Sigma Alpha Iota

PAN PIPES • WINTER 2017 • sai-national.org 12 BY DAVID WILLS BALLARD "We are now finishing another winter in Pan's Cottage, here at the MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, New Hampshire. It is always wonderful up here in the country, but I think this has been the best winter of them all. It has been the coldest and the most rigorous, and the best for skiing and snowshoeing, with six or seven feet of snow and the thermometer down as low as thirty-five below zero. But we have been as snug as the proverbial bug in the rug in this little house, built into the side of the hill, and equipped with a very efficient hot-air furnace. During the winters we have been here, my Pan's Cottage has been a retreat and home for many, many artists since its completion in 1919. In addition to the regular season inhabitants, the cottage was home to the Ballard Family for several winters. John Frederick (Fred) Ballard was born in Nebraska in 1884 and received degrees in literature from the University of Nebraska. He wrote many plays, including Believe me, Xantippe, which had success on broadway with John Barrymore in the lead and was then made into a silent picture in 1918. He was a fellow at the MacDowell Colony in 1911, where he met and later married May Wills, a pianist and pupil of Edward MacDowell. ey spent many summers and winters in Peterborough, and the family of four moved there permanently in 1930. eir teenage son wrote a letter to SAI about their stay at the cottage in 1933 and here is an excerpt from the November 1934 issue of PAN PIPES: Minnie Maddern Fiske/NY Public Library Digital Collections Mrs. Edward MacDowell in her home, "Hillcrest" at Peterborough, New Hampshire. The young girl in the picture is May Wills, a pupil of Edward MacDowell. Miss Wills married Frederick Ballard, a playwright, the author of "Believe Me Xantippe," acted by John Barrymore and "Trial by Jury." Winter at Pan's Cottage

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