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Newell Ford was a scholar of the Romantic Period of English Literature who published books about
Keats and Shelley. Newell and his first wife, Alysoun, designed and built a house and garden in
Palo Alto that included an unusual collection of plants and special varieties of fruit trees.
(See article below.)
A small circle of friends, including Esther Lederberg, the Houles, Sandor Salgo and Ford's
graduate students, shared evenings of Early and Romantic Music in the Fords' living room. This
room was acoustically designed by Ford and George Houle as a stage, to take full advantage of the
Fords' grand piano. Ford's students came to refer to his living room as "Ford's Theatre".
George Houle's first wife, Constance Crawford, wrote "The Muse of Menus: Stories from Life and
Cooking" (John Daniel and Company, Santa Barbara, CA, 1988), which includes recipes and anecdotes
such as "George Houle and la Soupe à l'Oignon" and "Alysoun Ford's Garden Salad".
(Included among the book's vignettes is a description of Houle's experiences as a student assistant
to Sandor Salgo; see page 49.)
While she was a research professor at Stanford, Esther met Alysoun Ford and Constance Crawford;
one common factor between them was that they were all divorced from their Stanford professor
husbands during the period 1966-1967. Esther also knew Newell Ford's second wife, Mary Ellen, and
introduced Mary Ellen to Newell Ford.
© Copyright 2006 - 2018
The Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg Trust
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