Author James Agee, his fiancee and his goats

AGEE, James – (1909-1955) a Pulitzer-prize winning author who resided in Frenchtown from the spring of 1938 to the summer of '39.

Delaware Valley News reporter Alex Primm interviewed Agee biographer Erik Wensberg in 1975. Wensberg told him that Agee came to Frenchtown with his fiancee Alma Mailman to finish his book about Alabama sharecroppers in the Depression, and to wait for his divorce from his first wife.

He rented the house at 27 Second Street, next door to Borough Hall. (It's now police headquarters.)

At age 13, Gloria Sipes and her friend Betty Hartpence made a point of trick-or-treating at the home of the fascinating and alien city people. Gloria remembered, “She wore high boots even though it wasn't snowing, and long flowered skirts. The young man had a lean, brooding, Gothic look.” And they kept a goat in their small back yard.

“Whenever I saw them, I would stare at them intently. Especially when they were together because they looked as if they were sharing some private joke in their own private world. They never seemed to blend into the town; they stayed as visitors from some exotic place.

“Betty and I had both been riddled with curiosity about them, and had decided weeks before that Halloween would give a legitimate excuse to go to their house, to enter their special world...”

“The pretty young woman who opened the door looked puzzled at us (Gloria in a gaudy Gypsy getup and Betty wearing an outfit made entirely of neckties) until Betty chanted, 'Anything for Halloween?' and held out her small paper bag for the treat.

The woman laughed delightedly, opened the door wide, and said, “Come on in and I'll see what I can find.”

The living room contained nothing but two straight-backed chairs and a table with a candle burning on it. She invited the girls to sit down and left the room saying, “Be right back with something for you two.”

“Betty and I looked at each other and then around that bare room. So this was their private world.” Then Agee, wearing a Frankenstein mask, lurched into the room letting out a terrible roar, paralyzing the girls with fear.

His wife breezed back in laughing, and Agee swept off his mask and said sheepishly, “I'm sorry. I didn't know that we had company. I hope I didn't frighten you." The girls shook their heads “in a mute lie.”

Then the couple introduced themselves and asked “all the questions that polite adults ask the young: how we liked school, what grade we were in, where did we live; but the young couple seemed genuinely interested in us and we enjoyed the visit.”

Gloria would have been scandalized to know that the couple was unmarried, at least not to each other – yet. They married in Frenchtown that December, Wensberg said. According to a friend of Agee's, the writer had noted in his journal that month that after paying the rent he would have $12.52 to his name.

About that goat: Wensberg said that Agee had purchased it on a whim after seeing it in town, but it was very noisy at night, so he bought it a companion goat. That didn't help.

Neighbor Ruth Vanselous didn't recall much about Agee, but she told the News reporter, “I remember the goats. They used to run up and down the street, and the children were always chasing and playing with them.”

The Agees moved to Brooklyn in the summer of 1939. His book about sharecroppers, “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” was published in 1941.

Later he would become a film and book critic for Time magazine and a film critic for The Nation magazine. He was a screenwriter for the movies “The African Queen” (1951) and “Night of the Hunter” (1955).

His novel, “A Death in the Family,” was based on his own experience of losing his father at age 6. It was published posthumously and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1958. Wensberg died in 2010 while finishing his biography.

Another author, Nathanael West, boarded at the Warford House for awhile in 1932, but he escaped Gloria's notice – probably because she was 7 at the time and was not much of a drinker.

From "Rick's Frenchtown Encyclopedia"