This article first appeared in the Fall 1989 edition of the Castleton Alumni Review. It was written by Castleton’s former Communications Director Ennis Duling.
Children’s writer and artist Christine Price of Castleton was a private person, independent and in touch with nature and her art. Thin and at first glance frail – although to her friends strikingly beautiful – she explored the world and was at home in primitive places. By choice she never completed college, but her knowledge of history and of the world’s cultures was exceptional. Today her name graces the college’s art gallery.
Treasured memories remain in the Castleton community: an image of her outside in winter decorating a spruce tree with popcorn for birds; the gift of an elegant Chinese horse given to a child; her solitary snowshoe tracks in the woods. Her books can be found in many children’s libraries; many of the works of non-Western art which she collected in her travels, she gave to the college.
Christine’s father, Clair Price, was a European correspondent for The New York Times during the 1920s and 30s, covering everything from the British Admiralty to archaeological discoveries in Greece. He was, in a phrase by Professor Emeritus Robert Patterson, “105 percent English, although from the Midwest [he was born in LaCrosse, Wisconsin.]” He left much of his personal library, rich with sources on the Balkans, to Castleton State College. Christine’s mother, Hilda, who was English, was a children’s author herself.
Born in London in 1928, Christine grew up in England, attended English schools, and visited castles and village churches with her mother and sister Ursula. “[She] was quite shy as a child,” Ursula recalls, “but got over it in adult life, though she was never forward.” She retained a British accent throughout her life. The Prices moved to the United States soon after the start of World War II, and finally settled in Castleton in the early-1950s in a house on Frisbie Hill which they jokingly called “Bat Mansion.”
At 16 she spent one year at Vassar College before announcing that she did not need a college degree to be an illustrator. Three years later, while studying at the Art Students’ League in New York, she illustrated her first book, Robert Schumann and Mascot Ziff, written by Opal Wheeler and published by E.P. Dutton. Many of the nearly 30 books she wrote (and many more than that which she illustrated) were published by Dutton. Charles Scribner’s Sons, another prestigious house, published a series of her books in the 1970s. Still, other works were published by and benefited UNICEF.
Ann Troy, her last editor at E.P. Dutton and now senior editor at Clarion Books, remembers the intensity with Christine imagined her books. “She was not open to changes in text if the changes were wording. She wrote and rewrote until she decided the rhythm was correct.” A suggested change in wording might be rejected with the comment, “No, because when I read this, it makes music.”
You can open any one of Christine’s books at random and be certain that she was hearing the music of language as she wrote.
In a book by Christine Price, the illustrations are always integral to the text. Although they stand alone beautifully – as do the prints from the Castleton collection used to illustrate this article – her artistic sense can only be fully realized when text and art come together. In her most popular series, Made In …, she ranged around the world and through history to tell the story of everyday objects. This series includes Made in the Middle Ages, Made in the Renaissance, Made in Ancient Greece, Made in West Africa, and her last book, Made in the South Pacific.
Her books are now sadly out of print, but they have not lost the ability to fascinate children. While writing this article, I read several to my own boys, ages seven and eleven, and found that after dinner they would start demanding another Christine Price story. The Rich Man and the Singer, in which she edited and illustrated Ethiopian folktales told by Masfin Habte-Mariam was a favorite.
At times there was something intimidating about Christine, perhaps the shyness of her childhood misunderstood or her fierce independence. She was aloof and could not abide pretentiousness. Mildred Schemm, a novelist who taught at Castleton for a year in the 1950s and is now retired and living in Montana, was warned that Christine was not fond of company and probably would not wish to speak before a class of college students. As it was, Mrs. Schemm was made welcome in Christine’s home, and later Christine held her class spellbound. The two became close friends and working on writing projects together.
In the late 1960s, Christine built her own ranch-style house on Frisbie Hill. It was small, simple, and close to nature. “She lived a life of the mind and spirit,” Mrs. Schemm says. There was an image of a saint over the mantel, but only one small mirror and no television. It was a place to work and think, and it expressed her taste.
She did not seem to be concerned with her own comfort. She drove an old Ford, and when she went to Manhattan to meet with publishers, she rode the bus and stayed at the YMCA. Her editors made an effort to see that she ate well on these trips, for she was increasingly thin. At times, she kept her wristwatch on her upper arm. Still, several friends recalled how stunning she could be, wearing a piece of African jewelry on a leather thong.
But although she appeared to frail for adventure, she traveled the world to places that seem more fabled than real: Katmandu, Surinam, Ethiopia (where sister Ursula and husband Michael Roberts lived for three years), Papua New Guinea, Yucatan, the South Pacific. As in everything else, she was not pretentious in her travel. She would give her neighbors a day or two warning that she was leaving and then would take the bus to the airport. Her books are the best evidence of how sensitive she was to other cultures. She was not a tourist who skimmed the surface and then hurried on, but someone who tried to enter into the spirit of the places she visited. Most trips resulted in books.
Her final departure from Castleton was much like the others. In the summer of 1978, she announced she was moving to New Mexico and promptly left before any fuss could be made. She died of throat cancer in January of 1980.
Hundreds of objects of everyday life, which she gathered on her travels, are now part of Castleton’s Christine Price Collection. They are traditional works of art, but at the same time household items – spoons and cups and combs. Many have a story attached. The carved and brightly decorated canoe paddle from the Marowjine River in Surinam is a woman’s paddle because every woman should have her own canoe to go from the village to the fields of corn and cassava. The large bowl from northern Kenya was used to mix milk and blood, the food of the warriors of Turkana. The coconut container, purchased by Christine in Honiara in the Solomon Islands, is for powdered lime for use in chewing betelnut and was shared by a group of people.
Castleton has always appreciated the great value of this collection, but it wasn’t until the arrival of historian Mary Allen McMaster last fall that the college had a professor whose interests were similar to Christine’s. While researching her dissertation, Dr. McMaster lived in Zaire and traced the relationship of the languages through the terms used by artisans who make everyday objects such as pottery. Like Christine, she brought to her work a deep respect for the culture she was studying. And like Christine, she wants to communicate the accomplishments of non-Western cultures to Americans, particularly children.
When she first heard of the existence of the college, she was drawn to it as a scholar with a specialization in Africa. But the more she learned of Christine Price, the more she began to take a personal as well as professional interest. “Christine’s and my feeling for non-Western material is just like this,” Dr. McMaster says, holding her hands with the fingers interwoven. “It’s uncanny. I feel like I’m a soulmate of hers.”
This summer, thanks to special funding from the college, Dr. McMaster has been working in a room of the Florence Black Science Center cataloging the collection, providing for its safe storage, and arranging for a rotating exhibit to be on continual display. She wants the collection, through slides and videotape, to become a resource for Vermont school children, who do not, in her view, gain much understanding of non-Western cultures.
Such a use would please Christine Price very much.