I'm writing this week's post in the company of my parents' cat, Edgar Winter. My friend Ed is technically a cat, but we like to call him "the cog" because he acts like a dog in many ways. He wags his tail when he's happy, which combines very oddly with the purring. I also maintain that he's part Klingon, because when he wants attention he is very hard to deter. (He clings on. Therefore, a Klingon.) He also really dislikes to be home alone for extended periods of time, so here I am.
Anyway, he's supervising this post, in between monitoring squirrel activity in the side yard and taking his fifteenth nap of the day. My subject has nothing to do with cats, so he's not overly enthused. I, on the other hand, am delighted with it. Today we're talking about a woman born and raised in Pennsylvania, who spent part of her life in Northampton County, and who lacked much in the way of formal training yet nevertheless emerged as a prolific, talented, and acclaimed writer of history. You know, kind of like I'm trying to do.
Many members of Henry and Etta's family were exceptional, including all six of their children. Harry, the eldest, was a prominent Philadelphia lawyer, one of the founders of the law firm known today as Faegre Drinker, as well as a chamber music composer. James was a successful banker and founding executive of his own firm, J. B. Drinker & Co., in Philadelphia. Cecil founded the Harvard School of Public Health. Philip co-invented the iron lung. Elder daughter Aimee Ernesta was an interior designer and the host of World War II radio program "Commando Mary." Both Henry and Etta each had a sister who was a notable artist; Catherine Ann Drinker was a painter and the first woman to teach at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, while Cecilia Beaux was a celebrated portraitist with a number of pieces in the National Gallery. And Henry's great-grandmother, Elizabeth Sandwith Drinker, was a diarist who chronicled many events of the Revolutionary War during her life in Philadelphia, including the British invasion of the city in 1777. (She, like her great-great-granddaughter, is the subject of a PHMC marker, so I'm looking forward to telling her story.)
But of all the remarkable family, it's Catherine who is the subject of today's post. Her marker stands on the grounds of the university, recalling her childhood spent there. She was an avid musician, studying the violin at both the Peabody Institute and the Julliard School of Music, and she seemed poised to pursue a musical career. Instead, she gave it up as a career in 1919 in order to marry one of her father's colleagues, Ezra Bowen, who was Lehigh's Chair of Economics. She continued to give violin lessons and write about music, and she and her husband had two children, also named Ezra and Catherine.
The marriage began to deteriorate after several years, and the couple divorced in the 1930s. Around the same time, Catherine started her rise to fame as an author. (Whether or not that had any connection to the dissolution of her marriage, I can't determine.) She was never taught writing in any formal setting; she didn't even have any sort of academic background, other than being the daughter of a university president. She nevertheless poured her energy into researching and writing biographies of historical figures. Initially this effort focused on musicians, such as Tchaikovsky; she also wrote a novel, Rufus Starbuck's Wife, and a retrospective of her own time as a chamber musician, called Friends and Fiddlers.
In 1957, she received the Philadelphia Award, an annual prize given to a resident of Philadelphia for their community service. The following year, she received the U.S. National Book Award for Nonfiction for her book The Lion and the Throne: The Life and Times of Sir Edward Coke. (If you're not familiar with the gentleman, you're not alone; he was a prominent lawyer in England during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James VI/I.) That was also the year she was inducted into Philadelphia's American Philosophical Society.
Catherine was at work on another biography, this time of Benjamin Franklin, when she died unexpectedly in 1973. She was at her home in Haverford when the end came, and her unfinished work was published the following year under the title of The Most Dangerous Man in America: Scenes From the Life of Benjamin Franklin. She declined to be interred beside her husband in Arlington Cemetery and instead rests in Montgomery County, in Bala Cynwyd's West Laurel Hill Cemetery. Her daughter Catherine, the wife of George Prince of Washington state, died of melanoma in 1974; son Ezra, who was a well-known writer and editor for Sports Illustrated, died in 1996. According to Catherine's obituary, she had four grandchildren at the time of her death. But she's also survived by her many books and essays - and a blue and gold marker that stands where she once lived.
Reaman, Denise. "Milestones Women Have Achieved at Lehigh." The Allentown Morning Call, April 20, 1997.
Catherine Drinker Bowen's obituary in the New York Times
Except where indicated, all writing and photography on this blog is the intellectual property of Laura Klotz. This blog is written with permission of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. I am not employed by the PHMC. All rights reserved.
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