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Ted Geisel was a La Jollan. He was a La Jollan who, like many of its residents, became attached to the area from the first time he saw it. Geisel dined in the town's restaurants, frequented its post office and rubbed elbows with its most distinguished citizens. He enjoyed a good party and always looked to the future optimistically. He was a typical La Jollan in many ways. In other ways, however, he was anything but. In light of the ongoing hoopla surrounding what would have been his 100th birthday - the festivals, the stamps, the endless celebrations - it may be hard to imagine Geisel here in the Jewel. His status in the world seems far too famous to picture him living and working along our stretch of coast, penning many of his famous books while looking down at the same vista that inspires us all in our own way. It's strangely amusing to think of him simply enjoying spirits at the Whaling Bar or observing the activities in the children's section of the La Jolla Library, perhaps standing on a street corner or sitting on a park bench at Scripps Park. He saw plays at La Jolla Playhouse when it was still in the La Jolla High School Auditorium and admired art at the La Jolla Museum of Art before it became the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. It's easier to view Geisel as does the rest of the world. To everyone else, he is the larger-than-life figure of Dr. Seuss. He is known for his work, his legacy, his effect on the culture. His books have enchanted children and adults for more than 75 years. Their images and words have worked their way into the collective consciousness of millions. He is certainly the most highly regarded and popular children's author of all time. Like Shakespeare, he has been able to examine and convey the human drama in a manner that speaks to us all. Geisel's importance has yet to be fully revealed and will likely continue for a very long time. Beyond all his accolades, though, Geisel was a La Jollan, a neighbor.
Geisel became enamored with La Jolla on honeymoon with his first wife, Helen. The views that hooked many others likely drew him in as well. He moved here in 1941 and began his 50-year stay in a house on Mount Soledad that became known as "The Tower." There, he began a prolific and inspired five decades of work that would produce many of his most memorable books. La Jolla was both an inspiration and a comfort to Geisel. Its seclusion kept him free from the distraction of his former residence in New York. The town's beauty was one of his muses. One might wonder if trees seen around La Jolla, specifically at Scripps Park, were the inspiration for some his better-known illustrations. Truffula trees, perhaps? Three doors down from Geisel and wife Helen lived Neil and Judith Morgan. Both Morgans were authors, journalists and, like Geisel, critical thinkers. The Morgans and Geisel enjoyed a close friendship over the years, the kind that develops between neighbors who discovered a lot more commonalities than simply a street address. The Morgans recall Geisel's "glorious perch" as being an optimum environment for his art and writing. "He loved his work so much," said Judith Morgan. "That studio overlooking La Jolla was where he wanted to be and it was where he was happiest." Neil Morgan agreed. "He liked his rock garden a whole lot up there on top of Soledad. He spent a lot of time there during the daytime and in between bad moments at his easel." The location also provided shelter for Geisel after his books began to rise in popularity. The winding roads in and out of La Jolla provided Geisel with enough privacy to cultivate, write and illustrate his works. "He knew that he had a great vista and a great retreating place," said Judith Morgan. "With being a celebrity, it gave him relative privacy. It was just hard enough to find." In the Tower, Geisel could indulge himself and become overtaken by his work. He didn't use writing and drawing as a method of escapism or venting. It was more of an extension of himself, a limb of his soul on paper or canvas. Art was his sixth sense. It spilled out of him even in casual conversation. "I don't think he could ever help it," said Neil Morgan. "He was drawing in college at Dartmouth. He was drawing cartoons before he was writing books, really. It's what he did." And it's how he met his first wife, according to Morgan. "He was doodling on a notebook page at Oxford during his year there (and) the girl at the next desk said to him, looking at his crazy elephants, that he shouldn't try to be a professor, he should be a cartoonist. She was right, and he became one." Morgan said that the art lived within his friend and that he had no choice but to let it out. "Judith and I had many talks with him about where it came from. I don't think any more than any other genius he was able to define it. It was something that only he had." Though it may have come as second nature, perfecting his craft was something Geisel took seriously. He often struggled with the tiniest shades of colors or the perfect arrangement of syllables. "(His art) had so many facets that it wasn't like an assignment with one task," said Judith Morgan. "He had his art. He had his writing. He had the rhyme challenge. He had the color scheme challenge. He had his own great line of successes to equal or beat."
As a respite from work, Seuss enjoyed small gatherings among friends rather than the extravagant society affairs La Jolla is known for. Though he would attend the larger parties, he would often seem aloof or distracted. "When he did have to go out to formal things," said Judith Morgan, "he would file away his time by drawing on placemats or the programs, writing something irreverent and drawing pictures." Those who found themselves in possession of Geisel's cocktail napkin doodles became the recipients of tiny works of art. Who knows how many Geisel-illustrated beverage napkins are stowed away in the foot lockers of Geisel's friends and casual acquaintances? It's not that Geisel didn't enjoy socializing, according to the Morgans' book "Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel," he preferred more intimate evenings, where interaction was more personal and less trivial. His dinner table was a comfort to him and, among friends, he was at his best. Who Geisel considered his friends could make up a who's who of his era's intellectuals and icons. A small social at the Tower may have as its guests author and columnist Art Buchwald, novelist Raymond Chandler, film director Frank Capra or scientist Jonas Salk. Many of his guests included liberal thinkers like himself. "He was a Democrat," remembered Neil Morgan, "and they were scarce in La Jolla." While normally a shy person with acquaintances, Geisel opened up to his friends once they crossed into a realm of trust. Even routine car rides in the Village could end up with Geisel's telling of some imaginative, stream of consciousness story about an incident earlier in the day. "In a car ... that was really where some much good conversation and cheer went on," said Judith Morgan. "Because it was a break from his studio. ... It was never mundane, not with Ted; nothing was mundane. That was the joy. It could be an otherwise simple topic that, by the time he told the story of trying to fix something or losing a paper ... by the time it went through Ted's mind, (they became) wonderful stories that you had never heard before because they didn't really happen. Some version of it happened. But it just kept getting better and better. He was a master of exaggeration." Neil Morgan said he was a delight to be around "because he was irrepressibly different. No answer was predictable. No conversation was predictable."
As a visitor and then resident of La Jolla, Geisel's opinion on growth was even-handed. He witnessed the community's expansion from a quaint enclave of artists and pleasure seekers to the destination it has now become. While not exactly opposed to commercial development, he was suspicious of it. He became involved in several local causes throughout his time. For instance, he lobbied for the ban on billboards in the Jewel and even composed a playful poem about them for the La Jolla Town Council, as related in "Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel": And, thus between them, with impunity They loused up the entire community ... And even the dinosaurs moved away From that messed-up spot in the U.S.A. Which is why our business men never shall allow such to happen in La Jolla, Cal.
Always appreciative of progressive thinkers, Geisel reveled in the great minds UCSD brought to La Jolla and accepted the level of growth the arrival of the school would bring to La Jolla. "I think he traveled enough to know that no place is likely to be overlooked if it has the advantages and charms of La Jolla," said Neil Morgan. "He came long before there was any talk of a great university. We had Scripps Institution of Oceanography and many of those people were friends. ... He had no idea even by the time of his death what was going to happen on Torrey Pines Mesa and the rest of North San Diego County which, because of Salk and Scripps research and UCSD, which he saw coming even before his death that they had become world centers of various fields including, certainly, neurosciences."
Towards the end of the 1980s, Geisel's appearances around town decreased as he was hampered with jaw cancer. He would eventually succumb to the cancer. The Morgans said Geisel faced his end with equal parts acceptance and indifference. His last book, "Oh, The Places You'll Go!" is widely thought of as an appropriate epilogue. Pieced together from smaller, unfinished works through out Geisel's life, the book's "life is a journey" credo mimics many of Geisel's philosophies towards the end of his life. He too felt life was a road to be traveled on, a road that continually moved onward and upward. "I think what interested me the most during in that last year was that he had no interest in talking about himself or about a biography at all," said Judith Morgan. "Until he had finished 'Oh, the Places You'll Go!' because that was his valedictory and he said it all there." Neil Morgan describes his final visits with Geisel as a time of reflection. "He knew he was winding up," he said. "We had a very tender couple of final sessions with him. Asking him what message he'd really want to leave the world and he said, 'Well that's very difficult. It's in my books.' I said, 'I know it's in your books. That's your legacy. But is there any little postscript that you would like?' And he thought about it for a couple days and brought us back a yellow page, which I think is at UCSD. He had written on it, 'We can and we have to do better.' " |
