the sky that day. I always showed everything to Dad. As I learned afterward, he showed the verse to an intimate friend of his, a literary man, Mr. F. F. Browne. [This was Francis Fisher Brown, whose papers contain some correspondence with John Milton Binckley -- P.D.B.]
He sent them to a publisher or a magazine -- I never knew and being but a child never gave the matter any thought. They gave me a dollar, and told me the verses had been paid for. I never saw them in print till I chanced to come across them in Lynchburg. I did not bother to remember the magazine to which the anthology credited them.
The teacher borrowed my copy of Longfellow and never returned it. And it was a special copy, too. It was the prize at a spelling bee the neighbors got up in suburban Chicago. Everyone was in it, grownups as well as children. Our family were good spellers, and Dad and I were the last on the floor. The Dad got tangled up in the word 'unparalleled.' He knew perfectly well how to spell it but was not accustomed to spelling aloud.
[Ellen/Nellie/Nella Fontaine Binckley (September 1, 1860-April 27, 1951). Family names and dates were whimsically tweaked by their owners during their lifetime, adding mystery and sometimes causing confusion. For Binckley's "Artist's Life," I'm opting for the artist's full signature name, Nella Fontaine Binckley.
Mother = Mary Louisa/Louise Mitchell/Michel Binckley (1838-1930).
My grandparents Michel = Harvey Mitchell/Michel (1799-1866) and Jane Johnston Mitchell/Michel (1811-1892).
Senator Thompson = Representative Thomas Larkin Thompson (1838-1898), son of Robert Augustine Thompson (1805-1876) and Marion Satterlee Thompson (d. 1905).
His sister, Mrs. Huie = Sarah Elizabeth Thompson Huie (1827-1905), had married Dr. George William Huie of Louisville (1825-1877) in 1848.
Theodore Presser (1848-1925), musical director at Hollins College in the early 1880s; began The Etude in October 1883 in Lynchburg; published in Philadelphia from 1884 forward.
Dad = John Milton Binckley (circa 1831-1878).
Francis Fisher Brown (1843-1913). See The Newberry Library (Chicago) for his papers. Link here.]
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