Is Charles Wadsworth Camp’s minimal internet presence due to lack of interest in his work, or is the lack of interest due to his minimal internet presence?

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 “No one,” the doctor answered, “can say what psychic force is capable of doing. Some scientists have started to explore, but it is still uncharted country.” - from The Abandoned Room, By Wadsworth Camp

Why is there almost no biographical information about Charles Wadsworth Camp on the internet? Almost all references to Mr. Camp appear in the numerous biographies of his famous daughter, Madeleine L’Engle. But Camp was also a writer. There are movies based on his work. His books are available for purchase in both used and new editions. The ebook versions range from free to 96¢, and some of his novels are freely accessable online.

Camp’s The Abandoned Room (Public Domain) is a little gem of a murder mystery with supernatural overtones. The story is briskly paced, for the most part, with a sustained  atmosphere of spookiness.  The denouement is no less satisfying than many of the Sherlock Holmes adventures. The story is certainly more linear than the webwork novels of Harry Stephen Keeler. I highly recommended The Abandoned Room to fans and scholars of the old-dark-house thriller mystery genre.

Charles Wadsworth Camp, also known as simply Wadsworth Camp, was born on October 18, 1878 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and died on October 30, 1936 in Jacksonville, Florida. This intrigues me because I live in Jacksonville, and it is my intention to find out exactly where Mr. Camp lived and if he wrote any of his novels or articles while residing here.

I sent an email to the Madeleine L’Engle website. After all, L’Engle’s parents were Wadsworth Camp and Madeleine Hall Barnett, and, although L’Engle passed away in 2007, maybe the mangers of her web site can fill me in. Maybe they are even planning a big Wadsworth Camp publicity campaign, even as I write this, which will make my research moot. Maybe my email will inspire them to initiate a big publicity campaign. See, that’s one of the problems with research. It’s like when scientists try to observe the position of a sub-atomic particle, the very act of observing the particle changes it’s position. 

The reply from L’Engle’s web site came back the next day, “Bill, we are not aware of any resources online about Mr. Camp. Sorry. Thanks for your interest.”

Continuing my web search, I found some vital information in a New Yorker profile of Madeleine L’Engle, written by Cynthia Zarin, which gives us the spectacle of an alligator climbing up the steps of L’Engle’s Florida home before she moves to New York and lives in an apartment below Leonard Bernstein.

“Madeleine L’Engle Camp was born in 1918 in New York City, the only child of Madeleine Hall Barnett, of Jacksonville, Florida, and Charles Wadsworth Camp, a Princeton man and First World War veteran, whose family had a big country place in New Jersey, called Crosswicks. In Jacksonville society, the Barnett family was legendary: Madeleine’s grandfather, Bion Barnett, the chairman of the board of Jacksonville’s Barnett Bank, had run off with a woman to the South of France, leaving behind a note on the mantel.” – from Cynthia Zarin’s profile of Madeleine L’Engle in The New Yorker.

Zarin goes on to say:“Madeleine…found Florida stultifying and surreal” (don’t we all; she should have been here during the hanging chad debacle - Bill). “One afternoon, she watched an alligator pick its way up the porch steps.” (She should have been here during the hanging chad debacle – Bill)

 

Next: A visit to The Jacksonville Historical Society

To be continued. 

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Tags: Barnett Bank, Charles Wadsworth Camp, Cynthia Zarin, ebooks, Jacksonville FL, Madeleine L'Engle, The Abandoned Room, The New Yorker, Wadsworth Camp