Mrs. Florence Zimmermann, John Bellairs' lavender-loving witch, the woman with a passion for purple, has been entertaining readers since she was first introduced in 1973's classic The House with a Clock in its Walls. She lives in New Zebedee, Michigan, next door to the Barnavelts - Uncle Jonathan and his young nephew Lewis.
Described as being "not a cruel witch with a black hat and a broom and an evil laugh, but a friendly, likable, next-door-neighbor witch" [The Figure in the Shadows, 12], Zimmermann plays the role of a motherly advisor in House, introduced to readers after Lewis gets off the bus in a strange town and led by a man he has never met before to a new home he has never seen:
Lewis walked down the long hall. It seemed to take forever. At the other end he emerged into a room full of yellow lights. There were pictures in heavy gilt frames on the walls; there was a mantelpiece covered with a wild assortment of junk; there was a big round table in the middle of the room; and over in the corner was a gray-haired woman in a baggy purple dress. She was standing with her ear to the wall, listening. [The House with a Clock in Its Walls, 10]
Bellairs interjects his trademark use of comic relief to help the reader switch gears and allow them to slip into a much more comfortable and inviting atmosphere - that of an exciting poker game with adults Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann.
She plays a limited role in The Figure in the Shadows (1975) as Lewis and his friend Rose Rita Pottinger mess around with magic and, ultimately, the mysterious Moss Ghost. During the climatic battle scene with this spirit, Zimmermann loses her powers, a plot point that is carried through the next two books. In 1976's The Letter, the Witch and the Ring, the action centers squarely on Zimmermann, who receives a deathbed letter from a relative, and Rose Rita, who travels with her elderly friend to claim the relative's most prized possession. Throughout the adventure, pieces of Zimmermann's past are revealed - an old flame and a bitter enemy in the form of Gert Bigger - as Rose Rita must protect her near-powerless friend and then try to track her down when she disappears.
Brad Strickland completed the fourth book in the Barnavelt series in 1993, The Ghost in the Mirror, which also focuses on Zimmermann and Rose Rita. A time traveling adventure, the two friends find themselves in 1828 Pennsylvania Dutch country where Zimmermann has been summoned to undo a great injustice on her mentor. Again the two friends fight off villains and charms (albeit the nineteenth century variety) to come out on top and are able to return to their native mid-1950s, Zimmermann with her powers restored.
Strickland says that he was privy to some notes and observations that Bellairs had prepared for The Ghost in the Mirror, including “Mrs. Zimmermann was American by birth, that she did meet and marry her husband, Honus, before going to Europe, and she was quite the toast of artistic London, attracting many (Platonic) admirers. She was back in the USA shortly after completing her doctorate degree, and sometime after that her husband passed away and she became a schoolteacher. She had only recently retired when the events of House begin. I don't, alas, know her maiden name.”
Restricted to the final chapter of The Vengeance of the Witch-finder, Zimmermann's role in later adventures is that of a motherly advisor on magic that can cast a spell when she needs to. For the remainder of Strickland's novels she and Uncle Jonathan tend to observe and step in when the time is right, though her powerful presence is always felt and dually noted.
While the inspiration behind this woman seems something entirely magical, Mrs. Zimmermann is based on a real woman both Bellairs and his friends, Dale and Marilyn Fitschen, encountered in the early 1960s. John Morrearty, a friend of Bellairs and former roommate of Dale Fitschen in Chicago, was getting married in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Running out of sleeping space, a friend of the bride's family offered to put up some of the wedding party in her house. The house belonged to Mary Zimmerman, described by Marilyn Fitschen as a "delightful short gray-haired woman, the proverbial little old lady in tennis shoes." Her shoes were white, Marilyn adds, worn with her printed silk dresses; "and in those days, it that was considered quite eccentric." She lived alone in a small house and garden a few blocks from Lake Michigan on the north side of Milwaukee. Marilyn recalls that she, Dale and John walked to Mass with Zimmerman on the Sunday after the wedding, she in her tennis shoes, of course.
Marilyn's memory of Zimmerman's house call up some interesting images. "Her dining room was more a wood-paneled alcove with shelves on three sides holding her pewter collection; the table appeared to be a very heavy picnic table with benches on two sides. Dale and I were given Mrs. Zimmerman's bedroom. The bed was a four-poster, the furniture was all French Provincial (white with gold trim), and included a chaise lounge, dressing table covered with a collection of perfume bottles."
Here a variety of violet-colored items dotted the room, itself bordered with wallpaper and carpeting in many shades of lilac, lavender and so forth. "There were purple perfume bottles, purple nosegays, purple soap dishes with purple soap, and purple bathrobes. There were purple window curtains in the purple bathroom. The other bedrooms were all in purple. Finally coming down to breakfast Sunday morning, we realized that everything in the house was purple. What can I say? The woman loved purple, and she loved to collect stuff. We were all enthralled with this house and went back to Chicago telling everyone about our purple experience."
Mary Holoubek Zimmerman (b. 1905, d. unknown) was a Wisconsin poet and playwright, who, according to Poems Out of Wisconsin III (1967) , had two volumes of poetry published, A Gallery of Women's Portraits and Written on the Lamb's Skin. Another article two years later in New Poetry Out of Wisconsin writes that "her poetry was published in 'A Wisconsin Harvest,' 'The Forge,' 'The Writer,' 'The Flower Grower,' 'Pen and Plow,' 'The Secretary,' and elsewhere. Among her published plays are 'The DP,' 'The Chocolate Milk Cow' and 'Tradem Squaw,' the first two of which were produced by the Wisconsin Idea Theatre.
Zimmerman received a Jade Ring, the first place prize in the annual Wisconsin Regional Writers Association writing contest, and was a life member of the Wisconsin Historical Society, the Milwaukee branch of AAUW (American Association of University Women), the Greater Milwaukee Association of Phi Beta Kappa and the American Legion Auxiliary of Cudworth Post, Milwaukee.
A brief autobiographical sketch prepared by members of the Wisconsin Historical Society for its records notes that Mary Zimmerman was born in Chicago and, like Bellairs, was a graduate of the University of Chicago - she in 1928 with honors in history. For two years after graduation Zimmerman did free lance writing, eventually teaching in the Chicago Public School system from 1932 to 1937. Marrying Louis P. Zimmerman in 1934, the couple had two children, Noel Louis (1937) and Mary Joan (1944). The aforementioned article from 1967 notes she was a widow with a married daughter and two grandchildren.
