How the Grinch Stole Easthampton

By Rick Teller '70 with Dr. Charles D. Cohen

A post-seasonal editorial.

[The opinions expressed here are the author’s own.  Special thanks to Charles D. Cohen and Patrick Brough for their contributions to this post.]

The story has been around for years.  Supposedly the Town (now City) of Easthampton and Mount Tom were Dr. Seuss’s inspiration for Whoville and Mt. Crumpit in the classic children’s book, How the Grinch Stole Christmas.   Back in 2009, a surge in the currency of this suburban legend prompted me to ask a friend, Charles D. Cohen, whether there was any legitimacy to the story.  It was not an idle question; Dr. Cohen is Theodor Geisel’s biographer (The Seuss, the Whole Seuss, and Nothing But the Seuss: A Visual Biography of Theodor Seuss Geisel, Random House, 2004) and possibly the leading authority on All Things Seuss.  Dr. Cohen responded,

The first thing I should point out is that whether you have the Grinch atop Mt. Crumpit, or King Derwin on his mountain looking down into the valley where Bartholomew Cubbins lived, or Yertle sitting on top of a skyscraper of turtles, there are plenty of similar images in Ted Geisel’s work. However, I’m not familiar with the notion that the Grinch story was based on something involving Mt. Tom specifically.

I do know that Ted had visited Mt. Tom — his senior picnic was held there on 09/23/1920. And he did have an uncanny memory for images. But I’m not aware of anything special that ever happened to him involving Mt. Tom that would be the genesis for the Grinch story.

In fact, in How the Grinch Stole Christmas! A 50th-Anniversary Retrospective (Random House, 2007), I believe that my contention was that the Grinch living on a mountain looking down on the village below was reflective of Ted Geisel living atop Mt. Soledad and looking down on the village of La Jolla down below. We know that the Grinch was modeled on Ted, himself. For example, in the book and in the 1966 cartoon, the Grinch says, “For fifty-three years I’ve put up with it now! I MUST stop this Christmas from coming! . . . But HOW?”  The book was published in 1957, when Ted, not coincidentally, was 53 years old. There are several other bits of information on this subject in my retrospective, but that should give you the idea.

That apparently satisfied my interest at the time.  But a few weeks ago, the story reasserted itself.  This time it spread rapidly on Facebook.  Suddenly, Easthamptonites wanted to celebrate.  Shortly before Christmas there was a well-attended rally on the Town Common, attended by a number of city politicians and the green fellow himself, apparently in competition with Santa Claus.

(Patrick Brough)
(Patrick Brough)

The best I can say is that it was good for local business, people were enjoying themselves, and it was probably harmless.  Why they would want the distinction of living in Whoville, I don’t know.  I’m reminded of the joy in Springfield, Vermont, a few years ago when, following a competition among several Springfields, the town was designated the model for the city of Springfield in The Simpsons.  It didn’t seem entirely complimentary . . . although I’m told that doughnut sales soared.

But something about claiming a rumor as historic fact didn’t sit well.  So I wrote Charles Cohen again, initially seeking permission to use the quote earlier in this article, but also wondering if any new information, confirmational or not, had come to light.  His response:

The Mt. Tom story still is no truer today than it was last time we corresponded, but I do have a bit more.

Dr. Cohen continued,

Charles D. Cohen’s Dr. Seuss biography, available from your favorite bookseller or library!

I should start by explaining that the reason I got involved in the field of Seuss scholarship was specifically because of the large amount of misinformation I saw.  So this Mt. Tom claim is not surprising.  In fact, it isn’t even the only rumor that puts a local claim on the origin of How The Grinch Stole Christmas.

One story, from at least 2007, alleges that Ted applied to the University of Virginia three times and was denied entrance on each occasion.  Supposedly he eventually bought a large house on a mountain above the school so that he could always “look down” on it.  Students at UVA are called Wahoos, and the campus is sometimes called Hooville, theoretically leading to Ted’s Who-ville. Some Virginia kids are apparently even taught that version in school.  In 2009, a message was sent to the urban legend debunking site snopes.com, in which a parent described that story as having been told to their son by his 7th grade social studies teacher.

For the record, Ted graduated from high school on January 26, 1921 and began classes at Dartmouth College on September 22, 1921.  That doesn’t exactly leave time for him to have applied to, and been rejected by, UVA three times.

Many people seek a commonality with those who have achieved wealth and/or notoriety.  The quirk of  human nature that causes folks to follow a Kardashian on Twitter also tempts them to look for local connections to famous people.  Since Ted grew up in Springfield, there is even more of a reason for people to associate him with their environs.  It’s the same impulse that causes people to erroneously claim that Ted, or one of his relatives, lived at 51 Mulberry Street (a rumor that I’ve traced back to 1992).

The dynamic of looking down from a great height on those below is one that Ted used a number of times.  There are also a variety of instances from his personal life in which Ted may have looked down from a mountain at a town below.  Due to his uncanny (and unconscious) memory for images, it is theoretically possible that any (or all) of these views might have influenced his writing.  You originally asked me about the Mt. Tom story in February 2009, and I’ve traced it back to at least to a 12/15/2005 posting on Masslive.com.  However, there is no reason to believe that the view from Mt. Tom had any specific correlation with How The Grinch Stole Christmas.

The first two illustrations in The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins (1938) show that same dynamic from two different perspectives–first King Derwin’s view from above and then Bartholomew’s view from below.  One could just as easily claim that this setting was based on a view from Mt. Tom.  But there wasn’t anything particularly memorable in Ted’s history that involved that peak or Easthampton.  The only relation between Mt. Tom and Ted Geisel that I’ve seen is that his high school class’s senior picnic was held there on September 23, 1920 — eighteen years before The 500 Hats was published.  Ted visited Germany less than two years before that publication, and I can make a much more convincing argument that the set up in the Kingdom of Didd was based on the Hegau mountains in Baden-Württemberg, Germany—most likely Hohenkrähen, perhaps with a bit of Der Mägdeberg added in.

In theory, Ted could have had a vestigial memory of Mt. Tom or the Hegau mountains when writing How The Grinch Stole Christmas.  However, the direct link comes from California, not Massachusetts or Germany.

The explanation starts when the Geisels bought property surrounding an old observation tower at the top of Mount Soledad, overlooking the town of La Jolla, greater San Diego, and into Mexico, with a long stretch of ocean view.  Construction of their new home began on September 17, 1948 and the Geisels moved in about a year later, in roughly the fall of 1949.

Ted was wary of his own success and about a year after moving in, drew a parallel between Yertle overlooking the water from atop his mount in Sala-ma-Sond and Ted overlooking the water from his perch atop Mount Soledad.  “Yertle the Turtle” appeared in the April 1951 issue of Redbook magazine.  Although the warning against being too prideful was directly based on Adolph Hitler, Ted was also drawing on his own efforts to remain humble.  He felt conflicted, being both a part of the wealthy community and removed from it.  An article in the December 17, 1960 issue of the New Yorker described Ted as being “staggered and a bit frightened by his opulence, for he has never learned to come to grips with money . . . ‘I wish people would stop talking to me about money,’ he says.  ‘All I want to do is write books.'”

Over the next few years, Ted continued to have mixed feelings about his relationships to his success and fame, as well as to the people and places with which he interacted from his new home.  The following year, a December 1952 article in National Geographic included a picture of Ted, along with a hint of the splendid view in question.  That article described La Jolla as a haven for the wealthy and powerful, noting that “at last count there were 63 permanent residents with an individual net worth of more than $1,000,000” (and that was in the 1950s), as well as “twenty-six retired admirals or generals.”  In contrast, a year after he originally wrote The Sneetches in 1953, Ted asked his agent if he “might count on $5,000 a year from royalties.”

That National Geographic article described La Jolla as a beach town where “Cadillacs and broken-down jalopies with surfboards tied on their sagging tops park side by side in happy democracy.”  Ted saw things differently from his mountaintop perch and wrote The Sneetches, in part, to show a different view of those two classes.

Ted continued to feel that division, both in his surroundings and within himself.  We know with absolute certainty that Ted based the character of the Grinch on himself.  When he wrote How The Grinch Stole Christmas in 1957, he was 53 years old, which is why the Grinch says, “For fifty-three years I’ve put up with it now!  I MUST stop this Christmas from coming! . . . But HOW?”  That year he drew a picture of himself looking in the mirror and seeing the Grinch as a reflection.

Looking down from Mount Soledad onto La Jolla below, Ted felt the distance between himself and the millionaires, physically and emotionally, and THAT is the basis for the setting of How The Grinch Stole Christmas.

(Patrick Brough)
(Patrick Brough)

So those are the facts.  I suspect that it won’t make much difference.  And one might ask, given the enjoyment people have derived from an apparently benign delusion, why am I trying to undermine it?  Could my behavior be just a little [gasp] Grinchlike?  (I’ve been called worse, including “Curmudgeon” (Erin Fitzgibbons ’11) and “The Troll that Lives Underneath the Library” (Joe Vasicek ’03) — all, presumably, with appropriately affectionate deference.)  When the Grinch Myth reared its shaggy head on Facebook last month, and I tried to put in my two cents of sense, a friend and colleague quoted, as he often does, from a Western we both admire, John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance:

“This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

It’s a great line, from a great film.  And mythology can be a useful tool for addressing history, for framing the real story.  But in and of itself, as a approach to journalism it leaves something to be desired.  As a philosophy of history, it strikes me as dangerously counterproductive.  Too often mythology is used less as an approach to history than as a retreat from it.  We live in an age where we are comforted by platitudes and simplified ideas, where we are fascinated and distracted by celebrity irrelevance, where political discourse is driven by innuendo, misdirection, misstatement.  There is a sense that if one repeats a lie often and loudly enough, it takes on a truth of its own, especially if it doesn’t require serious critical thinking.  This is how we end up with Fox “News” and the drivelous rantings of a growing number of national figures whose notoriety is based entirely on their ability to talk convincing nonsense, and make good copy while doing so — all the while consigning the intelligent, fact-based, critical exchange of ideas to the back pages, if reported at all.  This is why special-interest organizations and state legislatures, rather than scholars and educators, have far too much say in what is presented as history or science in school textbooks.  And in fairness, there’s just as much abuse of the truth on the left as the right side of the aisle.

Pundits are fond of quoting Plato: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  Except that Plato didn’t write that; George Santayana did.  (Reason in Common Sense, 1905-06).  The line has also been attributed to Winston Churchill and Kurt Vonnegut, among others, but now we know where they got it.  (Vonnegut added, “We’re doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That’s what it is to be alive. It’s pretty dense kids who haven’t figured that out by the time they’re ten . . . Most kids can’t afford to go to Harvard and be misinformed.”  Bluebeard, 1987).  Historical traditions that concern George Washington cutting down the cherry tree or Emily Williston stealing a button are probably benign, except that they oversimplify and distract from the true stories, which are often far more interesting.  So it is with the Easthampton Grinch.  But when history, or mis-history, is used to achieve questionable political, moral, or strategic gain, then it is dangerous — as has been seen countless times in real history.  And because the line is rarely black-and-white, we owe history — and the truth, and our kids, and ourselves — something better than to elevate rumor or legend to the status of fact — even if it makes us feel good.

15 thoughts on “How the Grinch Stole Easthampton”

  1. Very interesting and informative, even if you are a curmudgeon who lives beneath the library. Well done!

  2. Well-said, Rick. When the local Facebook sages began to buzz about this a few weeks ago, I made a feeble attempt to suggest otherwise about Seuss’s inspiration for Whoville, but your thoughtful piece brings a better measure of reason into the debate. Many years ago, when this same topic arose, a good, scholarly friend cast his own aspersions on its accuracy, and I’ve had my own lingering doubts ever since. Still, as you say, it’s a benign myth, hurting no one, really. Now, why don’t we see if we can prove or debunk the SECOND greatest suburban myth about Easthampton, that, in the 1950s and 60s, the town’s artesian water supply was, as legend had it, the “second-best water in the United States.” I always wondered about that one. And, needless to add, if we were second, who was first?

    1. Bruce, I remember the story about the water supply very well and I’m not sure that it’s a myth — although how they determined “second best” is beyond me. Second purest, perhaps? Can we put our faith in good old objective chemistry? I think we lost the title when one of the wells had to be closed because of groundwater contamination from a business in Southampton. My recollection was that a town in Texas had the distinction of being no. 1. This is going to require further research, unless someone who knows [as opposed to just believes 😉 ] would like to jump in.

  3. very interesting! Thank you for this research! I am going to continue to ‘believe’ in Mt. Tom…… a place where I have fond memories while attending Willy prep. 😉

  4. Easthampton had their first Whobilation!! This event took us out of our houses away from the negative news and we filled the hearts of children to the brim with joy! Our event was filled with creativity, joy, culture, community spirit!! May we continue our Whobilations every year and fill our hearts with joy of Dr. Suess’s inspiration from long ago!!!!

    1. well said Robin..myth or not..it brings our little city pride and community ..what better way of celebrating a wonderful writer!

  5. Thank so much for this. I have been pointing out the lack of anything approaching a factual basis for this legend in numerous venues and basically been told I’m a big party pooper for doing so. I have nothing against the lighthearted fun of the whole thing as long as people acknowledge it is sheer speculation with no basis in fact at all. But that’s not good enough for most people, they would rather pretend, even as adults, that something is true simply because it pleases them. Having any kind of standard that facts ought to be facts is considered tedious and boring. It’s far more fun to believe every hyperbolic Upworthy video that crosses your Facebook feed and shared it unthinkingly than to wonder whether it might not actually be a bunch of BS. I find this discouraging and fear I myself may actually be becoming the curmudgeon Seuss himself felt he was. But I honestly don’t think it’s that at all. At times I think we are a society of arrested development, happier in our clueless shiny fantasy land and content to stay there at all costs, rather than adults willing to have standards for journalism and a value system that values truth over fun. While that’s probably over stating it, and this is probably not an issue worth getting so worked up about, I simply can’t help myself. Bah humbug!

  6. Great introspect my friends. But, to speak of the Great Easthampton water supply leaves me uncomfortable. Since Easthampton grew as an industrious factory town; wouldn’t it suffice to reason the actual purity of the water? Through the past 40+ years, I have known many Easthampton folks that are suffering, have suffered or died of cancer. (Sorry to go off the beat of the grinch) If research is conducted of Easthampton’s water over the last century, I fear the cost of that gross tribute of being this country’s 2d best water Thoughts? Any Facts or Research? I’ll wait and hope to hear more. I left Easthampton in 1982 but am sincere about the reality I have seen.
    P.S. I still love the fantasy of Whoville that brought the diversity of Easthampton people together. Isn’t that the lesson?

    1. Bringing people together is one lesson. Ms. Garcia, in the preceding comment, eloquently cites another.
      I’m not currently in a position to talk with any authoritative detail about the water supply. (There are others who are.) This I will note: You mention Easthampton’s history as a factory town. Like most of its New England counterparts, Easthampton’s industrial development in the 19th century was aided by an abundant water supply, which both powered the mills and, prior to the arrival of the railroads, provided transportation. But Easthampton was unusual in having a natural underground source of drinking water (the Barnes Aquifer), so the town never had to rely on the ponds and rivers. I don’t think one can reliably equate industrial water use with purity. Most communities’ experiences would suggest the opposite conclusion.
      As for the recent history of the aquifer, the Easthampton Dept. of Public Works publishes an annual report on the water supply. They might have the information you seek, or you could contact the Mayor’s Office.

      1. I can address the water quality question. As Mr. Teller states the town water supply was drawn from the Barnes Aquifer and was not subject to the pollution associated with the mills. However the aquifer was found to be contaminated with a solvent TCE in the 1980’s. The source of this contamination was traced to General Electric (though they deny any responsibility) Easthampton was required to build a treatment plant to address the contamination and MassDEP and the Dept of Public Health have investigated the cause and effect of the contamination on the water supply and the populace. MA DPH did not find any conclusive evidence linking the contamination to higher incidences of cancers. If anyone wants more information please contact me at the Easthampton Water Dept. Mike Czerwiec, Water Quality, Easthampton Water Dept. mczerwiec@easthamptonwater.com

  7. Rick – I’m just seeing this post now, and learning the true story behind this myth was very interesting. But my favorite part of this piece, by far, was your next to last paragraph, which is absolutely brilliant! It’s eloquent, insightful, and invites further conversation. I could see that paragraph as the thesis and jumping of point for a fantastic op-ed piece. Kudos on a great article!

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