Ogden Nash

In 1931, Ogden Nash married Frances Leonard. The couple had two daughters, Isabel Nash Eberstadt and Linell Nash Smith. One of his granddaughters, Fernanda Eberstadt, later grew up to be a well-known author.

Initially they lived in New York. But later in 1934, the family moved to Baltimore, Maryland. He considered the city his home and lived there for rest of his life. He had later said, "I could have loved New York had I not loved Balti-more."

Towards the end of his life Nash developed a type of inflammatory bowel disease, known as Crohn's disease. In 1971, he was admitted to the Johns Hopkins Hospital when his condition was aggravated by a lactobacillus infection and died there on May 19.

Frederic Ogden Nash was born on August 19, 1902 in Rye, New York into an American blue-blooded family, whose roots stretched back to the American Revolutionary era. His great-great-great grandfather Abner Nash was the Governor of North Carolina, while Abner’s brother Francis was the founder of Nashville.

Ogden’s father, Edmund Strudwick Nash, was of remarkable character. During the civil war in 1865, he was only twelve years old. Yet, because he was the only man left in the family, he felt responsible for his mother and sisters and to protect them, he would patrol the family estate armed with a shotgun.

As he grew up, Edmund shifted to New York, where he started an export-import business. Later he married Mattie Chenault, whose father was a professor of classics. Frederic Ogden, born as one of their children, had three known siblings; Eleanor Arnett Whitherell, Shirley Gwendoline Nash, and Frederick Aubrey Nash.

Because of the nature of Edmund’s business, the family had to move around a lot. In general, they lived in places like Savannah and Georgia for six months, procuring resins and other things; these were then sold in New York, where they lived for the rest of the year.

Ogden had a usual childhood for his times. As a boy, he hated girls and collected frogs. At home, he learned the right manners and also the classics from his mother. What was unusual was that, from the age of six, he started writing “verses, jingles and rhymes”.

Although Ogden Nash did not have the necessary qualifications, he received his first appointment as a French teacher at his old school, St. George. However, teaching fourteen-year-olds was not his cup of tea and so he quit the job within one year.

Thereafter, he managed to get a job at Dillon, Read & Co, an investment bank in New York. There he mostly worked in the mailroom from four o’clock in the evening to midnight.

At other times, he was supposed to sell bonds; he sold only one and that too to his godmother. However, he found time to see lots of movies and after two years, came to the conclusion that he did not want to work there.

Now the question was what he did want? He considered writing. He had already written many sonnets about serious matters like beauty, truth and eternity, but had realized that they were not actually his style. He also thought of writing plays but discarded that plan too.

Subsequently, he decided that he must have some writing exposure and this he found in commercial advertisement. In 1925, Nash joined Barron G. Collier, where he wrote advertising copies for streetcars. As the company had a franchise for New York, his works appeared all over the city.

Initially, Nash was appointed in the marketing department but eventually became the manuscript reader in the editorial department. While reading manuscripts, some good others bad, the idea of writing crept into his mind once again. But he should write what?

He now started scribbling comic verses in small bits of papers, throwing them at his colleagues across the room. Out of it came ‘Born in a Beer Garden; or, She Troupes to Conquer’. Published in 1930, the book also contained pieces by his colleagues, Christopher Morley, Cleon Throckmorton, and Earnest Elmo Calkins.

Also in 1930, Nash submitted one of his poem, ‘Spring Comes to Murray Hill’ to the ‘New Yorker,’ one of the most well-read and respected magazines of the day. They not only published the poem, but also asked him for more, an offer Nash gladly took up.