Rachel Knott’s "Morro Miscellany"
I was asked to speak about my mother, Rachel Knott, because it was she who took the initiative and did all the groundwork to get this AAUW chapter organized in Morro Bay in the mid-1950's.
Your program chair asked me not only to give my mother's life story but the entire history of Morro Bay. This is not possible.
What I can do is give an overview of my mother' s life, and touch a bit on the creative period here in Morro Bay in the 1930's.
So, like the title of her book, this talk will be a “Morro Miscellany.”
I've given two talks to this group in the past about my parents, but we have many new members since then. So anyone who has heard this before may snooze.
**********
My mother was born Rachel Louise Thayer in Norwich, Conn., 1892. Her family on both sides was descended from 17th century English settlers. Her father was Mayor of Norwich for many years and her uncle was a Connecticut Supreme Court Justice. Her father even tried for the Governorship, but did not get the nomination. So she grew up with an early awareness of, and interest in, political matters.
She attended a private elementary school and Norwich Free Academy secondary school, as well as a school for young ladies in Virginia.
She then ventured forth to become governess to two little English boys. Their father was running the Cerro de Pasco Copper Mines in Peru.
The long ocean Voyage from New York, down one side of South America and up the other, and then life in a British and American expatriate colony high in the Andes was one of the great adventures of her life.
And then she fell in love with the Canadian doctor on the company's staff, which added romance to the mix.
**********
The First World War broke out in 1914 and her Canadian fiancé joined the Army and was sent to the Front in France.
The new Panama Canal had opened up in time for Rachel's return trip home at the end of her South American stay. This made the voyage back to New York much shorter.
While the War was still on, she undertook her second major adventure, sailing from New York to England in the midst of the submarine warfare. Her ship had to zigzag all the way across the Atlantic to avoid being torpedoed by German subs.
(She once told me the way to prevent seasickness was to sip champagne and nibble dainty little chicken teasandwiches. I wonder whether these amenities were available on that wartime sailing!)
**********
She married Captain Harry Dunlop in London—on leave from his war duties. She stayed in London with the English family she'd been with in Peru, while he returned to duty in France.
Tragedy struck when Captain Dunlop was killed by shrapnel only a week before the war ended in November 1918.
**********
Thus Rachel entered a new chapter in her life: As a young widow at loose ends, she returned to the United States to stay briefly with her married sister's family in Connecticut. She did a bit of traveling, including a look at the Wild West on a Wyoming Dude Ranch.
She decided to go to college, and settled on Stanford University, where she had a double major in English and Classics (i.e. Greek and Latin). Since she was older than the flapper girls in her class, most of her college pals were grad students. She was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and she graduated in 1926.
After college she spent some time in Santa Fé, New Mexico, perhaps drawn by its exoticism, from the east coast point of view, and by the literary and artistic ambiance in that region at the time.
She found the various Indian tribes and their handicrafts of great interest, to the extent that when she moved to Carmel, California, she opened a little shop featuring some of the Indian work in Monterey in 1927.
**********
In Carmel she met her second husband, the artist A. Harold Knott, a landscape and marine painter who was also working as a designer of houses for a builder there.
Harold, like her first husband, was also from Canada, born in Toronto in 1883. But when he was about five his family moved to Burlington, Vermont, where he grew up. (He said the Vermont Yankees called them "Redcoats." )
He had studied Applied Design at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and did his fine art training at the Art Students League in New York and the Byrdcliffe Art Colony in Woodstock, under leading teachers of the day.
He had worked as a designer in New York and Washington, Colorado and Arizona, where he also taught painting, before moving to the art colony at Laguna Beach and then to Carmel by 1922.
**********
So romance blossomed once again for Rachel, in Carmel. She and Harold thought Carmel was already "being ruined" by development in 1928. Mind you, it was still all dirt roads! So when they got married that year, they moved to what looked like an "unspoiled" little seaside village at Morro Bay.
Their plan was to spend two years here and then go to England and France. But the stock market Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression put an end to those dreams, and they remained in Morro Bay.
They bought a Cape Cod style house, which they christened "Little House of River Winds,” although there' s no river here. It seems to be a romantic name they copied from a place they had seen in Carmel.
**********
The Central Coast area was rich in scenery for the artist Harold to paint. There were two other professional artists here, Aaron Kilpatrick, who traveled a lot and had another home in Eagle Rock, and Charles "Robby" Robinson, who had retired here from teaching art in the Midwest. Many other visiting artists painted here from time to time.
Morro Bay had a lively little British colony, which made for a congenial milieu, and enriched the cultural dimensions of the town.
In the early 1930's, Olive Cotter, an Anglo-Irish lady Belfast, opened "The Picture Shop" (nov Pizza Port) , where she sold photos and curios and processed film. She expanded the operation to include an art gallery—the first one in the whole county. Local artists showed their work there, and the gallery received notice in various media.
Local and visiting artists as well as amateurs met at the shop weekly as an informal "Sketch Club.” They practiced their drawing skills by doing portraits of anyone they could drag in to pose.
**********
Theatrical productions were another highlight Of 1930’s Morro Bay. Local citizens, including children, produced and performed in these shows.
(My own show business career aborted after I appeared as Humpty Dumpty in a scratchy white buckram shell.)
Morro Bay's theatre was also used for showing motion pictures. The stage and the projection room are still there. You can find the place by its decorative rows of electric light sockets which remain in place, on the outside of the antique shop opposite the Bank Of America.
**********
Rachel Knott's forte was writing, and she wrote and published her own booklet A Morro Miscellany,” in 1932. The cover was designed by Harold. This booklet contains verse, notes on the changing seasons in Morro Bay, a short mystery story based on a factual event here on the coast, and a one-act play, based on a local legend.
Rachel was also one of the prime movers and editors in producing the Scribblers' Quarterly. This was Morro Bay's own literary magazine. In addition to Rachel, its editors and contributing writers included, among others, the local doctor Jack Levitt, the Englishman Miles Castle, the artist Robby Robinson, the abalone diver Delmar Reviea, a professional writer Vera Woosley, and the telephone operator Billie Frazier.
(Remember, this is the era when you hand-cranked your telephone to reach the live operator, gave her the number you wanted, and she connected you. )
The covers of one issue of this magazine had a woodblock print design on pieces of wallpaper, soaked in paraffin wax, to simulate a glossy. Other issues also featured woodblock cover designs but on more conventional stock.
The magazine' s subject matter included verse, shortshort stories, articles, and essays.
Here is a bit of Rachel's light verse:
The title is "BEAM.”
I am perfect That is why I pluck the mote From my brother's eye. Think how much better He will be When it is delicately Removed by me.
And here is her poem about a meeting of the Scribblers’ group at Miles Castle's house:
First I’ll explain a bit: TUDOR COTTAGE is the adobe house in English Tudor style Miles Castle built for himself. WINDSOR is his dog. ROBBY is the white-bearded artist Charles "Robby" Robinson. The MEDICO is Dr. Jack Levitt. His wife a nurse wearing her white uniform and a blue cape. BILLIE is Billie Frazier, the town's telephone operator. BETTY is a friend of hers whose last name I don't know. POSEIDON'S FOSTER SON is Delmar Reviea, the abalone diver. The ABSENT MEMBER IN gold Country is Vera Woosley, a professional writer. THIS ANCIENT DAME is Rachel Knott who wrote this poem.
The title is "THE SCRIBBLERS AT TUDOR COTTAGE. "
The singing of the kettle on its iron crane Mingled with moan of wind and beat of rain, As watery gusts defied the sturdy door, And crept in stealthy rivulets upon the floor, The sharp-toothed Findsor, weary of his play, Curled on the rug and wished we’d go away; And there was much good talk and laughter ringing Above the sigh of wind and kettle’s singing, While eight around the hearth and roaring fire, Pointed the heights to which the Quarterly doth aspire. Of course beloved Robby graced the Chair, And strove for order by foul means or fair; With his benign white head so young, though hoary, Nodded approval to each new-read story. Our witty medico roused laughter to high heaven With his new “Morro Winter Sports of Thirty-Seven”; And his good spouse, a picture was that night As she stepped from the storm into the light, In rippling cape of blue and dress of white. Billie and Betty, that Siamese pair, Curled on the sofa forsaking his draughty chair, The deep-sea diver, Poseidon’s foster son, Toasted his shanks, and added to the fun, Telling how abalones walk and flowers have living light Beneath the sea, and whether stingraees can really bite! The host, the Scribbler’s poet, the Builder of the House, Threw on great logs and poked the fire to rouse New warmth, fresh blaze; bore in the fragrant brew Of tea and coffee, and this was but the cue For more good talk and laughter ringing Above the wail of wind and kettle’s singing. While the Absent Member’s spirit hovered there, Lending an aura to one vacant chair; She in the cold Gold Country was much missed, And all to her in thought their fingers kissed! The clock, had there been clock, would have ticked To show how swift the wild, wet, windy evening had gone. Thus to record the Scribbler’s hours there came And went into the mud and storm, this ancient dame.
Rachel also contributed pieces to both the San Luis paper and the Morro Bay SUN.
Incidentally, you would enjoy reading through some of those old SUN newspapers on microfilm at the San Luis library…….
**********
As the Depression wore on, the WPA set up a Recreation Project. Various arts and crafts classes were taught by local people for both children and adults. This was in the Spanish-style building on lover Kings Avenue (now residential).
**********
Morro Bay was in the thick of things during WWII. A Japanese sub came here directly Pearl Harbor, torpedoed and sank an oil tanker just off our coast, December 23, 1941. The Navy base where the plant nov stands operated landing-craft rehearsals with the Army from Camp San Luis Obispo. The Army filled the areas where Cuesta College and the prison now stand. Gunfire, flame-throwers burning up the hillsides, tanks, trucks, jeeps and obstacle-course physical training livened up this area considerably.
To help ease the wartime housing shortage the Knotts moved into someone else’s tiny vacation home and rented out their house to military families, dividing the place into two apartments.
**********
After the war I went away to college and then off to my own life elsewhere. I was working overseas in the 1950's when my mother's letters began to include descriptions of what a time she was having trying to line up enough collegeeducated women (through an ad in the paper) to form an AAUW chapter. She described the bureaucratic red tape involved in the process.
The population here at the start of the War was about 400 to 500 souls. In such a small town there were not many women as well educated as she was. But the town was growing rapidly in the postwar decade, and was soon to have its own high school. She felt an AAUW chapter would provide a focal point for the handful of educated women already here plus the incoming teachers . She wanted all these women to have a forum where they could meet with people in their own league.
In the early winter of 1956 she wrote that she had finally signed up the requisite number of members and received an official OK from AAUW headquarters. She was asking Clara Froggatt to carry the ball from there, and Clara agreed to do so.
My mother then suddenly died, January 17, 1957.
**********
So I have always felt this AAUW Chapter has been a living memorial to her. She would be so pleased to see that her vision came true and that it remains a vital force in the community.
Thank you.