We continue this week looking at the lives of the children of Frank and Anne (Gholson) Glasgow of Richmond, Virginia. Frank if you remember was the nephew of Nancy Campbell of Adams County. Frank and Anne’s daughter, Ellen was born on the 22nd of April 1873. As the second to the youngest of 10 children, she was frequently left to her own devices and developed into an imaginative child. An extremely sensitive, apparently somewhat willful young child, Ellen was allowed not to attend school when she refused. Though off and on she attended various private schools, she was primarily self-taught, relying heavily on her father’s extensive library.
She read voraciously, particularly on the subjects of philosophy, social and political theory and European and British literature. She spent her summers at her family’s Bumpass, Virginia estate, the historic Jerdone Castle plantation, a venue that reappears in her writings later in life. Throughout her life, Ellen associated herself with her mother and manifested a strong resentment of her father. Her mother, who had survived 10 childbirths and a war, fell prone to depression and nervous exhaustion. She died in 1893, leaving Ellen devastated and further at odds with her father.
Her elder sister, Cary and Cary’s husband, George McCormack, assisted young Ellen and especially encouraged her writing, for which she had an obvious, early talent. Ellen composed her first poem at age seven. At age 17, Ellen refused to make her social debut in Richmond, a custom expected of Victorian ladies. She also rejected her father’s Scot-Calvinist religious customs. Ellen published her first novel, “The Descendant” in 1897 when she was 24 years old. With this novel, Ellen began a literary career encompassing four and a half decades that comprised 24 novels, a collection of poems, short stories and a book of literary criticism.
Critics of her early novels thought she explored topics unbecoming to a young lady. She ignored them and quickly earned respect as a Southern writer. Ellen struggled with deafness and the early death of her mother, sister and brother-in-law and the death in 1905 of a lover, she referred to as “Gerald B.” Ellen never married, though she was engaged and romantically involved with different men throughout her life. Ellen had two broken engagements, Frank Paradise in 1906 and Henry Anderson in the 1930s. Ellen felt her best work was done when love was over.
Ellen won the Pulitzer Prize for her final novel, “In This Our Life” in 1942. The novel, which traces the decline of an aristocratic Virginia family, was made into a film starring Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland and Hattie McDaniel in 1942. In addition to winning the Pulitzer Prize, Ellen received honorary degrees from Duke University and the University of Richmond, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Five of her books were best sellers.
Although she traveled the world, the Greek Revival structure on Main Street in Richmond, Virginia was her home throughout most of her life and where she wrote most of her novels. It was built in 1841. Upon returning to Richmond from many of her extensive travels she would say, “I am returning to the old gray house on Main Street. Her father purchased the home in 1887 and left it to Ellen. After Ellen died, it was given to the Virginia Historical Society. Today the home is worth $2.2 million.
In 1939, Ellen had her first heart attack. Ellen died in November 1945, in her sleep at the age of 73, of heart disease in her home in Richmond. She is buried (next to Jeb Stewart) in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond.
