Living Large: Wilna Hervey and Nan Mason

This book is both a delight to read and a lesson – or five or six – in how to live. Joseph Eckhardt’s account of the lives of Wilna Hervey and Nan Mason lovingly details the life journey of two women who lived their own ways and lived well indeed, as travelers, artists, lovers, philanthropists, and party-givers ready to meet you at the door with a drink. Wilna and Nan seem to have been uniquely capable of taking life on their own terms, and doing so gracefully. Eckhardt’s wonderful wealth of illustrations is sensitively matched with descriptions of the artists’ art and life in such a way as to maintain but enrich the distinctive threads of their respective personalities as they move through time. And space. These “big girls” had exquisite taste in places, and author Eckhardt enjoys taking the reader to gracious communities in natural wonderlands of Carmel, California; Anna Maria Island in Florida; and of course Woodstock, New York. It was a special treat to get a feel for the landscape and culture of Woodstock, where Wilna and Nan found a wonderfully positive-spirited community of other artists and back-to-the- landers. And the big girls lived so uniquely that I could always go back to the book knowing that surprises were still waiting for me. Until the awful realization that the book had to end. What a pity. But Wilna and Nan are still with me. In my pantheon. You’re different, their model says. So live different. And do it kindly, and with zest, and imagination.And a final note: I think the book, suitably large format for the theme of large women living large lives, is wonderfully designed and printed in such a way as to “display” both the images and the text, its form as well as its content a work of art.

Wilna and Nan may have emerged from the silent films, but they lived their lives full-blast in living technicolor, and I was thrilled to tag along. We paraded the boulevard in Paris dressed to the nines in the latest fashions while Parisians stared at our over six-foot 300- pound figures. We hopped the train and crisscrossed the country from Woodstock to Carmel with four big dogs in tow. We loved our dogs. We scuba-dived in secluded island waters in Florida. And all for Art, lugging our paints and sketchbooks behind us and finding our voices in the devoted colony of artist friends who loved and sustained us in our wintry farm in Woodstock, New York. Author Joseph Eckhardt has created a vibrant road movie of a bio of two utterly free and loving spirits, full of love for their friends and their art and wonderfully devoted to each other for sixty years. Forget Thelma and Louise. This is one long adventure that left me wishing I had been there, back in the day, to tag along.

As a local historian I couldn't have been more pleased with this beautiful tale of two artists who . The story touches on much more than their romance. Through a treasure trove of information, I learned about the individuals around the couple who helped enrich their lives and about the mark the two left on the communities in which they lived.

A great read on two people I knew little about. What a great life story of two women that loved one another. Both very good artists too.

EXCELLENT EXCELLENT EXCELLENT...... Wilna is our ancestor and we knew nothing about her. After reading this book...we feel like we knew her and Nan! Bravo Joseph and thank you for writing such a great book to tell their story.

Excellent - well researched by Eckhardt - Wilna Hervey was my favorite character in the old Toonerville Trolley movies

This is a wonderful book. It brought back great memories of my childhood in Woodstock, NY and how much I loved Willy and Nan!

LIVING LARGE is a tribute, not a biography, but Joseph Eckhardt's sensitive, classy, and thoughtful tribute book to the lives of Wilna Hervey and her partner, Nan Mason, is a lovely and very special book. Wilna, a 6'3" player in silent films and the daughter of a prosperous household and Nan, a 6'0" dynamo whose father was a well-known film actor from silents to talkies, were destined to meet. The fact they spent their lives together until death is poignant, fascinating, and a testament to the validity of a true "soul mate."Eckhardt's interest began with the silent film industry, especially the Toonerville Trolley comedies in which Wilna played "The Powerful Katrinka." Eckhardt's previous work and interest had focused not only on the early film industry but also American art and artists, so when he studied the Toonerville Trolley movies and became interested in the very Amazonian woman who played Katrinka, he also opened up a magic box that led to the up-and-down lives of Wilna and Nan as well as all the art they created.The book - a large format hardcover filled with black-and-white photographs that illustrate Wilna and Nan's lives as well as full-color reproductions of many of the women's art pieces - is a spectacular presentation. There is a great deal to look at and even more to read. It is an amazing book that will provide many readers with endless fascination. It will be of special interest to those who live in the Woodstock, NY area as Wilna and Nan spent much of their lives there, and to anyone researching American women artists.Eckhardt is forthright about the women's long journey to understanding money and finance as they went from rich to poor to moderately comfortable to comfortable again. The book conveys the lengths the women were willing to go to maintain their independence. Besides work in films and art making, the two were - at one point or another - farmers, candlemakers, house painters, gardeners, real-estate investors, and landlords. In other words, they lived wide, creative, and unusual lives, Nan appearing to be the more practical and the one most willing to venture into new work and ways to bring in income.Because LIVING LARGE is a tribute book and not a biography, one does feel the loss of intimacy that one often gets in reading a fully researched story of a life or lives. Eckhardt produced an admirable book, but the reader will feel the lack of Wilna and Nan's voices. At one point in the narrative, Eckhardt mentions that the loft over their Woodstock barn studio was filled with memorabilia and other possessions and items dear to Wilna, in particular. Where did those items go? Was no correspondence between the two women preserved or, because they lived together for decades, did they rarely have the opportunity to write to each other? Didn't either one keep a journal? This is what is missing from LIVING LARGE, the thoughts going through the women's heads, the passion of their love, their feelings on their status and comfort level as lesbians.Specialists of Women's Studies or of LGBTQ History are going to feel a slight letdown when reading this otherwise wonderful book. No where does Eckhardt address the political issues of women and/or lesbians during the relevant decades in which Wilna or Nan were together. He does, however, portray Woodstock, NY as an accepting haven of artists and of Wilna and Nan as an accepted couple among the mostly straight married couples with whom they socialized.In the wintertime, Nan and Wilna often spent their time on Anna Maria Island near Sarasota, FL where their benefactor - Ruth Hart Eddy (who, Eckhardt implies, knew no other lesbians other than herself and her own partner, Alice Gilman, except for Wilna and Nan) helped them purchase a home. Between Woodstock, NY and Florida, the reader follows Wilna and Nan through many jobs, friendships, pets, and much art making. There will be comparisons to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, to be sure, but Wilna Hervey and Nan Mason feel closer to us in many ways due to Eckhardt's touching tribute. LIVING LARGE should be experienced as the magnificent tribute that it is, but it should be kept in mind that there is room to know more and somewhere out there, there may be a researcher who wants to dig deeper and write a more in-depth biography. The ultimate question: which woman - Nan or Wilna - was the most fascinating? And is the fascination they hold for readers due to their being blended as a couple into an almost super-human "one woman?"