Two

James Thurber: 1901–1918

“... the restless imagination of a one-eyed sensitive boy of
fourteen in Columbus, Ohio ...”

When Jamie lost his left eye, he also lost all chances of having a normal childhood—and a normal adult life. He spent the next year at home, missing a year of school, then the family moved back to Columbus. His father began his job as recording clerk for the Ohio Senate and they lived in a boarding house called the Park Hotel. But in 1904 Charles developed an lengthy illness they called “brain fever” and the Thurbers were forced to move into William M. Fisher’s mansion, until Charles recovered. But the genetic stew that were the Fisher and Thurber families was a toxic mix.

When the Thurber boys played, they often irritated Grandfather Fisher. He went after Jamie first. “He didn’t like Jamie ‘playing the fool,’ as he called it. And Jamie never liked Grandfather,” Robert later recalled.1

So for five years, from 1905 to 1910, Jamie spent much of his time living with his “Aunt Margery” Albright, the widowed midwife who delivered him. He received the warmth and affection with Aunt Margery that he clearly lacked in the mansion of William M. Fisher. He spent much of his time away from his grandfather but also away from his Mother and Father and brothers. They didn’t have a word for it then—but we do now. The Thurber family was clearly dysfunctional. And not just for their own relationships—during the period from 1892 to 1918, the Thurbers moved fourteen times, but nearly always within the same square mile in Columbus.2 Clearly, they moved one step ahead of a landlord’s demand for the next month’s rent but years later, the Thurbers professed they could not explain why they moved so often or why they stayed within the same area.

The loss of his eye and the move from his family to Aunt Margery’s isolated Jamie.

Then a wonderful thing happened: he discovered language.

He rolled words over his tongue. He tasted them. He savored them. He held each