{{Short description|American humorist, author, lecturer, and editor}} {{Infobox person | name = Bertha Damon | other_names = Bertha Clark Pope | birth_name = Bertha Louise Clark | birth_date = January 4, 1881 | birth_place = Chester, Connecticut, U.S.<ref>Ship passenger list, Honolulu, 28 March 1928, National Archives</ref> | death_date = June 18, 1975<ref>{{cite web |title=California Death Index |website=Ancestry.com |access-date=2 February 2022 | url=https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/1677603:5180}}</ref> | death_place = El Cerrito, California | education = [[Pembroke College in Brown University|Pembroke College]] | spouse = [[Arthur Upham Pope]] (m. 1909–c. 1920; divorced),<br> Lindsay Todd Damon (m. 1928–1940; death) }} '''Bertha Clark Pope Damon''' (1881–1975) was an American [[humorist]], author, lecturer, and editor. She wrote the best-selling humorous memoir ''Grandma Called It Carnal''.
The composer [[Ernst Bacon]] dedicated two songs to Bertha Damon.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.americanartsong.org/bacon.htm |title=American Art Song |access-date=2012-08-01 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180207161241/http://www.americanartsong.org/bacon.htm |archive-date=2018-02-07 |url-status=dead }}</ref> Benjamin Lehman, English professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said she “had a real talent for gathering people around her, and that she "was so great a wit that we were all delighted periodically into really uncontrolled laughter.”<ref name="Lehman">[https://archive.org/details/lehmanrecollecti00lehmrich Benjamin H. Lehman, “Recollections and Reminiscences of Life in the Bay Area and Beyond,” 1969, p. 47.]</ref> Well-known writers who were part of her circle include [[Stella Benson]],<ref>Joy Grant's 1987 biography of Stella Benson ({{ISBN|978-0333393178}}) contains considerable information about Bertha Damon.</ref> [[Witter Bynner]], Oscar Lewis, [[Winfield Townley Scott]], and Marie de Laveaga Welch. She was also active in the [[Sierra Club]] and wrote accounts of some of its camping trips for the ''Sierra Club Bulletin''.<ref>"With the Sierra Club in 1914," ''Sierra Club Bulletin'' vol. 9 (January 1915), pp. 247-257 [https://books.google.com/books?id=1skQAAAAIAAJ]; "The High Trip of 1925," ''Sierra Club Bulletin'' vol. 12, no. 3 (1926).</ref>
== Biography == Bertha Louise Clark was born in a small town, [[Chester, Connecticut]], in 1881. After her mother died in 1892 she and her sister lived with their grandmother. She attended high school at [[Northfield Seminary]]. After graduating from [[Pembroke College in Brown University]] in 1905 and teaching school in [[Providence, Rhode Island]] briefly,<ref name=Wilson>{{cite journal|title=Bertha Damon|journal=Wilson Library Bulletin|date=October 1943|volume=18|issue=2|page=106}}</ref> she married [[Arthur Upham Pope]] in 1909,<ref>{{Cite web|last=Siver|first=Noel|date=July 20, 2005|title=Pope, Arthur Upham|url=https://iranicaonline.org/|url-status=live|access-date=2021-09-10|website=Encyclopaedia Iranica Foundation|language=en-US|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100410171658/http://www.iranicaonline.org/|archive-date=2010-04-10}}</ref> who had graduated from Brown in 1904 and was soon hired to teach philosophy there. Pope did graduate work at Brown, Cornell and Harvard. In 1910 the couple moved to Berkeley, California; where he taught at the University of California, Berkeley. During the 1915–16 school year Bertha taught English at [[Oakland Technical High School]].<ref>{{cite book|title=Directory of Secondary and Normal Schools for the School Year ...|year = 1916|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Oxs-AQAAMAAJ|publisher=California. State Board of Education|accessdate=12 June 2014}}</ref> Discovery of Arthur Pope's affair with student [[Phyllis Ackerman]] (who later became his second wife) led to his resignation from the university and a divorce from Bertha around 1920. Bertha continued to live in the Tudor-style house they had purchased after its use at the [[Panama–Pacific International Exposition]].<ref name="Lehman" /><ref>"Remnants of a Dream" website {{cite web |url=http://home.comcast.net/~sgsanders/pages/remnants4.html |title=PPIE found remnants |accessdate=2012-08-01 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20150113025923/http://home.comcast.net/~sgsanders/pages/remnants4.html |archivedate=2015-01-13 }}, retrieved 31 July 2012.</ref> She sometimes had long-term guests and boarders, including Peter Case and [[Stella Benson]], in that house, which she named "High Acres."
She became a close friend of [[Albert M. Bender]], who was treasurer and publications chair of the [http://www.bccbooks.org/ Book Club of California]. Bertha held a part-time job as the first paid secretary of the Book Club during 1920, and she edited and wrote an introduction to ''The Letters of Ambrose Bierce,'' published by the club in 1922.<ref>[http://www.bccbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/BCCvol1-The-Hundredth-Book.pdf David Magee, ''The Hundredth Book'', 1958, pp. xii-xiii. ''The Letters of Ambrose Bierce'' was reprinted in 1967 by Gordian Press.]</ref>
After a trip to Europe in 1922, she opened the Old World Shop in Berkeley, selling European antiques and Oriental rugs until 1925.<ref>Classified ad, Berkeley Daily Gazette, 29 January 1925, p. 12.</ref> She owned a series of homes in the East Bay in the 1920s. As she told it in her author biographies, "Bertha Damon has earned her living in various ways, the most interesting to her being the successful building and remodeling of houses, though she had no formal training as an architect." In 1925 she had a Mediterranean-style house built on Eagle Hill in [[Kensington, California]], which she sold to [[J. Robert Oppenheimer]] and his wife in the summer of 1941, while he was working on the [[Manhattan Project]]. Another home she lived in and worked on was on the waterfront in [[Point Richmond, California]].
In 1926 she wrote an account of "The High Trip of 1925" in the [[Sierra Club]] Bulletin.<ref>[https://archive.org/stream/sierraclubbullet123sier Sierra Club Bulletin 12:3 (1926), pp. 213-223.]</ref> In 1927 she traveled by automobile to [[Santa Fe, New Mexico|Santa Fe]] and [[Taos, New Mexico|Taos]], New Mexico, with Albert Bender and [[Ansel Adams]].<ref>''Ansel Adams, An Autobiography'' {{ISBN|0821222414}}, p. 71.]</ref>
In 1928, she married Lindsay Todd Damon (1871–1940), who was an English professor at Brown University from 1901 to 1936.<ref>[https://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/Databases/Encyclopedia/search.php?serial=D0010 ''Encyclopedia Brunoniana'']</ref> They bought a house on 250 acres of land near [[Alton, New Hampshire]] and spent much of each year there, where she created extensive gardens. Soon she was president of her local garden club and then president of the New Hampshire Federation of Garden Clubs. After her book ''Grandma Called It Carnal'' became a best-seller, she was a popular guest lecturer to women's clubs and other groups. She generally returned to Berkeley for part of each year, and spent even more time there after the death of her husband in 1940. She died in nearby [[El Cerrito, California]] in 1975 at the age of 94.<ref>William Whittingham Lyman, "Faculty Member at Berkeley," typescript memoir, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. She appears in Oakland area phone directories with a Berkeley address from 1959 to 1973 and nearby El Cerrito in 1974.</ref>
== Books == * (as Bertha Clark Pope), editor (with [[George Sterling]], uncredited): ''The Letters of [[Ambrose Bierce]]'' ([[Book Club of California]], 1922; Gordian Press, 1967). Includes letters by Bierce, "The Introduction" by Pope, and "A Memoir of Ambrose Bierce" by Sterling. * ''Grandma Called It Carnal'' (Simon and Schuster, 1938)[https://books.google.com/books?id=MpMPAAAAMAAJ&q=grandma+called+it+carnal], [https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,772078,00.html review] describes her experiences being raised in a Connecticut village by an eccentric grandmother who combined Victorian notions of propriety with a great admiration for [[Henry David Thoreau]] and an aversion to modern inventions. * ''A Sense of Humus'' (Simon and Schuster, 1943), [https://books.google.com/books?id=PdRBAAAAIAAJ&q=damon+sense+of+humus] published in England as [https://books.google.com/books?id=Z9RBAAAAIAAJ&q=damon+green+corners ''Green Corners''] (London: Michael Joseph, 1947), focuses on her adult life in the 1930s in rural New Hampshire, where she became an enthusiastic gardener and enjoyed getting to know some of the local characters. It includes much humor as well as serious passages. "Ruffled Paws," the chapter about cocker spaniels, has appeared in more than one anthology.<ref>Jack Goodman, editor, ''The Fireside Book of Dog Stories'' (Simon & Schuster 1943)[https://archive.org/details/firesidebookofdo00good]; ''Love of Spaniels'' (Voyageur Press 2000, {{ISBN|0896584534}}).</ref>
== References == {{Reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Damon, Bertha}} [[Category:Brown University alumni]] [[Category:American humorists]] [[Category:20th-century American women writers]] [[Category:American women humorists]] [[Category:1881 births]] [[Category:People from Kensington, California]] [[Category:1975 deaths]] [[Category:20th-century American writers]]