I had known MacDonald only as the author of the hilarious Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books I loved as a child. But during her lifetime her greatest fame rested on her equally hilarious memoirs for adults. Her first book, The Egg and I, about her comic calamities as the wife of a would-be chicken farmer, was the number one title on the New York Times nonfiction best-seller list for 43 weeks in the late 1940s, selling a million copies during its first year and at one point, according to her biographer Paula Becker, selling at the rate of one book every twenty-two seconds.
It was her second memoir, The Plague and I, that I chose for my light-hearted pandemic reading: MacDonald's account of her eight-month stay in the Firland Sanatorium in Seattle after she was diagnosed with tuberculosis in September 1938, as the single mother of two daughters, ages nine and ten. At that time, the chief cure for this dreaded disease was absolute, fanatically enforced rest for the lungs, which meant lying motionless in bed for month after month, forbidden to read, to write, to laugh, even to cough ("Coughs can be controlled," the stern nurses would insist). Rooms were kept frigid, with windows flung wide open in the most relentlessly cold and rainy weather, so residents felt perpetually half-frozen.
But MacDonald makes her record of life at The Pines (as she calls it in her memoir) so funny that few readers would be able to obey the no-laughing rule while reading it.
The book begins with her statement, "Getting tuberculosis in the middle of your life is like starting downtown to do a lot of urgent errands and being hit by a bus." She goes on to say, "By background and disposition some people are better suited to being hit by a bus than others." For example, her co-worker Doris: Doris's "mother had a little tumor, her father had a 'bad leg,' Doris had a great deal of 'female trouble,' and they all were hoping that Granny had cancer." (Yes, MacDonald's humor rests largely on unflinching, downright scathing observation of human foibles, including her own.) She writes, "To Doris and her family tuberculosis would have been anti-climactic but a definite asset. So of course it was not Doris but I who got tuberculosis." And in Betty's family it was considered a character flaw to be sick, and even worse, to be a self-pitying "saddo" about it.
It's all I can do not to type in paragraph after paragraph of Betty's commentary on her fellow patients at the Pines. I did call my younger son, in Chicago, and ask him if I could read him some of it over the phone, and after an uncomfortable pause, he graciously said, "Well, okay. I mean, sure." I won't do that to you here. Well, maybe just one more line... oh, which one should I choose? All right: here the glamorous new roommate balks at having her long beautiful hair cut off, as the institution rules require. The Charge Nurse chides her: "I think that you are being unfair to your wardmates. You say that your hair cut will make you look like an ugly old hag yet Mrs. Bard [Betty went by her maiden name, despite her failed first marriage to the gentleman chicken farmer] and Miss Sanbo both have had their hair cut and I don't think they look like hags." Eileen then looks at her two roommates: "Well, it didn't improve 'em any." Ha!
So for the past few days I read, and read, and read, and howled with laughter at how funny a plague could be. I closed the book grateful that during my enforced coronavirus isolation I can still walk to the bathroom! And sit up for more than fifteen minutes a day! And sleep at night under heaps of blankets, unlike the shivering residents of the sanitorium! And right this minute I'm in no danger of dying, and even if I were, I wouldn't be leaving two young daughters motherless.
I discovered from Paula Becker's delightful 2016 book, Looking for Betty MacDonald (part biography and part account of her own personal journey to walk in MacDonald's footsteps, visiting all the many homes in which she had resided), that Betty was born right here in Boulder, where I live. A couple of years ago I made a pilgrimage to her birthplace at 723 Spruce Avenue.
I'm going to do my best not to be a "saddo."
And if I ever need a good hearty laugh during the coming weeks under stay-in-place restrictions (or months? or years? some of the patients at the Pines were there for a decade or more), I'll open The Plague and I to any random page and start in reading.
This is so great! Thanks, Claudia!
ReplyDeleteI read that book a few years ago too. Fascinating! I was struck by the fact that male patients were allowed to read more than female patients were.
ReplyDeleteFrom your delightful review of Betty McDonald's The Egg and I, and The Plague and I, I guess I better dust off my long ago purchased copies and get busy reading. I can use a major distraction and an escape into Betty's world.
ReplyDeleteI do remember "The Egg and I" ('twas also made into a movie) and something else of hers that was read aloud to me when I was a kid. Thanks for reminding me.
ReplyDeleteGoing to order this from my local indie right now! Thanks for sharing, Claudia.
ReplyDeleteI love Betty MacDonald! Her books are so well-written and laugh-out-loud funny.
ReplyDeleteI love this, Claudia! How have I missed this. I know the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle Books, but never connected mer with The Egg and I. Isn't there a movie of this, too? I'll check. Interesting about the plague book. My father spent years in a sanitorium with TB -- I think he was the longest term patient they ever had. He told me everyone else either got better or died. Finally he was relassed and a few years later married my mother...
ReplyDeleteThis was lovely, I hope I can find a copy of The Plague and I! In 10th grade, we were assigned The Egg and I, which sounds odd for English class—shouldn’t those readings be all gravitas and teenage despair?—but the teacher clearly loved the book. And I remember to this day the book’s minor characters included the Kettles, who had their own celebrity.
ReplyDeleteAlso read, if you can find copies, of the other Bard titles. Bettys sister Mary also wrote amusingly. One title in particular that I remember is ''Everyone can do anything", a light-hearted memoir of trying to find a job during The Depression. Don't remember if Betty or Mary wrote it. Also memoir of growing up with mining engineer father, who traveled the West for mining jobs, and the stay-at-home, trying-to-cope mother, a fairly laissez-fait parent: Mary and Betty cadged dog biscuits as 'treats', among other 'making do with what you got' solutions. Both authors were a delight.
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