Monthly Archives: March 2023

Brooklyn Author Betty Smith

Betty Smith, the well-known author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, had an early play produced in New York City this season.  I was surprised to learn that she had actually been a playwright for most of her career, and had no real success until her novel was published when she was 47 years old.

A Sagittarius, Smith was born on December 15, 1896 at 6:00 p.m. in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, according to her biographer (though no source is given for the time).  She had many trines in her birth chart, but her life often wasn’t easy.  With Cancer rising, her Moon in Taurus in the 11th house is exalted, suggesting popularity and a good income from her career.  A grand trine with Jupiter in Virgo in the 3rd house and Mercury in Capricorn in the 6th house shows her facility for writing.  With Cancer rising and a prominent Moon, her best work drew on her memories.

Betty’s mother was practical and down-to-earth (shown by the Moon in Taurus and 10th ruler Jupiter in Virgo).  But her father, well described by the Sun in Sagittarius opposite Mars and Neptune in the 12th house, was a dreamer who couldn’t support his family and died of alcoholism when his daughter was just 19.  The Moon also squares Venus on the cusp of the 8th house, showing other family issues and their modest circumstances.

Betty was forced to work at around age 15, and she worked diligently for most of her life, often struggling to get by.  She returned to school twice but never completed her high school degree.  And while she later attended college and then completed a master’s program in playwriting at Yale University, she never received those degrees because she lacked the prerequisites.

There are no angular planets in this chart, and aside from the Moon, there’s a lack of essential dignity.  The 7th, 8th and 9th houses are all traditionally ruled by Saturn, but its near-exact conjunction with Uranus, the modern ruler of Aquarius, covers these houses either way.  Placed in Scorpio in Smith’s 5th house, we can see her relentless pursuit of education and creative work, and her focus on her two daughters throughout her life.  But there was often an element of both responsibility and unexpected change in each of these areas.  Saturn may delay things, but with a close trine to the Midheaven, the author always found opportunities and had great success after middle age.

Smith’s sometimes rocky marriages also come under the rulership of Saturn and Uranus.  After splitting with her first husband following his infidelity and some separations, she essentially raised her girls alone.  She became bored with her younger second husband when their relationship stabilized, and her third husband, also younger and reflecting the Neptunian pattern in her chart, was a drinker who secretly cashed large checks and pawned household items before he died of a sudden heart attack when his wife was 63.

Smith worked in North Carolina for the depression-era Federal Theater Project and stayed there the rest of her life.  She wrote many plays, mostly with others, and earned some money through publication.  She drew on her personal experience for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and writing about urban poverty from a female point of view was innovative at the time.  The novel also resonated with many during the war years, as it reflected a simpler time and depicted women struggling to hold their families together and survive.

Many astrological events combined at the book’s publication on August 18, 1943 which radically changed Betty’s life as it quickly became a best-seller.  Smith neared a progressed Solar Eclipse in her 8th house (she had been in debt before immediately receiving a large royalty check).  Her progressed Midheaven at 13 Taurus in her 11th house of career earnings trined her 3rd house Jupiter and sextiled her Ascendant.  The progressed Ascendant at 21 Leo trined and sextiled her Sun-Mars-Neptune oppositions from her 2nd house of money.  The progressed Moon and Mercury in Capricorn through her 7th house kept her focused on her goals and added the help of her publisher and the public as both planets sextiled her MC and natal Saturn-Uranus conjunction. And transiting Pluto also squared her ruler, the Moon, from the 2nd house.

Smith continued writing; her fourth novel Joy in the Morning (1953) took a nostalgic look at her first marriage and was also a best-seller.  In early 2023, when her early play was first produced in New York, transiting Uranus in Taurus was near the progressed MC of her break-out novel, and squared her Nodes from the 11th house.

Like her mother, Betty Smith tragically suffered from dementia as she aged, and she began having trouble with words.  Jupiter in the 3rd house square Pluto in Gemini in her 12th contributed to her writing abilities, but ironically also suggests the possibility of mental challenges.  In her early 70s, Betty began forgetting names and her daughters eventually institutionalized her.  She died less than a year later at 75.

Perhaps due to her strong Moon in Taurus and its grand trine with Midheaven ruler Jupiter and IC ruler Mercury, we still share in Betty Smith’s memories of her family and the old neighborhood from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.  No wonder, since the image of a tree growing in a harsh environment is so aptly symbolized by her Moon-Jupiter-Mercury grand trine in earth signs.

More on Betty Smith on Wikipedia.

About the 2023 NYC production of her early play.

Valerie Raleigh Yow’s biography of Smith.

Lynn Wells and Evangeline

Evangeline Adams practiced astrology in her New York Carnegie Hall studios from 1905 until her death in 1932, reading thousands of charts, with many more processed for mail order work by her assistants.  One of these was Lynn Wells, who wrote the introduction to the 1970 edition of Adams’ autobiography The Bowl of Heaven.  I could never find much information on Lynn Wells, until I located the publisher’s files and discovered that she actually used a pen-name.

Wells’ father, Clarence C. Smith, worked at Carnegie Hall and became its manager around 1911.  The family lived next door until the Hall was sold in 1925.  Lynn’s mother was friendly with Evangeline, who draw up her chart when she was a baby.  She became interested in astrology, and beginning at age 17, “I was trained by Miss Adams and worked with her for many years.”

Lynn married in 1925 and started her own astrology practice with her husband.  In 1946 they were pictured as some of astrology’s “top practitioners” in a Life magazine feature that said: “Most dignified of astrologers are Mr. and Mrs. Charles R. Wells, who have an early American apartment in Greenwich Village, deal chiefly with professional men, are considered a little high-hat by competitors.  They married soon after Evangeline Adams predicted they would.”  Adams’ home was done in an early American style, too, so maybe she inspired Wells.  Holden and Hughes in Astrological Pioneers of America say that both Lynn and Charles wrote for astrological publications in the 1950s.

In The Bowl of Heaven, Lynn said that Adams “referred hundreds of people to me.”  A newspaper article in 1940 stated that Evangeline “left Miss Wells a collection of some 7,000 to 8,000 charts.”  But in her reply to an astrologer in 1982, Wells said that Adams’ “files contained at least 50,000 charts of clients, these no doubt lost or destroyed by now as I destroyed my own thousands of charts when I retired a few years ago.”  I have never found any trace of Adams’ charts or office files; all are probably gone.

Lynn Wells was born on February 23, 1901 in Norwalk, Connecticut, according to her marriage record.  In The Bowl of Heaven, she said that “my chart indicates that I cannot be a successful speculator.”  The couple also appear to have had no children.  So I’ve somewhat arbitrarily placed Uranus in her 5th house.

Leo rising would explain the way Wells inserted her own story into her introduction to Evangeline’s book, as well as the somewhat high-handed manner in which she responded to the astrologer in 1982 who asked for information about Adams’ Windsor Hotel forecast.  Unable to answer the question, she offered, for no apparent reason, “I note your chart contains the Part of Fortune and the Moon Nodes, which I consider superfluous now being invented by earlier astrologers searching for the source of Uranus and Neptune influences…”  I don’t know who would agree today.

If she was born at about 4:00 p.m., Lynn’s Venus in Aquarius would conjoin her 7th house cusp, and her husband was an Aquarius with the Sun, Mercury, Venus and Mars all in this sign.  Lynn also seemed to have a compelling need to identify herself through her relationship with Aquarius astrologer Evangeline Adams (Pluto in the 11th trine Venus).  In accepting the assignment to write the introduction to Adams’ autobiography in 1969, she wrote the publisher, “The original Bowl of Heaven is inscribed to me by Miss Adams.  Also her Astrology, Your Place Among the Stars is inscribed, “For Mollie, with sincere regard and affection from her teacher and co-worker.”  In a P.S., Lynn added that “Mollie was my young nickname.”  (Neither book was dedicated to Wells; by “inscribed” she means that Adams signed a copy of the book for her.)  Decades after her death, she continued to remind folks of her association with her famous employer.

The name rang a bell for me, and I recalled two pictures of Adams sold on Ebay addressed to “Mollie,” both were dated after Wells had her own practice.  One said, “For ‘my girl’ Mollie with much affection and all good wishes – Evangeline Adams, 1929.”  (Adams was warm, if not effusive, in all of the signed photos I’ve seen from her.)

In fact, Mollie Smith was Lynn’s birth name, and Mollie Wells was her married name, according to her marriage and Social Security records.  “Lynn” appears to have been a pseudonym.  With Mercury in Pisces square Neptune, the difference between the two was blurred.

It seems rather strange that I came across two pictures Mollie owned.  What are the odds?  How many must Adams have signed for Mollie/Lynn in the first place?  Lynn’s Sun opposite Mars fell right on Adams’ Nodes, and her Mercury conjoined Evangeline’s Ascendant, showing points of connection and identification.  Her Moon conjoined Adams’ Pluto, hinting at the potential for an obsessive focus on the older woman.  As Adams was the best-known astrologer of the time, their association served as something of an endorsement.

Mollie/Lynn Wells and her husband had moved to Florida by the 1960s, and later to North Carolina.  Lynn died at the age of 90 and left quite a bit of money to her local library to expand its building.