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Officiële naam: Brook, Margaret Frances Bacon
Geboortedatum: 1895-05-02
Overlijdensdatum: 1987-01-04
Geslacht: female
Nationaliteit: USA
Geboorteplaats: Ridgefield, Connecticut, USA
Plaats van overlijden: Kennebunk, Maine, USA
Woonplaatsen: Ridgefield, Connecticut, USA
Paris, France
Montreaux-sur-Mer, France
London, England, UK
Opleiding: Kent Place School, Summit, New Jersey, USA
Art Students League, New York City, New York, USA
Beroepen: illustrator
printmaker
painter
writer
satirist
children's book author (toon alle 7)
novelist
Relaties: Bacon, Charles Roswell (father)
Brook, Alexander (husband)
Prijzen en onderscheidingen: American Academy of Arts and Letters Academy Award (Art ∙ 1942)
Guggenheim Fellowship (1934)
Korte biografie: Margaret Frances Bacon was born in Ridgefield, Connecticut to two painters, Charles Roswell Bacon and his wife Elizabeth Chase Bacon, who had met at the Art Students League in New York City. It was an unconventional household. The family moved frequently between the USA and Europe, and Peggy was educated by tutors and later at Kent Place School, a boarding school in New Jersey. In 1915, Peggy enrolled at the Art Students League herself, and studied painting with Kenneth Hayes Miller, John Sloan, George Bellows, and other popular teachers of that era.
While at the League, Peggy made a lifelong circle of friends who included Dorothea Schwarcz, Anne Rector, Betty Burroughs, Katherine Schmidt, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Molly Luce, and Dorothy Varian. Around 1917, Peggy became interested in printmaking and taught herself how to do drypoint -- this served as her primary medium until 1927, after which she preferred pastels. Although she had trained as a painter, Peggy became famous for her prints and drawings, especially her witty caricatures and good-humored satires of celebrities and artists of the 1920s and 1930s. She also wrote and illustrated some 60 children’s books and published poetry and novels for adults. Her 1952 mystery novel The Inward Eye was nominated for an Edgar Award. Her popular drawings appeared in many national magazines such as The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and Fortune. She also taught for more than 30 years. Her drawings, paintings, and prints were frequently exhibited in galleries across the USA and are found today in the permanent collections of many museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Brooklyn Museum.

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The ghost of Opalina; or Nine lives door Peggy Bacon

I'd remembered The Ghost of Opalina from my schooldays and finally found a copy back in 1981. I read it again last year. Peggy Bacon also illustrated the book. There are full page illustrations, half-page ones, and many margin illustrations that allow you to see what the characters look like.

The book opens with three modern [1966] children, Phillip, Ellen, and Jeb Finley, moving from the city to an old house near a village called Heatherfield. The children are given an upstairs room in the wing that still doesn't have electricity for a playroom. They're also given an old red velvet chair that their parents found in that paneled room. It's five-year-old Jeb who notices the kitty with the amazing opal eyes first. The cat casts as much light as a candle, but she can be seen only when it's dark. Opalina has the copious self-esteem of most cats. She tells the children that she is a Very Important Presence. She also sleeps a lot. I like the fact that this ghost of an 18th century cat uses old-fashioned figures of speech.

Opalina came to the house when her lovely rich owner, Angelica, married Ben Trumbull, who had inherited it from his father. Ben has a nasty brother named Saul who was cruel to Opalina and to Angelica's young orphaned cousin, Horace, after he moved back in in 1754. Saul built the wing where the playroom is. Saul is Up to No Good and it's up to Opalina to do something about it.

Opalina's next tale is set in 1766, when Angelica's frivolous Aunt Selina and her pampered pooch, Tootsie, move in. Aunt Selina has a suitor, the mincing, flowery Sir Humphrey Pomme de Terre [for those of you who didn't have to study French in school, a pomme de terre (apple of the earth/ground) is a potato. Ben is suspicious of this fellow and doesn't want him hanging around his wife's aunt. Is Sir Humphrey what he seems?

You'll probably love the scene where two of Ben's children pretend to be Sir Humphrey courting Aunt Selina, but Sir H is not amused. Worse, he blames it on Horace and demands they duel, even though poor Horace is no match for him.

By the way, the names of Opalina's last litter of kittens, Daffy, Downy, and Dilly, probably came from 'daffy down dilly,' an old English colloquialism for daffodil.

We jump again to 1785, when Phoebe and Jim, two of Ben and Angelica's grandchildren, are the next subject. Theirs is the adventure of the rowboat. Their game of pirates takes an unpleasant turn when they meet Mr. Murphy, who is as ugly in heart as he is of face. I laughed aloud at what Opalina did to Murphy.

Skipping over to life number 6, in 1880, we meet the wild twins, Patrick and Pelley. Their grandparents own Opalina's house and their mother finds it quite convenient to pack the little bundles of energy off to her parents' house for a week. Their adventure, with woodsman Batsy Diggs (a lovely matter of miscommunications and misunderstandings), happens when they're ten years old. The twins have fun, but poor Grandpa's nerves are sorely tried.

The story I remembered the best was about pale, pretty, exquisitely dressed young Cousin Sophy from 1905. Sophy thinks her country cousins are rude bumpkins. Sophy's parents think their tattletale daughter is the perfect little lady, and her aunts and uncles just don't understand why her cousins don't want to play with her. Wait for the grand unmasking....

Opalina saves the day once again in her 8th life, in 1932. I will say no more except that it involves the past.
The last chapter leads to a Halloween that will never be forgotten. We who have loved Opalina are free to think of her still in her velvet chair in the paneled room. She's a very special cat and couldn't possibly be limited to nine lives.… (meer)

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JalenV | 2 andere besprekingen | Sep 22, 2023 |

The Ghost of Opalina, or Nine Lives door Peggy Bacon

Totally loved this as a kid!

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caedocyon | 2 andere besprekingen | Jul 18, 2023 |

Blue Hill {short story} door Peggy Bacon

A favorite story from childhood about how a snail gets to a far away place it has always wanted to go.

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aulsmith | Apr 15, 2014 |

The Ghost of Opalina, or Nine Lives door Peggy Bacon

When Phillip, Ellen and Jeb Finley move from the city to a large, rambling house in the country, they gain an unexpected friend and guardian in Opalina, "a diaphanous being from another world, made of the finest grade of atmosphere, a limpid lightsome spirit." The ghost of a Persian cat who lived two hundred years before, Opalina relates the history of the house to the Finley children, beginning in 1750, when it was owned by the Trumbull family.

With plotting younger brothers and secret chambers, false accusations and make-believe noblemen, the early years in the life of the house are filled with colorful incident. Soon passing to the Paisley family, Opalina's house is the scene of both wild childhood adventure and sedate elderly existence, before being sold to the Cumberlands. Generation follows generation, as Montagues replace Cumberlands, and then give way to Pankeys. Young people grow up and have their own children, forgetting - those who ever knew her - the extraordinary feline presence who guards the house. But she does not forget them...

Part ghost-story and part historical fiction, The Ghost of Opalina is a delightful juvenile novel: an entertaining mixture of matter-of-fact children's adventures and delicious supernatural thrills. Young readers will thrill to the story of Opalina foiling the dishonest Saul Trumbull's scheming in 1750, relish the tale of Pelley and Patrick Montague's sojourn in the woods with lovable hermit Batsy Diggs in 1880, and enjoy seeing the superior Sophy Bannister get her comeuppance in 1905.

The pleasure of reading - already considerable - is enhanced by Peggy Bacon's charming illustrations, which include full and half-page drawings, as well as margin portraits depicting the main characters of each chapter. All in all, The Ghost of Opalina was a delightful reading experience, and given how difficult it is to obtain, I can only hope that some enterprising publisher decides to reprint it. Never was there a title more worthy!… (meer)