REIGNING AS KING ON DENSLOW ISLAND

by Jane Albright

Originally published in The Baum Bugle, vol. 59, no. 1 (Spring 2015), pgs. 6–14

Citations

Chicago 17th ed.:

Albright, Jane. “Reigning as King on Denslow Island.” Baum Bugle 59, no. 1 (2015): 6–14.

MLA 9th ed.:

Albright, Jane. “Reigning as King on Denslow Island.” The Baum Bugle, vol. 59, no. 1, 2015, pp. 6–14.

(Note: In print, this article was supplemented with photographs and vintage advertising that have not been reproduced here.)

With headlines announcing, A New York Artist Has Established a Kingdom of His Own in One of the Bermuda Islands, forty-eight-year-old W. W. Denslow, the “delightful old reprobate who looked like a walrus”¹ headed six hundred miles off the coast of the Carolinas to honeymoon with his new wife—“new” meaning both freshly married and latest in a series of wives—expecting, one would imagine, to live happily ever after. Because when you’re king of your own island, you illustrate fairy tales for a living, and you’re on your third-time’s-the-charm wife, shouldn’t happily-ever-after follow? The popular illustrator was at his professional peak. Flush from the success of The Wizard of Oz on Broadway, the unconventional artist was free to follow his muse to paradise. And in 1904 that meant Bermuda.

Oz fans first heard that the beloved Oz illustrator spent his personal fortune on Denslow Island in the biography of him written by Michael Patrick Hearn and Douglas G. Greene.² He negotiated for six months with owner Claude McCallan to lease the island, describing it in a letter as “about 10 acres of rocks, soil and cedar trees.” For four months or so each year, it would be his winter home. The more romanticized headlines claimed he owned it, but at first that was not the case.

“Buying” an island

Today your cheerful Bermudian cab driver will tell you, with a British accent, that there are 365 islands in Bermuda—one for every day of the year. Other sources might claim there are 120 or 180 islands. But as your driver will explain, anything big enough to grow a tree is considered an island in Bermuda, so the count changes frequently. The overseas British territory may have plenty of them, but both in Denslow’s day and today they are not easy to purchase.

On February 20, 1904, the Minneapolis Journal wrote:

King Denslow of Denslow Island, the Bermudas, sounds somewhat more pretentious than Denslow, hack artist and illustrator. The one title the artist gives himself and the other has been bestowed on him by his friends since he acquired possession of an emerald isle float-ing in a sapphire sea. It was while Mr. Denslow was recuperating two years ago in the Bermudas that he became desirous of owning one of the islands—a small one, as befits a modest illustrator. It is an easy matter to find an island; there were hundreds of them that would do, but obtaining possession was another question. England does not allow anyone but an English man to own property in the colony, and after six months of deliberation Denslow hit on the plan of persuading a British subject to buy the island and lease it to him on the longest lease the colony laws allow.

It was 1905 before Denslow was able to clear the hurdle of government approval and actually purchase the island himself. (It is unknown whether the government made a special exception for Denslow or how he was otherwise able to purchase the property contrary to British law.) Just how long he kept it is less clear. Hearn and Greene’s research indicates Denslow mortgaged it in August 1909 to Paul Tietjens (who had composed the music to the stage adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz) and then mortgaged it to him again more deeply in 1911. The legal records in Bermuda confirm these facts. And to quote Hearn, “That’s what [his daughter] Janet Tietjens told me.” News reports from 1908 and 1909, however, indicate that it had sold.³ In any case, starting in late 1903 and for less than a decade, Denslow the First, reigned under his hippocampus flag.

Why Bermuda?

By the turn of the century Bermuda was the destination of choice for the affluent. Denslow had spent some vacation time on Prince Edward Island, Canada, which was a lovely place back in 1900, but it was a thousand chilly miles north of the subtropical climate in Bermuda.⁴ In contrast to all that Canadian cold, Her Royal Highness Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyle, fourth daughter of Queen Victoria, had called Bermuda “a place of eternal spring,” following her visit in 1883.⁵ Author Frances Hodgson Burnett described her Bermuda home as a place where “six hundred and seventy-two roses bloom in one’s face when New York is seventy degrees below zero and London is black with fog or slopped with mud and rain.”⁶ It is possible that Mark Twain had personally recommended Bermuda to Denslow, as Denslow had done some illustrating for him, and he was a family friend of Denslow’s second wife Ann Waters.⁷ A regular visitor to Bermuda since 1863, Mark Twain had published his impressions of it in The Atlantic Monthly in the 1870s, and in his first book, The Innocents Abroad. In one of his more famous quotes he claimed to be so smitten with Bermuda that he would happily choose it over heaven.

When Denslow suffered a nervous breakdown in 1902, he turned to the Alma Sanitarium in Alma, Michigan, for treatment.* During his time there, though married to Ann Waters (who had been immortalized in the verse about “Little Annie Waters” in Father Goose: His Book), Denslow fell in love with another woman, Mrs. Frances Golsen Doolittle. After his discharge from Alma, the Denslows headed to Bermuda to recuperate and reconcile, checking into the popular Hotel Inverurie.

Despite their efforts the marriage did not survive. Ann soon left Denslow for another, younger man, their friend and fellow artist Lawrence Mazzanovich. He had worked with Denslow as part of Elbert Hubbard’s Roycroft community and had lived briefly with the Denslows.⁸ Less than a month after their September 1903 divorce was final, Ann married “Mazzy,” moved to Paris, and became pregnant with his child. Friends who were unaware of their relationship were shocked, but they did know that Denslow was building a new future for himself in Bermuda. In late November popular columnist Dorothy Dix wrote Denslow thanking him for some “lovely books,” adding, “I envy you, your new home. How fine it must be to be an Island King.”⁹

The island, Dyer’s Island until Denslow renamed it, is actually just four acres. When he first laid eyes on it, under guidance from Captain Archie, whose sailboat he had chartered for the search, he would have seen the wonderful foliage and the perfect site for his castle. There are two small caves on the island, one of which has two separate rooms accessible through a narrow entrance. The island has a small area of sandy beach and access on the north side for boats.

By the time his December proclamation was appearing in newspapers, Denslow had built a mansion, a cottage, and a dock on the property. The larger house—his “castle”—was made of local white sandstone and wrapped in verandas. Like most homes in Bermuda, it required a substantial water tower to collect rainwater for the household’s use. Denslow trimmed his tower with a distinctive observation balcony. The cottage, which he described at the time as a residence for “my admiral and his navy force,” was smaller and housed both Captain Archie and his cook, a Japanese man named Sakuri.

Barely two months after the divorce from Ann, Denslow married Frances, the Other Woman from the Alma sanitarium.¹⁰ She was a thirty-two-year-old widow with two children and considered wealthy. She became his third wife on Christmas Eve, and their Bermuda honeymoon began.

* In a letter to Alfred Stieglitz, Denslow said he was treated at the Alma Sanitarium for nervous prostate and rheumatism. His lifelong problems with alcoholism undoubtedly contributed to his troubles.

Island living

“An American King on a Bermuda Island,” shouted the full-page article in the February 28, 1904, edition of the North American, a daily newspaper in Philadelphia.* It printed King Denslow I’s lavishly embellished tale, complete with photos and illustrations. The article was syndicated in newspapers around the country. For weeks the news continued to spread.¹¹ There were interviews and photo shoots, including one with his stepdaughter “little Frances Denslow.”¹²

* Michael Patrick Hearn believes the illustrated article originated in the North American because the drawing is by Oz illustrator John R. Neill’s great friend Joseph Clement Coll (1881–1921), who, like Neill, was on the North American art staff at the time. They had shared a studio in their youth. 

In an extensive interview about his picture book titled Denslow’s Three Little Kittens in October 1904, he told the Saint Paul Globe a long, involved story about a cat named “Bob the Fisherman,” who was brought to the island to catch rats while the house was being built. To hear Denslow tell it, the rat population was soon gone, and Bob took to swimming boldly out to a fish trap from which he stole the fish. “Anyone who doubts the accuracy of the story in any of its details,” the interview continued, “and happens to be in Bermuda next winter, may call on Mr. Denslow at his island home and see the cat for himself. … He is now a great pet in the Denslow household and is famous all through the Bermudas as ‘Bob, the Fisherman.’”

Articles also explained that Denslow was building quite a fleet. He had a thirty-two-foot sailboat and a dory. There was a twenty-seven-foot sloop-rigged yacht under construction, with plans to add a boat specifically for fishing. The yacht he named The Wizard, appropriately enough. During his residence he participated in annual dinghy races and was a member of the Hamilton Dinghy Club.

From his island kingdom, Denslow began to turn out works with seascapes, ocean life, and landscape elements from Bermuda. At one point, the two characters in his Denslow’s Scarecrow and the Tin-Man newspaper comic page adventured “on the Water.”¹³ Another story found the straw and tin pair in Bermuda.¹⁴

It was from Bermuda that Denslow collaborated with Paul West on The Pearl and the Pumpkin, which he initially envisioned as both a stage show and a novel. His illustrations for the book include his island and house. Much action takes place in Bermuda. Fish become major characters. According to Hearn and Greene, he searched rare book sources in both Bermuda and New York for descriptions of Blackbeard, Captain Kidd, and other buccaneers. Denslow dove to depths of thirty feet designing stage sets for underwater scenes that reproduced what he saw under water. And he sailed out into the ocean in a small boat and painted there—despite the boat’s rocking motion—in his effort to get the colors just right.¹⁵

Billy Bounce and The Jeweled Toad were his next big projects from the island. Critics consider the former a poor example of Denslow’s work, but the latter is a fine, beautifully designed book. Neither, however, shows as much direct influence of Bermuda as did the collaboration with West. Denslow’s 1909 book, When I Grow Up, included pirates and a sailor among its future professions, but by this time glimpses of his island kingdom were becoming rare in his work.

Professional demand for Denslow began to decline. Instead of books and theatrical productions, smaller advertising pieces, postcards, and periodicals dominated his work. Along with Teddy Bear Bread and Red Goose Shoes, he produced Through Foreign Lands with Sunny Jim, a booklet that helped sell a successful wheat flake cereal called Force. His illustrations promoted varnishes for Berry Brothers Varnish, soap in Fairbank’s Juvenile History of the United States, and Shinola Shoe polish for the feet of Everyday Heroes. He was working, but his income was no longer kingly.

Kingdom’s end

The Denslows mortgaged the island to Paul Tietjens in 1909 for $500. That year they moved to Buffalo, New York, where Denslow was getting work from the Niagara Lithograph Company. A second loan followed less than two years later for $3,000. When the Denslows were unable to pay back the loan, the Tietjens family became the island’s new owners. Denslow never visited the island again. Facing his third divorce, he moved to New York City in 1913 where he worked intermittently and drank steadily. Magazine covers are among his memorable work from this period. Unable to support himself with his work, Denslow pawned his book collection to make ends meet. By the time of his death in 1915, his life as an island king was just a faded memory.

With my thanks for answering questions, providing photos and news clippings and other support: Michael Bennett, Than Butterfield, Bill Campbell, Cleveland Public Library Microform Center, Cornelius Dyer, Freddy Fogarty, Mike Gessel, Michael Patrick Hearn, Nicholas Lusher Antiques and Fine Art of Bermuda, William Price, and Cindy Ragni.

SIDEBAR 1: Before and After Denslow

While Denslow didn’t live happily ever after on Denslow Island, the island is still with us. On old maps it is often labeled Dyer’s Island. Before Denslow lived there, Cornelius Dyer’s great grandfather owned it. Dyer claims his great grandfather sold the island to buy a boat because he needed to cross a channel to buy groceries. Another report says Dyer’s great grandfather sold it when his ship foundered and he had to pay off the losses of his cargo.* The Tietjenses did not rename the island during the brief time they owned it. But when Arthur William Bluck, a former mayor of Hamilton, Bermuda, purchased it, he and his wife Mary “Matey” renamed it Bluck’s Island for their family.

According to Bluck’s grandson, Nathaniel “Than” Butterfield, Bluck originally purchased the island from the Tietjenses together with his son-in-law, Hal Kitchener. Initially, the Bluck family lived in the main house, and the Kitcheners lived in the cottage. Kitchener eventually had the opportunity to buy his own island, so Bluck bought him out. Bluck’s 1944 death left the island to his three daughters, Winifred, Ester, and Elinor. Elinor’s husband, Arthur Butterfield, then bought out her sisters and divided the island into three lots, leaving a house on one acre to each of his two children, his son, Than, and his daughter, Frana, and a two-acre lot to both of them. Frana Butterfield Price and her son Bill own the big house, Denslow’s “Castle,” and they live there today. Than lives in the cottage, which is called “Matie’s Cottage” for his grandmother. Since Bill Price has no children of his own, his nephews—Than’s children—will one day inherit the island through a trust.

Because the island remains privately owned, photos of the property through the years are scarce. During the 1940s, a young Mike Bennett lived on the island while his father, a British naval officer, was stationed in Bermuda. He vividly remembers spending his summers there and keeps a few grainy black and white photos of himself fishing, boating with the Kitcheners, and playing in the surf from those years.

“My father was in the Royal Navy and stationed at HMS Malabar [a Royal Naval Air Station in Bermuda], says Bennett. “A boat used to pick him up every morning except when he was officer of the day when he would stay over-night at Malabar. I don’t remember much about the house—only that it had a verandah long enough to play cricket with my dad!” Mike adds, “I have such fond memories of my three years in Bermuda. It was an idyllic childhood, mostly playing in the water.”

* Emailed exchanges with Cornelius Dyer and one-time island resident Michael Bennett.

SIDEBAR 2: Destination: Denslow Island

When I visited Bermuda a few years ago, I rented a beach-front cottage of my own, made seahorses in the sand, and waited for the day the boat I chartered would sail me in the right direction. I spoke by phone with Bill Price in the big house; I had no contact for the Butterfields at this time.

Price told me his family had built a stairway in place of the water tower’s ladder, added an apartment, and enclosed a porch on the far side. However, aside from the addition of electricity, little else has changed from Denslow’s years. Interestingly, from his description, no interior finishes are distinguished by marks of Denslow’s ownership. Price spent summers on the island all through his childhood, and has lived there year-round since 1985. He described it as having classic Bermuda construction, meaning that it has many exterior doors and windows and has high ceilings.

Of course, I hoped to set foot on the island in person, but my timing could not have been worse. Price had just brought his eighty-six-year-old mother home from the hospital. She was quite frail, and he lamented they were not in a position to host me. Fan that I am, I assumed I could simply dive off the boat into the sea and swim to some hidden stretch along the shore, moth to flame, leaving the owners none the wiser. But on arrival I found the island to be ill-suited for trespassing Americans. Aside from a bit of beach in front of the smaller house, the entire island is surrounded by rocky shore. I had to be content with photos. Fortunately, my husband and daughter were with me, which meant there were three clicking cameras.

As we snapped away, I listened to my modern day Captain Archie tell me about the island. He included many facts, as well as some questionable legends. For example, he told me the locals say that Mark Twain liked to climb inside the tower on the main house to write. Dubious, I ran that by Michael Patrick Hearn, who, having annotated Huckleberry Finn, knows almost as much about Mark Twain as he does about Baum and Denslow. Mark Twain, he told me, went to Bermuda when he was ill to rest; it’s unlikely he had the strength to scale ladders to write in towers. Furthermore, no record exists that says he ever visited Denslow Island.

There are other tales that the island’s family knows are quite wrong, but they just can’t seem to squelch them. Like the booming speakers from the “Famous Homes and Hideaways” boat tours that sail by telling hundreds of tourists that the man who designed the costumes for MGM’s Wizard of Oz created them on the island.

Bill Price told me to be on the lookout for one particular boat. He said it has been owned and used by members of his family for as long as anyone can remember, and its style and construction indicate it may be two hundred years old. While he has fruitlessly searched the island and both houses high and low for some hint of Denslow—he has found no sign of a seahorse anywhere—he suspects this particular boat may have belonged to the famous artist.

In preparing to talk about Denslow Island at the Oz Club’s 2012 National Convention—the talk that has now developed into this Bugle article—I was able to form a bit of an online friendship with Than Butterfield. That is to say, I plied him with questions, and he graciously responded. On my sail around his island, his own boat caught my eye. During our correspondence, I was quick to ask about the Kalidah. He emailed a photo, noting, “the boat in the foreground is called The Wiz. We have a little row boat called Ruby Slipper (after the movie version of the shoes), a little rowing/sail boat called Glinda and a bigger sedan cruiser called Emerald Spray, all Oz connections one way or another!”

King Denslow himself may no longer rule over this lovely little island, but its brief appearance in Oz history is not forgotten by those who do.

¹ Eunice Tietjens, The World at My Shoulder (New York: Macmillan Company, 1938), 13.

² Douglas G. Greene and Michael Patrick Hearn, W. W. Denslow (Mt Pleasant, MI: Clarke Historical Library / Central Michigan University, 1976).

³ New York Sun, June 4, 1908; New York Evening Telegram, February 9, 1909.

⁴ W. W. Denslow in letter to A.M. Moore, July 28, 1900, from Fortune Bridge, Prince Edward Island, Canada.

⁵ http://www.fairmont.com/hamilton-bermuda/hotelhistory/.

⁶ Angelica Shirley Carpenter and Jean Shirley, Frances Hodgson Burnett: Beyond the Secret Garden (Minneapolis, MN: Lerner Publications Company, 1990), 109.

⁷ Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad (Hartford, CT: American Publishing Company, 1880).

⁸ Marie Via and Marjorie B. Searl, eds., Head, Heart, and Hand: Elbert Hubbard and the Roycrofters (Rochester, NY: University Rochester Press, 1994), 113.

⁹ Dorothy Dix in letter to W. W. Denslow, November 23, 1903, from New Orleans, LA, private collection.

¹⁰ New York Sun, December 30, 1903.

¹¹ Boston Sunday Post, February 28, 1904.

¹² Lewiston Evening Journal, October 8 1904.

¹³ Minneapolis Journal, January 14, 1905.

¹⁴ Minneapolis Journal, January 28, 1905.

¹⁵ The Reader Magazine 9, no.5 (April 1907).

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