English
Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)
Mother Tucking Children into Bed, 1921
Cover illustration for Literary Digest, January 29, 1921
The Elizabeth F. L. Gerteiny Trust Collection
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT
Well, there’s Irene O’Connor. She was a very pretty girl. I used her on some of my early Sunday Post covers and other pictures, and so on. Her home was in Potsdam, New York. Her father worked for a wholesale grocery company. His name was O’Connor, but he wasn’t an Irishman. He was … had some French Canadian blood in him, and she had two brothers and a sister. Because I didn’t get to know them until later on.
As I said, I was doing quite well, and I had had my first Post cover. I didn’t know it at the time, but she was engaged to another fellow who was studying at agricultural college. He was from Potsdam, and he was out, I don’t know, somewhere in the Midwest in a agricultural school, and I think the real fact of the thing was that she was really in love with him. But foolishly, I was a better financial match, and I seemed to already be going places, and I don’t blame her at all. We never were really unhappily married, but she was unhappily married, I think. But we got on well enough, but I think that she was really in love with this other fellow.