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Home Life. James Grover Thurber was born in Columbus in 1894, second of the three children of Charles Leander and Mary Agnes Fisher Thurber. (Mrs. Thurber didn't like the "Leander," so her husband, a loyal Republican, changed it to "Lincoln.") Their other sons were William, a year older than Jim, and Robert, two years younger.
Charley Thurber, the boys' father, was tall, thin, an inveterate wearer of derby hats, and by profession an unsuccessful politican. Although he kept running for various offices until he was nearly 65, he never got elected to any. When there were six leading candidates for five offices, Charley Thurber would invariably finish sixth. Too honest to play ball with a political machine, and too amiable and gentle to be a winning maverick, he was a chronic also-ran.
In return for his unflagging idealism and perseverance, he received appointments that were largely drudgery: secretary to two governors of Ohio (Asa Bushnell and William McKinley), to a mayor of Columbus; member of a committee to investigate hazing at West Point; state organizer for Teddy Roosevelt's unsuccessful Bull Moose campaign for the presidency in 1912, etc. In a piece called Gentleman from Indiana, Jim has written lovingly and beautifully of his father.
In contrast to her mild, quiet husband, who never scolded the boys, Mamie Thurber was a hurled hand grenade. The class comic in school, a star at amateur theatricals, for a while she considered running away from home and going on the professional stage. Her stern Methodist father scotched that, clamping down on even the amateur theatricals, but it made no difference. Mamie kept right on performing.
Once at a buffet luncheon she found a bowl of uncooked eggs waiting to be used for eggnogs. "You know, I've always wanted to throw a dozen eggs," she said to nobody in particular. Whereupon she selected a dozen and threw them at the nearest wall, not missing it once.
Another time, she attended an overflow meeting conducted by a faith healer, who with his exhortations and layings-on-of-hands had set Columbus afire. Somehow she got hold of a stretcher, lay down on it, and had a couple of friends carry her toward the platform. Halfway down the aisle, Mamie flipped to her feet, yelling, "I can walk! I can walk! It's the first time I've walked in 40 years!" Hundreds wept or screamed at the miracle.
Mamie Thurber has gone on performing. Her husband died in 1939 at the age of 72, but she is still at it, an amazing old lady of 85, with piercing grey eyes under black brows, and none of her staggering faculties impaired. Wolcott Gibbs, of The New Yorker, has written of Thurber's "sure grasp of confusion." Nobody who ever heard Jim's mother tell a long, detailed, uproarious misadventure story would wonder where his sureness of grasp came from. There are oldtimers in Columbus who insist that Jim is but his mother's pale copy.