![]() ![]() Louise was artistic, rebellious and captivating. ![]() Fitzhugh briefly wed Ed Thompson, though later said, “I can’t abide a male human being in my bed.” Courtesy of Rebecca Jacks Louise did feel sympathy for her mother and maintained a relationship with her through adulthood, but she never trusted her father’s family again, forging a skepticism toward parental figures that later defined her children’s books. “She just kept repeating, ‘I was a baby and they threw me on the couch,’ ” her friend would later say. Afterward, Louise went to her friend’s house, visibly shaken by the shocking courtroom accusations. Still, Louise didn’t know just how scandalous her parents’ marriage was until she did some sleuthing of her own, using a college internship at the local Memphis paper to read up on the divorce proceedings. Eventually, he relented, and sometime after Louise entered the first grade, she met Mary Louise. ![]() The Fitzhughs refused to let Mary Louise see the child Josephine particularly thought Mary Louise, who came from a poor family, was a bad influence.Īfter Sally married Millsaps, she urged him to tell Louise the truth about her mother. Despite the emotional abuse he inflicted on his wife, Millsaps won full custody of Louise - he had bragged that he had the courts “all sewn up” due to his family name. Mary Louise - who had met Millsaps while vacationing in Europe - had chafed under her husband’s controlling, boorish behavior (he wouldn’t let her teach, gave her a paltry allowance and disparaged her family, calling them “trash”) and demanded a divorce. Mary Louise was alive and well, teaching dance in Clarksdale (about an hour and a half away from Memphis) and trying to see her baby. Louise’s father, Millsaps Fitzhugh, was a prominent lawyer who told Louise that her mother, Mary Louise Perkins, a ballet teacher from Clarksdale, Miss., died when Louise was a baby. Photograph by Hans Knopf, Courtesy of Bard College Archives The “Harriet the Spy” author spent the next decade making love and art in NYC and Europe. A young Louise Fitzhugh sits for a painting around 1949 at Bard College, where she studied writing. Her stepmother, Sally, was pretty cool, but Louise would never admit it. Her grandmother, Josephine Fitzhugh, was - according to Louise - “a musical millionaire who threw money out the window for the birds, while servants stood below to catch the cash in baskets.” Her crazy uncle Gus lived in the attic and cut up dolls. Louise Fitzhugh was born in Memphis in 1928 to a prominent, eccentric Southern family. With the publication of the book, “ Sometimes You Have to Lie: The Life and Times of Louise Fitzhugh, Renegade Author of Harriet the Spy” (Seal Press), out now, author Leslie Brody is finally revealing the truth. She wrote few books before her death in 1974, at the young age of 46, and her last romantic partner took pains to keep as much of Louise’s salacious past - including her sexuality - under wraps. Photo by Lilyan Chauvin with permission of Julie Ann Johnson In 1951 Louise Fitzhugh moved to Greenwich Village and fell in with an artistic lesbian crowd, including photographer Gina Jackson. She was a lesbian who dressed in tailored suits and capes and had multiple affairs with women and a few men. She was a pint-sized heiress with a dysfunctional Southern family. According to a new biography, Fitzhugh led a secret life that would have thrilled her nosy heroine. It’s a motto that “Harriet the Spy” author Louise Fitzhugh could have called her own. Her main takeaway is that “sometimes you have to lie” to keep people from hating you. In the end, her clever takedowns land her a blockbuster gossip column in the school newspaper. She’s also not very nice: She throws tantrums, hides a frog in her frenemy’s desk and refuses to apologize when her classmates discover the disparaging dossiers she’s written on them. She’s mostly a gossipmonger, obsessed with chronicling the people around her and figuring out what makes them tick. Welsch does not solve mysteries, like that goody-two-shoes gumshoe Nancy Drew. She snoops on her neighbors - sneaking into dumbwaiters and scaling the roofs of apartment buildings - while jotting down shockingly frank observations, like “DOES HIS MOTHER HATE HIM? IF I HAD HIM I’D HATE HIM.” The 11-year-old heroine of the 1964 classic “ Harriet the Spy” is a street-smart tomboy who galumphs around her Upper East Side neighborhood in ratty jeans and a hoodie. Story of trailblazing 1920s NYC female police officer finally told New book explains how to ‘woke-proof’ your life with these simple stepsīest-selling crime novelist shares footage of terrifying real-life raid on $2.8M home ‘Blind Side’ author jokes about Michael Oher’s college grades in resurfaced video: ‘Says a lot’ ![]()
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