Grace Van Braam Gray, writings by and about
A. C. Haeselbarth’s profile of Miss Grace Van Braam Gray is one of those that piqued my interest (another was Hettie Fithian Cattell). That profile is linked from the Haeselbarth page at 2568, and is the source of the photo shown above. Repeated trawls here and there brought some of her writing over the period 1908-1918 into view, although little about her life.
She wrote under the names Grace Van Braam Gray and Peggy Van Braam. These are my findings at present (20240416).
writings by Some of these instances are listed here, most not.
“Love and Faith Sustained Wives of Pole Finders,” etc., etc. Interviews with parents and others, one of a suite of stories relating to “grim tragedies” (including death) on the football field
“...Dr. F. W. Lange, of Scranton, has leaped suddenly into the limelight of fame by announcing that he can transmute base metals into silver and gold, by increasing the gold and silver nitrates and chlorides, then extracting the pure metals and casting them into bars...”
William Loeb, Jr. (1866-1937) : wikipedia
Mrs. Abigail Newhouse, 1829 Park Avenue
on a run-away boy — “An Oklahoma woman has brought suit for divorce right away that she may be sure of getting her full share of his money... she decided to be divorced at once and secure the money that he now had, sooner than wait a few more years on the chance of getting bigger alimony...”
corrected OCR transcription below “He’s mad! He’s mad!” Shrill voices took op the cry; terrified mothers gathered their little ones into their arms and fled into the shelter of doorways, while the shouts for the police grew louder and more insistent with every yelping gasp or blind rush of the dog about whom the excitement surged. corrected OCR transcription below The lure of the city, spreading its promises of fortune and success and the bustle and throb of living in the heart of the universe has drawn into the meshes of its crooked streets the young and old from little towns, or the lands far across the sea. — There was a Grace van (sometimes “Van”) Braam Roberts (1869-1958) : Vassar, WCTU, suffragist, ran Ulsterdorp Farms (registered Jersey cows), lived in NYC. I do not know (and even doubt) that this is the same Grace Van Braam, but have not confirmed matters, either way.
This Grace was a suffragist, a theater critic/lover, knew about investments, read books and wrote carefully about them. Her writing was stylish, assured, and wore its learning lightly. I surmise that she wrote about fashion from Paris, and suspect she had lived in Europe for a time.
“Peggy Van Braam, the ‘Peggy at the Play’ of the late Evening Times [Philadelphia], has been made house manager of the Little Theatre” and then there are these poems, both addressing Peggy Van Braam, in epigram on title page — ‘Just a bit of badness I can find little about Estar Banks, save that she was born in Boston. There’s a letter to the editor of the New York Times (April 20, 1915; paywalled link). And she has an IMDb page for appearances in silent films 1915-1924, stage plays as well. anyway, this untitled poem — (To Peggy Van Braam) and “Pansy Maiden” Well, my Pansy Maiden, — finally, a portrait of Estar Banks — via NYPL’s Billy Rose Theater Collection : link 20240416
about
in The Cavalier (Frank A. Munsey Co.; October 1908) : 146
via wikipedia : link
via archive.org : link
The Cavalier (November 1908)
have not seen, listed at The FictionMags Index : link
“Helen Taft, the Next Daughter of the White House” by Grace Van Braam Gray,
“A clever article on the daughter of the president-elect, describing her charming personalities and her enthusiastic interest in athletics and in books. A sketch of her life at Bryn Mawr, where she has already become deservedly popular.”
found in The Rocky Mountain News (January 10, 1909) via Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection : link
(haven’t yet found Human Life, however.)
The Cavalier (February 1909) : 54
Have not seen, listed at The FictionMags Index link
The magazine (a Frank Munsey publication) is discussed at the Pulp Magazines Project : link
many (82) items (1909 through 1914, mostly from the Washington Times) via LoC’s Chronicling America : link
“The Women Who Waited at Home / What the discovery of the North Pole meant to Mrs. Peary and Mrs. Cook is told in tomorrow’s Sunday Evening Edition of the Times”
by James Hay, Jr., and Peggy Van Braam
The Washington Times (September 11, 1909)
via LoC’s Chronicling America :
link
The Washington Times (September 12, 1909)
link
The Washington Times (November 7, 1909)
via LoC’s Chronicling America :
link
The Kansas City Times (February 11, 1910) : 10 : link (newspapers.com)
cleaned transcription (and notes) at 2591b
The Washington Times (May 29, 1910)
via LoC’s Chronicling America : link
Stern guardian of port is unmindful of offenders’ station or power. Please for secrecy fall on deaf ears. Ocean greyhounds bring many who risk disgrace to save few dollars.”
The Washington Times (June 5, 1910)
via LoC’s Chronicling America : link
The Montgomery Advertiser, from St Louis Times (October 13, 1910)
via LoC’s Chronicling America : link
(syndicated?), found in The Rocky Mountain News 51:297 (October 24, 1910)
via Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection : link
(syndicated?), found in The Rocky Mountain News 51:304 (October 31, 1910)
via Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection : link
(syndicated?), found in The Rocky Mountain News 51:325 (November 21, 1910)
via Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection : link
The Washington Times (May 5, 1911)
via LoC’s Chronicling America : link
The Washington Times (May 15, 1911)
via LoC’s Chronicling America : link
The Washington Times (May 16, 1911)
via LoC’s Chronicling America :
link
“The Judge declared on that day that half the runaways of the city were caused by the lack of ‘old-fashioned mothers,’ and that hygienic rules and regulations were fine for the body, but that the little souls beneath craved sympathy and understanding.”
The Washington Times (May 17, 1911)
via LoC’s Chronicling America :
link
The Washington Times (May 22, 1911)
via LoC’s Chronicling America : link
on alimony, damages, etc.
The Washington Times (May 24, 1911)
via LoC’s Chronicling America : link
The Washington Times (May 26, 1911)
via LoC’s Chronicling America :
link
The Washington Times (May 27, 1911)
via LoC’s Chronicling America : link
The Washington Times (August 12, 1911)
via LoC’s Chronicling America : link
in A Page of Interest to Women Readers,
News Leader (September 4, 1911) : 6
via virginiachroicle Library of Virginia : link
(will move to own page in due course)
One — two — three shots and it was all over, but the terror of thoee moments lingered for weeks in the minds of woman and children. The dread of another such scene left an indelible mark. And yet such episodes, such cries, arise almost every day during the hot weather in the city.
Stray cats and dogs, wild with the heat, with lack of water, and more often than not from teasing, run amuck until death comes to them mercifully with a bullet.
And all the laws about muzzles, all the laws about stray dogs will not avail unless the housewives leaving the city for cool country homes or hotels do their part, and make sure that the cats and dogs which have been pests In the house, or which have been, through a misguided sense of charity, fed daily at the back door, have soe place to go while the houses are closed in the summer time.
Like Wistful Ghosts.
They are like wistful ghosts haunting the deserted homes, those traveling little animals who cannot understand why the dish of food and water is no longer on the kitchen step. And they wander through the lont streets where the houses are boarded up, day and night, till the heat and the lack of water do their work and another “mad dog” scare thrills the city with terror.
Cats are more often deserted than dogs because there is a general theory that cats can take care of themselves. But records show that hundreds of dogs, too, left yearly, their owners — knowing that the animals, although pets, are not of any great value — declaring comfortably that “dogs always manage to shift for themselves all right, for they get food by instinct.”
And how indignant those same women would be if some one declared them directly responsible for a “mad dog panic.” Yet they are, more or less. Don’t you think so?
in A Page of Interest to Women Readers,
The Washington Times (September 25, 1911) : 6
via virginiachroicle Library of Virginia : link
(will move to own page in due course)
In fiction and fact alike we have acknowledged the lure and sighed over it, but now a noted doctor declares that thousands of families are yearly going without a proper amount of food, without proper recreations and clothes for the sake of clinging to their dark and narrow rooms within the congested districts of the city.
High rents are, he says, an outcome of demands for city rooms, and the failure of the average wage earner to answer the call of out of doors is the reason of the high cost of living within the city, and the deterioration of moral and physical standards.
Of course, he may be wrong; yet there is so much food for thought in the idea that it is well worth considering, don’t you think so?
We grumble about the cost in time and money of commuting, we declare we must be near where there is something is [sic] going on. And we never take into consideration that we pay in health, in nervous strain, and through our children for the rent of thsoe convenient houses “in town.”
Leads Often to Crime.
Neurasthenia, the strange wild lust of money grabbing that leads so often to crime, the restless seeking for new sensations, divorces and all the shadows that lie across modern life center in the city, and yet we never think of them, do we? We see only the bustles, the glitter and the gaiety until we, or our children,bhave fallen victims, and then it is too late.
The man who has answered the call of out of doors finds rest and quiet at the end of the day and returns to town in the morning with his lungs full of fresh air, but the city man goes home to his narrow rooms, rushes, perhaps, into other clothes, and to escape the cramping environment, wanders to a restaurant, or to some place where he spends, in a week or two, three times as much as he would spend on that much discussed “commuters’ ticket.”
The woman in town frets and strives to emulate richer people: the children learn life’s evils almost with their alphabet, and so the city takes its daily toll of health and joy, but the city dweller never realizes it.
For the lure is always there, and not until every pne has learned to listen for the call of out of doors will there be any change.
Ainslee’s 29:2 (March 1912) : 149-151 : link
(syndicated?), found in The Rocky Mountain News 53:12 (March 21, 1912)
via Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection : link
The Evening Times (Grand Forks, North Dakota; April 29, 1912) : 6
via LoC’s Chronicling America : link
Part I : Collier’s 49:17 (July 13, 1912) : 14-15, 27 : link, and
Part II : Collier’s 49:18 (July 20, 1912) : 20, 31-32 : link (google books)
both illustrated by May Wilson Preston (1873-1949)
wikipedia : link
The Washington Herald (March 29, 1914) : 28
via LoC’s Chronicling America : link
The Daily Telegram (Clarksburg, Virginia; April 17, 1914) : 13
via LoC’s Chronicling America : link
The Fargo Forum and Daily Republican (September 19, 1914) : 16
via LoC’s Chronicling America : link
The Books News Monthly 33:8 (April 1915) : 404-406
archive.org : link
syndicated, found in The Great Divide (Published weekly by the Denver Post; August 9, 1915)
via Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection :
link
transcription at 2591a
All-Story Weekly (March 25, 1916)
have not seen, listed at The FictionMags Index : link
The Black Cat 22:8 (May 1917) : 40-45 : link
Railroad Man’s Magazine (November 1918)
have not seen, listed at The FictionMags Index : link
The Books News Monthly 33:12 (August 1915) : 580-581 : link
a more general essay, on the coming season but also on competition from movies
London edition at hathitrust : link
New York edition ditto : link
and a wikipedia page on the novel : link
note : the same number features Grace Livingston Hill Lutz (pp49-52)
“Philadelphia Theaters” (September 1916) : 30-31 : link
“The Theaters in Philadelphia” (October 1916) : 68-70 : link
“Thanksgiving Fare in Philadelphia” (November 1916) : 103-105 : link
“Romance and the Holiday Spirit” (Christmas 1916) : 164-165 : link
“Philadelphia Theater News” (January 1917) : 207-209 : link
“Melpomene and St. Valentine / The Theaters in Philadelphia” (February 1917) : 246-248 : link
“March Winds that Profit Many / The Philadelphia Playhouses” (March 1917) : 284-286 : link
“Philadelphia Theaters” (April 1917) : 319-321 : link
“The End of the Season in Philadelphia” (May 1917) : 357-358 : link
“Theatrical Notes” (June 1917) : 391-392 : link
(Christmas 1916) : 143-145 (145) : link
Editor and Publisher : 378 : (October 29, 1914) : link
Estar Banks her The Kate Prince Poems of Passion (Helen Norwood Halsey Publishers, 1915) : link (LoC copy/scan, via hathitrust)
Man and woman’s madness
Studies of life’s sadness
Versed with ink and pen”
By Kate Prince
It is with purple pansies
I say to you, adieu!
And ere their petals perish
May all day dreams, come true;
May love with spirit sunshine, spin
The veil fate holds for you,
And through its mesh may sorrow tears
As diamonds, sparkle through
And all their brilliant colors, flash
In flame of joy, o’er you.
p 98
To Miss Grace Gray
Where were you to-day?
I called you up at noontime
From Broad street Penn railway;
Of course you would be missing,
Most always that’s the way.
I’m with a new production,
A “live one,” so they say;
It’s called “The Man Who Would Live”
— Of Past and Present way.
William Hurlbut wrote it, and,
Believe me — ’tis some play!
We’re booked a week in Washington;
Chicago sees us then.
And if the Fates are willing
A “run” till Lord knows when!
I wanted much to lunch you
And talk with you again:
But “Press” phone was not able
To find you in your den.
(I only had an hour
For you and William Penn!)
O Purple Pansy Peggy,
Why were you missing — why?
A bite, a sup, o’er plate and cup,
A word or two, a “How de do,”
“God bless you,” and “Good bye.”
p 66