8                             Alice Goudy Lochhead

the early 1900's. That night Mother and Dad went home and
took with them the book they had just finished. They had only
this one commission. Everything else was destroyed. In the shop
fire at Marlboro in 1939 everything that Dad owned was de¬
stroyed. Every pattern he ever made there, all his drawings, and
all the mats were lost. My room was in the middle of the house,
facing the shop. When I first saw the glow, I thought it was one
of the neighbors' houses burning. I ran to the telephone, but it
was dead. Realizing that the shop telephone was connected with
our line, I called, "Dad, it's the shop!" He was very calm. All he
said was, "It's a hell of a blaze, isn't it?" He appeared so uncon¬
cerned about it. We had a luncheon engagement that afternoon.
I just wasn't any good, I was so upset; but Dad was as calm as
could be. He sat down and never said one word about the fire
to anyone. When, later, someone came in with an account of the
fire in the Tribune and said, "I see you had a fire," he repKed,
"That's putting it mildly." Someone else asked, "What are you
going to do now?" And he replied, "I still have my pencil."

From the very beginning he had always thrown aU his cutouts
in the waste basket. I would go through the basket and save them.
After the fire, the Library of Congress wanted the patterns, and
we had nothing but cutouts. Dad said he was glad I had saved
them, but at the time he had thought it was so sUly.

He made about half of his type faces without commission. He
did them just for his own amusement, and let them be used by
whoever wanted them. The "Goudy Thirty" he designed as his
last face, and gave it to the Monotype Corporation of Philadel¬
phia, to be used after his death. What his idea was in having it
saved until after he died, I don't know exactly. It was someone
else's idea, I think. I beUeve that when he was in California one
of the newspapermen there asked him, "What are you leaving?"
Dad rephed that there were several faces. "Do you have one that
has not been put on the market yet?" asked the man, and Dad
replied, "No." The man then asked if he didn't think it would
be a good idea to do a Goudy thirty. Dad agreed that it would.