Harrell: She grew up in Morristown, New Jersey. Her father was head of a large insurance company. Hers was a very literary family. One brother was, at the time of his death, head of the English Department at Yale [University]. Another brother also taught at Yale. She went to Smith College. She was not a strong young woman. After two years at Smith, she became deaf. They sent her to Germany to take the mud-baths because those were supposed to help the nerves in the ears. She lived with the family of the Countess Krakow (sp?), whose husband was cupbearer to Kaiser Wilhelm. The treatment apparently did some good--not lasting good, but some good. She came home, accompanied by the Countess. The two of them went around the world in sailing ships and steamers. At that time, my mother began to write. One of her books is a result of that trip.

Harrell: They were spending the summer on Jewel's Island in Maine, which was owned by her family at the time. It is the outermost island in Casco Bay. The Countess and my mother were sailing around the bay one day and they talked about how they would like to take a trip. They saw a tramp steamer in Casco Bay. They asked the skipper if he would take them on his next trip. He said that he was going to South America. They said, "Fine--we'll go anywhere." He said, "Well, I'll take you if you can catch me." Then he steamed away. They took him up on that. They caught up with him in Philadelphia. He was horrified! He didn't

want any women on his ship. He was a young, handsome, Scotch bachelor. He liked to go out onto the bridge in his pajamas if he felt like it. They insisted, but they didn't get aboard. They got on a sailing ship and, down in the Florida Keys, were caught in a hurricane. The ship was so terribly battered that the captain latched my mother and the Countess to the mast so they wouldn't be swept overboard. My father came by in his steamship and hailed them. By that time, the storm had gone down. Later on, in South America, my mother and the Countess were stranded. They had very little money and no way to get home. They heard about my father's ship being in port and they badgered him to take them aboard this time. The name of his ship was the Ripley. He was only 25 or 26. His father owned a fleet of ships in Scotland. My father went to sea in the summers and to maritime college in the winters. He got his first command, captain of all oceans, when he was 21, but he didn't get his first ship then. They got aboard the Ripley. My father built a verandah for them and took two rocking chairs aboard. They sailed north and before they got to New York, my mother and father were engaged--to the horror of Mother and Father Stanley. The Scotch branch came over. One of them brought his Rolls Royce and his own chauffeur. The chauffeur was very haughty. He was asked by someone on the dock if he wanted to be led through New York to the Waldorf [-Astoria Hotel], where they were staying. He said, "No!" Well, they sat at a red light for half an hour, but they finally got to the hotel. Many Odd things happened at the bridal dinner. They got married and, after a while, moved to Norfolk, where my father went into business ashore.

Harrell: Because it is such a big seaport and he was an agent for Lloyd's of London, the biggest insurance company in the world. He was a steamship agent here in Norfolk. His background at sea had prepared him for that. They lived here the rest of their lives. Mother, who had started writing while traveling, began writing seriously after her three children were old enough to get from underfoot.

Harrell: No - she didn't talk about that much. I think she was mostly upset about the way the juveniles were handled. She and her father had a lot to do with getting the juvenile courts established in New Jersey and New York. That was not for a great length of time, though.

Harrell: Yes she was very much interested, but she didn't ever take a job. She was a "friend of the court."

Harrell: It was Judge Herbert Cochran.

Harrell: Oh yes - she'd been interested in getting children out of the jails ever since she was a little girl because they, at the time, were thrown in with the hardened criminals. Judge Cochran was very much interested in getting that done, too. In order to get them treated like children, they had to have a juvenile court, as well as a separate jail. The separate jails didn't come about for a long, long time.

Harrell: I don't think she was doing much poetry then.

Leitch: She was publishing in American and English poetry magazines from the early 1930s on.

Harrell: Yes - but not during the 1920s.

Harrell: That was in the early 1920s Then, she started writing poetry.

Harrell: I didn't realize it was that early.

Leitch: When she was a child, for example, she was required by her parents, particularly her father, to memorize Hamlet's soliloquy verbatim. It took her a long time, but, after memorizing that, memorization of poetry and verse became much easier [for her]. She had an extremely good memory. She was able to take other poetry and "formulate" new poems, taking advantage of the experience of other poets.

Harrell: She kept on memorizing poetry for the rest of her life. She just loved the flow of poetry. I don't know what she'd think of some of the poets today!

Harrell: Lyrics and sonnets I think a lot of it was the joy of living and the joy she got out of nature.

Harrell: She loved to be busy. In spite of many years of off-and-on very poor health, she kept busy. She loved people. She never admitted that there was such a thing as a color line, even way back then. She got into some trouble with the Norfolk poets because she invited a very, very distinguished man to come stay with her and give a reading here. His name was William Stanley Braithwaite. There was an uproar because people knew he had colored blood, as they called it then. He was not allowed to stay with her. She couldn't get him to stay, but he did come down and give his reading. He was an anthologist. Every year, he put out an anthology' of poetry.

Harrell: Well, she already had the contacts. I think that's why she was made president of the Poetry Society of Virginia. Robert Frost wrote one his poems up for her and signed it. She framed it--she was proud of it. She was more proud of other people's accomplishments than of her own. She was very proud of her family. She was proud of what she had accomplished to help other poets. I don't think she was proud of being president; she was too busy to be proud!

Harrell: Oh yes - we recall them! We were very young then and we were supposed to be quiet. But, we would listen to them and we met them all, of course. All of them were nice to us, if a little bit bored with us probably. I think Frost and Gogerty were probably the most unusual. Sandburg was such a strong person.

Leitch: Coffin was my favorite. I lived near him for a summer in Maine. I got to know him very well.

Harrell: Coffin was a lovely man. I thought Gogerty was an amazing person. Lizette Woodworth Reese, from Baltimore, was a very fine poet. Edna St. Vincent-Millet was a good friend of my mother's.

Leitch: Southall Wilson was a good friend of hers. He was a professor of English at the University of Virginia for many years. I think he was also active in the Poetry Society of Virginia. She, of course, had literary contacts through her family, with members of her family teaching at Yale. Maybe half of the males in the family taught at Yale at some time or another.

Harrell: She did not, however, teach.

Harrell: [They were] mostly romantic and idealistic. I don't think she believed in topical things in poems.

Harrell: No - she always liked to travel. [She] went abroad frequently, but never again in the spirit of adventure, only. She took us to England and Scotland when I was two years old. I don't know how many times they went abroad - eight or ten times, at least.

Leitch: In 1934-1935, they spent a year in England, Scotland, and the Channel Islands. After World War II, they spent several months in England.

Harrell: They traveled as often as my father could get away. After he retired, they were able to go abroad more frequently and stay longer.

Harrell: He was very, very proud of her and liked to hear her read her poems. He was always a gracious host when the poets visited, but he never wrote himself. He also never pretended to understand.

Leitch: The Captain and Mrs. Leitch and their son went out to California in the summer of 1933 to visit their daughter, Barbara, who had married a naval officer. The camper was purchased because they had too many possessions to carry home in the car. So, the camper was bought and towed back to Virginia. It was used for a few years after that.

Harrell: She had a lot more time to write as she grew older. She didn't travel after my father's death. She kept up her correspondence with hundreds of friends and other poets.

Even though she didn't go to so many meetings, people came to her. She did write a lot, but she rewrote a great deal more then, I think, than she did in her earlier years.

Leitch: She was very much interested in younger poets. I don't think she specifically encouraged them to come to her, but I think they came to her because they wanted to. She spent a great deal of time with them, trying to polish them. Some poets in Norfolk now, who are on the wrong side of middle-aged, probably owe a good deal of their polish to her instruction.

 

Harrell: Yes - that's true. She was a wonderful teacher, without you realizing that you were really being taught.

Harrell: I think they did. She was active in both the Irene Leitch Society and the Norfolk Society of Arts. A great many of her "students" were members of these organizations. She was very well known in Norfolk. I think she was the best known poet in Norfolk for 20-25 years.

 

Leitch: For her later years, she didn't enter the Irene Leitch Memorial Contest because she'd won virtually all of the prizes for a number of years. She felt it wasn't fair to the younger poets, so she didn't compete in the last 20 years of her life.

Harrell: She left money to give prized to poets after her death, too. Those prizes are still being given every year.

Harrell: I don't think she took any active part. She was a backer of the museum when it was first talked about. I don't think she was really active in any of the other arts, rather than the literature.

Harrell: That's a hard question to answer because, with her being a mother, she was always a little bit less of a mother and more of a poet. Not that she ignored us or anything like that, but we were brought up with governess and nurses. Her health was precarious many years, in spite of all her activity. She had terrible dizzy spells, and she'd fall. That was because of the ear trouble that she had. Her balance was gone.

Harrell: Yes - same as John Glenn, except hers would be worse if she caught a cold, for instance. I think the greatest impact she had was her help with the younger poets and what she did for them. She was known very well in New York. She gave readings in New York at the Poetry Society there. Some of her books were very, very well received by the critics. Her first one made quite a splurge, but she was not one to seek publicity. In the Tidewater area, she was very well known and very outstanding in her field.