(1) THEN YOUR TIPSY LITTLE SCRAWL PEEKS OUT OF THE MAIL.

                                                   THE CONCERT

                                    Yelchior, dressed in his black and his white

                                    Sat down on his skinny old shanks

                                    And sang, the old dear, without worry or fear--

                                    And, too, I might add, without thanks.

                                 

                                    Outlined on the rail by a bleary-eyed moon,

                                    He sang to a distant Maltese;

                                    Keeping time with his tail, he emitted a wail

                                    In eleven malevolent keys.

                                    When windows flew open and nightcaps leaned out,

                                    He was thrilled to his flattered old roots,

                                    And he took a deep bow when his mounting me-ow

                                    Brought a thundering salvo of boots.

                                   "They cannot but recognize genius like mine!"

                                    Thought Yelchior, dodging a shoe;

                                    "Since they all stay awake for my talented sake,

                                    I will now rend and encore or two!"

                                    All evening he sang, but as dawn staggered in,

                                    (Worn out by the concert, I guess),

                                    He finished content, and he thought as he went:

                                    "I am surely a howling success!"

     In 1949, Ernestine sent some of her verses to Sandie and Patrick Wells, of KWKW radio in Los Angeles.  They became enthusiastic fans.  Their program, "Love's Notebook," was heard three times a week and featured almost anything in good poetry form, including contemporaries among the immortals.  Sandie began writing breezy letters to Ernestine  that lifted her spirits.

October 31, 1949
Dear Ernestine,
    "Neat Mrs. Murphy" will make her debut over KWKW on Wednesday, Nov. 2, '49.  And bless her neat soul for the laugh she provokes.

     We delight in your poetry—your choice of words, your humor.  And we only hope our constant praise doesn't ruin your head size.  If all the verses of Solomon's Travels are as cute as the one you enclosed, please DO let us see it—even if it takes the whole fifteen minutes, I'm sure the audience would chuckle as we did over the four liner we saw.  I'm trying to get our appreciation across to you so that you can know—even before your first poem's to be read—that you have two staunch fans here in L. A. and will soon have many more.             

                When Mrs. Murphy scrubs the floor     

                And wants no foot to touch it,

                She nimbly leaps from door to door,

                In order not to smutch it.              

                When she retires, she snuffs the light

                To let the darkness soothe her—

                Then sits beside the bed all night,

                To keep the covers smoother.

     Before long, according to TV-Radio Life’s reports, listeners were "topping their list of favorites with Edgar Allen Poe, the Brownings, Ogden Nash, Richard Armour, and Ernestine Cobern Beyer."      

June 22, 1951:

Dear gay, mad, tipsy lil' Ernestine,

     (Well, now the cat is out of the bag, that's just how we talk about you around our house.)  It's funny the way I approach writing to you.  I'll be thinking -- ugh -- mail to answer, and then your tipsy little scrawl will peek out among the envelopes. And while no one's looking I'll sneak out your letter and answer it, feeling quite like we'd left a pile of dirty dishes in the sink and had sat down in the midst of chaos to have an extra cup of coffee and some conversation. 

     You asked regarding comments on Solomon.  Well, we have one letter here from a listener, which arrived the day after your program, and I quote from same: "We enjoyed your wonderful program last night, it was just perfect."  She didn't mention "Solomon" by name, but you were the program, my dear, so I don't know what else she could have been referring to.  Pat said even our engineer laughed aloud.  (We keep him as a gauge -- when we get him to chuckle, we figure it must be amusing because usually he grimaces or scowls at us.)

     When you get tired of Jeeves, perhaps you could will him to me.  He seems like a most invaluable little guy to have about!

     Such clever rhyming in "When Santa Got Stuck" -- "buoyance and annoyance," "hysterics and derricks," "adventure and censure." Ohhh, how things like that please us.

     Well, my dear, the truant officer just pointed a glaring finger at the stack of mail yet to be answered and so I leave ya for now.   Gleefully, Sandie and Patrick

[from "Solomon's Travels"^*]

                But Solomon Solomon chuckled and crowed

                And read to himself with delight,

                            So he failed to perceive when his chimney took leave  

    And his roof sailed away like a kite!         

     Ernestine's financial state involved a continual balancing act, steadied now and then by loans reluctantly accepted and rapidly repaid.  "You have enough responsibilities, Ed dear," she would say to my husband.  "I want to paddle my own canoe."

(from Training the Subconscious Mind")

     Writing for children is pleasant work but not particularly remunerative.  Nevertheless, I continue at it because it is, I think, what I am supposed to do, what I am capable of doing.  The good Lord created the lark that soars and sings in the sky—and also, the cricket that chirps in the grass.  What matters most to me is that I often feel, as I take dictation from Jeeves, that I am in touch with something outside of myself. 

     “There is one mind common to all men,” said Emerson, who compared our individual minds to the inlets in an ocean of universal Mind. Edison, too, believed he got his ideas from a source outside himself.  “Ideas are in the air,” he would say.  Reading along these lines, I grow more and more interested in what I cannot see, touch, hear, smell and taste.   I am intrigued by what my five senses cannot tell me.  I ponder the mystery of man's mind, yearning to comprehend.  I guess you might say I am busy, trying to unscrew the unscrutable! [Correct spelling is inscrutable, but I prefer Mom's.]

                         Flight

               A beauty beyond all believing

               Has startled my eyes:

               The sight of a falling star cleaving

               The slumbering skies.

               A flash!  Then the heavens absorb it.

               I sigh in the night,

               And think of my life's fettered orbit‑‑

                           And the wonder of flight!

     In October of 1951 I received a panicky letter from Los Angeles where Mother had gone to visit Sandie and Pat.

Dear Babs,

     This trip is jinxed!  First the rain!  Waited hours!  One trip canceled, another arranged.  Held up hours before they took off.  Arrived Chicago with 1 min. to catch second plane.  All day from 6 a.m. till the next morning all I had was coffee and a skimpy box luncheon.  I arrived here with my nerves jumping and twitching and my breath alarmingly short.  Heart thumping.   Couldn't sleep — not a wink.  I felt as murderers must.  O—to turn back the clock!  To wake up in Boston!  My stomach felt and still feels as if a fist were knotted in it. .  .. I ask myself do I dare stay a few days to see if I like it better—get over this awful loneliness, hatred of Calif  — do I dare or will I get sick?  If so I'd rather be sick at home than here.  Will see Sandie tonight—with me at the point of tears!  My nerve reserve is evidently small.  Alas that I should learn the hard way!   Darling!  I'm too far away from you!  It's awful!  But I'll work it out—probably will just come home....Mother   

To my husband, she wrote:

Dear Ed,

     The miles and miles of impersonal space oppressed me as I lengthened the distance between myself and those I love most in all the world—you and Barbara and your children, Janeth and little Walter.  I was panicked at first, and was so sick at heart with my first experience with home‑sickness that I was desperately ill—physically.  What power our minds have over our poor bodies.  I felt I must turn around and fly back or die!— literally die!

     But children sent off to camp suffer, I suppose, in the same way, then in a day or so, become adjusted.  Had it not been for the capers my heart kept cutting and for my sleeplessness, my common sense would have comforted me—the knowledge that I would adjust.  I was afraid I would be sick in bed in a stranger's house before that took place!  Adding to the situation was a feeling of fright since my money had dwindled alarmingly.  In panic I wired you, and you, dear Ed, answered with touching promptness.  I have now the wherewithal to make it possible to return—and that being the case, the panic is vanishing and healing, begun.  My nervous margin is small, I guess, and I was frightened to recognize a shortness of breath and tension which were forerunners of my break‑down a few years ago.  To be frank, I feared a second.  I assure you, however, that I'm all right now, and believe I'll have a marvelous winter.

     My landlady and I clicked immediately.  Isn't that nice?  As for Sandie and Patrick they are all I had hoped and more.  Sandie said "Wait till you meet my poets!  You won't have a moment to be lonely in!"  

       I rarely received a letter from Mother that wasn't accompanied by an entertaining rhyme.  One spring day in 1952 I was treated to "The Concert," a six stanza poem about a cat named Yelchior who spent the night serenading an unappreciative audience.

     "Dear Babs," Mom wrote, " I don't know whether this is any good or not, but it was fun writing it."

And what fun it was reading it, especially this stanza's tongue-in-cheek inside rhyme:  

                                 Outlined on the rail by a bleary-eyed moon,

                     He sang to a distant Maltese;                               

                     Keeping time with his tail, he emitted a wail

                     In eleven malevolent keys.

      Ernestine's sense of fun was accompanied by a sense of ambivalence about the meaning of life.  Who knew for sure, she asked herself in "Query Without Answer":

Is life a plan whose point we lack?

A dream—a blunder?

Why stretch the mind upon the wrack           

Of fruitless wonder?

Is death, man's enemy and friend,

Awaiting, grinning,

The unimaginable End

Of no Beginning?

     And yet at other times her poems expressed more confidence.  As the daughter, then mother of a preacher (my brother, Dick), she yearned for a faith in the hereafter.                                         

                                        Limited Vision

          Once upon a morning    

          Not long ago, I stood 

         And marveled at the beauty 

         Of mountain-range and wood.

         
         Today, alas, the valley

         Is all that I can see.

         The mountains all have vanished

         That once looked down at me.                   

          
         But they are there, though hidden;

         They have not taken flight.

         A veil of mist surrounds them

        And shuts them from my sight.                  

        O learn, my soul, this lesson:

        God, like the mountain-range

        Will never, never vanish,

        His glory never change.                     

                                If mists of doubt obscure Him,

        Let me not trust Him less,

        Nor let my clouded vision

        Hide His foreverness.

      In a letter written to Janeth, after attending the funeral of our Aunt Ruth, she let her family know how she felt about such rituals:

      I am more than ever of the opinion that funerals, except for the truly great, border on the barbaric.  I want nothing at all -- no flowers -- no display of my hideous old overcoat,  nothing but a prayer from the family, and that inaudibly.  Of course, if darling Dick feels hurt by this, I'm willing for him to pray aloud -- only to the family.  No friends, nothing.  I will not be there.  Either I will be extinct or "on my way."  I truly believe in the latter idea due to certain experiences which (to me) furnish proof of further progress.     

      Whichever fate it is, I still want only a thought now and then in some loved one's heart.
     That you have in full measure, dearest Mother.

(2) I'M WAITING FOR A GIRL WHO CAN SING AND WRITE POEMS.

       In January of 1953, the editor of Child Life, Ernest Frawley, wrote to Ernestine:  "There is no doubt that your talents in verse are truly outstanding.  I believe you stand a good chance of becoming the greatest children's poet of the day . . . ."

     The next two years were busy and productive.  Ernestine Beyer wrote several books for children, continued to appear in Child Life and other children's magazines, and was honored by awards from The National League of American Pen Women.   In the spring of 1972, she received first prize for a religious poem and was invited to a banquet in Washington, D. C.

     Ernestine described her trip to Washington in a talk she called “Thank-you, Jeeves.”

     I spent the night of April 10 at the Mayflower Hotel.   In the afternoon, buses took three hundred Pen Women to the White House where attractive young ladies escorted us from room to room so we could see the entire lower floor with its beautiful portraits and famous mementos of the Presidents who have lived there.  At 2:30 p.m. we formed a line to meet Mrs. Nixon whom I had not seen before except on TV.  As I took her hand I marveled at her youth and beauty.  Moving on, I saw a long table set with exquisite taste.  We were served tea and many different kinds of cookies.  I thought it all utterly delightful.

     After the tea, we returned to the Mayflower just in time to dress for the Letters Banquet; and there I had the pleasure of meeting many compatible women, some of whom marched up to the platform to receive a prize.  When my name was called, I did the same.

    I had planned to return to Boston the following day, but as I was packing my bags, I noticed that the telephone was flashing red.  I thought there was something wrong with it.  When I picked up the receiver a voice informed me that Congressman James A. Burke wanted to speak to me.

     "There must be some mistake," I said.  "He must have me confused with someone else."

     "Don't hang up!" said the voice hastily.  "Here he is now!"

     I still felt sure there had been a mistake.  But Congressman Burke insisted he wanted to see me—wanted, in fact, to have me as his guest for lunch at the Cannon Building.  "I read the article about you in the Herald-Traveler. If I am delayed a bit," he said, "my assistant, John King, will look after you, and bring you to the dining room."

     Still perplexed, I accepted his invitation to lunch.  Congressman Burke sat on my left, John King on my right, and on his right sat Mrs. Burke, our gracious hostess.

     Congressman Burke talked to me about his son's interest in writing poetry.  He questioned me as to how I had happened to turn to writing.  From the article, he knew that in my early years I had been a singer.  I told him that after my husband passed away and many problems and trials confronted me, the "sing" had gone out of me. It was then that I returned to my first love, writing.

     I then told him of my discovery that the subconscious mind could be of great help to anyone engaged in creative effort.  "Just before I go to sleep, I ask my subconscious mind to work out a story or poem.  In the morning, I take dictation.  All I do is furnish the pencil."

     Realizing I was neglecting Mr. King on my left, I turned to him.  John King was one of the handsomest young men I've ever seen.  Not only was he tall and graceful, but he reminded me of a character in one of my stories.  Many years ago, I wrote about a spoiled little princess who had dimples at the corners of her mouth that appeared whenever she compressed her lips to say a word beginning with B or P.  It was useless for her to cry "Begone!" or "Piffle!" for those dimples popped out and turned the words into a compliment.   Mr. King had dimples exactly like that.

     "Have you any sons who like to write poetry?" I asked him.

     "I'm not even married!" he replied.

     "How did you ever escape?" I asked.

     Looking down at me, he said:  "I'm waiting for a girl who can sing and write poems."

     After lunch, Congressman Burke took me all around the building, introducing me to important people who run this country's business.  I met Wilbur Mills, Chairman of Ways and Means, Congresswoman Louise Day Hicks, Congressman Broyhill, and many others.  After I had made the rounds, Congressman Burke took me outside and asked me to stand on the steps of the Cannon Building and have my picture taken with him and John King.

     With many thrilling things to think about, I returned to Boston, believing the adventure concluded.  But it wasn't.  I was busy writing, one day, when suddenly a verse that obviously belonged in "The Pool" was given to me by Jeeves.  Evidently I had failed to take his dictation correctly!  What now appeared on my writing tablet was what should have been the closing verse of "The Pool."

     Yet even without this last verse, which so belatedly "came" to me, the poem had won an important prize, and had been accepted by Ideals Magazine.   I rewrote "The Pool," adding the new verse that I think closes the poem with a tender simplicity it didn't have before.  I mailed it to Ideals, and soon received a letter, saying this revised version would be put in the files.  It may be a long time before it is published, but I hope when it appears in print that my last version will have been the editor's choice.   I have to play fair with my good servant, Jeeves, who works so faithfully with no salary save the wages of my thanks.
      Ernestine was puzzled when she received a large volume of the Congressional Record after her return  from Washington.  Then she turned to the page noted on the cover and found a warm tribute.
[I tried to enlarge the printed test but got no cooperation.  Mom (or Jeeves), ever the perfectionist when it came to her poetry, amended a line to "luminously lie" in the quoted stanzas from the prize-winning poem.]

     Toward the end of Congressman James Burke's tribute to my mother, he says, "I am being serious when I say that meeting her yesterday made my whole day brighter, that much easier, and this is not a quality in a person that one encounters too often or forgets too quickly.  I hope that she is with us many more years and continues to share with us all her vitality, all her enthusiasm, all her spontaneity. . . ."
"My Isha" by Dr. Kathleen Malley-Morrison

      Throughout my childhood, my maternal grandmother, known as “Isha” to her grandchildren, spent her summers with my family.  She was a magical poet, whose clickety-clacketing on her typewriter drew me to her room like a magnet.  I often visited her in the evening to hear what she was working on and then went back in the morning to see whether Jeeves had helped her through whatever block was interfering with her progress.  She always made me feel that, like Jeeves, I helped her perfect her poems.  Hardly able even to talk without slipping into verse, she once wrote this poem about our collaboration:        

                         To My Granddaughter

Kathie's eyes are bright, alive, her manner, blithely charming,

And though her years are only five, her wisdom is disarming.

When she, at times, invades my room, I leave this peaceful place;

Astride Imagination's broom, I soar with her in space.

Within my own she lays her hand, and with a compass true,

She guides me to that happy land which long ago I knew.

Contemporaries, she and I! For though my hair is white,

Whenever Kathie passes by, she leaves me young and bright!

       From the late 40s to the early 70s, Isha's rollicking verses appeared in all the popular children's magazines.  She also became a regular contributor to adult publications like The Ladies' Home Journal. Except during my recalcitrant adolescence, we remained  close, and the summer after I graduated from college, she sent me a letter with the following remembrance:  
      I've been thinking of you as you used to be at ten -- my unsparing, always right little critic.  Heaving a story a second time you would state -- oh so truly -- "You spoiled it, Isha.  I liked it better before!"  And I remember a time when you lay on my arm, one long-ago afternoon.  No word had been spoken between us for quite awhile.  Then suddenly you said: "Isha, are you thinking about sheep?"  And I had been!  I'd been lying there, staring at the walls which roofed my bed, thinking that I'd like to have a fence painted with lambs going over it—little lambs to count as I went to sleep.  You had read my mind with utter accuracy!   So all these years you have nestled in my heart, having a most special place.  I yearn, now, for your success and for your happiness.  Any good that comes to you will be a good that comes to me.  Be sure to share what you can with me.  A joy shared is a joy doubled. . . . .

       As Ernestine grew older, it pained her when magazines accepted her verses, then failed to publish them for a year or longer.  Shortly before her death in December, 1972, she wrote to a magazine that had accepted a verse the previous winter. In reply to her plaintive query, the editor said:  "I am sorry we cannot publish your poem as soon as you would like, but we have to plan our layouts in advance."  The poet wasn't happy with responses like this.  "How long do they expect me to wait?  Do they think I'm immortal?”

      Ah, Mom, some of us do . . . Some of us do.         

 [from "The Pool," closing verse]

                                  Deep darkness falls.  I turn at last to leave,

          Pursued by dreams which I can not forget.

          I do not stay to meditate or grieve.

          I am at peace although my eyes are wet.

          For I have learned how like the pool am I—

          The pool which faithful to the distant sky,

          Still glows with gold although the sun has set.

June 5, 1977

to my sister Janeth                                                                                 

      I have started re‑reading P. J. Wodehouse's books.  He is such a delight that I feel thrilled, rather than overwhelmed, at the thought that I have seventy more to go.  His humor is timeless, his Bertie Wooster hilarious, his Jeeves priceless.   How could Mom miss with her own personal Jeeves working with her subconscious, helping her to extract its latent gems?  As I laugh aloud over The Inimitable Jeeves or Carry On, Jeeves, I have the lovely feeling that Mom is smiling over my  shoulder . . . .                                         

(3) "ED, DEAR, I'D GIVE YOU EVERY CENT I OWN, BUT I WILL NOT SELL MY SOUL."

October 11, 1960

          Mom’s book, Aesop with a Smile, is proving to be a big hit.  It was chosen by the Book Committee of the Child Study Assoc. of America to appear on its list of outstanding books of the year.  Mother has been interviewed on the radio by the Lady of the Bookshelf and has made a tape for another radio program called “Dimensions.”    She is so thrilled over these developments she tells me she can hardly sleep nights.  Success has a wonderful effect on her temperament.  In the past, when I was in my irritable time of the month and replied sharply to a question (How I wish I had never done this!) or an impatient grandchild hurt her feelings, she would go to her room to lick her wounds or to write a poem such as “Bringing Up Mother.”  Now nothing fazes her.
                                      My children don't purposely pain me

                                   They mean to be patient, I know,

                                   As gently but firmly they train me

                                   In the way that a mother should go.

                                   They say my illusions are many; 

                                   They smile at the things I believe.

                                   My reasoning process (if any),

                                   They laughingly label naive.

                                   Do you think I resent them?  No, never.

                                   I accept all the training they give,

                                   For I hope to be modern and clever

                                   By the time that I die -- if I live!   

 Circa 1960   
     In the interest of continuing peace and harmony, I recently suggested to Mom that we avoid a sore subject: politics.  Although Ed intends to vote for Kennedy, I had been adopting an on-the-fence attitude, planning to base my final decision on the debates.  Mother, having been a Republican all her life, has been trying to influence me by giving me anti-Catholic, anti-Kennedy articles clipped from the Christian Science Monitor (“Haven’t you always felt they were very fair and unbiased, Babs?”), urging me to read the latest fascinating issue of Time, and saying to Ed when he gave her a pro-Kennedy argument:  “Ed, dear, I’d give you every cent I own, but I will not sell my soul.”

     Of course, this was said half-facetiously, but nevertheless it implies that God is on her side and the Devil on ours.  I mean Ed’s. I find myself digging my heels in and sticking up for Kennedy out of sheer contrariness.

     Moreover, now that I have seen the first two TV debates, I must say “our boy” strikes me as being stronger, more sure of himself, and more courageous and sincere than Mr. Nixon.  If I am wise, though, I will keep these sentiments to myself.  In a town like Cohasset, a Democrat ranks one step below a traitor.

(4) MOM USED TO SAY SHE COULD PAPER A WALL WITH HER REJECTION SLIPS.

To Paige 
rhapsodyenbleuclair.blogspot.com
May 25, 2015
     You, my dear Paige, have not only a gift for writing but also a gift for making a friend feel like she's dancing along on air with no need for her walker.
     News re activity books based on Mom's poems: The first two, Poetry with a Purpose and Rhyme Time can be bought on Amazon for pennies, but the the third, Read Me a Rhyme, Please, is a different story. Between the years 1993 to 2004, I submitted to it to 60 different publishers. Many of the rejection letters spoke warmly of Ernestine Beyer’s talents as a poet and invited me to try them again. I did this so often that my submissions neared a total of a hundred. I saw my local post office clerk oftener that I saw my children. I recalled how my mom used to say she could paper a wall with her rejection slips. 
     But now, with the publication of Read Me a Rhyme, Please on my blog, I've discovered that Amazon has been charging approximately $30 a copy, which means the supply is limited.  Teachers and parents hung on to their copies.
     In 1928, Mom wrote a discouraged letter to my out-of-town father.
     "All my poems are coming back and back. Each time it is like a kick in the stomach. I know just how Dempsey felt when Tunney pummeled his bad eye! I wish it didn't affect me that way. I almost think I'll have to give it up, I get so blue. I have to lecture myself to keep going . . . perhaps lecturing should be my vocation. It is sad to think yourself a skylark and find you are only a mud one!"
     Oh, how I empathized with my mother 75 years later. Every time I saw my address on a returned manila envelope -- oof! It was like a punch in the solar plexus.
     In December of 2004, I had given up and nearly forgotten my quest, when I received a call from Gary Wilson of Humanics Learning. "We are going to publish your book,” he announced. I almost had to grab my desk to keep from falling off my chair. Read Me a Rhyme, Please appeared in bookstores, schools, and libraries in September, 2006 and was a runaway success..
     We’ve come a long way, Mom. Couldn’t have done it without you.

(5) MOTHER FOUND HERSELF WITHOUT FUNDS FOR A CHRISTMAS DINNER.

     Ernestine was determined to paddle her own canoe, and paddle it she did, no matter how turbulent the waters.  There had been that December 24th in Coral Gables when Mother found herself without funds for a Christmas dinner. "It doesn"t matter, Mom," said Janeth, my teenage sister.  "Let's just have whatever's on hand."  Ernestine—or Jeeves, her name for her subconscious mind—came up with an ingenious solution: she bought canned goods at a market where she had credit, then returned them to another store for a "refund."  She would laughingly confess in the distant future, but at the time, Janeth had no idea where the windfall had come from.

From "Training the Subconscious Mind" by Ernestine Cobern Beyer: 

      Writing for children is pleasant work but not particularly remunerative.  Nevertheless, I continue at it because it is, I think, what I am supposed to do, what I am capable of doing.  The good Lord created the lark that soars and sings in the sky‑‑and  also, the cricket that chirps in the grass.  What matters most to me is that I often feel, as I take dictation from Jeeves, that I am in touch with something outside of myself.