Dale Bartoletti

About Dale Bartoletti

Dale Bartoletti is a retired high school teacher in Salinas, California. He has lived in Steinbeck’s “Long Valley” since 1968 and wandered the hills, back roads, and California coastline celebrated in Steinbeck’s California fiction. He has been a docent at the Steinbeck House, Steinbeck’s Salinas, California birthplace, for more than a decade.

Steinbeck’s Signet Ring Raises Question: What Happened to Mary Ardath?

john-steinbeck-signet-ring

In a room on the main floor of the Steinbeck House in Salinas, California—formerly John Steinbeck’s bedroom, now known as the Blue Room—visitors can inspect a glass display case containing a signet ring that once belonged to the author. When I started volunteering at the Steinbeck House some years ago, I was told that he had given the ring to a girlfriend, but that no one knew her identity, or how old he was when the gift was made. People assumed that Steinbeck was still in high school at the time, that the ring was forgotten when the pair broke up, and that, decades later, the unidentified recipient—now an adult woman—must have come across it and donated it to the Steinbeck House.

Then, about a year ago, I was going through some papers that I found in the back of a file drawer when I discovered three letters written by a woman named Mary Ardath van Gorder. All were dated 1986 and addressed to the then-president of the Valley Guild, the nonprofit organization that has owned and operated the Steinbeck House since the mid-1970s. In the first letter, sent from a retirement home in La Jolla, California, Mary said that she had once been engaged to John and that she still owned the signet ring that his mother had given him before they met. Would we like to have the ring back, for display at the house where John lived until he left for Stanford in 1919?

My curiosity piqued, I found this passage about Mary Ardath in Jackson Benson’s great life of John Steinbeck. It told a remarkable story, about John’s brief romance with Mary when he was a struggling writer in New York during the winter of 1925-26:

Ardath was a statuesque beauty who worked at the Greenwich Village Follies as a showgirl for a hundred dollars a week—four times what Steinbeck was making as a reporter. After meeting Steinbeck, Mary seemed to cling to him like a safe harbor. . . . Every night he waited for her outside the stage door, and nearly every night she would take him to dinner and try to talk him into getting a better job. She finally gave up on him after several weeks of trying and did marry a banker. But that is not the real ending of the story: after having settled down and had her children, she couldn’t stand it and came looking for John in California—with children in tow.

Sixty years later, now in her 80s, Mary Ardath wrote three letters that I found at the back of a filing drawer, in the house where Olive presumably gave her son the signet ring that Mary received from John in New York in 1925-26—and eventually returned to the home where the Steinbeck story started.

Readers with information about Mary Ardath’s life after the affair with John Steinbeck are encouraged to leave a comment or email williamray@steinbecknow.com—Ed.

Bless You! John Steinbeck’s Letter to Dorothea Lange

Image of John Steinbeck's 1960 letter to Dorothea Lange

Shortly before the show closed on August 27, my wife and I drove from our home in Salinas to the Oakland Museum of California to see Dorothea Lange: Politics of Seeing, an exhibit devoted to the documentary photographer whose images of the 1930s quickly became associated with John Steinbeck and The Grapes of Wrath. Like Steinbeck’s novel, Lange’s Great Depression pictures have become symbols of the suffering of farmland Americans displaced by joblessness, drought, and despair. Less familiar but equally powerful are the events recorded in Lange’s photos of Japanese-Americans “relocated” from their homes to internment camps after Pearl Harbor—an executive order signed by President Roosevelt that Steinbeck and Lange both questioned at the time. Lange’s internment images were so evocative, and so damning, that most of them were confiscated by the government and suppressed, even after the war. Also on display was the letter John Steinbeck wrote to Dorothea Lange on July 3, 1960, looking back on their friendship and the events of the Great Depression and ending with this deeply personal statement, half-confession and half-benediction: “And if I, who am not religious, offer my prayers for you, it is because God did not beget prayers—prayers created the Gods—and kept them in their places too. Bless you!”

In 2017 the Iran Deal Included John Steinbeck’s Hometown

Image of John Steinbeck House in Salinas, California

Guest book entries by visitors to the gift shop in the basement of John Steinbeck’s childhood home show that the Steinbeck House remains popular with readers who travel to Salinas, California from other towns, states, and countries. For example the guest book page for July 17-August 17 contains entries from a cosmopolitan array, including France, Wales, the Netherlands, Hungary, Norway, New Zealand, Germany, England, Italy, and Canada. Less conventionally, guest book entries for the current year also include the Virgin Islands, Bermuda, Portugal, Iceland, South Africa, and—even more surprising—the Republic of Iran. An internationalist who believed that good treaties prevent bad outcomes, John Steinbeck would like the idea that the Iran deal with the United States extended, however briefly, to Salinas, California.

The House Where Steinbeck Lived and Wrote Needs Help

Image of John Steinbeck's home in Salinas, California

John Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902 in the front bedroom of the Victorian house at 132 Central Avenue in Salinas, California. In 1905 he was christened in the parlor of the Queen Anne-style structure—the same room where he later practiced the piano. In the living room he announced that he intended to become a writer. In the basement he regaled neighborhood friends with ghost stories and other tales. In an upstairs bedroom he wrote short stories that he sent to magazines, unsigned, as a teenager. He left for Stanford in 1919; years later he and his wife Carol returned to help care for his dying mother, a former school teacher who insisted that all four of her children go to church, learn piano, and attend college. In the same upstairs bedroom he occupied as a boy he continued to work on The Red Pony and Tortilla Flat, the book that brought him fame when it was published in 1935, the year his father died.

In the upstairs bedroom Steinbeck occupied as a boy he continued to work on The Red Pony and Tortilla Flat, the book that brought him fame when it was published in 1935, the year his father died.

The home was sold following Olive’s death, near the bottom of the Great Depression, in 1934. For the next four decades—years of war, recovery, and modernization—ownership of the aging Victorian house passed through various hands until its purchase by the newly created Valley Guild in 1973. A 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization created to save the house where Steinbeck was born, the Valley Guild made repairs, conducted research, and produced results that are evident today. The bed in which Steinbeck was born was returned. So were Olive’s desk and table. Steinbeck’s sisters stayed in California, and they and their children and grandchildren made generous gifts of period furnishings and family heirlooms. Thanks to the hard work of Valley Guild volunteers, the Steinbeck House was added to the National Register of Historic Places, a prestigious designation with some practical benefits.

For the next four decades—years of war, recovery, and modernization—ownership of the aging Victorian house passed through various hands until its purchase by the newly created Valley Guild in 1973.

Recognizing the need for an income stream to support ongoing maintenance and preservation, the founders put their heads together and came up with a plan that serves educational and economic goals equally. For five days each week throughout the year the House is open to the public as a lunch restaurant, gift shop, and bookstore operated by a team of 98 dedicated volunteers. The restaurant employs a professional chef and offers a changing menu. Table service is provided by Valley Guild members in period dress—docents in motion who educate diners about Steinbeck while taking orders and serving food. The annual Steinbeck festival and the National Steinbeck Center on Main Street, three blocks from the Steinbeck House, are partners in the enterprise of keeping Salinas, California at the forefront of global interest in Steinbeck’s life and work.

Image of Steinbeck House interior in Salinas, California

Time Catches Up With Every Victorian—Even Steinbeck’s

Age has its advantages, but keeping a 119-year-old Victorian house in working order is expensive. Not long ago it was discovered that the center of the Steinbeck House, supported by eight posts on brick footings, was slowly sinking. The posts run the length of the basement gift shop and bookstore and serve as the building’s legs. As they go, so goes the body. To prevent collapse, soil engineers and construction experts determined that the deteriorating posts and bases had to be replaced using concrete. Although the restaurant has remained open during the process, the project required closing the gift shop and book store, raising the central beams, and installing temporary supports while making excavations and constructing permanent posts and footings—all necessary to insure the future of John Steinbeck’s birthplace as a public resource.

Image of construction on Steinbeck House foundation

Using the GoFundMe Page Makes Giving Safe and Easy

The project is well along and, once all expenses are paid, is expected to cost $35,000. The bill, along with the revenue hole caused by the gift store closing, has created an urgent need for funds to keep the Steinbeck House open and operating in the black. The people of Salinas, California are community-minded and do their part. But the Steinbeck House is a national treasure, and help is also needed from friends and fans who live elsewhere. Fortunately this group is growing: visitors from 68 countries and 50 states have enjoyed lunch and a lesson in Steinbeck history while eating at the restaurant. Please do your part to keep the Steinbeck House on its feet. Visit the new GoFundMe page and make your tax-deductible gift to the project. The Victorian house where Steinbeck first wrote fiction is getting on, but just as beautiful as the day Steinbeck was born in the front room of his family home 115 years ago.