6D THE PALM BEACH POST
Oddly for a wordsmith, Marjorie left a vague will
> CROSS CREEK from 1D
boy and disembarked in
Florida, where his sister
lived. She’d never turned
down a request for money
from the itinerant real-estate
man before. And she didn’t
this time.
Nine years later, howev-
er, Arthur would be dead of
lung cancer. Jeff, who’d
spent time in foster homes,
would go to live with his
grown half-sister in nearby
Lynnwood, Wash. There
were problems between
them, ones that Marjorie
Batchelder, now 75, doesn’t
want to talk about. Jeff at-
tended the University of
Washington for a while but
ended up living at a hotel for
transients in Portland, Ore.
It was there that a report-
er found him in 1981.
Charles Kelly of the Arizona
Republic, who says his hobby
was finding missing heirs,
had spotted a large un-
claimed bequest at the court-
house, worth about $70,000
($200,000 in today’s money).
Kelly discovered that a
100-year-old Phoenix wom-
an, Wilmer Kinnan, who’d
lived with two equally elder-
ly sisters, had left the money
to her great-nephew, Jeffrey
Kinnan, in the form of a
$150-a-month annuity.
But where did Wilmer
get the money?
“It probably came from
her niece,” says Kelly, who
still writes for the Phoenix
daily. “She was some kind of
famous writer . . . Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings.”
■ major celebrity of the era,
Yes, Marjorie was some
kind of famous writer.
Today often confused
with environmentalist Marjo-
ry Stoneman Douglas, Rawl-
ings became an international
sensation at age 43 after win-
ning the Pulitzer in 1939 for
The Yearling, about a boy and
his fawn set in the “Big
Scrub” near Gainesville. She
struck gold again with her
1942 memoirs, Cross Creek.
Though she lived in the
middle of nowhere, Marjorie
was a celebrated hostess and
an avid bridge player —
which is how she met
Norton Baskin, an Alabama
transplant six years her jun-
ior, who ran the Marion Ho-
tel in nearby Ocala and was,
according to his niece, “a fa-
vorite with the ladies.”
Marjorie — and first hus-
band Charles Rawlings —
had come from Rochester,
N.Y., in 1928, to grow orang-
es and write the Great Amer-
ican Novel. Charles couldn’t
stand the primitive condi-
tions and left; Marjorie
stayed and, having sparked
the interest of illustrious edi-
tor Maxwell Perkins with
some short stories, did write
a great, American novel.
Along with the editorial
attentions of Perkins, Marjo-
rie — a plain woman, but
earthy and amusing — at-
tracted the eye of a certain
charming hotelier.
Marjorie and Norton
were married in 1941. When
World War II broke out, he
went to Burma with the am-
bulance corps. Marjorie
stayed to run the groves and
aid in the filming of The Year-
ling, which starred Gregory
Peck and Jane Wyman.
After the war, however,
Florida changed. Moonshine
stills and orange groves gave
way to hotels and tourist
camps. Norton and Marjorie
moved to the coast, buying a
mansion in St. Augustine
and turning it into the Castle
Warden Hotel. (Today, it’s
the Ripley’s Believe It or Not
Museum.)
Marjorie changed, too.
No longer the shotgun-toting
pioneer portrayed by Mary
Steenbergen in the 1983
movie Cross Creek, by the late
’40s, she enjoyed tamer pur-
suits — playing bridge and
entertaining friends with
cookery and cocktails.
Then in 1946, calamity
struck: She was sued for in-
vasion of privacy.
The highly publicized
case dragged on for five
years but ended up awarding
all of one dollar to Zelma Ca-
son, a former friend who ob-
jected to Marjorie’s descrip-
tion of her in Cross Creek as
“an angry, efficient canary.”
To pay the court costs,
Marjorie cranked out Lassie
screenplays in the penthouse
apartment Norton built for
her at the Castle Warden.
But living in the social
center of St. Augustine made
it hard for Marjorie to settle
down to writing. The couple
ended up selling the hotel
and moving south to a cot-
• SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 2005
tage Marjorie owned at Cres-
cent Beach. But that didn’t
work, either. Because
Norton had found an even
hotter spot to oversee.
■ Jacksonville
The Sea World of its day,
Marineland was the brain-
child of three ex-Navy divers
who hoped Hollywood would
use the large seawater tanks
they built for underwater
movies. When that failed,
they stocked them with
sharks and built Florida’s
first theme park. Norton was
hired to manage the elegant
Dolphin Restaurant there.
Sally Baskin Hooker,
whose dad was Norton’s kid
brother, grew up at Marine-
land — her father, Tom
Baskin, was manager of the
motel. Hooker, whose nick-
name was “Sally B.,” remem-
bers “Uncle Norton’s famous
smorgasbord. It had linen ta-
blecloths and silver chafing
dishes,” she says. “The toast
of the town!”
(The park, which has
closed several times, is being
refurbished by investors.
The Dolphin now serves as
their offices, but if you peer
through the windows, you
can see the very tables Mar-
jorie once dined at.)
The fun crowd at the res-
taurant, with its boat-shaped
Moby Dick bar, proved an
overwhelming lure to the
lonely writer up the road.
“Marjorie,” recalls Sally,
“went there quite often.”
Through the socializing,
however, Marjorie developed
a warm relationship with a
Owen D. Young.
The retired president of
General Electric responded
with sympathy to his writer
friend’s predicament.
In 1947, Young and his
wife, Louise, invited Marjorie
to try out a cabin at their up-
state New York estate as her
new “Cross Creek.” She did
and fell for the rural area,
buying a nearby farmhouse
and pouring money into it.
The antiques-filled summer
home in Van Hornesville,
N.Y., became known — be-
tween Marjorie and Norton
— as “the Yankee House.”
Increasingly, she spent
more and more time there,
writing her last novel, The So-
journer, and conceiving an-
other book she was working
on at the time of her death.
■
It was around this time,
Marjorie met Jeff Kinnan —
before he was even born.
In 1950, she wrote to an
old Wisconsin classmate,
Bea McNeill: “Day before
yesterday, I have a letter
from Alaska, and Arthur has
been married since March
25, and the bride is pregnant,
and offspring due in January!
Nice to know, eh?”
Marjorie tells her friend
she hopes her brother had
found “the right girl at last.”
But Grace Kinnan, a
nurse he’d met in Alaska,
wasn’t the right girl after all.
According to Rawlings bi-
ographer Elizabeth Sil-
verthorne, Arthur com-
plained to Marjorie about his
wife’s violent tantrums, “and
was threatening to take the
baby and leave her.”
He did. In July 1952,
Arthur and Jeff arrived at
Crescent Beach and ended
up staying a month.
His sister had already left
for the Yankee House, but
his brother-in-law, Norton,
seemed happy to host them,
promising Marjorie he’d
send the pair along when
Arthur was “not so nervous.”
In a series of wonderfully
intimate letters, Norton
keeps Marjorie apprised of
his guests’ day-to-day doings.
In one, he bemoans the
fact that 17-month-old Jeffrey
isn’t out of diapers yet and, in
Arthur’s words, is “pissing all
over the floor.”
His wife is horrified. “Put
Jeff into a nursery school at
once,” she advises Norton.
He does so, and in just a
week, he reports, Jeff is
potty-trained.
Marjorie is pleased and
eager to spend time with her
nephew. In a letter dated July
23, 1952, she excitedly out-
lines several scenarios:
“What about Arthur’s leaving
Jeff here with me while he
goes west to settle things?
Or what about my going
west with the two of them, to
lend moral support? What
about Jeff’s staying with me,
and then when you come up,
you and I take him west?”
But, even as Jeff and
Arthur wended their way
north, Norton gently but
S N
The sojourn from Cross Creek
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Yearling, is most closely associated with Cross Creek. But after a
neighbor there sued her, she stayed away, buying property in and around St. Augustine, as well as in upstate New York.
10
St. Augustine
St. Johns River
Crescent
Gainesville Beach
Cross Marineland
Creek 95
75
FLORIDA
4
FLA. Orlando
Map
area
BRENNAN KING/Staff Artist
Norton Baskin and Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings on their
wedding day at St. Johns County
Courthouse, Oct. 27, 1941.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS/File photo
■ Cross Creek ■ Castle Warden Hotel
Marjorie willed her famous farmhouse to the University of
Florida in Gainesville. But the school struggled for years In 1941, Marjorie and her hotelier husband, Norton, turned an old
to properly maintain the historic site, eventually giving it mansion into a grand hotel in St. Augustine, where it became the city’s
to Florida’s Division of Parks and Recreation. social center. Today it houses the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Museum.
■ Crescent Beach ■ Marineland
The beachfront cottage where Marjorie suf- In the late ’40s, Norton got a job managing the Dolphin Restaurant at
fered a fatal cerebral hemorrhage in 1953. Marineland. The building is now closed to the public, but you can peek in the
Norton lived there until about 1960, then windows and see where Marjorie once enjoyed dinner or a cocktail.
sold it and moved to St. Augustine.
■ Antioch
Cemetery
Marjorie’s final resting
place. The sandy,
scrubby, hard-to-find
graveyard south of Cross
Creek wasn’t Marjorie’s
choice — the funeral
director chose the wrong
one. But by the time her
widower realized the
error, it was too late.
Norton, who outlived his
wife by 45 years, is
buried next to her
Photos by
MARGARET McKENZIE
firmly shut the door on any popular novelist Ellen Glas- As most of us do, he sure and relatives. Norton held
such notions. gow — a book, sadly, she hated to be looked upon as onto the groves — which
“For one thing, I don’t would not live to complete. the fool. were still making money —
think Arthur would leave Jeff The end — as it will do But it wasn’t foolishness but Marjorie’s annuities
with you,” he bluntly tells his with the most dramatic peo- that led the St. Augustine fu- were cashed in, and ac-
55-year-old wife. “And I am ple — came in an undramat- neral director to make ar- counts of $10,000 apiece
sure that you should not try ic way. It was at Crescent rangements at the wrong opened at several different
to keep him — unless you Beach, a few weeks before cemetery — just a lack of in- banks.
were able to get much more Christmas 1953. As Arlene formation. Norton knew Mar- Arthur’s $12,000 debt
and permanent help. Ellis, wife of Norton’s neph- jorie wanted to be buried was forgiven — Marjorie
“Together,” he adds, “we ew, George, tells it: “Marjo- near Cross Creek. But there saw to that in a will she’d
just might make out, but nei- rie and Norton were climb- were two cemeteries close to drawn up with trial lawyer
ther of us could care for the ing those steep steps to the each other in Alachua Coun- Philip S. May in 1949. It also
boy alone.” top of the dune, where the ty. And Norton didn’t specify provided that Norton and
house overlooks the ocean.” which one. Arthur would share the roy-
■ Marjorie doubled over By the time he realized alties from her books.
with a blinding headache. his error, the casket was in Back then, the royalties
Having the 2-year-old ac- Norton helped her up the the ground. As a result, Mar- weren’t about to make any-
tually underfoot, however, stairs and called family phy- jorie (joined later by her hus- one a millionaire.
proved more persuasive than sician Dr. H.H. Norris, who band) is spending eternity at As Marjorie had once
anything Norton could say. told them to get to Flagler the hard-to-find, weed- complained to her attorney,
“The child is indeed Hospital. Some lab work was choked Antioch Cemetery in “No one not familiar with the
adorable,” Marjorie enthuses done. Norton returned to the Island Grove — where, coin- publishing set-up could be-
in one letter, but later ob- cottage to fetch some of cidentally, her nemesis Zel- lieve how relatively little I
serves, “He begins to fuss Marjorie’s things. ma also is buried — instead have received in money from
and whimper if remotely By the time he got back of the shady Oaklawn Ceme- such large sales. . . . After
thwarted.” to the hospital, she was tery in Citra, about which my modest living expenses
But “the problem,” Mar- gone. Marjorie had remarked, “I over those 12 years, and the
jorie decides, “isn’t Jeff. The Such a lively, opinionated could find peace here.” income tax, I have myself
problem is Arthur.” His love woman — with so much still Hiding his grief, Norton saved almost exactly
for the boy, she notes, “bor- to do, and so much to leave set to administering her es- $100,000.”
ders on obsession.” behind — gone. tate. Indeed, it was said of But as Norton must have
Frazzled, she signs off: Norton, his niece Sally the widower, who outlived understood, while the prop-
“Instead of stopping ciga- recalls, was devastated, but his wife by close to 45 years, erty — the homes, jewelry,
rettes and liquor, I have just appeared stoic, even dispas- that the only job he ever held AT&T stock, antique furni-
bought a fresh carton and a sionate. “You would have to after her death was . . . her. ture — delivered an immedi-
fresh bottle . . . Much love, understand the Baskins and Norton was a zealous ex- ate payoff, the true value of
Marjorie.” how they handle bereave- ecutor. The spigot of cash to Marjorie’s estate lay with her
Thus, Jeffrey Kinnan’s ment,” she says. “They don’t Arthur was shut off; the Yan- work, the copyrights of
brush with possibly becom- show a lot on the outside.” kee House, Marjorie’s brand- which still churn out from 10
ing Marjorie Kinnan Rawl- new Oldsmobile, even Dora to 15 percent of the book
ings’ adopted son remained ■ the cow — praised in Cross sales to whoever owns them.
just that. His father took him Creek for her rich Jersey In 1953, Arthur and Nor-
back to Seattle, and Marjorie The snafu with the grave cream — were quickly sold ton split $16,000 in royalties.
plunged herself into re- site provides another clue to off, Marjorie’s personal ef- After Arthur died in 1961,
searching a book about then- Norton Baskin’s personality. fects divided among friends Norton received, “all of such