Getting to Know Edward Gorey

A group of fans of Edward Gorey pulled into a parking lot in Massachusetts on a June day too hot for the beach.

The Edward Gorey House is open to the public from April to December each year. Gorey lived and worked here until he died. One of the senior members of the group had a history with Gorey.

My daughter spotted a familiar figure when she exclaimed, "Look, it's The Doubtful Guest!" There was a metal sculpture of Gorey on the lawn. I would call it larger than life, but what is life-size for a bird in sneakers?

The youngest of our group, my five-year-old granddaughter, already raised on Gorey's strange little books, wondered if there were still any cats in his house.

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I had tea with Gorey in 1991 when the house was so overgrown that its owner warned that it might be abandoned. His animals.

A ballet company was performing The Gilded Bat, based on a Gorey book, at the Kennedy Center when I was a reporter. I wrote a story because I wanted to meet Edward Gorey.

He was well-known for his intricately cross-hatched drawings of vaguely Victorian figures, often suffering ghastly fates, and for the droll stories accompanying them.

His introductory animation to the popular public television series Mystery, featuring more ghastly fates, helped bring him a broader audience.

For years, New Yorkers looked for him at Lincoln Center, where he attended virtually every performance of the New York City Ballet, until he moved to Cape Cod.

Gorey is more well known now than when he died at age 75.

The Edward Gorey Charitable Trust was established in his will and has been showing his work. His books are on display. Gorey will be honored with a U.S. postage stamp in the 100th anniversary of his birth.

The former home draws about 10,000 visitors each year. He told me that he loved bats and that he hung bat houses on the trees. I don't know much about bats.

The Gorey bats were small. Our tour guide told us that the Edward Gorey House was built by the man known as the vampire. Gorey received a Tony Award for the costumes for the musical version of Dracula, which starred Frank Langella. Gorey was able to buy this semi-derelict property for $84,000 and install central heat, a new roof, and modern wiring because of his royalties.

It looks a lot better now. Paint was peeling off its wooden shingles. The tilted floors were covered in huge piles of books. The floors have been removed and the volumes are gone.

The Gashlycrumb Tinies. ">

It's still a place that still steers into that reputation. The front parlor has a pair of small legs underneath it. Visitors who have never read The Gashlycrumb Tinies, in which children meet untimely ends in alphabetical order, grasp that this is different.

Gorey has a collection of books, polished rocks, carved decoys, and children's games. He liked the texture of the metal so he bought a tool that wasn't usable. There are action figures in their original packaging.

He would go to estate sales, yard sales, and flea markets with friends and place boxes of his purchases on top of the boxes he had bought the week before. The house was arranged for his own pleasure.

The home of a borderline hoarder wouldn't make the most reverential museum experience, so a lot of his stuff has been distributed. Gorey gave his art holdings to the Atheneum. Most of the books were taken from San Diego State University by the Harry Ransom Center. There are thousands of drawings and manuscripts in Manhattan.

The house is well organized. Visitors were free to wander after a guide explained that friends and a foundation bought the house after his death.

Gorey wore one of his famous fur coats but later regretted it because he was a lifelong animal lover. A video of Gorey's opening for Mystery can be seen continuously in a back room at the museum.

We went on a scavenger hunt with children in tow. There is a small prize for finding all the dead kids.

George is easy to spot because there is a doll on the staircase. Good luck with the name of the person who passed away.

My granddaughter insisted that we push on even though adults were content to tick off half the Tinies. In the kitchen, we found a sign that said "E is for Ernest who chokes on a peach."

I had amiably chatted with Gorey in the kitchen 30 years ago. He wasn't interested in analyzing or scrutinizing his career. He shrugged and said that the longer he goes on, the more it doesn't interest him.

He wore a tattered sweater and a crystal frog with a cord around his neck. If the seven cats dug their claws into his shoulder or made for the muffins, he warned them.

He seemed incapable of anger towards his cats even when they knocked over an ink bottle and ruined a day's work.

She was excited to see a black cat walking behind a barrier up a staircase labeled "Wildlife viewing area". Hischak and his wife live on the second floor of the museum with two cats named after characters in The Epiplectic Bicycle.

It took an hour but we were able to locate all 26 Tinies and my granddaughter got a bookmark from the gift shop. Gorey was diffident about merchandising. He didn't like the idea of lawyers and contracts.

Thanks to the efforts of the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust, fans can purchase Gorey books, calendars, puzzles, mugs, T-shirts, and much more.

The Trust will be the major catalyst if Gorey'slegacy continues. Last year, it donated to animal-related charities, as his will directed. A newsletter, an oral history project, and an account with more than 30,000 followers are some of the things it has done.

Thousands of notebooks, manuscripts, drawings, and personal papers Gorey left behind are preserved and organized by the Trust. Will Baker is in the climate-controlled rooms in the lower Broadway building.

Baker said that he might have one of the best jobs in the world. He said that a new book or anthology might be possible in 25 years. The trust has retained a literary agent.

Eric Sherman said his inbox was full of inquiries from would-be licensees. He nixed a proposal for Gorey-themed underwear but has agreed to a movie adaptation of The Doubtful Guest and a television series based on neglected murderesses.

It's a strange thing. You either get a quizzical look or you love Edward Gorey when you mention him. Sherman wants to increase the latter. Nobody says, "I know him, but eh."

The place to channel Gorey's presence is in Port Yarmouth.

I asked my granddaughter if she remembered that he was never mean to his cats.