N.C. Wyeth: Family, Home and Studio

"Jim Hawkins Leaves Home"
from "Treasure Island"

"In a few years N.C. and Carolyn were as much a part of Chadds Ford life as if they had lived there all their lives. N.C., with his open nature, quickly made friends. He was genuinely interested in all kinds of people, their peculiarities, their interests, the work of their hands. After he had worked his way through a number of friendly wrestling bouts and thrown all the local champions, there was no question about his acceptance. They could now brag about him, about his ability to hold two filled milk cans at arm's length.

His letters home to his parents and brothers constitute an almost daily chronicle of the Chadds Ford life. There was homely news of Carolyn putting up Mason jars of green beans from the garden and N.C. picking five barrels of apples. Then there was the happy tidings of the firstborn, Henriette, in 1907. In letter after letter her baby ways are lovingly described: 'May 19 - The Butcher was here this morning and he weighed Henriette - 19 1/2 lbs.'

The other children enter the chronicle as they appear: Carolyn - 1909, Nathaniel - 1911, Ann - 1915, and Andrew - 1917. There are descriptions of their new house built on the wooded hillside which looked down across the meadow fields to the hills. Its sturdy brick walls, white trim and a wide veranda was made possible by the Scribner's fee for the illustrations for Stevenson's 'Treasure Island.' Next came an ample studio built above the house on the brow of the hill. 

The large studio room with its high glass Palladian windows to the north and a small anteroom were soon filled with N.C.'s accumulations of props and mementos, costumes, chests, firearms and swords, a birchbark canoe, bookshelves, ship models, busts and bottles. Outside he planted an orchard and a few steps away was an outcropping of large boulders shaded by a tangle of trees which often suggested background elements for some of his adventure settings. It was somewhat remote, yet looked down upon his home and the hills and fields with which he had identified himself."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Brandywine Tradition" by Henry C. Pitz.)