All in the Family: Poets and Writers

 

I published my novella The Ice Mine in 2018, but my great-aunt Alice Adkins beat me to it by 84 years.

 

Alice was a badass. She was blind, yet traveled to Africa, Asia, Australia, the Arctic Circle, and of course, Europe.  She translated from the French and also spoke German, I believe.  Family letters show a woman who was kind, whip-smart, cultivated, and unstoppable.  Her husband was a geographer of some note (part of the delegation which hammered out the Treaty of Versailles, for example), Douglas Johnson, and apparently she was a woman who could go toe-to-toe with him on any day of the week.

 

She published Fog Phantoms and other Poems in 1934.  This slim volume contains original poems and translations from the French.  Here's one of her poems from her school days, 31 years prior: 

from Adytum, 1903:

 

The Secret 

 

The wind is whisp'ring thro' the leafy trees; 

The rippling brooklet answers to the breeze. 

Fleecy clouds across the sky are trailing, 

In the sea of sunshine slowly sailing; 

 

And the ferns and grasses swing and sway; 

While the birds make music all the day. 

Birds and brooklet — tell me what you sing, 

You and yonder bubbling little spring, 

 

Is it on the past you're fondly dwelling, 

O'er and o'er some simple story telling? 

Won't you tell me clearly, all the tale, 

All the secrets of this dreamy vale? 

 

Ah ! But they are secrets, every one, 

Many, many ; but we tell to none; 

 

For the youths and maidens often wander 

To the fatal tree and boulder yonder, 

Tho' we listen long it is in vain! 

We only know they leave thro' lover's lane.

 

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I don't know when he wrote it, but my great-grandfather Alvin Adkins (1853-1926) wrote the following poem, probably close to his death.  Alvin was a farmer, but he was an intellectual man as well.  His wife Emily was descended from Dutch settlers who'd established farms in what is now Brooklyn as early as the the 1650's.  Through her, I am a distant relative of Humphrey Bogart. 

 

Bury Me on the Hill Top High

Under the blue and starlit sky,
Placing my feet towards Sun Rise Street
Placing my head where sun sets meet,
Leaving one hand next to the Northern Light
Placing the right toward the South land bright.

Leave my soul in the care of God
Bury my hopes where Christ had trod,
Think of the Christ who died for me
Think of the Christ who made men free
Give to the world the best of will
Render to man ill for ill.

Forget me not in life's years
When time has dried your loving tears
Enrich the land that gave us birth
Make more happy this home of earth,
Honor the God whose land ye till,
Seeking the best your mission fulfill.

But when you bury my body in the hill top high
Under the blue and starlit sky,
Bury my love in the love of my friends
Letting it live there till Christ descends
Let it grow through eternity's end.

Alvin, along with his dad Isaac and his son Elgin, my grandfather, also have the distinct honor of having been arrested for attempted murder!  How now, Caravaggio?

 

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My most renowned in ancestor, writing-wise, was my great-aunt, from my mom's side, who was a successful romance novelist. Her name was Tilly Armstrong, but she published under other names as well.  Tilly served terms as both Chair and VP of the Romantic Novelists' Association (UK).  Before her writing career, she'd worked for the World Health Organization in Geneva, and later, for 18 months in Canada.  At some point she became the personal secretary to the Chairman of British Steel, Lord Melchett.  Quite a woman. 

 

.As Tilly Armstrong

• Lightly Like a Flower (1978)
• Come Live With Me (1979)
• Joy Runs High (1979)
• Limited Engagement (1980)
• Summer Tangle (1983)
• Small Town Girl (1984)
• Pretty Penny (1985)

As Tania Langley

• Dawn (1980)
• Mademoiselle Madeleine (1981)
• The London Linnet (1985)
• Genevra (1987)

As Kate Alexander

• Fields of Battle (1981)
• Friends and Enemies (1982)
• Paths of Peace (1984)
• Bright Tomorrows (1985)
• Songs of War (1987)
• Great Possessions (1989)
• The Shining Country (1991)
• The House of Hope (1992)
• Voices of Song (1994)
• The Anthology of Love and Romance (edited, 1994) (including stories by Rosamunde Pilcher, Georgette Heyer, Edith Wharton et al)
• Family Trees (1995)
• Love and Duty (1998)
  

So, there you have it. Go Tilly! Some of my literary antecedents. 

 

My great-uncle Homer Burton Adkins was an author of scientific textbooks, and was a leading organic chemist of his time.  The Adkins Catalyst and Adkins-Peterson reaction bear his name.  My second cousin Roger, Homer's son, worked in the Office of Management and Budget, working face to face with Presidents from Eisenhower to Clinton.  Roger was not a "front office" guy, but Google the OMB and his name and he's all over the place.

 

One day, I'll get into all these things, but just wanted to name-check some of the literary ancestors I never knew existed when I started writing as a teenager....