Table Of ContentW H O
THE
W H AT
THE
W H E N
AND THE
65 ARTISTS ILLUSTRATE THE SECRET SIDEKICKS of HISTORY
foreword bbyy by
KURT ANDERSEN JENNY VOLVOVSKI,
J ULIA ROTHMAN,
and MATT LAMOTHE
INTRODUCTION AND
COMPILATIONCOPYRIGHT
© 2014 by Jenny Volvovski,
Julia Rothman, and Matt Lamothe
FOREWORDCOPYRIGHT
© 2014 by Kurt Andersen and
Wendy MacNaughton
TEXT COPYRIGHT
© 2014 by the individual
text contributors
ART COPYRIGHT
© 2014 by the individual artists
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
No part of this book may be reproduced in
any form without written permission from
the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-
Publication Data available.
ISBN 978-1-4521-2827-6 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-4521-3723-0 (epub, mobi)
Design by ALSO
The text face is Mercury Text,
designed by Hoefler & Frere-Jones.
The titling face is Verne Jules,
designed by Isaac Tobin.
Chronicle Books LLC
680 Second Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
www.chroniclebooks.com
“Thunder is good, thunder is
impressive; but it is lightning
that does the work.”
—MARK TWAIN
CONTENTS
Foreword CHRISTOPHER MORCOM EDITH BOLLING WILSON
8 Alan Turing’s friend Woodrow Wilson’s wife
32 56
Introduction
11 MICHAEL AND JOY BROWN G. P. PUTNAM
Harper Lee’s patrons Amelia Earhart’s husband
JOE MARTIN
34 58
Muhammad Ali’s coach
12 ALMA REVILLE LESLEY RIDDLE
Alfred Hitchcock’s wife The Carter Family’s friend and teacher
JOHN GREENWOOD
36 60
George Washington’s dentist
14 BROWNIE WISE EILEEN GRAY
Earl Tupper’s partner Le Corbusier’s colleague
VÉRA NABOKOV
38 62
Vladimir Nabokov’s wife
16 WARD KIMBALL JOHN MARTIN
Walt Disney’s employee Charles Bukowski’s editor
JOHN ORDWAY
40 64
Lewis and Clark’s colleague
18 HARRY PIERPONT ELEANOR CALLAHAN
John Dillinger’s mentor Harry Callahan’s wife and model
JULIA WARHOLA
42 66
Andy Warhol’s mother
20 JOYCE MCLENNAN JUAN DE MARCHI
P. D. James’s personal assistant Salvador Allende’s mentor
QUEEN KA`AHUMANU
44 68
Kamehameha I’s wife
22 GIUSEPPINA STREPPONI ANNA DOSTOYEVSKAYA
Giuseppe Verdi’s wife and muse Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s wife
IAN STEWART
46 70
Rolling Stones’ sixth member
24 HIROSHI ARAKAWA CHARLOTTE “EPPIE” EPSTEIN
Sadaharu Oh’s coach Gertrude Ederle’s coach
THOMAS A. WATSON
48 72
Alexander Graham Bell’s assistant
26 MICHEL SIEGEL YAKIMA CANUTT
Jerry Siegel’s father John Wayne’s stuntman
SOFIE MAGDALENE
50 74
(HESSELBERG) DAHL
Roald Dahl’s mother SAM SHAW CARLO
28 Marilyn Monroe’s photographer Emily Dickinson’s dog
52 76
CAPTAIN ARTHUR EDWARD
“BOY” CAPEL GODFREY HAROLD JACK SENDAK
Coco Chanel’s lover (G. H.) HARDY Maurice Sendak’s brother
30 Srinivasa Ramanujan’s discoverer 78
and collaborator
54
FRANK WILD ANNE SULLIVAN MACY LOUIS KARNOFSKY
Ernest Shackleton’s right-hand man Helen Keller’s teacher Louis Armstrong’s benefactor
80 104 128
EMILY WARREN ROEBLING MARJORIE GREENBLATT JOHN INGERSOLL
Washington Roebling’s wife MAZIA GUTHRIE Robert Ingersoll’s father
82 Woodie Guthrie’s wife 130
106
MAX DEUTSCHBEIN JOSHUA SPEED
Martin Heidegger’s colleague JOHN ALLAN Abraham Lincoln’s friend
84 Edgar Allan Poe’s foster father 132
108
MARY MOODY EMERSON CHARLOTTE SMALL
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s aunt ROSE MARY WOODS David Thompson’s wife
86 Richard Nixon’s secretary 134
110
GLADYS LOVE PRESLEY BAYARD RUSTIN
Elvis Presley’s mother LAVINIA WARREN THUMB Martin Luther King Jr.’s mentor
88 Tom Thumb’s wife 136
112
ALICE B. TOKLAS ROSALIND FRANKLIN
Gertrude Stein’s lover DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI Francis Crick and
90 William Morris’s collaborator James D. Watson’s peer
114 138
MARIE ANNE LAVOISIER
Antoine Lavoisier’s wife HORACE WELLS JOHN MALOOF
92 William Morton’s teacher and partner Vivian Maier’s discoverer
116 140
JOSEPH DALTON (J. D.)
HOOKER NAT ELIAS Author Bios
Charles Darwin’s colleague Margaret Sanger’s chemist 143
94 118
Illustrator Bios
ALEXANDER ULYANOV JULIUS ROSENWALD 148
Vladimir Lenin’s brother Sears, Roebuck business partner
Bibliography
96 120
155
MARCUS TULLIUS TIRO OCTAVE CHANUTE
Author Index
Marcus Tullius Cicero’s secretary Wright Brothers’ mentor
161
98 122
Illustrator Index
GWEN JOHN LULU PEYRAUD
163
Auguste Rodin’s muse Alice Waters’s mentor
100 124 Index
164
JOHNNY TORRIO HOLGER GESCHWINDER
Al Capone’s mentor Dirk Nowitzki’s coach Acknowledgments
102 126 167
FOREWORD
written by KURT ANDERSEN illustrated by WENDY MACNAUGHTON
novelist and public radio host illustrator and graphic journalist
I jumped at the chance to be part of this book because I’ve been
fascinated for a long time by one of history’s most extraordinary and
improbable secret accomplices, a promising young man who signed
on as second fiddle to an unpromising young man who became one
of the nineteenth century’s most famous and consequential men of all.
At the dawn of industrial capitalism, Friedrich Engels was At twenty-three, Engels befriended a cranky, excitable,
a tall, handsome capitalist working in his father’s cotton- scrounging twenty-five-year-old journalist and rabble-
milling business, helping to manage a factory in Manchester, rouser—Marx—and became his lifelong collaborator (The
England. But he had simultaneously turned himself into Communist Manifesto, Capital) and patron. And in order
an anticapitalist, writing articles for radical papers and a to fund his bourgeoisie-loathing BFF’s bourgeois lifestyle,
book-length exposé of the wretched lives of Manchester’s Engels kept his lucrative capitalist-tool day job for the next
mill workers and their families, The Condition of the Work- quarter century. I’m a fan of Fitzgerald’s line about living
ing Class in England. (Imagine a modern equivalent: Jamie with contradictions—“The test of a first-rate intelligence is
Dimon’s kid, say, running a JPMorgan Chase derivatives the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same
trading desk while also publishing screeds in The Nation and time, and still retain the ability to function”—but Engels’s life
organizing Occupy Wall Street.) is a gobsmacker.
A plurality of the accomplices here are (like Engels with
Marx) men who helped other men, and nearly as many are
women (wives, mothers, assistants) who helped men. There
are only a handful each of men who helped women and
women who helped women. As an academic might say, such
is the genderedness of historiography. What an academic
might say about a possible lesbian having an animal accom-
plice—Emily Dickinson and her dog Carlo—Lord only knows.
These accomplices are variously mentors, partners,
spouses, muses. In my own career, I’ve had three unequivo-
cally indispensable enablers. I met them all in my twenties,
during my first five years in New York City.
The crucial mentor was Gene Shalit, then the Today
show’s full-time movie critic and cultural correspondent,
who hired me out of college to be his writer (mainly of the
daily essays he broadcast on the NBC Radio Network). He
created and offered the job, he admitted later, because at our
8
first meeting I’d used the word “anthropomorphic.” As a boss was essential to its existence and occasional greatness. For
he was perfection: unfailingly cheerful, encouraging and me—for both of us—it was the thing that got the world to pay
grateful, generous in every possible way. A year or so into my attention and permit my next adventure, and next and next.
tenure, he signed a contract to produce a book of humorous Another person instrumenal in Spy’s success was Anne
essays called The Real Thing, and asked me to write it for him. Kreamer, whom I’d married five years before we started the
Around Christmas, after I’d finished maybe a half dozen of magazine. First, she’d introduced Graydon and me to a col-
the essays, he called me into his office to announce that he’d lege classmate of hers with an MBA, who became our busi-
changed his mind. Instead of being his ghost (and by the way, ness partner and pushed us to turn our larkish notion into an
his company’s official name actual magazine. And when
was Scrooge & Marley), the we launched, Anne quit her
book would have my name and corporate job to come aboard
my name alone on the cover. as our underpaid advertising
And thus, at age twenty-six, sales director, allowing the
I became a published author. magazine to survive infancy
I left Scrooge & Marley to and then to thrive. After she
become a staff writer at Time, and I moved on from Spy, she
and a few weeks into that job was my de facto patron for a
one of my colleagues popped few years, her fancy new cor-
his head in my office door to porate job helping to subsidize
introduce himself—“Hi, I’m my professional lane change
Graydon Carter”—and tell from magazine editor to fic-
me he’d loved The Real Thing. tion writer. Again and again
We promptly became friends, she has served as my muse.
then close friends, and, finally, The first big magazine piece I
partners. At weekly lunches published, “Why Men Marry,”
we’d gossip about the juicy was an ode to her, and in my
stories our journalist pals had first novel many strands of the
heard but couldn’t or wouldn’t main female character’s DNA
publish. We’d rhapsodize were transplanted directly.
about the magazines we read It was Anne who fortunately
in the 1960s and ’70s—MAD, talked me out of switching
New York, Rolling Stone, Esquire, National Lampoon—that career lanes again a few years ago, from writer back to weekly
had inspired us to work in magazines. And we’d lament that magazine editor; she who’s the first reader of everything I
now, in the 1980s, we had no magazine we truly loved, the write; she who has more faith in my talent than anyone else
way we had as kids. Which led to conversations about what in our household.
form such a hypothetical publication might take: smart but And it’s she with whom I finally reciprocated, becom-
also fun . . . funny but journalistic . . . insider-y but fearless. ing her mentor, patron, and enabler a dozen years ago when
In 1986, we gave birth to Spy, which turned out to be almost she decided to reinvent herself as an author of intelligent,
as wonderful as we’d hoped, and much more successful. Our thoughtful, candid memoirs and guides to life.
temperaments and editorial skills were perfectly complemen- So maybe the moral of this story—of this book—is that the
tary, and together we ran the magazine for five of its twelve most fortunate among us are all each other’s secret accom-
years, each of us understanding implicitly that the other plices, and that the secrets should be revealed.
9
INTRODUCTION
Would we still have the classic novel Lolita had Véra Nabokov not
pulled it from the flames? Would Muhammad Ali have boxed his way
to greatness had he not met a police officer when he was twelve?
Would George Washington have been able to orate his way to the
presidency were it not for his dentist?
Behind every great person there is someone who enabled escaped the Internet altogether (yes, it can still happen). A
his or her ascension. These friends, relatives, partners, few of these secret helpers are alive and well and were able
muses, colleagues, coaches, assistants, lovers, teachers, and to be interviewed for the book. In the final essay, a writer
caretakers deserve some credit. This book is about celebrat- explains firsthand how he helped bring an unknown photog-
ing them. rapher into the public eye.
When you consider your own life, there are dozens of We then matched artists, illustrators, and designers with a
people who have guided you along your path—whether a story we thought paired well with their individual styles. The
teacher from fifth grade who finally got you to raise your artists had the task of creating a portrait of the accomplice
hand in class, a family friend who gave you your first camera, and the relationship that person shared with the famous
or that whiskey-sipping neighbor who’d tell you stories of his counterpart.
childhood. These relationships shape our lives, some lightly While it was intriguing to learn about these obscure
and others with more impact. characters, the relationships also brought to light new details
The three of us have worked together for more than eight about the famous figures. Ultimately, these are stories of
years. Each would name the other two as truly significant humanity: of love, competition, obsession, hardship, and true
influences. Every day we offer each other constructive criti- passion. People who may have been icons in our minds—the
cism for our designs and ideas. Matt helps Jenny figure out fashion queen Coco Chanel, the animation visionary Walt
every technical challenge. Jenny guides Julia’s fledgling Disney, the fearless revolutionary Lenin—suddenly became
typography skills. Julia reins in Matt’s wild schemes. We real people. They had relationships that we could relate
are each fill-ins for the others’ shortcomings. Without one to: an unrequited love, an inspiring business friendship, a
another’s influence, our work wouldn’t be the same. Would brotherly honor to defend. With decades, even centuries, of
this book exist if one of us weren’t involved? time between us, we are all still feeling the same connections
We’ve asked more than sixty writers to help us with the to people, needing the same encouragement, and having the
task of highlighting some of history’s “unknowns” along with same kinships.
their famed counterparts. The writers chose subjects based We hope this book will not only introduce you to new
on their interests, but researching these hidden accomplices figures and bring dimension to these historical personalities,
often proved difficult. There was often very little source but also help you recognize and honor the same relationships
material that outlined the relationship between the famous in your own life.
person and the unknown one. Sometimes, their presence even
written by JENNY VOLVOVSKI,
J ULIA ROTHMAN, 11
and MATT LAMOTHE
