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Mother
Laura, Tasha and Bethany
at the Blackwater River
Bethany's younger siblings grew and went away to school and college in
the 1960s Their father died in 1963.
At the end of the decade, only Tasha and Bethany were left to ramble
about the very large house in Webster.
For a number of years, Bethany shared with her mother the roles of cook, housekeeper and farm manager. Tasha sometimes left on speaking tours
leaving Bethany in charge of the homestead. Sometimes they
toured together. Bethany had one great
adventure in a 1968 trip into the Big Thicket of east Texas searching
for the rare ivory-billed woodpecker. With a Cornell ornithologist, they heard the bird but did not see it.
Another
adventure of the late Webster years was the birth of a beautiful daughter Laura
Dennis, see picture above. An uncommon little booklet of photographs from Ann Beneduce entitled Tasha Tudor captures the interwoven lives of three
generations of Tudor women at their New Hampshire home: Tasha, Bethany
and Laura.
Laura is the beautiful little girl on snowshoes painted as "Laura in the
Snow." The image has been sold on a
variety of products, both paper and china.
Tasha said that this portrait of her only granddaughter was the best
painting she ever created.
Drawn from New England records the story of Tasha Tudor's move from New Hampshire to Vermont. Bethany and
Laura were there to help load chairs and tables and truck loads of plants.
After the replica house was completed in Marlboro, another smaller cape was built next door where Bethany could live. She named it The Nest. The house was eventually sold and has now become the
Rookery, designating a place where crows live. Bethany has lived by herself
with her numerous avian companions ever since.
She continued to travel with her mother and was often her mother's faithful housekeeper
until late in her mother's life. They
lived only a few miles apart.
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Bethany Today
 Bethany modeling a tip-to-tip shawl
Today
Bethany continues to live with
her birds. She is a mature
woman who regularly attends bird shows, has a large collection of birds for which she cares. She sells,
trades and buys birds and is known to a circle of friends within the caged bird
world. She cannot imagine life without
her birds. There are doves and colorful finches
and cockatiels and canaries.
She has once more begun to play the guitar and takes lessons to improve her technique. She plays for her own enjoyment and relaxation.
Bethany has painted and drawn for new
products from Cellar Door Books in recent years. If you
click on the BETHANY TUDOR button at the top of our web page, you will see our
stationery, blank note cards and small gift enclosures with her designs. We always have them available and encourage
you to acquire some. Bethany's pencil drawings also
grace the pages of our 1998 bibliography Tasha
Tudor: The Direction of Her Dreams.
We have very special extra-illustrated copies of Drawn from New England. Bethany has drawn a unique illustration in each one. Search the title.
This
is the saga of a woman who loves nature, paints well and has come to peace
with the solitude of her life. And she approved this message !
 The real Samuel, Qweek, Owl and Samantha from Bethany's youth. |
FEBRUARY BOOKS
AND CARDS
Valentine's Day is almost here. We are offering 2 books and 2 card sets at discount prices for your Valentine purchases. We have a variety of copies of ALL FOR LOVE and ROSEMARY FOR REMEMBRANCE. Order any of the copies you see on our web site; we will apply a 20% discount at the time of sale.
The Jenny Wren Press card sets FIRST KISS (18182) and FRIENDS FOREVER (18183) are half-price at $6.00 per package.
The sale prices won't show on your order, but will be properly invoiced at the time of sale.
We have the lovely Nell Dorr photograph of Tasha with baby Bethany. It is not on sale, but it is, nevertheless, a beautiful acquisition. Item 25500
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Who Is Bethany Tudor ?
Bethany Holding Chicken Photo by Nell Dorr. ©1990 Amon Carter MuseumYou may know her books, art and something of her life. This
month we introduce you to Bethany Tudor and some of her broader interests. Bethany
is the eldest child of the late Thomas Leighton McCready, Jr., and his wife
Tasha Burgess McCready (Tasha Tudor). Bethany
was born in Boston a few weeks in advance of her mother's 25th birthday when the
young family was living in Redding, Connecticut. But Tasha always returned to Boston
for her birthing experiences and the family's medical needs. They did so even though they resided hours outside
the city. Little Ann Newell, the dedicateee of A Tale for Easter, is the doctor's daughter. She was born a few months before Bethany. But, we digress . . . |
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The Daughter, The Subject
 First Delights. pg. 14 Bethany, on the right.
Bethany's McCready grandparents lived in Redding
on an old historic farm that her mother painted on several Christmas cards. Sylvie Ann's corn field sits high up behind the McCready house. A
McCready ancestor was a physician in Richmond,
Virginia, in the 1800s. The Wheelocks and Strongs were New
York branches of her father's family tree.
Tasha's close friend Rose Mikkelson, a great-granddaughter of Nathaniel
Hawthorne, lived only a mile up the road. Uncle Frederick Tudor was a physician in Milton, Mass, and inherited the right to use license plate No. 1 [which was sometimes stolen from his vehicle]. Uncle Lauren McCready was a founder/professor and Vice-Admiral at
the Merchant Marine Academy on Long Island. These were a few of the many influences on young Bethany, her brothers and sister.
World War II raged a world away when Bethany
was four. Connecticut was
a center of heavy industry and manufacturing. It was vulnerable to suspected
attacks. To escape the danger of war,
the McCreadys (now with a second child Seth) followed their friend Nell Dorr
north. They bought a large farm with old barns and a big house to restore in Webster, New Hampshire The Moultons, another Redding
family, joined them a few years later.
They purchased the farm abutting the McCreadys. They actually lived in the McCready house ca.1949-51 while they made their venerable structure livable. Their two
daughters became ready-made "sisters" and assisted in the make-believe of the expanding McCready
home. All the girls appear in The Dolls' Christmas and Becky's Birthday.
Bethany speaks lovingly of these
early years in Drawn from New England. Tasha
taught her children to cook and to sew.
They were farm children enjoying the intimacy of living with nature, with many
animals and pets. You know some
of those pets through the books Edgar
Allen Crow, Thistly B, Biggity Bantam and Mr. Stubbs. The children appear in illustrations that their mother prepared for this series of books about life on the New Hampshire farm. Of all the animals, birds were Bethany's
chosen favorites. One
of the charming pictures in Nell Dorr's Mother
and Child shows a youthful Bethany
stretching on a chair to examine a caged canary. Tasha painted the cage and others like it into many pictures. Outside, there was a menagerie of larger fowl: geese, ducks and
guinea hens rummaging and patrolling the barnyard grounds.
One of Bethany's best pets was a starling that she owned for several years. It was so favored an individual that Bethany spirited it along to England with the family in 1957. And then she smuggled it back into the country in a
small box a year later.
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The Artist, The Author
The young author with the models who inspired the stories.
The
McCready children experienced a spectrum of education. Bethany and Seth were taken to a private
nursery school in Concord soon after arriving in New Hampshire. They attended the Millville School (now closed) in Concord and met a number of children from families at St. Paul's [boarding] School
across the street. Later education consisted of home schooling, years at Hopkinton High School and boarding school. At times, college students came to tutor in the McCready house.
And
always there was painting. Not the least of the
skills the children learned from their mother was the ability to sketch quickly
and to capture a scene before it disappeared forever. Tasha often spoke of using her children as
models for sketches and paintings. The
girls, she said, posed from sheer vanity; she had to bribe the boys with
cookies and sweets. Bethany learned to sketch, to
paint, to choose color from her mother - just as
Tasha had learned from her own artist-mother Rosamond Tudor. Bethany also received formal training at the Vesper George Art School in Boston and at the London County Council School in the UK. Birds were always favorite subjects.
Bethany met the Lippincott
editor Ann Beneduce in the early
1960s when her mother began to work with Ann. Ms Beneduce would remain an important
influence in both their artistic lives for many years. Encouraged by a professional publisher,
Bethany created adventures for her favorite Steiff toys - two ducks she named
Samuel and Samantha. The adventures
became stories which developed into books for the national market. Bethany wrote the text and
painted the pictures. Gooseberry Lane (1963), Samantha's Surprise (1964) and Skiddycock Pond (1965) were
published by Lippincott. Samuel's Tree House (1979) followed fifteen
years later after Beneduce moved to the William Collins Company. These four books reflect the detail Bethany always knew. The scenes are more spare than her mother's, without
the wide array of embellishment. There
are clues to the inspiration: tables laden with food, old china sitting on shelves and used regularly and rooms of antique furniture. Tiny
framed portraits hang on the walls. In
one illustration from Samantha's Surprise
Bethany captured the blue New Hampshire hills that are common in
her mother's Christmas cards. There is
even a gate in a stone wall, the same
one her mother captured in several illustrations. It was one they knew well on the New Hampshire farm.
Bethany illustrated two other
titles: Chip the Chipmunk, Bethany Press (1962) and The Nest, Harvey House (1972).
They are drawn from her knowledge of creatures in wildlife, but they
lack the engaging enchantment of the books she wrote herself. These are the six books that Bethany illustrated.
We are most grateful for one more delightful volume created by Bethany and Ann Beneduce. Drawn
From New England, Collins (1979) is the only attempt at a fulll biography of Tasha Tudor. It bears the authenticity of coming from within the family. It is a slim volume of only 96 pages, but it draws on valuable photographs that illustrate how Tasha Tudor's life developed to that point. Bethany wrote the extensive
text that describes the events behind the photographs. DFNE
was reprinted 16 times, but is now out of print in the United States. A Japanese version is still available.
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Wm John Hare
61 Borough Road
Concord, NH 03303-1833
Toll free: (800) 818-8419
Entire contents © 2010 Cellar Door Books
Visiting New England? Please plan to visit Cellar Door Books by appointment. We are an hour and a half east of Marlboro, VT, and an hour and a half north of Boston. An hour to the coast or mountains. Your GPS guide will bring you right to our driveway - and then tell you to turn left, for some perverse reason ! The vagaries of technology !
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