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THE

Boston Public Library
QUARTERLY

Boston Public Library

QUARTERLY

Volume IV
1 95^

Published by the Trustees
Boston, Massachusetts

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Table of Contents

Page

Articles

Alcott's Search for the Child 88

Antarctica, The First Recognition of 3

Augustine, St., The Life of, in Pictures 20

Benson, Frank W., Painter and Etcher 102

Bernard, Governor, for an American Nobility 125

Child, Lydia Maria, and Anti-Slavery 34

Civil War Sketches 27

Delatre, Eugene 149

Fore-Edge Paintings, The Wiggin Collection of 50

French Prints, Contemporary 210

A Gift of Rare Books 67

A Hundred Years Ago 115

The Impostures of the Devil 185

The Keepsake in Nineteenth-Century Art 139

“Not Men, But Books” 167

Prophecies of the Popes 200

Notes on Rare Books and Manuscripts

Carnival Play, An Early German 108

Fuller, Margaret, A Satire on Longfellow 224

Hawthorne’s “The Ambitious Guest,” The Sources of 221
Longfellow, Letters to Elizabeth Stuart Phelps 157

Manuscripts, An Important Gift of 57

O’Meara, Stephen, Collection 160

Richardson Discusses his Clarissa and Grand iso n 217

The Spirit of Young America iio

Valentine Writers’ Manuals 162

Wynkyn de Worde’s Passyon of 1521 61

Illustrations

Antarctica, Captain Burdick’s Logbook Entry about 13

Benson, Frank W., “The Marsh Gunner,” an Etching 103
Delatre, Eugene Self-Portrait of 151

Dickens, Charles, Dombey and Son , Title Page of the

Original Edition in Parts 79

Fore-Edge Paintings on William Cowper’s Poems 53

Gems of Beauty, “The Parting” from 143

Homer, Winslow, one of his Campaign Sketches 29

Lyrical Ballads, Title-Page of the First London Edition 71
‘Prophecies of the Popes,” Boniface VIII 205

Ticknor, George, at Thirty-Seven 173

Utrillo: “Moulin de la Galette” 213

THE

Boston Public Library
QUARTERLY

Volume 4, Number 1

Contents

Page

The First Recognition of Antarctica 3

By Edouard A. Stackpole

The Life of St. Augustine in Pictures 20

By Ellen M. Oldham

Civil War Sketches 27

By Alison Bishop

Lydia Maria Child and Anti-Slavery 34

By Ethel K. Ware

The Wiggin Collection of Fore-Edge Paintings 50

By Muriel C. Figenbaum

Notes on Rare Books and Manuscripts

An Important Gift of Manuscripts 57

By Zoltdn Harassti

Wynkyn de Worde's Passyon of 1521 61

By Margaret Munsterberg

Illustrations

**

*

EDITOR: ZOLTAN HARASZTI

The Boston Public Library Quarterly is published, for January, April, July,
and October by the Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston
in Copley Square, Boston 17. Entered as second-class matter at Boston,
Massachusetts. Printed at the Boston Public Library in December 1951

Single Copies, 50 cents
Annual Subscription, $ 2.00

THE

Boston Public Library
QUARTERLY

JANUARY 1952

The First Recognition of Antarctica

By EDOUARD A. STACKPOI.E

FOR centuries the continent of Antarctica was the sub-
ject of mystery. Captain James Cook, of the British Navy,
on his remarkable voyages of 1772-75, circumnavigated
the great southern continent without sighting it, although he
had reason to believe in its existence. “It is true, however,” he
wrote as of February 6, 1775, “that the greatest part of this
southern continent (supposing there is one) must lie within
the polar circle, where the sea is so pestered with ice that the
land is thereby inaccessible. The risque one runs in exploring
a coast, in these unknown and icy seas, is so very great, that
I can be bold enough to say that no man will ever venture
farther than I have done; and that the lands which may lie to
the South will never be explored.”1

The discovery of the Antarctic Continent has been credited
to Admiral Charles Wilkes of the United States Exploring Ex-
pedition, and to Admiral Dumont D’Urville of the French Navy,
both of whom approached the ice barrier of the new continent
from different positions in January, 1840.2 However, a few
years ago American historians found that the real discovery
probably occurred two decades earlier, when American sealers
at the South Shetlands came upon a mountainous, snow-capped
land to the south.

In 1940, Colonel Lawrence Martin, the Chief of the Division

3

4

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

of Maps in the Library of Congress, presented documentary
evidence to prove that Captain Nathaniel Brown Palmer, an
American sealing master of Stonington, Connecticut, had
sighted Antarctica where its peninsula juts out toward the
South Shetland Islands, five hundred miles south of Cape
Horn.3 The discovery was claimed to be as of November 1820,
when Captain Palmer commanded the sloop Hero, one of the
Stonington fleet of sealers. The section of the Antarctic penin-
sula then sighted has been called by a number of geographers
“Palmer’s Land,” while the peninsula is now known as the
Palmer Peninsula. The log book of the Hero is in the Library
of Congress.

On the basis of the log of the Nantucket schooner Huntress
— found by the present writer beneath the pasted clippings of
an old scrapbook — a new claim is advanced here; namely that
Christopher Burdick, Captain of the Huntress , was the first
man to recognize the continent of Antarctica.

T HE adventures of the American sealers are of extraordin-
ary interest. Always seeking new rookeries, in a continual hunt
for fur seals and sea elephants, these “nomads of the sea”
sailed into unknown waters and made several important con-
tributions to the geographical history of the world. With- the
growth of the trade with China of sealskins for silks and tea,
the sealers boldly sailed their little craft from the Falklands in-
to the uncharted nooks and crannies of Patagonia, rediscovered
the Crozets, and visited Desolation Island, voyaged from the
South American coast along the higher latitudes to New Zea-
land and Tasmania, and at last were among the first mariners
to reach the newly-discovered South Shetlands — five hundred
miles south of Cape Horn — in 1819.

The South Shetland Islands were accidentally discovered
by Captain William Smith, an Englishman who was making
regular commercial voyages from Buenos Aires around Cape
Horn to Valparaiso. In the brig Williams Captain Smith, whose
course had been laid far south of Cape Horn in an attempt to
circumvent contrary gales, on February 19, 1819, sighted the
islands and on the next day confirmed his discovery, although

THE FIRST RECOGNITION OF ANTARCTICA 5

he did not land. The South Shetlands are a chain of volcanic
origin, lying about five hundred miles south of Cape Horn, be-
tween 61 0 and 63° South and 530 to 63° West. A strait fifty
miles wide, filled with ice and made doubly treacherous by fog,
separates them from the Palmer Peninsula.4 Later, Lieutenant
Edward Bransfield, of the British naval squadron in the Paci-
fic, was commissioned to accompany Smith on another voyage
to the South Shetlands from December 1819 to March 1820.
An account of this exploration was composed by Dr. Adam
Young, surgeon of the expedition, and printed in the Edinburgh
Philosophical Journal of April 1821.

The report that there were seals in these islands immediately
aroused the interest of both American and British sealers. Wil-
liam Herbert Hobbs, in his exhaustive study, “The Discoveries
of Antarctica within the American Sector, states that Smith
probably had secretly told British sealers at Buenos Aires of
the whereabouts of the South Shetlands, and that the British
Espirito Santo sailed from that port in October i8i9.s The
American brig Hersilia , Captain James P. Sheffield, which had
sailed from Stonington, Connecticut, late in July 1819, is sup-
posed to have spoken the Espirito Santo at the Falklands and
arrived at the South Shetlands about the same time as the
British craft — in November 1819. She returned to Stonington
in July 1820. Next, a fleet of five vessels left Stonington harbor
in the summer of 1820, and several other ports sent out craft
as well. Just how many British ships there were is not known,
but Captain Burdick in his journal speaks of the British being
able to muster eighty men in case there was a pitched battle
between the rival sealers.

The mountainous South Shetlands, covered with snow most
of the year, where moss, lichen, and some straggling grass are
the only growing things, were found to be a great haunt for sea
elephants and fowl as well as seals. The desolate shores did
contain several harbors for anchorage purposes, but they were
dangerous due to sudden gales, drifting ice, and the great fogs
which swept in from the unknown seas to the south. The curi-
ous phenomena of hot water springs at two harbors made these
fog banks especially thick, adding greatly to the eerie appear-
ance of the rocky shores and beaches.

6

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

Captain Christopher burdicic sailed the fifty-

foot schooner Huntress out of Nantucket on August 4, 1820.
Two weeks later he sighted Fayal in the Azores, and at five
o’clock the next morning hove to off Pico. “Lowered away the
boat and sint it on shore for vegtables. Tacking off and on for
boats,” he recorded. Continuing his voyage, he made the Cape
Verdes on August 28, where he took a cargo of salt on board
at the island of Boa Vista. His next passage was across the
South Atlantic to the Falkland Islands; on the way (October
26) he spoke to the ship President, Captain Cottle, seventy-
three days out from Nantucket, and “lowered away the boat
and went on board.”

On October 31, 1820, the Huntress arrived at the Falklands.
Captain Burdick carefully noted his approach to the “Western
Falkland Island,” where, after sailing alongshore, he discovered
an opening in the land which appeared to form a bay, with
several small islands ahead. His careful seamanship is recorded
as follows :

Wednesday, the 1 November [1820]

Begins with moderate Brezes and pleasant at y2 past 12 Being
abrest of the opening Concluded to run in close in perceived plenty
of kelp in the passage, sent the boat to examine and tacked off.
The boat returnd and reported 2 fathoms in pass & no roks & a Large
Sound inside, whre and run in sent the Boat ahead & crosd the
sound to the southward which was six miles wide & 10 fathoms
water went in to a snug harbor at 5 P.M. anchored in 2 fathoms. So
ends.

Wednesday, the 1 [continued]

. . . took one man with me and went on shore and went onto a hill
about V/2 miles high. From it Could Count about fifty islands
which formd the sound, the principal part. The smaller islands lay
on the South of the sound, the Land I was to anchor under which I
supposed to be the main island, proved to be one of those islands,
it being very hazy I could not determine whether ther was any
islands to the Southward and Westward of me. Got on board at 3
P.M. So Ends.

The Land to the North hindered getting the sun. Supposd Lat.
5i° 20.

Thursday, the 2 November

. . . All hands employed in Breaking out the hold and shifting

THE FIRST RECOGNITION OF ANTARCTICA

7

the salt room to get at the mainmast. Strong gales . . . At H the
gale increasing the schr. hooked her anchor. Let go the small an-
chor, veered out, 25 & 50 on the other which brought the hawser
to with 60 fathoms. At 12 it blew tremendous the schr. heeling well
over . . . Let go the sheat anchor and veared out on him, and then
I turned in.

All this time we were lying under the Lee of the Land — Y\
mile off in less than 2 fathoms water and good holding ground and
smooth, all except the wind had the water right up. At 6 P.M. mod-
erate, took in Sheat anchor.

Friday the 3 November

. . . Got the fouryard and main Boom up for sheers hoisted our
mainmast out of the step, Cut five feet off the heal & stepped it
anew which brought the place sprung in the wake of the hardness.
At 3 P.M. took a man with me on shore at 6 returned with 14
geese. Saw several seal around the shore in the water.

While in the Falklands, Captain Burdick sighted a small
schooner off the mouth of the harbor. He hoisted his colors
and, as the schooner ran into the passage, hailed her. “Asking
her where from, she answered from West Point. I, thinking she
was a-going to anchor, asked no more questions. She tacked
soon after and went out without anything more passing between
us and was soon out of sight behind the land . . . She sot no
collours.” Such were the mysterious visits of rival sealers.

That the Nantucket sealing master, then twenty-seven years
old, had more than ordinary curiosity about the geography of
his landfalls is evident from his entry at the Falklands:

Sunday the 5

Begins with Light [breezes] NW and pleasant. At 8 A.M. started
with a Boat’s Crew & rowed around the island to the southward
and Eastward which I was to anchor under until I came out on the
west side it blowing very fresh . . . and very ruff. I landed on a
Large Island to the Southward of me and went onto a mountain
to see what I could but the Clouds on the mountain hindered me
from seeing. Returned to the vessel at 6 P.M. without being much
wizer. So Ends this Day.

On November 22, 1820, he left the Falklands, heading for
the South Shetlands, this time in company with the New Haven
ship Huron , Captain Davis, and her shallop, or tender. On No-
vember 25 they sighted Staten Island, and Captain Burdick

8

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

took an observation so as to figure his variations. On Novem-
ber 30, he wrote :

Begins with moderate breezes and thick cloudy weather attended
with snow at 6 P.M. thick fogg hove two being in coullered water.
Latter part broken cloudy & a very thick haze to SSE. At 10 A.M.
the water being very much discoullered sounded 150 fathoms —
no bottom. Lat 61 0 40.

The next day, December 1, 1820, at 4 p.m. the murky weather
lifted a little and Captain Burdick made sail. At meridian he
made his latitude out as being in 62° 7' South, and at that time
sighted land to the southeast. In company with the Huron and
her shallop he steered southward. On December 2 he lay to
under the land, looking for a harbor. The fog came in so thickly
that the larger craft sailed off the shore, leaving the shallop to
search for a harbor. A northwest gale drove them to the east-
ward, but they were back in the vicinity of the land the next
day searching for the shallop, which they found the following
noon. The small craft had found a harbor. On December 8,
Captain Burdick entered in his log:

... At 4 P.M. hauled our wind to Beat up the harbor in Co with
ship Huron of New Haven and her shallop. Middle and Latter
part brisk winds. Stood in to Yanky Sound and went into harbor
came two at 6 A.M. in 16 fathoms. Landlocked found five Stoning-
ton vessels here. So ends sea account.

The five Stonington craft were the fleet commanded by Cap-
tain Benjamin Pendleton, consisting of the brig Frederick , Cap-
tain Pendleton; the brig Hersilia , Captain Sheffield; schooner
Hero, Captain Nathaniel Brown Palmer; schooner Freegift,
Captain Thomas Dundas ; and schooner Express , Captain Eph-
raim Williams. This was only a portion of the sealing craft at
the South Shetlands at this time, as there were an equal num-
ber of ships from other American ports and probably as many
more British sealers. The harbor where the fleet lay, Yankee
Harbor, was on the southeast coast of Greenwich Island. The
business of sealing combined the work of shore-crews and boat-
crews. When a herd was located on the rocky shore, a shore-
crew was landed to surround and kill them. Then began the
skinning operations, after which the sealskins were taken off

THE FIRST RECOGNITION OF ANTARCTICA

9

by the small boats. It is apparent from accounts left by the
sealers, such as Captain Burdick’s journal, that ship masters
took turns in leading shore-crews and boat-crews.

T HE Nantucket and New Haven crews got to work quick-
ly. Captain Burdick reports as of Saturday, December 9, 1820:

Begins with Brisk wind from NW. sent Mr. Coleman [first
mate of the Huntress] and eight men on board the shallop . . . the
ship sent twenty-two and 2 boats. At 10 A.M. the shallop went
out to find a place to land the men for sealing. Latter part brisk
gales and rainy. So Ends.

While Captain Burdick remained on board the Huntress , clear-
ing out his hold and mending his sails, the shallop of the Huron
hunted seals along the shores of Greenwich and Friesland
Islands. On Wednesday, December 13, Captain Burdick noted:

Begins with moderate Breezes at NE and Pleasant. At 10 A.M.
Capt. Davis and myself with seven men went up Yanky sound to
the westward in a boat to see if we could See any place for seals.
About 12 miles up the Sound which brought us out on the west
side found a Scotch brigg to anchor. She had her men on shore on
a Beech but there was no seal up. Found a passage out to the west-
ward throug this Sound, followed it through with our boat it being
full of rocks, found seals at 6 P.M. returned to our vessels with fif-
teen seals. The shallop not returned. So Ends.

It was at this time that the Stonington sealer Clothier was
wrecked on the northwest shore of Friesland Island. The log
of the Huntress records this as of Thursday, December 14, 1820:

Begins with moderate breezes and pleasant. A strange Boat came
in which proved a Boat from Capt. Clark’s fleet from Stonington
and reported the loss of Captain Clark’s ship the Clothier which run
on a Rock in attempting to make a harbor about 15 miles to the
westward of where we lay the rest of his fleet had harbored closely
by the ship and was saving what they could. Latter part strong
gale. So Ends.

Four days later, after weathering a northeast gale accompanied
by snow, Captain Burdick made a cruise “around the island
called Frezeland,” to the south-southwest. On this occasion the
Nantucket captain met Captain Johnson, of the schooner Jane

10

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

Maria of New York, one of the most adventurous of the sealing
skippers and a man who was to lose his life several years later
searching for the land which he expected to find southwest of
the South Shetlands. Captain Burdick wrote of the meeting:

. . . Employed towing to windward to get around the Island. At
9 P.M. fell in with Capt. Johnson’s fleet of New York from Raged
Island looking for Yanky harbor this fleet consists of one Brigg
two Schooners and shallop.

Captain Burdick found several large herds of seals at van-
tage points along the south coast of Friesland Island. He ob-
tained 980 skins and also discovered that the Stonington craft
had landed fifty men along a seven-mile stretch of shore. He
returned to Yankee Plarbor on December 22, 1820, and again
met Captain Johnson and his fleet there. The latter had a total
of 1600 skins, having arrived at the South Shetlands two
months before the Huntress. On Christmas Day, Captain Bur-
dick wrote the following in his log:

Begins with strong Gales at NE with Snow and hail. Me and
the Boy busily engaged in scraping the ice from the cables & sides
of the vessel. The NE side of our harbor is formed By And Iceburg
from three to five hundred feet high from the surface of the water
which Break off in flakes of 4 or 5 hundred tons with a report as
Loud as a Cannon. These pieces of ice fall into the water and the
wind drives them afoul of us which is very chafing. Latter part
moderate. Employed in mending scrivits on the cables. So ends
this Day.

In such a dangerous anchorage the Huntress lay with the seal-
ing fleet, all with their anchors down, when a gale broke. On
one occasion Captain Burdick records: “A large boat as big as
two whaleboats which was hauled up on shore was Blown
about 30 or 40 rods and stove to pieces.” On January 9, 1821,
Captain Davis of the Huron , who had “cruised as far to the
northeast as the land extended but found no seal to speak of,”
returned with the shallop. The log of the Huntress reads under
this date :

Captain Davis . . . fell in with an English ship and brigg that
were castaway, took part of their crews and put them on board an
English vessel lying at Ragged Island. Returned to where the men
were stationed and brought in 2470 Skins. Took 696 on board being
my part ... So Ends this Day.

THE FIRST RECOGNITION OF ANTARCTICA u

Sealing operations continued to be successful. The schooner
returned with 627 skins on January 13, 1821. Captain Burdick
took her along the coast of Friesland again on a cruise and ob-
tained 981 more skins, but had a difficult time of it when a
northeast snowstorm sprang up, followed by a “tremendous
gale,” forcing him to sail off shore, standing to the “southward
and east on a wind . . . with a tremendous sea and perishing
cold weather.” With the gale increasing, on January 20, at 4
a.m., he sighted President Island, the next island southeast of
Friesland, about three miles ahead. He recorded:

The gale still increasing, took in the mainsail, whore around and
ran between President Island and Frezeland, among a parcel of
ledges and hauled round between Ragged Island and Frezeland and
anchored in 7 fathoms with both anchors.

The vagaries of South Shetland weather were characteristic
of the Antarctic Sea. Upon his return to Yankee Harbor two
days later, Captain Burdick remarked that, the wind having
fallen away to a calm, he had to lower the boat to tow the
shallop into the anchorage.

Some of the most interesting entries in the log now appear :

Tuesday the 25 [January 1821]

... A Boat came in belonging to Captain Barnard of Nantucket
in Brig Charity having been robbed of eighty skins by the English
at Sheriffs Cape and drove off the beach. 4 P.M. our Boat come in
from a cruise with 52 skins having likewise been drove from the
beach at Sheriffs Cove by the English where he said there was
plenty of seal. The muskets of all the vessels in the harbor being
nine in number and all Americans being notified of the Same all
repaired on board ship Huron, Capt. Davis, to Consult about what
to be done Where we all agreed as one to Muster all our men from
our Several Camps and as one body to go on to said beach at Sheriffs
Cape and take seal by Fair means if we could but at all Events to
take them. So Ends.

Friday, the 26

... At 6 A.M. Capt. Bruno of the schooner Henry started in a
Boat with the First officer of the schr. Expres with a circular Let-
ter signed by all the masters to their Respective officers at their
Camps to muster all their men save a man at Each Camp and with
their Boat to Repair amediately under the guidance of Capt. Bruno
to a Small Bay not far from Sheriffs Cape where Capt. Davis and

12

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

Capt. Barnard would meet them in the shallop with 5 boats and
33 men . . . the residue of the men from the harbor at 8 P.M.

Capt. Davis and Capt. Barnard started in the shallop they met
at the place appointed 120 men, they would have to land and
by the best information we can get the English have but about
80 men there. So Ends.

The expected battle between the rival sealers could not have
taken place, as Captain Burdick makes no further mention of
the subject. It is probable that the British sealers, seeing the
large group of Americans determined on using the rookeries,
with laudable discretion quietly withdrew.

^3 N the next day, the Nantucket skipper made an important
entry in his log. He made no further reference to the impend-
ing fight between British and American sealers; in fact, he
completely ignored the exciting record of the day before. What
he did write is significant of where his true interests lay — in
the possibility of discovering new rookeries on land heretofore
not visited by other sealers. He records as follows:

Saturday, the 27

. . . Capt. Johnson came in in shallop from a cruise of 22 days —
said he had been to the Lat 66° S and the Long, of 70° West and
still found what he first took to be Land but appeared to be noth-
ing but sollid islands of Ice and Snow. Whether he had found any
seal he did not inform nor otherwise than then to say ther was
none so far South as he had ben.

This was a very definite report and Captain Burdick prompt-
ly took it into account. The next day he observed that the
“Stonington shallops” had returned after a cruise of fourteen
days to the northward and eastward and had seen no seals.
Thus, two possible locations were eliminated. When Captain
Davis returned a few days later from a cruise to the westward
and brought back 1720 skins, it took care of the shore in that
direction. There was only one compass direction left towards
which Captain Burdick might sail — south by west, into the
unknown seas. This direction he followed two days later.

In the interim he went with several other ship masters to
attend the auction of articles from the wreck of the Clothier at

13

Captain Burdick's Logbook Entry about Antarctica

THE FIRST RECOGNITION OF ANTARCTICA

15

the place called “Clothier Harbor.” On February 1, 1821, he
met two well-known sealers here — Captain Winship of Bos-
ton, who had come down on the O'Cain three months before,
and “Capt. Smith, the man that Discovered this Land first. He
had two vessels and 60 men and had got 45,000 skins.” Their
talk was not recorded, but it may be assumed that Captain
Burdick asked many questions of Captain Smith.

On February 12, 1821, Captain Burdick sailed “southward
and westward.” “Light Brezes and Calm, trying to get to the
Southward,” he entered the first day. Cruising along the
southern coast of Friesland Island, he took his first officer, Mr.
Coleman, off the bleak shore. The next day, sailing west along-
shore, they found a rookery and collected 446 skins between
them. Later that day he “stood to the southward.” On the 15th
of the month he continued south-southwest. His log book re-
cords the sighting of Antarctica :

Begins with Light airs and variable with Calms pleasant wether
at meridien Lat by obs. 63 . . 17 S President Island Bearing North 3
Leagues mount Pisco SW b W dist 7 Leagues the Peak of Freze-
land NE E 11 Leagues Deception Island NE by N 8 Leagues
and a small Low Island SSW 6 Leagues to which I am bound and
Land from South to ESE which I suppose to be a Continent. Later
part fresh breze at North. At 6 P. M.came to anchor under Low
island among a parcel of rocks Sent the Boat on shore She returned
with 22 Seal So ends thes 24 hours.

The mere fact that Captain Burdick laconically announces
sighting “land from South to ESE which I suppose to be a
Continent” reveals that he had sailed the Huntress to a position
off Hoseason Island where it was easily possible for him to
sight the black, rocky, and precipitous shore of the Antarctic
Continent with its great, snowy mountain-plateau stretching
for miles away.

The atmospheric conditions favored long-range observation
and tended to shorten distances. Burdick mentions sighting
Friesland Island more than thirty miles away to the northeast,
but it is probable that the peak of Friesland was much further
off, thus placing the continent of Antarctica — twenty miles
away — clearly in view. Furthermore, he continued his cruise
south for several hours, anchoring at 6 p.m. at an island, some

1 6

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

twenty miles from the Continental shore across Der Gerlache
Strait. He remained in the vicinity two days, going ashore on
both sides of the island and getting seal skins. It was not until
February 19 that he returned to Yankee Harbor.

Under these circumstances, it is fair to assume that the Nan-
tucket sealer had no reason to doubt the existence of a Con-
tinent across the channel from his anchorage. He not only had
a long period in which to observe, but he gives bearings which
enable one to trace his five-day cruise. Most important of all
is the record of the log itself : “Land from South to ESE which
I suppose to be a Continent.”

On the following day Captain Burdick continued:

Friday the 16

Begins with moderate Breezes at NE Got all the men on shore
to take seal drove up four hundred and nocked them Down. The
wind shifting in to the SW which making a bad harbor where [we]
lay took 8 men on board and got under way and shifted her round
on the NE side and anchored and at 8 P.M. we had got 400 skins
on Board. So Ends these 24 hours.

Saturday the 17

Begins with fresh breezes at NE and thick whether. Sent the
Boat on shore . . . returned with 30 skins. It Blowing a hard gale
right into the harbor we lay in hoisted in the Boat and got under-
way and Beat out after clearing the Land. Double refd the sail and
stood to Northward. So Ends with hard gale and thick snow.

Sunday the 18

. . . Made President Island bearing NE stood close in with it and
tacked off to Southward at 4 P.M. more moderate wind canting to
South, tacked and steered ENE at 8 made Deception Island. Middle
and Latter part Light wind making the best of our way for Yanky
harbor.

Wednesday the 28

. . . Capt. Inott of the ship Samuel from Nantucket came into
our harbor . . . brought me a package of letters.

Captain Burdick sailed for home on March 11, and arrived
June 10.

T

JL HE log-book entry in the cruise of the sloop Hero , which
Colonel Martin believes substantiates Captain Nathaniel Palmer’s
claim to the discovery of Antarctica, is as follows:

THE FIRST RECOGNITION OF ANTARCTICA

i7

Friday November 17th [1826]

These 24 hours commences with fresh Breeses from SWest and
Pleasant at 8 P M. got over under the land found the sea filled with
imense Ice Bergs at 12 hove Too under the Jib Laid off & on until
morning — at 4 A M made sail in shore and discovered — a strait
— Trending SSW & NNE — it was Literally filled with Ice and
the shore inaccessible we thought it not Prudent to Venture in ice
Bore away to the Northerd & saw 2 small Islands and the shore
every where Perpendicular we stood across towards friesland
[Friesland or Smith’s or Livingston Island] Course NNW — the
Latditude of the mouth of the strait was 63-45 S Ends with fine
weather wind at SSW.

The island sighted by Palmer and thought by Martin to be
Trinity Island is forty miles from the nearest South Shetlands.
The strait which he mentions as being filled with floating ice
is claimed by Colonel Martin to be Orleans Channel, which
lies between the continental mainland of Antarctica and Trinity
Island; but it is evident that Captain Palmer did not sail into
it. Although Colonel Martin thinks that “it is not clear whether
it was the coast of the mainland or the shore of these islands
that was considered to be perpendicular,” the present writer
believes that Palmer had the precipitous shores of Tower
and Trinity Islands in mind.

H. R. Mill, the eminent British authority, writing in his The
Siege of the South Pole, believes that Palmer actually saw the
littoral around Anvers Island, as did, a decade later, Captain
John Biscoe.6 Certain it is that “Palmer’s Land” was for years
attached to an island archipelago, as the many maps cited by
William PI. Hobbs indicate.7

The subsequent voyagings of the Hero in January 1821 were
uneventful. There is no record of a trip south along Palmer
Peninsula as far as Marguerite Bay. Captain Palmer is alleged
to have made this important exploration, but the claim was
made long afterwards, and his log-book entries make no men-
tion of the land.

J. N. Reynolds, in a Congressional Report of 1828, stated
that Captain Benjamin Pendleton “discovered a bay, clear of
ice, into which he run for a great distance, but did not ascertain
its full extent south.”8 And Captain Edmund Fanning, in his
Voyages, published first in 1833, credits Pendleton with the ac-

i8

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

tual discovery of Antarctica, declaring that he sighted it first
from the peak of Deception Island.9 According to Fanning,
Captain Palmer was sent by Pendleton, who was in command
of the Stonington fleet, to investigate the land. Unquestionably
he was so dispatched, but his object was to hunt for seals; his
log book on November 1820 reveals no suspicion that he had
seen the great southern polar continent, if he did actually ob-
serve the land mass at all. He merely describes the discovery
of a “strait.” Fanning’s account of the meeting between Cap-
tain Palmer and the Russian Vice-Admiral Thaddeus von
Bellingshausen in January 1821, when the Russian explorer
was in the South Shetlands,10 is disappointing. The translation
of the Russian navigator’s account11 does not contain the story
of the American mariner; nor does it bear any resemblance to
the elaborate version given by Captain Palmer’s niece, Mrs.
Richard Fanning Loper, in 1907, 12 or to that of J. R. Spears a
few years later.13 Palmer’s joint voyage with Captain Powell,
the British sealer, to the South Orkneys in 1821 is a much more
conclusive exploration.

Dumont d’Urville, the French Admiral, sighted and named
the northeast end of Orleans Channel in 1838. Eduard Dall-
mann, on his voyage of 1874, merely gave it a cursory exam-
ination.14 Both were prevented from exploring the channel by
the presence of the ice-fields and a heavy fog which shrouded
the entire area constantly. The Belgian Expedition of 1898-99
further explored the coast; and in 1912 the French Hydro-
graphic Office brought out a map of the South Shetlands show-
ing the results of Charcot’s explorations in 1903-05 and 1908-09.15

The British base their claim to the Palmer Peninsula, which
they call Graham Land, on the voyage of Captain Biscoe, in
the brig Tula, in 1831-32, as “communicated by Messrs Ender-
by in 1833.” This was a truly magnificent Antarctic circum-
navigation. But Biscoe did not even venture as close to the
land as did the sealers. The British mariner refers to land
sighted as “Palmer’s Land,” thus revealing a contact with seal-
ers, and Mill states that “As a matter of historic justice, it
seems to us that Powell’s name of Palmer Land ought to be
retained for the whole group of islands, and possible contin-
ental peninsula south of the South Shetlands.”16

THE FIRST RECOGNITION OF ANTARCTICA 19

Captain Burdick made two more voyages to the South Shet-
lands, and then sold the Huntress and purchased larger craft
for the coasting trade between Nantucket and mainland ports.

{In connection with the publication of this article , an exhibit of
rare maps , atlases, and accounts of famous voyages has been ar-
ranged in the Treasure Room of the Library.)

Notes

1. James Cook, A Voyage towards the South Pole, and round the World,
London 1777, 231.

2. Charles Wilkes, Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition
during the Years 1838-1842, Philadelphia 1845. Dumont D’Urville, Voyage au
Pole Sud et dans VOceanie sur les corvettes I’Astrolabe et la Zelee execute par
ordre du Roi pendant 1837-40, Paris 1841-45.

3. Lawrence Martin, “Antarctica Discovered by a Connecticut Yankee,
Captain Nathaniel Brown Palmer,” Geographical Review, XXX (October
1940), 529-52.

4. J. Miers, “Account of the Discovery of New South Shetland,” Edin-
burgh Philosophical Journal, III (1820), 367-80.

5. William Herbert Hobbs, “The Discoveries of Antarctica within the
American Sector,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, XXXI
(1939), 8-71.

6. Hugh R. Mill, The Siege of the South Pole, New York 1905, 161-2.

7. Hobbs, op. cit.

8. J. N. Reynolds; Report to the Secretary of the Navy, September 24,
1828, 23rd Congress 2nd Session, House Document 105, 1835, 26-7.

9. Edmund Fanning, Voyages & Discoveries in the South Seas, 1792-1832,
Salem 1924, 306-9.

10. I bid., 307-9.

11. The Voyage of Captain Bellingshausen to the Antarctic Seas, 1819-21,
Frank Debenham, ed., London 1945, xxv-xxvi, 425-6.

12. Mrs. Richard Fanning Loper, article in the New London Globe, Janu-
ary 28, 1907.

13. J. R. Spears, Captain Nathaniel Brown Palmer, New York 1922.

14. A. Schiick, “Entwickelung unserer Kenntniss der Lander im Suden
von America,” Zeitschrift fur wissenschaftliche Geographic, VI, 242-64.

15- Jean Charcot, The Voyage of the “Why Not?” in the Antarctic, New
York, London [1911].

16. Mill, op. cit., 162.

The Life of St. Augustine in Pictures

By ELLEN M. OLDHAM

A VALUABLE addition to the Library’s collection of
medieval manuscripts is a Vita S. Augustini written and
illustrated about 1460 in Germany, probably at Augs-
burg. It is a volume consisting of fifty-four leaves of paper,
measuring ii/4 by inches. The narrative is divided into
one hundred and twenty-four “chapters” of five or six lines
apiece, each illustrated by a picture painted in water colors. The
pictures are five inches in width; their height varies from three
to five and a half inches. Four leaves are missing, with the con-
sequent loss of chapters one to four and twenty-two to twenty-
five. The original boards, backed with leather, have been pre-
served. A note written by a Brother Joannes in 1591 shows that
the book once belonged to a house of the Hermits of St. Au-
gustine.

The principal interest of the volume lies in the fact that it
represents a popularization of book making, due to the use of
cursive script and rapid pen drawing instead of a formal hand
and the elaborate work of miniaturists. Because less care was
taken of them, such works have disappeared, worn out from
sheer use. But for a time, after the introduction of rag paper,
they were common. Most surviving copies come from Germany,
and were produced in secular rather than monastic workshops.
It would be interesting to know whether the Library’s volume
was originally owned by a layman and only later reached a
monastery, or was from the first in the possession of a religious
establishment.

The popular manuscripts are undoubtedly related to the
early block-books, intended for a similar clientele. Though
pen-drawing and wood-engraving were separate art forms, the
two exercised a profound influence on each other. Sequences
of illustration have been preserved showing that woodcutters
took over the forms of representation introduced by draughtsmen,
while after 1460, in the region of Augsburg at least, the pen-
and-ink sketches show a technique closely related to the an-

20

THE LIFE OF ST. AUGUSTINE IN PICTURES

21

gularity natural to the use of wood-cutting tools. The drawings
in the Library’s manuscript possess these characteristics. Pos-
sibly they even had an engraved prototype. One illustration
shows a group of soldiers carrying the bier of St. Augustine
into Pavia — but the head of the important character does not
appear; it has been cut off by the left-hand upright of the
frame! If deliberate, this would be a curious touch for a fifteenth-
century artist, working in the normal fashion from left to
right. An explanation might be the copying of a woodcut, where
the workman accidentally ran out of space on the right side of
his block, which was then reversed in the printing.

Some remarks must be made about the artist’s technique of
drawing and painting. Each picture was first drawn in a fine
and careful pen outline, and then much of the work was gone over
again with a thicker, clumsier brush stroke by the painter
(probably a different person), some details being completely
obscured. This practice gives an appearance of greater crudity
of workmanship than is actually the case. The backgrounds
are for the most part a simple indication of blue sky and yel-
lowish-green foreground, with a tree or two in scenes with a
garden. The furniture is reduced to a bishop’s throne, a bench,
or a bed, while a few drawings have the architectural setting
of monastery, school, or city. The colors used are a vitreous
blue, in which the particles of glass may still be seen where it
has been applied thickly; a dusty rose, vermillion (for the frames),
green, yellow, and black, with gray for details in the black
habits. The Saint’s mother, Monica, everywhere appears in a
blue cloak, white veil, and rose dress. The child Augustine is
in blue ; as a youth he wears a fur-trimmed garment with a cap ;
after his baptism he is depicted in the black robe of a monk, to
which are added a cloak and mitre upon his elevation to the epis-
copate. Many of the scenes contain only two or three figures,
and the perspective is naive and rarely successful. Often the
paint is applied in a solid mass with straight lines for folds.
However, at times a more discriminating use of the color, to-
gether with the hatchwork and shading of the draughtsman,
produce an effect of chiaroscuro.

The influence of St. Augustine throughout the Middle Ages
needs no discussion here. Nevertheless, it may be of interest

22

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

to point out that in the De Ricci Census of Medieval and Renais-
sance Manuscripts in America more space is devoted to his works
than to those of any other individual. Over two hundred entries
appear, his closest rivals being Aristotle, Cicero, and St. Ber-
nard. The Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke lists seventy editions
of the genuine works and one hundred and five of the supposi-
titious ones. Although St. Augustine never drew up a monastic
code in the same sense as St. Benedict, his writings on the re-
ligious life became the basis for a great many orders of both
men and women. The Premonstratensians, Servites, Ursulines,
and Knights Hospitallers are but a few of these. In the thir-
teenth century a number of monastic societies were combined
to form the Hermits of St. Augustine. Such a move had become
necessary because many independent bodies had adopted the
“Rule of St. Augustine” while each kept some distinctive
feature of customs or dress. The order flourished, and especial-
ly in Germany many large monasteries grew up. By the four-
teenth century the relaxation of discipline led to reform move-
ments, in which the German houses were again the most promi-
nent. It was to a reformed monastery of the Augustinians that
Martin Luther belonged.

The Order of Canons Regular, another important group,
stemmed from Augustine’s insistence on following a life of
rule even within the Episcopal palace. The institution of canons
can be traced to early Christian times, for they are simply the
clergy attached to a cathedral; however, many placed them-
selves under Augustine’s patronage and practiced his precepts.
The Hospice at the St. Bernard Pass in the Alps is served by
members of an Augustinian congregation, and Erasmus and
Thomas a Kempis were members of the Brothers and Sisters
of the Common Life, an institute under the spiritual guidance
of canons regular.

The pictorial treatment of St. Augustine’s life was a great
subject, not so much in the bare outline of events as in the es-
sential aspects of his teachings. The compiler was careful to
give his sources (underlined in red ink) at the end of each chap-
ter. In common with all writers, before and since, he took for
a starting point Augustine’s own Confessions , which includes
the famous account of his youth and his conversion at the age

THE LIFE OF ST. AUGUSTINE IN PICTURES 23

of thirty-three. The biographical features of the first nine
books of this work fill forty-five chapters of the volume. The
later material is taken primarily from Possidius’s Vita S. An-
gustini and a group of sermons entitled Ad Fratres in Eremo.
Possidius, a friend of St. Augustine for nearly forty years, was
elected a bishop in Numidia in 397. Pie produced his book
shortly after the death of the Saint. The Sermons to the Hermits
were edited in the latter part of the fourteenth century by Jor-
dan of Saxony, of the Augustinian order. Ten Latin and three
Italian printed editions indicated the popularity of this collec-
tion in the following century. But shortly thereafter Erasmus
wrote, “Of all works falsely ascribed to St. Augustine, nothing
is more absurd and impudent than the Sermons to the Hermits,
in which neither the words, nor thoughts, nor affections, nor
anything at all is worthy of him.” Jordan of .Saxony’s work in-
cluded various tracts and legends of the life of Augustine and
his mother, and the compiler of the Library’s volume may
well have made use of it, for he often remarks that certain
statements are “ex legenda famosa,” or “ex dictis suis et aliorum
doctorum.” The use of the pseudo-Augustinian work probably
did not affect the accuracy of the manuscript, since the ma-
terial is of a well-authenticated character.

The first page preserved in the volume shows Monica and
her husband Patricius taking the young Augustine to school
for the first time. An early owner here, as in many other places,
wrote the name above each figure. Although simply drawn,
the figures have considerable life. The schoolmasters appar-
ently were strict; there is a lively illustration of a story Augus-
tine tells about his praying (unsuccessfully) that he might
avoid a beating. One boy is receiving a thrashing; behind Au-
gustine, who is on his knees with hands clasped in prayer,
stands another master armed with a switch. While the Saint
was still in his teens, his father was converted to Christianity,
dying shortly after. In the usual fashion, a tiny naked figure
issues from the old man’s mouth, representing his soul, which
is received by an angel. The drawing of the bedcovers and
Monica’s grief-stricken expression show the hand of a skillful
artist.

The conversion of Augustine furnished material for several

24

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

illustrations. As he lies beneath a tree in the garden of his
friend Alypius, his book dropped carelessly beside him, the
hand of God reaches forth from the sky, red forks signifying
the divine intervention. In the right corner Augustine is de-
picted again, telling Alypius about his experience. This me-
dieval practice of compressing several sequential events into
one picture is used in a number of the drawings. After a period
of retreat and preparation, Augustine, together with his son
Adeodatus and Alypius, is baptized by St. Ambrose, Bishop
of Milan. Three fonts are shown, and each candidate appears
to be standing in one, up to his waist in water. After the death
of Monica, a small band of recruits, Augustine at their head,
reached Africa, and with the help of money from Valerius, the
Bishop of Hippo, a monastery was built. This is one of the es-
pecially charming pictures. One monk is mixing mortar, an-
other is carrying a bucket up a ladder to a companion, and a
third is standing upon scaffolding working on the still uncom-
pleted wall. The chapel wing is already built, and the bell is
in place. Upon the completion of the cloister, Augustine pre-
sents his hermit brothers with a rule of life, as they begin an
existence of poverty, possessing all things in common and
practicing “vigils, prayers, and fasting.” Here in his beloved
solitude, Augustine spent much time in contemplation. A large
drawing shows him kneeling on the grass, with gently rolling
hills, studded with a tree here and there. The vision before his
uplifted eyes is denoted by an oval frame containing the tra-
ditional representation of the Trinity.

Several pictures illustrate the daily life of the monks. The
whole forenoon the brothers devoted to worship. A group
kneels before the altar, where a priest in blue chasuble is say-
ing Mass. The artist is attentive to details : the facial expres-
sions are well differentiated, some of the monks being young
and clean-shaven and others elderly with beards. While the
perspective of the altar is inaccurate, the carving of the reredos
is carefully done and two parts of a triptych painting are clear-
ly shown. From twelve to three the monks spent in reading
and private prayer. Then they replaced their books and had
their main meal, nevertheless “attending more to the Word of
God and the reading than to the refreshment of the body.” One

THE LIFE OF ST. AUGUSTINE IN PICTURES 25

of the brothers, as was customary in religious houses, read
aloud, his volume resting upon a wooden lectern. The table
is laid with a blue-striped cloth, and each place is set with a
bowl, a knife, and a chunk of bread. The menu was of herbs and
barley bread and included no meat or fish, and but rarely but-
ter, milk, cabbage, and other vegetables. After the meal, the hermits
busied themselves in the garden, or wherever there might be
work to do; and when vespers were over returned again to
silence. Several are shown busily at work out of doors, two
with axes cutting down a tree, and a third equipped with a
pruning knife.

The fame of Augustine’s sanctity of life caused him, much
against his desire, to be ordained a priest, that he might preach
to the people publicly; and soon Valerius had him elevated to
a bishopric to secure his help for himself. In the picture of the
consecration Augustine kneels before an altar, two bishops
laying their hands upon his head. In this scene, almost uniquely
in the manuscript, traces of gold leaf are preserved in the
bishops’ mitres and croziers.

It is difficult to represent pictorially a man’s labors in writ-
ing, but the artist did his best. Augustine sits at his desk while
in the lower right corner is the head of a fierce monster, red
tongues of fire streaming from his open jaws. In the upper part
of the drawing angels blow their trumpets, and in a cloud ap-
pears again the symbol of the Trinity. The text states that
Augustine is here engaged in searching out the Unity and the
Trinity, the joys of paradise, the pains of purgatory, and
the depths of hell. Some of the Saint’s famous sermons on na-
ture are also illustrated, as well as his many works against the
Arians and other heretics.

Six chapters show those classes of people for whom, directly
or indirectly, Augustine provided a rule of life. First come
prelates and clerics, then monks and other religious, nuns and
women living an enclosed life, holy virgins, holy widows, good
husbands and wives. The Bishop is pictured in his daily life
visiting the sick and his monks, receiving penitents, distribut-
ing food to the poor, preaching to clerics and laity, and praying
for the living and the dead (the latter standing naked in the
midst of flames).

26

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

The last months of Augustine’s life were troubled by the in-
cursion of the Vandals and the siege of Hippo. The Bishop and
his monks may be seen above the turreted walls, the gates be-
ing stormed by armed soldiers. A quaint touch is the stork
standing on her nest on top of one of the houses. At last a fatal
illness seized the Saint, and after his death the body had to be
carried to Sardinia to safety. Years later Luitprand, king of
Lombardy, obtained permission to translate it to Pavia. The
body, clothed as in life, is shown lying before the entrance to
the town. The last scene of all depicts the bier before the altar
of the Church of San Pietro in Ciel d’Oro (where Augustine’s
sarcophagus still remains) flanked by two brothers of the Or-
der of Hermits and two canons regular, joining in homage to
their great patron.

Civil War Sketches

By ALISON BISHOP

AMONG the most interesting recent additions to the Li-
brary’s Twentieth Regiment Collection are two portfolios
of rare Civil War etchings and lithographs — Winslow
Homer’s Campaign Sketches , published in Boston by Louis
Prang and Company in 1863, and A. J. Volck’s Sketches from
the Civil War in North America , secretly printed by the artist,
a Confederate sympathizer, in Baltimore in 1861-63.

Winslow Homer was twenty-five when, in the fall of 1861,
he made his first trip to the front as a special artist and corres-
pondent for Harper’s Weekly with the Union army. Although
already a competent illustrator whose sketches and lithographs
had appeared regularly in magazines in both New York and
Boston, he had as yet given little promise of the development
that was to make him one of America’s great artists. It was
during his months in the field that he made the realistic drawings
which were the basis for the paintings which first made him
famous. Many of these as they appeared in Harper’s are com-
paratively crude, but this may have been due, as Homer’s biog-
raphers have suggested, to the clumsy way in which they were
transferred to the wood block. Such an explanation is supported
by the evidence of the Campaign Sketches , where delicacy of
line and shading has been preserved by the lithographic process.

Homer spent the spring of 1862 with General McClellan’s
Army of the Potomac, during the offensive against Richmond.
He arrived in Alexandria in time to see and record the departure
of the Northern troops, and remained with them through the
siege and capture of Yorktown. Judging by his work in Harper’s ,
his biographers have concluded that he did not follow the troops
in their advance up the peninsula, nor see the Seven Days’ Battle
and the disastrous failure of the campaign.

The six plates of Campaign Sketches, like the drawings in
Harper’s, are humorous rather than heroic and solemn in the
manner of much “war art.” Instead of vast battle panoramas,
they show everyday life in camp, with soldiers eating, resting,

27

28

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

and playing cards. In “A Pass Time: Cavalry Rest,” three soldiers
are sitting by a fire in a clearing playing what looks like some
form of poker. One, whose back is to the observer, holds three
aces; four other cavalrymen stand or sit watching the game
with various expressions. In “The Coffee Call” a crowd of
hungry men with tin cups is waiting before an open fire, over
which rough pails of steaming coffee hang from a stick. In the
distance, behind a cloud of smoke from the fire, can be seen
tents, covered wagons, and mules, with other figures running
towards the foreground. Only the plate entitled “Foraging,”
shows soldiers on duty. Here cavalrymen are taking a bull
from a farmyard, while a servant screams after them. The bull
is shown charging wild-eyed through a patch of cabbages, the
soldiers clinging to its halter. “Our Jolly Cook” is in a still more
humorous vein; it shows a Negro in a tasselled cap dancing to
the tune of a fife, while spectators stand watching. In “The
Baggage Train” two Negroes are sitting on the rear board of
a covered wagon as it moves through the mud at the end of a
long line of other wagons. They wear boots and broad-brimmed
old hats; one is smoking a pipe, and the other holds a whip.
The one serious subject of the Campaign Sketches is “The Letter
for Home,” which portrays the interior of a hospital ward in
winter. In the foreground a soldier, thin and worn, is dictating
a letter to a nurse who sits on the edge of his bed. In back can
be seen rows of beds and a man hobbling on crutches.

These six plates, the actual drawings measuring nine by
eleven inches, are extremely rare even individually; and there
are only three or four complete sets in existence. The Library’s
copy, which includes the cover, is apparently unique. This
cover, lithographed in red and black on brown, shows a Union
soldier in full-dress marching uniform with his pack and rifle.

It was probably one of Homer’s sketches made during his
first visit to the front that served as the basis for his painting
of three soldiers at Camp Benton, now hanging in the Rare
Book Department of the Library. This painting, presented by
the Twentieth Regiment Association, was completed in 1881,
at the beginning of Homer’s impressionist period. Twenty-
one by twenty-three inches in size, it shows Lieutenant Colonel
F. W. Palfrey and Captain W. F. Bartlett of the 20th Massachu-

One of Winslow Homer's Campaign Sketches
( Greatly reduced)

29

CIVIL WAR SKETCHES

3i

setts Volunteers standing together in conference, while a sol-
dier seems about to give them a message. The scene is a bleak
morning, with a cloudy sky broken by patches of blue. The pre-
dominant colors are the grays, blues, and gray-browns which
were typical of Homer’s work at this time, when he was preoc-
cupied with problems of outdoor light. In the background can
be seen a row of tents with figures moving about and a horse be-
side a log cabin. The way the painting catches what must have
been the mood of the Army of the Potomac then is striking. The
Twentieth Regiment had just passed through its first bad fight-
ing, at the Battle of Ball’s Bluff in late October. Its losses had
been particularly heavy, and William Lee, the Colonel of the
Regiment, had been captured. As the remnants straggled back
to Camp Benton, Francis Palfrey of Boston found himself the
only officer left of the entire field and military staff, and thus,
at the age of thirty, in command. One of his first acts was to ap-
point William Bartlett, then twenty-one, as second officer.

What artists like Winslow Homer were doing for the Union
cause, Adalbert John Volck, a Baltimore dentist and printer,
tried to do for the South. His Sketches from the Civil War in North
America were, according to him, intended as a direct answer to
the drawings and cartoons then appearing in Northern papers.
“The production of these etchings,” he wrote nearly half a cen-
tury later, “suggested itself to my mind on seeing the illus-
trated papers of the North filled with one-sided pictures of the
war, and with villainous caricatures — such for instance as
those of that nastiest of caricaturists, the notorious Nast . . . and
I thought it a pity that no pictorial record should issue from
the South.” (Letter to Mrs. Thomas Baxter Gresham, written
on January 21, 1900, now in the Confederate Museum, Rich-
mond, Virginia.)

There has been much bibliographical confusion about this
work. The first edition was issued under the pseudonym “V.
Blada” — Adalbert Folck spelled backwards — and the title
page bore the words “London, 1863.” However, this was only
a subterfuge designed to trick the Union officials. Throughout
the war Volck, a German immigrant who had taken part in the
revolutionary march on Berlin in 1848, was a vigorous sup-
porter of the rebels, and, according to rumor, even served as

32

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

a Confederate spy. He crossed the Union lines many times,
helping- to bring medicine and supplies to the Southern army.
One of the plates, “Smuggling Medicines into the South,”
shows this activity. It was on these dangerous trips that Volck
made many of the sketches on which he based his etchings.
“The drawing, etching, and printing were all done by myself
at night,” he later recalled, “after the day’s unintermittent pro-
fessional labor. Of course entire secrecy had to be preserved.
The work was begun about the time of the first Battle of Bull
Run . . . The making of these pictures extended through the
whole war, the last plate being “The Return Home of Lee’s
Men,’ but the last eighteen plates were never printed. Before
this could be done, there came Lincoln’s assassination, and the
danger of issuing the last set was too great to be risked. These
last eighteen plates were sent by a friend to England to be
printed and issued there . . . Ten years afterwards they were
discovered by my brother . . . completely ruined.” (From the
letter to Mrs. Gresham.)

The original prospectuses for Volck’s etchings announced
a series of forty-five plates. The “first issue” contained ten;
the “second and third issues” included twenty more, and named
seventeen additional drawings as being completed and partially
etched. The list of these does not include “The Return Home
of Lee’s Men.” According to the letter quoted above, there
must have been forty-eight plates in all, of which only thirty
were ever printed. However, in a letter of January n, 1905,
now in the Library of Congress, Volck contradicts himself,
stating that twenty unpublished plates, not eighteen, were sent
to England. This would mean that he actually made fifty plates.

In any case, the thirty etchings which we have are an im-
pressive record of the war as seen from the Southern view-
point. Compared with Homer’s lithographs, they are classical,
with sharp outlines and very little shading. Many of the more
serious plates recall the work of John Flaxman and other Bri-
tish artists; and even the most bitter caricatures are restrained
in style if not in feeling. In the first plate, “Worship of the
North,” a white man is being sacrificed before a Negro idol, on
an altar of which the stones are labelled “Puritanism,” “Social-
ism,” “Free Love,” “Negro Worship,” etc. Many of the North-

CIVIL WAR SKETCHES

33

ern leaders are present as worshippers, with Henry Ward Beecher
officiating as priest and Horace Greeley swinging a censer full
of vipers. “The Emancipation Proclamation” shows Lincoln
writing while trampling on the Constitution; a grinning devil
holds his inkpot. Consistently, Northerners are portrayed as
ugly, cowardly, and cruel. They are shown burning homes and
killing women and children. Two plates, “Free Negroes in the
North” and “Free Negroes in Haiti,” illustrate the horrors of
Emancipation. Southerners, on the other hand, are depicted
as noble, handsome, and brave. Etchings show women sewing
for the army and giving up their household goods, and soldiers
praying, fighting, and sacrificing home and family.

The Library’s set of Volck’s etchings is complete, with the
plates all clean and in fresh state; only the title page is in fac-
simile. It also has copies of the editions of 1880-94 and 1917.
Volck made other series of drawings during the Civil War,
though of lesser importance, and the Library has a second edi-
tion of his Ye Exploits of . . . Bombastes Furioso Buncombe , 186-?,
a set of caricatures of General Benjamin Franklin Butler.

The Twentieth Regiment Collection contains a vast amount
of pictorial material on the Civil War. Particularly interesting are
twenty lithographs of battles, camps, skirmishes, and marches
by a Union soldier, printed in Cincinnati in 1862. The artist,
J. Nep Roesler, was a corporal of the Color Guard Company in
the 47th Ohio Volunteers, and served during the campaign in
that part of Virginia which is now West Virginia. Most of
these lithographs have romantic landscape backgrounds, with
plenty of trees and clouds, but the figures of the soldiers, clus-
tered around a campfire or sleeping with their caps tilted over
their faces, are lively and realistic. Perhaps the best is “Tomp-
kin’s Farm,” where the rows of peaked tents, the white frame
houses, and the tiny soldiers drilling with rifles in a field recall
the work of the American primitive painters.

The lithographs and etchings discussed here will be on view
in the Treasure Room throughout January and February.

Lydia Maria Child and Anti-Slavery

By ETHEL K. WARE

( Continued from the October 1951 issue )

IN 1852 the Childs retired to the Francis farm at Wayland,
Massachusetts, so that Mrs. Child could care for her father,
who was ill. Her brother, James Francis, lived half a mile
away. Wayland, originally a part of Sudbury, had been set off
in 1780 as East Sudbury, but in March 1835 it was renamed
Wayland in honor of Francis Wayland, President of Brown
University. In the census of 1850, just prior to the Childs’
settlement there, the population numbered 1,115. About fifteen
miles from Boston, the Francis-Child cottage was on the road
from Wayland to Sudbury. Though the furniture was plain
and old-fashioned, Mrs. Child had many pictures and keepsakes
of all kinds. In the town of Wayland Center, through which a
stagecoach passed twice a day, was located the first free pub-
lic library in the state, founded at public expense in 1848.

With the Compromise measure of 1850, the slavery issue
seemed settled. Yet the second phase of the fight was just in
the making. Mrs. Child, although busy with household duties,
accomplished considerable writing. In 1853 she published Isaac
T. Hopper , a True Life , an appreciation of the old Quaker abo-
litionist, full of lively dramatic episodes of his help to Negroes
in danger or distress. In 1855 appeared her three-volume work
on comparative religion, The Progress of Religious Ideas, the
result of years of study. In the preface she warned: “I would
candidly advise persons who are conscious of bigoted attach-
ment to any creed or theory, not to purchase this book. Wheth-
er they are bigoted Christians, or bigoted infidels, its tone will
be likely to displease them.” And she added: “My motive in
writing has been a very simple one. I wished to show that theology
is not religion ; with the hope that I might help to break down
partition walls; to ameliorate what the eloquent Bushnell calls
‘baptized hatreds of the human race.’ ”x

After the turmoil of Boston and New York, the Childs en-

34

LYDIA MARIA CHILD AND ANTI-SLAVERY

35

joyed their retirement at Wayland. Her father’s death in De-
cember, 1856, caused Maria many “sad, lonely hours,” but she
soon settled down to work. Her interest in public affairs was
unflagging. Commenting on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle
Tom's Cabin , she remarked that it had “done much to command
respect for the faculties of women.” With “towering indigna-
tion” she realized that women were made chattels, “perpetu-
ally insulted by literature, law, and custom” — she had been
obliged to have even her own will signed by her husband. She
noticed a lull in fugitive slave activities. The Senate that passed
the Nebraska bill she branded as the most “completely servile
of all our servile Senates.”2 Diagnosing the situation, she wrote :
“The South understands her own interest too well to secede,”
and “I am out of patience with the North. I don’t blame the
slaveholders for kicking and cuffing us; for obviously we are
of the stuff that slaves are made of.”3 She quoted her old father
as saying: “My first vote was given for Washington and my
last shall be given for Fremont.”4 Her own hopes were set on
this candidate. “I shall not live to see women vote,” she wrote
to her friend Mrs. S. B. Shaw; “but I’ll come and rap at the
ballot-box. Won’t you? I never was bitten by politics before . . .”5
Outraged by the assault on Charles Sumner in the Senate, she
wrote Theodore Parker about a project for a statue commemorating
Sumner’s defence of Kansas, but Parker replied, June 5, 1856, that
he would rather put the $1,500 into corn and gunpowder for
the men in Lawrence, Kansas.6 On December 25, 1859, she
wrote to Samuel E. Sewall, next to Ellis Gray Loring her
closest friend: “May God keep Charles Sumner’s garments
spotless. He is the only one of our Representatives in whose
integrity 1 have implicit trust. If he falls from his pedestal, I
shall never set up another idol.”7

SlNCE the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, the Free-Soil con-
test had for many people in New England the nature of a cru-
sade. They subsidized the Kansas immigrants, made them
clothes, and even supplied arms and ammunition for them.
Members of the Massachusetts State Kansas Committee en-
couraged John Brown in his plot to free the slaves by force. It

3^

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

is true that they advised delay, but they also supplied him with
$3,800. Mrs. Child had not followed Higginson, Parker, Samuel
G. Plowe, and others in supporting Brown, but his capture
after his ill-fated attack upon Harper’s Ferry aroused her sym-
pathies. She wrote to Governor Henry A. Wise, asking him
to transmit a letter to John Brown, who had been wounded in
the fight and was now in the Charlestown jail, and to allow her
to come down to Virginia and serve as his nurse. She and
her large circle of abolitionist friends, she told him, were sur-
prised at Brown’s attempt, and she did not know of a person
who would have approved it. But she was sorry for ‘‘the brave
and suffering man,” who needed “a mother or sister to dress
his wounds, and speak soothingly to him.”8 She promised that
if allowed to come she would not advance her ideas about the
right of the slave to fight for his freedom. In his reply Gover-
nor Wise promised to forward the letter to Brown; as to her
request to be permitted to minister to the prisoner, he asked:
“Why should you not be allowed, Madam? Virginia and Massa-
chusetts are involved in no civil war, and the Constitution
which unites them in one confederacy guarantees to you privi-
leges and immunities as a citizen of . . . Massachusetts coming
into Virginia for any lawful and peaceful purpose.” But at the
end the Governor reproved her: “His attempt was a natural
consequence of your sympathy, and the errors of that sym-
pathy ought to make you doubt its virtue from the effect on
his conduct.”9

Mrs. Child’s answer was in the vein of her editorials of the
Standard days. She was aware, she wrote, of her constitutional
rights, but she had found in many cases that the Constitution
had been “completely and systematically nullified whenever it
suited the convenience or the policy of the Slave Power.” John
Brown’s methods were sanctioned by his religious views. Was
not Governor Wise himself treasonable when he boasted that
he would rout government troops if they attempted to stop the
invasion of Mexico? “Because slave-holders so recklessly sowed
the wind in Kansas,” she concluded, “they reaped a whirlwind
at Harper’s Ferry.”10

John Brown himself expressed his gratitude to Mrs. Child,
but wrote that he was under the care of a “most humane

LYDIA MARIA CHILD AND ANTI-SLAVERY

37

gentleman” and his family, and had recovered from his wounds
enough not to need nursing. He suggested that instead she
help his wife, three daughters, two widowed daughters-in-law,
and a Mrs. Thompson, also widowed in the cause. He also had
a crippled son, now destitute, and “no living son, or son-in-law,
who did not suffer terribly in Kansas.”11 A pledge of fifty cents
now, and the same sum yearly from her and each of her friends
for bread, clothes, and education, would be a real service.

In the meantime, contrary to her expectations, her corre-
spondence with Governor Wise was published in the col-
umns of the New York Tribune . As a result of the publicity, a
Mrs. M. J. C. Mason of King George’s County, Virginia, came
into the controversy, with a tirade beginning: “Do you read
your Bible, Mrs. Child? If you do, read there: ‘Woe unto you,
hypocrites,’ and take to yourself with two-fold damnation that
terrible sentence.” Descending to a more mundane level, she
added: “No Southerner ought, after your letter to Governor
Wise and to Brown, to read a line of your composition, or to
touch a magazine which bears your name in its list of con-
tributors; and in this we hope for the ‘sympathy,’ at least of
those at the North who deserve the name of woman.”12 Mrs.
Child, in her turn, listed numerous quotations from the Bible,
and pointed out the evils of slavery as they were exposed by
the statute books of slave states and advertisements of South-
ern papers. As to the malevolence called down on her publica-
tions, she replied that she was in the good company of Chan-
ning, Bryant, Whittier, Lowrell, Longfellow, and Mrs. Stowe.
She released to Greeley both Mrs. Mason’s letter and her reply,
asking him to print them together. The whole Child-Wise-
Mason correspondence was later published in about three hun-
dred thousand copies.

On November 28, 1859, Mrs. Child wrote to one of her
friends, probably Anne W. Weston:

I have been so overwhelmed with letters about John Brown, that
I have been kept in a whirl ... You can hardly conceive of the
violence and obscenity of those I receive from Virginia. I did not
suppose that even Slavery could produce anything so foul ... I
cannot understand what I have done to deserve so much laudation
on one side, and so much abuse on the other. It seemed to me a

38 THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

very simple act of kindness to wish to nurse the brave old man,
when I supposed him to be alone, helpless and bleeding in prison.
The notoriety I gained by it was altogether unexpected to me, and
far from being pleasant. But since it came, without my seeking, I
determined to make the best use I could of it.

In the same letter she mentioned her plan to go to Boston to
help Garrison prepare a meeting in honor of Brown, doomed
to be executed, adding:

Emerson writes to me : “I have hopes for his brave life. He is one
for whom miracles wait.” And I confess I have a little of the same
hope. Yet his death would be a magnificent martyrdom. What a
success he has made of failure, by the moral grandeur of his own
character ! Whether he lives or dies, he has struck a blow at slavery,
from the effects of which it will never recover.^

Four days later, on December 2, John Brown was hanged.

After Brown’s death, Mrs. Child fanned the flame of anti-
slavery sentiment. “I am willing to have my name used to any
extent,” she wrote to the same friend on December 22, 1859.
“I would even use the Irish privilege of voting in thirteen
wards in one day if it would do any good.” She had answered
twenty-three letters that week, all but two about John Brown.

Others may spend their time debating whether John Brown did
wrong, or not ; whether he was sane, or not ; all I know, or care to
know, is that his example has stirred me up to concentrate my-
self with renewed earnestness to the righteous cause for which he
died so bravely . . .

I have just received an invitation to write for the Independent,
on my own terms ... I don’t like the course of the Independent, in
several respects. How inconsistent in H. W. Beecher to send rifles
to Kansas, and then deny that the slaves have a right to fight for
their freedom ! His moral principles seem to be as much blurred
as his theological doctrines ... I did not go into any particulars in
my reply to the proposition. I merely wrote : “It would not be
agreeable to me to write for a paper, that has dealt so unjustly by
William Lloyd Garrison . . .”*■*

A few days later she wrote Maria Chapman that Wendell Phil-
lips had rlso been asked to write for the Independent. “Wendell
is orthodox,” she remarked, “and so I suppose would like the
paper better than I do.” However, she seems to have changed
her mind some years later and sent occasional articles for the

LYDIA MARIA CHILD AND ANTI-SLAVERY 39

journal to Theodore Tilton — “the only sound timber in the
fabric.”15

In the following January she related the story of John Brown
to sympathizers in other countries. She addressed a letter to
Queen Victoria, which she tried to transmit through the Bri-
tish ambassador at Washington who, however, civilly informed
her that he could not be the channel. “I thought if I could in-
terest the queen personally ,” she wrote Anne Weston, “it would
do more good than any efforts with Colonial Legislatures.
Such bodies have no soul . . .” Further, she wanted Mrs. Chap-
man to ask Harriet Martineau whether some English journal
would like several articles showing the antecedent causes of
the Brown incident. She also wished to send her Wise-Mason
correspondence to Victor Hugo, Kossuth, Mazzini, Mary
Howitt, the editor of the London Advertiser , and Punch. How-
ever, she soon changed her mind, writing: “You need take no
further trouble about that London Correspondence. I have
given it up, in disgust. I don’t like the look of it. I am not the
person to write ‘statesman-like’ letters, and I don’t like to deal
with ‘precise’ people, like your English. So good-bye to that
project. I have another in my head, which I like better . . .”l6

The suggestion had been made that she write an explanation
of John Brown’s foray. “But,” she confessed, “I can’t explain
it. The more I cogitate upon it, the more unaccountable it
seems to me that any man in his senses could have undertaken
such an enterprise.”

N EXT, Mrs. Child turned her attention to the case of
Thomas Sims. On September 9, i860, she received a letter from
Francis Jackson in answer to her request for facts. Jackson re-
lated the following story: Sims, a mason, was a mulatto about
twenty-three years old. Claimed by James Potter of Savannah,
he was arrested in Boston on April 10, 1851, and falsely charged
with stealing a watch. He was imprisoned in the city court
house, tried, and later taken down Long Wharf to the brig
Acorn, bound for Savannah. By order of the Mayor, a regiment
of infantry quartered in Faneuil Hall and a militia of fifteen
hundred merchants were on duty for the occasion — the cost

40

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

to the City, all in all, being $2,996.95. Money enough was raised
to ransom Sims, but Potter refused to sell him at any price —
“he wanted to humble Boston.” Sims, delivered to his master’s
overseer, was whipped and thrown into jail, where he sickened,
and was taken out only because he would otherwise have died.
Some time after he had recovered, he was consigned for sale
to a broker, who finally bought Sims himself and shipped him
to New Orleans “on speculation.” There he was sold to a
mason at Vicksburg, for whom he acted “as his boss and is an
expert bricklayer.” At the close of his letter Jackson reminded
Mrs. Child that since the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 three
fugitives had been arrested in Boston — Shadrack, Sims, and
Burns. Shadrack had been rescued, and Burns ransomed. “Sims
had as good a right to live in Boston as ever I had,” he wrote,
and asked, “Are those who enslaved him going to let him die
in Slavery and they in their sins?”17

Mrs. Child informed Samuel Sewall that she was going “to
speak to several wealthy gentlemen about the purchase of
Thomas Sims,” whose master was charging $1,800 for him “on
account of his intelligence and mechanical skill.” Years later,
she described the results of an interview: General Devens had
given her the money for Sims’s redemption, with the understand-
ing that there was to be no publicity. While she was consulting
with friends how best to negotiate with the slave-owner, the
guns of Fort Sumter were fired. Sims took refuge in a Union
camp. He subsequently came to Boston, and “I heard,” she
wrote, “that General Devens gave him $100 to help set him up
in business.”18

In i860 she published The Right Way the Safe Way, a study
of emancipation based on detailed knowledge of what had
taken place in the British West Indies. She had consulted Sam-
uel J. May beforehand, writing to him on February 26:

You will perhaps wonder that I leave out the question of justice
and humanity . But you must remember that I wrote it especially
for the South. It is strongly impressed upon my mind that there
are reflecting people at the South, who might be influenced by those
statements, if we could only contrive to place them before them. I have
thought it might perhaps be well to omit the fact that it is printed
by the Anti-Slavery Society ; lest the word anti-slavery should stop

LYDIA MARIA CHILD AND ANTI-SLAVERY 41

it in the Post Office. Please consult with Mr. Garrison and Mr.
Phillips about it.19

She wanted to send a copy of the tract to every member of
Congress, every Governor, and every Southern newspaper edi-
tor. She desired that each friend of the cause send copies to in-
dividuals in the South — this, too, to be done quietly. “My
plan is to attack them with a ‘troop of horse shod with felt.’ ”
She would have preferred to omit her name from the publica-
tion, but as she happened “to be notorious at this time, it seems
to be necessary to help its extension.” By June she was writing
May about a new edition, to which she wanted to add data
about Swedish emancipation.

In September, Mrs. Child wrote to Garrison, who was ill
and worn out. She told him that he should go away for a rest.
“If I can help in taking care of the Liberator, in your absence,”
she assured him, “I will do it most cheerfully. Mr. Child also
says he would do anything to help, either in the care of the
paper, or the office, and esteem it a privilege, if it would be any
relief to you.”20

Shortly after the opening shots of the war, she wrote to
Sewall that she was “afraid of politics in closing the Civil
War.” “Civil War,” she declared, “is a horrid thing, but since
it is begun, and there has already been so much expenditure of
money, blood, and suffering, it will be a dreadful pity if the
cause of all the trouble is not removed in the process.” She re-
gretted that General Scott was a Virginian by birth, for she
did not trust “any southerner’s profession of neutrality.” As
for Mr. Seward, “I will not trust myself,” she remarked, “to
express my feelings about him. I will only say that no amount
of duplicity on his part can possibly surprise me . . . He gains
the ear of Mrs. Lincoln and thus operates indirectly ... If it
had only pleased the Lord to remove him as well as Douglas.”21
Her peculiar attitude toward Lincoln appears here and there
in her letters. In one to Mr. R. F. Wallcut of April 20, 1862,
she stated: “Well, it is something to get slavery abolished in
ten miles square [the District of Columbia], after thirty years
of arguing, remonstrating, and petitioning. The effect it will
produce is of more importance than the act itself. I am inclined
to think that ‘old Abe’ means about right, only he has a hide-

42

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

bound soul.” In another letter to Wallcut on September 7 she
wrote in a little note in the margin: “I wish the Rebels might
catch ‘old Abe/ Don’t you tell”22

She dreaded the Democratic Party more than the rebels “be-
cause insidious enemies are more dangerous than open ones.”
Further, she had seen letters from England stating that
Mason and Slidell were offering to abolish slavery as the
price of a league with England and France. She thought Se-
ward presented a “remarkably foolish appearance,” and that
Lincoln seemed to be saying that if the rebels “continued to
resist, the United States Government must resort to eman-
cipation.”23 Again, when Mrs. Shaw wrote asking Mrs. Child
what she thought of Lincoln, she replied, on May 18, 1862,
that he had done better than she expected, and had turned
out to be “a better President than we deserve,” but she sup-
posed his soul to be a little hide-bound, since he was going
to interfere with General Hunter just as he had done with
Fremont.24 It was not till after the election of 1864, when her
feelings toward Lincoln had warmed considerably, that she
could write to Godwin: “I become more and more radical. I
rejoice in having a rail-splitter for President and a tailor for
Vice-President. I wish a shoe-black could be found worthy
to be appointed Secretary of State; and I should be all the
more pleased if he were a black shoe-black.”25

In every way possible Mrs. Child agitated for the aid of
the “contrabands,” or freed slaves. To Francis Shaw and his
wife she poured out her anxieties, writing him on January 28, 1862 :

I enclose $20, which I wish you to use for the “contrabands,” in
any way you think best . . . My interest in the “contrabands,” every-
where, is exceedingly great ; and at this crisis, I feel that every one
ought to do their utmost. I still have $40 left of a fund I have set
apart for the “contrabands.” I keep it for future contingencies ; but
if you think it is more needed now, say the word and you shall
have it.

Then she told him of the plans she had worked out for making
the ex-slaves good members of society:

The “contrabands” ought to be employed on such terms that the

LYDIA MARIA CHILD AND ANTI-SLAVERY

43

more they do the more money they get. I wish white people could
get rid of the idea that they must manage for them. I think it is a
bad system at Fortress Monroe to keep back so large a proportion
of their wages to support the sick and the aged. White laborers
would not work with much heart under such circumstances. They
ought to pay them wages in proportion to their work, and let them
form Relief Societies among themselves, so that they might feel
that they did the benevolent work themselves. I think a great deal
depends upon the application of proper stimulus to their industry . . .

Where we are drifting I cannot see; but we are drifting some-
where; and our fate, whatever it may be, is bound up with these
same despised “contrabands.” Oh, if the country could be saved,
all free, by jumping into a great gulf, as Quintus Curtius did, how
I would hurry to the sacrifice !

To her constant concern for the freed slaves she added (May
18, 1862) an interest in the fate of the “poor whites.”

I am greatly interested in the Educational Commission for the
“contrabands,” which they have started in Boston. I shall do all
I can for it. It is refreshing to find some green spots in our blood-
red landscape. Oh, how heart-sick I am of the war ! Almost every
day my heart receives some stab, which makes it writhe with an-
guish. It is not merely our soldiers that excite my pity. I cannot
help compassionating the “poor whites” of the South, led into
wickedness and danger by men who care no more for their souls or
bodies than they would for so many blind dogs. I was glad to see
that several hundreds of them deserted from Georgia to the U. S.
giving as a reason that they were “tired of fighting the rich men's
war.” Through this terrible process, they will come up to the light,
as well as the negroes, and they have been scarcely less wronged.
I was powerfully drawn to be a teacher among the “contrabands,”
but my good David would get sick if he went with me, or if he
stayed at home alone. The nearest duty must not be neglected.

The problems of the coming post-war period greatly wor-
ried her. She wrote Mrs. Shaw in the same letter:

The work is in the hands of the Lord, and he is doing it in a most
wonderful manner. I don’t see how Mrs. Chapman can help believ-
ing in the superintendence of God. I think the progress of events
connected with the war is enough to make anybody religious. I
confess they have impressed my mind very solemnly. That the
Rebels will be conquered seems almost certain ; but the worst part
of the trouble is what to do with them after they are conquered. I
do hope they are not going to be allowed to return directly to Con-

44

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

gress, and vote on questions connected with slavery and the rebel-
lion. It is refreshing to see Congress free from slaveholding domina-
tion, at last. Mr. Gorham of Boston, more than thirty years ago,
complained to Mr. Child that all Northern men in Congress were
obliged to work in fetters . . 26

As one of the founders of the Anti-Slavery Women’s Fairs
and Receptions, she was interested in the continuance of
these gatherings. She offered practical suggestions for plan-
ning such affairs privately and on a small scale. However, she
doubted the necessity of maintaining the Standard if it could
not support itself. “The plain fact is,” she wrote Garrison,
“that the war has sucked in nearly all the anti-slavery feeling
of the country; and the pecuniary demands for that are so in-
cessant, and so immense, that only a few crumbs are left to
nourish the old-fashioned anti-slavery.”27

Early in 1863 fire damaged the Child’s house, though the
main body of it and Mrs. Child’s precious keepsakes were
saved. The feelings of her friends may be seen in a letter from
Mrs. Shaw :

I can hardly credit it ! I try to think of that neat, perfect, shiny
little home changed to what you describe ! It does seem hard it
should happen to you, of all persons, and just after you had made
it all so nice — . . . Now dear Friend, you surely will let us build up
again for you. If you won’t accept any money to do it, you know
you can mortgage the whole to Frank — at any rate, do treat us like
real relations .*8

“Our dear boy,” Mrs. Shaw went on, “has gone with his regi-
ment to an Island off Georgia and my heart sinks when I
think of it!” This was Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, Com-
mander of the first colored regiment, who was killed in the
attack on Fort Wagner, South Carolina, in July of the same year.

TT HE war over, Mrs. Child turned to help win the peace for
the freedman. She called upon Garrison, writing him on July
7, 1865:

I want some help, which perhaps you can render me. I know
you will, if you can. I am writing an account of William and Ellen
Crafts, and I cannot obtain all the information I wish . . .

LYDIA MARIA CHILD AND ANTI-SLAVERY

45

I am writing it for the Freedmen’s Book which is nearly com-
pleted. I am writing over nearly every prose article I extract, so
as to give them as much as possible in the smallest space, and to give
it in a very clear and simple form. I am a great lover of mental
order, and in this case it is peculiarly necessary for the class of
readers I address. I am taking more pains with it than I should if
it were intended for young princes, or sprigs of what men call no-
bility. In the first place, my theory is that whatever is done at all
ought to be well done, and in the next place, I have a more and more
tender feeling toward what are called “the lower classes.” If I live
to be ninety years old and go on at this rate, I shall be the rabidest
radical that ever pelted a throne, or upset an image.

How refreshing it is to live in days, when Senators, and Gover-
nors, and Presidential Candidates address colored men as “Gentle-
men !” Thank God we live to see it ! I want to live a while to see
the glorious work go on. Don’t you?29

The Freedmen’s Book, which appeared in 1865, was a collec-
tion of articles, some retold, by various friends of the Negro
(Garrison, Mrs. Stowe, L. Sigourney, and Mrs. Child herself),
some by Negroes themselves (Frances Harper, F. Douglass,
Phyllis Wheatley, Harriet Jacob, and Charlotte Forten). Just
before its publication, she wrote to Mrs. Sewall that she hoped
it would help the freedmen, the whites, and the cause of woman
suffrage. She had tried in every way to save money to pay for
the edition, which cost $1,200. She had gotten together only
$600, but had made arrangements with Ticknor and Fields on
the basis of time payments.30 In an introduction she told the
freedmen that she had prepared her book expressly for them,
with the hope that those who could read would read it aloud
to others. She took nothing for her services, and the book was
to be sold to them at the cost of the paper, printing, and bind-
ing. The returns would be immediately invested in other vol-
umes to be sent to freedmen. If any money remained after the
book ceased to sell, it would go to the Freedmen’s Aid Asso-
ciation, for schools for freed slaves and their children.

The book that was to be Mrs. Child’s last work in behalf of
the Negro was an indirect plea; it took the form of a novel, A
Romance of the Republic, 1867. Here she let her imagination run
wild. It is a story of slavery days, in which the heroines are
two lovely mixed-blooded New Orleans girls, who for 442
pages go through all the vicissitudes Mrs. Child’s mind was

46

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

capable of devising. The plot is filled with melodrama — ship-
wreck, substituted babies, long-lost sisters, disclosed identities,
wicked villains, and noble heroes ad infinitum. Writing Tilton
on October 27, 1867, about a review of her novel which had
appeared in the Independent, she said she never sought notice,
but that if it came in a friendly, spontaneous way she was thank-
ful. Apparently to quell some doubts about the credibility of
the “Methuselah” parrot which appears in the book, she told
him that parrots sometimes live to be a hundred years old, and
that she had found the case of a parrot that “did utter a scream
of joy and fall dead” on hearing Spanish spoken after being
sold to an English sea captain. As for the character of Alfred
King, she had made his “broadcloth sit stiffly upon him because
he was a Bostonian, in contrast to the impulsive and slippery
South Carolinian.”31

Though she was isolated at Wayland, Mrs. Child’s interest
in public affairs never flagged. Expressing her political senti-
ments freely, she wrote Mrs. Shaw on April 2, 1866, that “the
virus of the Democratic Party does so disease the blood of man,
that seven times washing in Jordan cannot cleanse him.” React-
ing to a compliment from Mrs. Shaw’s son-in-law, George Wil-
liam Curtis, she assured her friend that if he wished to keep the
illusion of her looking “sweet and lovely,”

he had better never mention in my presence our fuddled President
or the “narcotic maudlinism” of his snaky Secretary of State.
Heavens ! What a couple to steer our Ship of State through the
dangerous breakers that surround her ! It makes me groan to think
that I cannot convince people how bad and how dangerous a man
William H. Seward is. Sometimes, when I get thinking about him,
the Charlotte Corday spirit rises within me, and I look anything but
“sweet and lovely”. . .

“Magnanimity” toward fallen foes is a very good thing; but I
tell you there is a great deal of a spurious kind in circulation, and
toward foes who are not fallen. The Republic was never in so great
danger as it now is. France ready with her armies on our Mexican
border, the Fenians saying to the ex-slaveholders, “Make a war
upon England for ns, and we will help you to exterminate the nig-
gers and put down the Yankees. Here we are, organized in every
state and ready for your service.” The Rebels, emboldened by
Johnson and Seward, and provided with the arms and ammunition,
which Grant and Sherman allowed them to carry to their homes,

LYDIA MARIA CHILD AND ANTI-SLAVERY

47

are already talking of invading the North. And ive, good easy souls,
are feeding the South with sugar-plums, just as we did when the
first War of Rebellion was close upon us \*2

A steady flow of letters to Mr. and Mrs. Samuel B. Sewall
and to other friends continued during the last fifteen years of
Mrs. Child's life. She thought the “nation might fare worse than
in the hands of General Grant,” though she distrusted his terms
to Lee and felt that he had not expressed sympathy for the col-
ored people. She was afraid he was an “habitual tippler,” and
“we have had enough of that sort of thing in the White House” —
but if they could not have Sumner, “take him” She was glad
that “Andy Johnson” was impeached at last, though she wished
“the terms of the indictment had expressed something about
the slaughters and discouragements of the freed people, caused
by his nefarious policy.” She mourned unceasingly “over the
injustice and impolicy of Congress, in not taking away large
tracts of land from rich rebels and selling them cheaply in small
portions to the freedmen and the poor whites.” The “wicked-
ness of Congress” in granting immense tracts of the public
lands to monopolists made her indignant. She wanted to whip
them out. “We will,” she added, “when the women get the
control of affairs.”33

She followed the Franco-Prussian War closely, finding the
Prussians “very forbearing.” “Wendell Phillips jeers at me,”
she wrote Mrs. Sewall, “for being a partisan of the Germans. I
certainly have a very great liking for German literature, art,
and character.”34 She also “respected” the Czar for emancipat-
ing the serfs, and felt grateful to Russia for her friendliness to
the North during the Civil War.

David Lee Child, like his wife, never lost interest in reform.
As late as May, 1874, he was trying to enlist the aid of Garrison
on some “controversial issue.” Garrison, who was to survive
him by five years, wrote with affection:

Having labored with you and your dear and noble wife, for so
many years, to make this world better than we found it — and I
trust not labored in vain — I hope to join you in another sphere,
animated by a similar spirit, and consecrating the same faculties
and powers to “the general welfare” under better conditions and
with constant enlargement ; only may “the sum of all villainy” have

48

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

no possible foothold in that untried sphere ! Should we find it there,
however, no matter under what sanctions or in what strength,
here is my pledge of hand and heart to join you as in “auld lang
syne,” in a war of extermination !33

Child died on September 18, 1874. Maria sorted his papers
and possessions, and distributed many of them among his old
friends, including of course Garrison. The latter, now nearly
seventy, had been ill; yet he would have made the effort to go
to the funeral. Mrs. Child perhaps sensed this and let him
know that no notices to friends were sent. After paying tribute
to her husband, Garrison wrote her :

I cannot refrain from renewing the expression of my earliest
appreciation of your character, genius, literary productions, and
self-denying and untiring labors in the cause of universal emanci-
pation, of suffering humanity in its varied aspects, or religious
freedom of inquiry and dissent as against all sacerdotal assump-
tions, of equal rights and immunities without regard to sex, of re-
form and progress in their widest scope. Few have written so well
and instructively as yourself. Multitudes on both sides of the At-
lantic have read your writings with profit and delight, and yours
has been a conspicuous part in popular education. I honor and
admire you among the very first of your sex in any age or country.36

Mrs. Child had been dreading the parting with her husband,
whose decline she had watched for some time with heart-ache.
When the separation came, she did not know where to go. For
a while she visited friends, but returned home in 1875 with Mrs.
Pickering, who remained her companion until her death on
October 20, 1880. Almost to the last day of her life she carried
on her correspondence. She considered herself blessed with
many intimate friends, “all sifted out from the world in the
Anti-Slavery sieve.”37

Notes

1. The Progress of Religious Ideas, New York 1855, vii.

2. Letters of Lydia Maria Child, Boston 1883, 69, 74, 71-2.

3. Robie-Sewall Collection, Massachusetts Historical Society (December

18, 1859).

LYDIA MARIA CHILD AND ANTI-SLAVERY 49

4. Bryant-Godwin Collection, New York Public Library (L. M. C. to
Godwin, November 18, 1856).

5. Letters of Lydia Maria Child, 80.

6. MSS. Letters, New York Historical Society.

7. Robie-Sewall Collection (December 25, 1859).

8. Correspondence between Lydia Maria Child and Gov. Wise and Mrs. Mason,
of Virginia, Boston i860, 3.

9. Ibid., 4. 10. Ibid., 6, 12.

11. Ibid, 15. A footnote in Oswald Garrison Villard’s John Brown, New
York 1943, 479-80, quotes a letter written by George H. Hoyt, John Brown’s
lawyer, to J. W. Le Barnes : “Do not allow Mrs. Child to visit Brown . . . He don’t
want women there to unman his heroic determination to maintain a firm and
consistent composure. Keep Mrs. Child away at all hazards. Brown and asso-
ciates will certainly be lynched if she goes there.”

12. Correspondence between Lydia Maria Child and Gov. Wise and Mrs.
Mason, of Virginia, 16-18.

13. Lydia Maria Child MSS., 1821-1873, Boston Public Library, 79.

14. Ibid., 82. 15. Ibid., 86.

16. Ibid., 89, 91. 17. Ibid., 92-3.

18. Robie-Sewall Collection (September 27, i860); MSS. Letters, New
York Historical Society (to “Mr. Earle Boston,” April 11, 1877).

19. Anti-Slavery Letters Written to William Lloyd Garrison, Boston
Public Library, XXX, 24.

20. Ibid., XXX, 124.

21. Robie-Sewall Collection (June 16, 1861).

22. Anti-Slavery Letters Written to William Lloyd Garrison, B. P. L.,
XXXI, 16, 146.

23. Horace Greeley Papers, New York Public Library (L. M. C. to
Horace Greeley, March 9, 1862).

24. Shaw Family Correspondence, New York Public Library.

25. Bryant-Godwin Collection (L. M. C. to Godwin, December 13, 1864).

26. Shaw Family Correspondence (January 28, 1S62; May 18, 1862).

27. Anti-Slavery Letters Written to William Lloyd Garrison, B. P. L.,

XXXII, 95.

28. Child MSS., 18.

29. Anti-Slavery Letters Written to William Lloyd Garrison, B. P. L.,
XXXIV, 67.

30. Robie-Sewall Collection (October 9, 1865).

31. MSS. Letters, New York Historical Society.

32. Shaw Family Correspondence.

33. Robie-Sewall Collection (March 21, 1868; February 3, 1871).

34. Ibid., ([September ?, 1871?]; December 20, 1871).

35. Anti-Slavery Letters Written by William Lloyd Garrison, B. P. L.,
VIII, 46.

36. Ibid., VIII, 64. Marked “copy.”

37. Robie-Sewall Collection (January 10, 1875).

The Wiggin Collection of Fore-Edge Paintings

By MURIEL C. FIGENBAUM

IT was in 1945 that Albert H. Wiggin began to form the
fine collection of fore-edge paintings that upon his death
in May 1951 came to the Boston Public Library. One of the
largest collections in this country, it is surpassed in size only
by the Estelle Doheny Collection at St. John’s Seminary,
Camarillo, California. The Wiggin Collection contains 258
volumes, some of which are the unusual double fore-edge
paintings, and is, to the best of our knowledge, the largest in a
public institution.

The painting done on the fore-edge of a book, and known as
a fore-edge painting, is visible only when the pages are care-
fully fanned, in the same manner as when the artist was paint-
ing the picture. When the book is closed, the painting disappears
under the gold leaf of the edge. In time it was realized that
after one painting was finished it was possible to paint another,
fanning the book in the opposite direction. These are known
as double fore-edge paintings. The work itself is done in water
color, very drily.

Little is found in writing about fore-edge painting and its
history. However, as the technique was passed on by word of
mouth, it is by no means a lost art. Fore-edge painting is being
done today by Frederick R. Cross. An example of his work is
dated 1946. Carl F. Weber’s A Thousand and One Fore-edge
Paintings , published by the Colby College Press in 1949, seems
to be the first book devoted to the subject. Cyril Davenport
has attributed its invention to Samuel Mearne, the royal book-
binder to Charles II. Whether or not Mearne did the paintings
himself or employed artists to do them, is still a matter of
speculation. The shift to landscape from the scrolls and herald-
ry of this early period came about a hundred years later, and
was developed for the most part by Edwards of Halifax. The ques-
tion of just who was “Edwards of Halifax’’ is ably discussed by
Mr. Weber. He identifies the various members of the Edwards
family, all of whom were interested in the art of the book. Wil-

50

COLLECTION OF FORE-EDGE PAINTINGS

5i

liam Edwards was a bookseller, bookbinder, and publisher in
Halifax, who sent his sons, James and John, to London where
he settled them with a fashionable bookshop.

It was William Edwards who revived and developed the art
of fore-edge painting perhaps as early as 1755, and invented
two special types of binding. One is known as the Etruscan
binding in which the calfskin of the binding has been colored
by treating with chemicals. The center panel of the book is
usually decorated this way, and gives the effect of a growing
tree. Classical motifs then surround this panel in gold or blind
stamp. There are interesting examples of this type of binding
coupled with fine fore-edge paintings, also attributed to Ed-
wards of Halifax, in the Wiggin Collection. Among them is
David Robertson’s A Tour through the Isle of Man, London,
1794, which has the typical “tree calf” inlay in the back and
front covers. A finely executed fore-edge painting of a rural
scene in the neighborhood of Milton Constable, Norfolk, is
under the gilt. Two volumes of Hector MacNeill’s Poetical
Works, London, 1801, are also bound in this manner, with fore-
edge paintings on each volume, a view of Edinburgh Castle and a
landscape with Stirling Castle. The other style of binding which
Edwards developed is a cream-colored vellum, often decorated
with a painting. Either William Edwards or his son James in-
vented a way of rendering the vellum transparent, and the
paintings were done under the vellum, enabling the colors to
last indefinitely. Most of the paintings are done in black or
sepia, such as the Library’s copy of Thomas Gray’s Poems,
London, 1785. On the front cover the Muse of Poetry is strew-
ing Gray’s tomb with flowers, and on the back there is a scene
described in his poem “The Bard,” in which the poet stands on
a cliff above the water playing a harp. The painting under the
fore-edge depicts a bridge across a river with the tops of the
buildings visible in the distance and with mountains in the
background. Apparently the artist was inspired by the opening
lines of Gray’s “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.”

Other examples of this type of Edwards binding with fore-
edge paintings are Specimens of the Early English Poets, London,
1790, with a painting of the house of Sir Thomas Claverings,
Oxwell Park, Northumberland, whose name appears in ink on

52

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

the flyleaf of the volume; Poems and Essays by Jane Bowdler,
Bath, 1788-87, with a painting of a fort on a river bank with a
sailing vessel in the foreground; and Poems by E. Cartwright,
London, 1786. The binding of this last book is contemporary
white vellum with paintings in sepia under the covers of the
binding. An outstanding volume is James Thomson’s The Sea-
sons, London, 1788. Here instead of the usual monochrome are
designs in full color. The central design in the front cover is a
circular medallion of green background with a figure of a man
offering grapes to a child. Red and black concentric circles sur-
round the design. Etruscan borders of gilt and green are on
both covers, and within the borders there is a floral design with
ribbons and urns. On the back cover, in color, is the reclining
figure of a shepherd with flute and a winged cupid with pipes.
The fore-edge painting depicts a lake with a small island in the
center, and at the right is a mansion showing its reflection in
the water. This volume is considered to be one of the finest ex-
amples of the work of Edwards of Halifax.

Among the examples of the double fore-edge painting in the
Wiggin Collection are two volumes of Roderick by Robert
Southey, London, 1818. Volume I bears a painting of the “Gate
House, Highgate,” showing a street and houses, and, reversing
the fanning of the pages, “The Tower of London,” with ships
at anchor in the Thames River. Volume II offers “The Found-
ling Hospital” with street and carriage in the foreground, and
“London from Highgate,” with houses and field in the fore-
ground. Also bearing a double fore-edge painting is The Life of
the Right Reverend Beilby Portens, D. D. by Robert Hodgson,
London, 1811. One side shows a view of St. Paul’s Cathedral
from the Thames and the other a view of Chester Bridge. The
volume is from the library of Shute Barrington, Bishop of Dur-
ham, to whom, in conjunction with the Bishop of Lincoln, the
book is dedicated. An unusual example is seen in the two vol-
umes of Memoirs of the Court of King James the First by Lucy
Aikin, London, 1822. Each volume has a double fore-edge paint-
ing, and three of the paintings are divided into two, making in
all seven subjects. Volume I contains a portrait of James I and
a view of Whitehall from the river, and, from the back, a por-
trait of Francis Bacon and a view of York Gate; volume II de-

53

Fore-Edge Paintings on William Coivpc/s Poems, Published in London in 1808

COLLECTION OF FORE-EDGE PAINTINGS 55

picts a portrait of William Shakespeare and a view of the Globe
Theater, and, from the back, the landing of the Pilgrims.

Of special interest are the twelve fore-edge paintings after
Wheatley’s Cries of London. The Library possesses a superb
complete set of the thirteen stipple engravings done after
Wheatley, and also a unique set of porcelain figurines by Gwen-
dolyn Parnell of the same subjects; thus the addition of these
fore-edge paintings to the Wiggin Collection enlarges a fascin-
ating subject. The paintings are in the two volumes of William
Cowper’s Poems, London, 1820, each bearing a double fore-edge
painting, and each painting divided into three finely executed
subjects.

There is an earlier edition of Cowper’s Poems, published in
London in 1808, in two volumes, bound in dark blue morocco
with gilt by Bartholomew Frye of Halifax. Frye was one of the
employees of William Edwards, and went into business for him-
self after the latter’s death. Whether or not he himself did the
fore-edge paintings on his books is not known, but their superi-
ority is easily recognized. One of the paintings depicts a harvest
landscape, and the other a rustic river scene.

The finest book in the collection, not only because of the
painting, but for the binding and the provenance, is the Diction-
naire Grec-Frangais, Paris, 1817. It is bound in original red straight-
grained morocco, richly gilt and blind-tooled. The sides are
decorated with a broad gold border of flowers and leaves. Un-
der the gilt of the fore-edges is a charming mythological paint-
ing, portraying a nude Diana, sitting with a handmaid by a
lake, with two dogs and a sheaf of arrows, her bow and some
dead game. Diana is resting against blue drapery. The back-
ground shows trees, rushes, and sky. The binding is signed in
gold on the spine by the binder, R. P. Ginain. The volume
originally belonged to the Marquis of Douglas and Clydesdale,
whose monogram “D & C” appears on the front cover. His
signature appears on the first blank flyleaf. The book subse-
quently belonged to Napoleon III and contains his book-label,
an “N” surmounted by a crown printed in gold. Evidently this
was one of the more important books in the Emperor’s library,
as the labels he used in the less important books were printed
either in silver or black.

56

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

Another item of interest is The Plays of William Shakespeare,
London, 1823. An unusual fore-edge painting embellishes the
volume, depicting an actor in costume, with sword and shield
in the part of Falstaff. The thickness of the book, about two
inches, allowed the artist to paint the picture with the figure
of the actor standing parallel with the fore-edge, instead of at
right angles to it. It is most unusual to find a painting placed
vertically, the great majority being in a horizontal position.
The human figure is by no means a common subject in fore-
edge painting. When it does occur, it is almost invariably in
the form of a small vignette, a bust, or as a very small figure
in a landscape. The figure in this painting is approximately
seven inches in height.

The collection also includes the three volumes of The Bib-
liographical Decameron by T. F. Dibdin, London, 1817, which
contains several hundred beautiful woodcuts and engravings
of illuminations, portraits, etc., and a fore-edge painting on
each volume. These were done by a Miss Daniels of Ipswich
for Admiral Page and his wife and represent on Volume I, a
view of LowestofFe, Suffolk; on Volume II, a view of Harwich,
Essex; and on Volume III, a view of Oxford Castle, Suffolk.

One of the more recent fore-edge artists was Miss C. B.
Currie, whose books are signed and numbered, but not dated.
We do know, however, that she was active at least as late as
1928. She was employed by Riviere and Son, London binders,
and began her career as painter of miniatures on ivory, which
were sometimes inserted in bindings. Many of her fore-edge
paintings were on old books that were being rebound, and for
a time they were not always in keeping with the subject of the
book. A number of examples of her books are in the Wiggin
Collection, one of which is A History of Nezv York by Washing-
ton Irving, published in London in 1821 under the pseudonym
of Diedrich Knickerbocker.

Among other interesting items is an old manuscript recipe
book, decorated with a fore-edge painting, but containing hand-
written notes. Robert Southey’s The Curse of Kehama, London,
1812, is embellished with a scene of India along the shore of a
river with a Hindu Temple upon a high rock, palms in the dis-
tance, and a boat at anchor off shore.

Notes on Rare Books and Manuscripts

An Important Gift of Manuscripts

IT is pleasant to announce here the recent receipt of an anony-
mous gift of a distinguished group of manuscripts and documents.
About one-third of the group are Americana. The most valu-
able among them is a long autograph letter by George Washington,
dated from headquarters in Cambridge on April 4, 1776, giving
instructions to Major-General Artemus Ward for the military ad-
ministration of “the Province of the Massachusetts Bay,” particu-
larly in relation to the defense of Boston. The letter, nearly four
folio pages long, has been published (in the Centennial Volume of
the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society , 1878, pp. 4-8) ;
nevertheless, it may be of interest to summarize a few of its points.
All the lines on Boston Neck, the Commander-in-Chief wrote, were
to be demolished, as they were no security to the town ; proper
signals for alarming the country upon the appearance of a fleet
were to be agreed upon without delay ; the powder magazine in
Boston was to be closely guarded; all captures made by the Con-
tinental armed vessels were to be immediately reported to the
Court of Admiralty of the district; the barracks were to be pre-
served ; the wheat left by the King's forces was to be sold or con-
verted into flour for the Army, and so on. General Washington es-
pecially insisted upon keeping strong discipline among both officers
and soldiers. “All attempts to mutiny, or disobedience of orders,”
he wrote, “should be severely punished.”

Another fine item is a letter by Thomas Jefferson, written from
Paris on September 9, 1788, to “Mr. Rutledge,” probably William
Rutledge, who at that time was visiting in Europe. This, too, has
been published (in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson , edited by
H. A. Washington, 1853, vol. II, pp. 474-75). The larger part of
the letter is a refutation of Buffon’s description of the moose as
being identical with the Lapland reindeer. Jefferson went to great
trouble and expense to secure the skin and skeleton of the animal.
He asked General Sullivan to have one killed for him. “M. de Buf-
fon,” he wrote, “describes the Renne to be about three feet high, and
truly the Moose you saw there was seven feet high, and there are
some of them ten feet high.” And further on: “The animal whose

57

58 THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

enormous bones are found on the Ohio, is supposed by M. de Buffon
and M. Daubenton to have been an Elephant. Dr. Hunter demon-
strated it not to have been an Elephant. Similar bones are found in
Siberia, where it is called the Mammoth. The Indians of America
say it still exists very far north in our continent.” There are also
some reflections about the philosophies, such as John Adams could
have written : “I am glad to hear you have been so happy as to be-
come acquainted with M. de Saussure. He is certainly one of the
best philosophers of the present age. Cautious in not letting his as-
sent run before his evidence, he possesses the wisdom which so few
possess of preferring ignorance to error. The contrary disposition in
those who call themselves philosophers in this country classes them
in fact with the writers of romance . .

There is also a letter by John Adams, written in his old age, on
July 29, 1818, to Rufus King. Apparently it has never been pub-
lished. Here are some passages :

For a long course of Years I have almost dispaired of the
Policy of Themistocles, of Colbert, De Witt and Cromwell, or
even of Queen Elizabeth in this Country.

Nothing has wounded my soul so deeply as to see the Opposi-
tion that I have seen in Massachusetts, and even in the Town of
Marblehead, to a National Navy.

I have never dared, and I dare not now, to look forward to
future Events in America. Your Assurances of Union revive
me. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to communicate
freely with you on these Subjects; but Mr. Addison’s faulty
figure of the “expiring flame of the dying lamp” is the Emblem
of your most humble servant, etc.

Similarly unpublished is John James Audubon’s letter to his son
Victor, written in London on October 10, 1828. Having described
the progress of his work on the first volume of the Birds of America,
Audubon gives a few details of his technique in making the plates
and, then, with justifiable pride he boasts :

A full length portrait of myself will form the Frontispiece, and
in centuries hence the name of Audubon will stand on the pages
of Ornithology . . . When I retrograde in thought on my situa-
tion when I first landed in England with 340 £ an unknown in-
dividual and therefore not a friend in this country, and again
think and see that in less than two years I have established
such Publication as mine, have procured 125 subscribers, have
become honorary member of 11 of the first Societies in the

RARE BOOKS AND MANUSCRIPTS

59

Country, have managed to pay punctually all engagements and
find myself supplied with sufficient funds to proceed without
fear, I wonder at my extraordinary great Luck, or Industry
or whatever you may please to term it.

There are brief letters by Emerson, Longfellow, Oliver Wendell
Holmes, and William Cullen Bryant; a few lines and a signature
by John Winthrop, the first Governor of the Bay Colony, and by
Edward Rawson, Clerk of the General Court ; a congressional reso-
lution made on June 30, 1775, to the effect that in case any Indian
tribes were to support the British ministry the Colonies would
undertake an alliance with their enemies ; a broadside containing a
military appointment signed by Samuel Adams as Governor of
Massachusetts; and other similar material.

Among the English items there is a remarkable document in the
handwriting of Isaac Walton, author of The Compleat Angler , re-
lating to a house purchased by him at Halstead on the river Colne
in Essex. It contains the deposition of Walton's neighbor, Walter
Noell, who testified that John Meison had no right to walk through
Walton’s yard and that in so doing he was a trespasser.

In a long letter, dated May 17, 1754, Samuel Richardson thanks
Lady Elizabeth Echlin for her acceptance of his Sir Charles Grandi-
son. The letter, apparently unpublished, contains acute and detailed
comments on the characters in both Sir Charles Grandison and Clarissa.
The following is a characteristic passage :

I admire your Ladiship for what you say of Clementina, and
the Count of Belvedere. I have half a dozen of my female Cor-
respondents, who (sweet Romancers, as they are, yet know it
not) cannot bear the Thoughts of that noble Lady’s resolving
to reward the Count for his persevering Love. Till now, I thought
Constancy and Fervour in a Lover sufficient to make any Man,
not unworthy from want of Rank, Fortune, Morals, a Merit in
the Heart of the noblest Woman. But some Ladies had rather
forgive (and this perhaps to the Praise of their Generosity!) real
Faults in a Lover, than reward passive Values. — It is not often
given to Woman, when addressed by more than one Man, to choose
for Plappiness. Something glaring, active, bustling, will engage
her, as it has done those who sitting in Judgment on the Charac-
ters of Clementina and Harriet, prefer that of Clementina: Who,
however, I think of as an admirable Woman; and as a Sister
not unworthy of the generous Love of Harriet.

On May 26, 180.1, Admiral Nelson wrote from board of the St.

6o

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

George , off Rostock, to Alleyne Fitzherbert, Lord St. Helens, the
new English Ambassador to St. Petersburg. Written shortly after
the assassination of Tsar Paul and the subsequent collapse of the
Northern Confederacy formed against England, the letter is not in-
cluded in The Dispatches and Letters of Lord Nelson , published in
seven volumes in 1845-46.

A letter by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, dated February 6, 1818,
shows his preoccupation at that time with the work of the English
reformers :

Brerewood’s tract begins where I have put in the slip of Paper.
The first treatise I have never been able to light on ; but this is
a whole in itself. Byfield’s work is interesting only as it leads to
the history and origin of the controversy — and as a specimen
of the Bigotry and mob-adulation of the Puritans, of that age —
at least of too many of them. The first great Reformers, nay,
Calvin himself in his best works, breathe a far other spirit — •
and in a marked degree the Founders and Martyrs of the Church
in England, till errors on both sides brought it to be the Church
of England as by Law.

Byron’s letter, written on December 13, 1820, from Ravenna to
Richard B. Hoppner, the English consul at Venice, has been pub-
lished ; yet the poet’s remarks about the German translation of his
Manfred are worth quoting: “There is a German translation of
Manfred — with a plaguy long dissertation at the end of it; it would
be out of all measure and conscience to ask you to translate the
whole, but if you could give me a short sketch of it I should thank
you — or if you would make somebody do the whole into Italian, it
would do as well ; and I would willingly pay some poor Italian Ger-
man Scholar for his trouble.”

Walter Scott sent to Sir William Knighton, Keeper of the Privy
Purse to George IV, on May 18, 1829, the first copy of the new edi-
tion of the Waverly Novels inscribed to the King. “As it is a work
intended for wide diffusion and a small price,” the novelist wrote,
“its exterior could not have that splendour which ought to have
attended the Dedication, but I trust the decorations which I believe
are good, at least they are executed by the best artists we have, may
be esteemed some apology for the humility of the volumes. We
start with a sale of ten thousand which in a work which runs to 40
volumes is a very considerable matter.”

A letter by Charles L. Dodgson, the Lewis Carroll of Alice in
W onderland, is particularly touching, if not pathetic. Dated East-

RARE BOOKS AND MANUSCRIPTS

61

bourne, September 7, 1883, the writer speaks of his desire to know
certain children in spite of their guardians’ opposition.

The miscellaneous items include a letter by Lorenzo de Medici
and one by Martin Luther. Luther’s letter, written in August 1537,
is addressed to the Council of Torgau, in Silesia. The reformer
asked the aldermen of the town to help their parson, who had served
them for fourteen years, to buy a piece of land on which he could
build a house for his family. There is also Haydn’s acknowledg-
ment of his election to the Institut National des Sciences et des
Arts in Paris, written in Vienna in April 1802, and a receipt given
by Beethoven for twelve gold ducats paid to him to cover the ex-
penses which he had incurred in connection with the manuscripts
of three Scotch songs sent to him by George Thompson.

The unpublished letters in the collection will be printed in full
in future issues of this magazine.

ZOLTAN HARASZTI

Wynkyn de Worde’s P assy on of 1521

THE Passyon of our Lorde was issued by Wynkyn de Worde in
London on October 6, 1521. Following the colophon is the
printer’s striking, three-panelled device, containing in the central
panel the printer’s mark of his former master, William Caxton
(McKerrow 25). The volume is illustrated with sixteen large wood-
cuts and one repeat, each filling approximately two-thirds or one-
half of a page, and nine small cuts, including one repeat. Some of
the decorated initials consist of two faces in profile ; the type is a
large black letter. The book is very rare; the Short-Title Catalogue
mentions only two copies. ,

Treatise and woodcuts are wholly medieval in spirit, unruffled
by a breath from Reformation or Renaissance. On the verso of the
title-page is the statement that the book has been translated from
the French by Andrew Chertsey in 1520. Chertsey, in the neighbor-
hood of London, was known as the seat of the monastery of St. Peter.
It may be supposed that the writer came from a family in that re-
gion. In a verse prologue Robert Copland introduces him as one who
has endeavored

Bokes to translate in volumes large and fayre
From frenche in prose, of goostly exemplayre.

62

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

Copland enumerates Chertsey’s other works, the Flour of Goddes
Commaundements, a treatise called Lucydary , “with two other of
the seuyn sacraments/ One of christen men the ordinary/The
seconde, the craft to lyue well and to dye.” He further explains
that the book was formerly in a language too rude, and that the
translator has applied himself to banish this vice, presenting the
work in clear English, at the instance of Wynkyn de Worde. Cop-
land, although he signed only the prologue and the invocation at
the end, is believed to be also the author of the stanzas, much in
the same style, that introduce the prose chapters. A printer and
bookseller, as well as writer and translator, he was in the service
of Wynkyn de Worde, but had set up his own printing establish-
ment by 1515. His printing output was small, but he is credited
with a long list of works, mostly translations and compilations, be-
ginning with The Kalender of Shepherdes , printed by de Worde in
1508, and including the poems Hye Way to the Spyttel Hous and Jyl
of Breynt fords Testament. He was an executor of de Worde’s will
in 1533. Mr. John M. Berdan, in his study of Early Tudor Poetry,
(1920) remarks that Copland “may be taken as an extreme example
of those importing French influence.”

The book is a narrative of the Passion summarized from the
Gospels, beginning with the raising of Lazarus and ending with
the entombment of Christ. The expositions are in the nature of a
sermon, with occasional hits at contemporary evils. Having told
how the Jews would not enter the court of Pilate because he was a
pagan, lest they be thought unworthy to partake of their paschal
feast, the writer comments : “Of the which condycyon dyvers be
of nowe a dayes the which haue no conscyence to slee [slay] a man
by sclaundre [slander] and backbytynge where they wyll shewe
themselfe to haue conscyence of a small thinge.” The chapter treat-
ing of Lazarus contains some harrowing descriptions of the tor-
ments of purgatory and hell. Throughout, the narrator dwells on
the effect of events on the Virgin Mary.

The woodcuts give the book its special interest. They range
from crude, naive efforts to the well composed and forcefully cut
Crucifixion of the title page, and belong to different series and
periods. Wynkyn de Worde, who succeeded Caxton in 1491 and
ten years later moved from Westminster to Fleet Street in London,
acquired, with Caxton’s other stock, also his woodcut blocks, some
of which furnished illustrations for the Passyon. Four cuts which
Caxton first used in the Speculum Vitae Christi by St. Bonaventura

RARE BOOKS AND MANUSCRIPTS

63

can be identified. According- to Hodnett’s English Woodcuts 1480-
T585' ^e design and style of these cuts is Flemish. In the Passyon,
the first of the Caxton cuts illustrates the raising of Lazarus, al-
though it was originally intended to represent the raising of the
daughter of Jairus. Indeed, the figure coming to life on the bier is
evidently a girl and the man kneeling in joyful consternation
would naturally be her father. The following cut shows Mary Mag-
dalen anointing the feet of Christ. The gestures of the figures are
pronounced, and the fish on a plate, the loaves and salt-cellars on
the table are naively realistic. The Entrance into Jerusalem is the
usual dramatic composition. The fourth Caxton cut is a rather
primitive crucifixion.

Most of the small cuts seem to have made their appearance for
the first time in the volume. Hodnett distinguishes two series of
which these form parts : to the first belong a little cut depicting
the thieves tied to their crosses, and another which shows the rais-
ing of the sponge; to the second, which may have been cut out by
Flemish hands, belong five small cuts, Christ before Pilate and a
striking “Ecce Homo” among them.

Six larger cuts of another group, also first introduced in the
Passyon of 1521, include the notable cut on the title page ; the Agony
in the Garden, in which the faces of the sleeping Apostles are sharp-
ly characterized; Judas returning the money; the scourging of
Christ; Pilate washing his hands; and the entombment. The com-
position in all these cuts is effective, and the figures have consider-
able animation. “Collectively the set represents a high level of
woodcutting,” Hodnett comments, “and if perchance it is the work
of De Worde’s chief man, then it is his chef d’ oeuvre. The original
designs must be French.”

Finally the volume contains four cruder cuts, one of which —
Christ before Caiphas — appeared for the first time in the Passyon
of 1521, while the others were used by de Wcrde in St. Bonaven-
tura’s Vita Christi of 1509 or 1517.

The Library’s copy is handsomely bound in dark blue morocco
by Riviere.

Margaret Munsterberg

Trustees of the Library

Lee M. Friedman, President
Robert H. Lord, Vice-President
Frank W. Buxton Frank J. Donahue

Patrick F. McDonald

Director, and Librarian

Milton Edward Lord

Contributors to this Issue

Edouard A. Stackpole is connected with the Nantucket Inquirer
and Mirror. He has recently been awarded a Guggenheim fellow-
ship for research work on American whaling in the nineteenth
century.

Ethel K. Ware (Ph.D., Columbia) is the author of A Constitutional
History of Georgia , published by the Columbia University Press
in 1947.

Muriel C. Figenbaum is First Assistant in the Print Department
of the Library.

Margaret Munsterberg, Ellen M. Oldham, and Alison Bishop
are members of the staff of the Rare Book Department of the
Library.

Zoltan Haraszti is Keeper of Rare Books and Editor of Publica-
tions at the Boston Public Library.

12.10.St. 1M.

THE

Boston Public Library
QUARTERLY

Volume 4, Number 2

Contents

Page

A Gift of Rare Books 67

By Zoltdn Haraszti

Alcott's Search for the Child 88

By Sherman Paul

The Anarchiad and the Massachusetts Centinel 9 7

By Abe C. Ravitz

Frank W. Benson, Painter and Etcher 102

By Arthur W . Heintzelman

Notes on Rare Books

An Early German Carnival Play 108

By Margaret Mimsterberg

The Spirit of Young America 110

By Alison Bishop

Illustrations and Facsimiles

**

*

EDITOR: ZOLTAN HARASZTI

The Boston Public Library Quarterly is published for January, April, July,
and October by the Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston
in Copley Square, Boston 17. Entered as second-class matter at Boston,
Massachusetts. Printed at the Boston Public Library in March 1952

Single Copies , 50 cents
Annual Subscription, $ 2.00

THE

Boston Public Library
QUARTERLY

April 1952

A Gift of Rare Books

By ZOLTAN HARASZTI

IT is a pleasure to announce that Mr. Lee M. Friedman,
President of the Board of Trustees and a noted book collec-
tor, has donated to the Library an important group of rare
books, mostly first editions of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
literature. Many of the items fill gaps in the Library’s collec-
tions; but, apart from the value of the books, there is a special
satisfaction in the spirit which has prompted Mr. Friedman’s
action :

“The rare book collections,” he stated, “constitute one of
the chief distinctions of the Boston Public Library; yet the de-
velopment of such collections in a public institution must de-
pend on the contributions of private individuals. It has been
so in the past, and will continue to be so in the future. I am
confident that the people of Boston, as well as bookmen all over
the country, take pride in the treasures of the Boston Public
Library; and I shall be happy if my gift animates such an in-
terest, and encourages others to follow the example.”

Indeed, most of the great rare book collections of the Libra-
ry were received as donations or deposits. In the early days of
the institution, George Ticknor gave his matchless collection
of Spanish literature, together with a trust fund for its upkeep;
the Bowditch collection of mathematics and astronomy, again
with a fund, was given by the heirs of Nathaniel Bowditch; the

67

68

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

Prince collection of Americana, one of the greatest of its kind,
was deposited by the trustees of the Old South Church, as was
later the library of President John Adams by the Supervisors
of the Adams Temple and School Fund. For the Barton collec-
tion of English literature, including one of the richest groups
of Shakespeareana and Elizabethan books, the Library paid
only a nominal sum. Mellen Chamberlain gave a collection of
historical manuscripts, the hoardings of a lifetime. And similar-
ly there have been gifts and trust funds for the collections of
Americana, modern literature, the history of the theater, and
so on. An extremely fine collection of Books of Common Pray-
er and a princely trust fund for the purchase of books of per-
manent value and use were bequeathed by Josiah H. Benton, a
former President of the Board and the greatest benefactor in
the history of the Library. The accumulated interest of the
Benton Fund made it possible some twelve years ago, when
the fund first became available, to round out the collections of
medieval manuscripts and incunabula, Americana, English liter-
ature, and many others.

The Library has suffered, as have all public libraries, from
the keen competition which college and university libraries
have increasingly offered in attracting such donations. In the
past half-century, but particularly in more recent years, many
academic libraries have formed rare book departments, and it
has been a well-recognized tendency on the part of alumni to
direct their benefactions towards their alma mater — a tendency,
to be sure, with which no one can quarrel. Yet the Boston Pub-
lic Library deserves a continued and more than local interest,
for, by virtue of its existing treasures, it is in many respects a na-
tional institution, the services of which are extended to scholars
throughout the country and even abroad. Requests for research
came to the Rare Book Department last year from thirty-five
states of the Union, as well as from England, France, Spain,
Canada, the Philippines, and a number of Latin-American
countries.

The city of Boston, of course, derives primary benefits from
these great collections. The exhibits in the Treasure Room bring the
rare books and manuscripts of the Library to the attention of the
public, and classes from high schools and colleges as well as

A GIFT OF RARE BOOKS

69

groups of craftsmen and book-lovers receive from them much
pleasurable instruction. A public library can make its resources
available more liberally, and to a wider range of people, than
can a private institution.

Here are a few notes on Mr. Friedman’s generous donation:

T HE most interesting of the eighteenth-century items is a
copy of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones , ‘‘that exquisite picture of
human manners,” which, as Gibbon prophesied, “will survive
the palace of the Escurial and the imperial eagle of the house
of Austria.” The work was published on February 28, 1749, in
six volumes, by A. Millar, “over-against Catharine-Street in
the Strand.” Fielding dedicated it to George Lyttleton, a for-
mer schoolmate of his at Eton and then one of the Commission-
ers of the Treasury, to whom, he wrote, he owed his existence
“during great part of the time” he was composing the novel.
The Table of Contents of the six volumes occupies forty-six
pages; then comes a page of “errata,” listing some sixty mis-
takes, but covering only the first five volumes. The title-page
carries the motto “Mores hominum multorum vidit” — “He
saw the ways of many men” — the briefest and best descrip-
tion of the hero’s experiences.

The sale was so fast that the publisher, as he stated in an
advertisement, was unable to get sets bound rapidly enough to
answer the demand; copies in paper covers were offered at
a cheaper price: sixteen shillings a set instead of a guinea. It
must have been this haste which prevented the printer from
correcting the errors in the sixth volume; in fact, work had
started by then on the second edition. In the latter, the er-
rors were corrected and the page of “errata” was suppressed,
the Table of Contents being spread out to fill its place. The
publisher tried to make the second edition look exactly like
the first; the number of pages was the same, but the composi-
tors did not always succeed in reproducing the original pages,
so that there are hundreds of variations. Frederick S. Dickson,
in his edition of Thomas Keightley's biography of Fielding,
noted more than a hundred of these. However, the sheets of the
two editions are often found mixed in the same set; only a de-

70

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

tailed examination can determine the nature of a copy. Such
an examination has been made in the present case, and it shows
that the set, with the exception of the second volume, belongs
to the first edition. The title-page of the first volume, too, is of
the second edition, as it lacks the period after the motto.

The second edition was published on April 13, 1749; and on
the same day a third edition appeared in four volumes. Within
a few years the book was translated into French, German, and
several other languages.

Printed in 1798, the Lyrical Ballads is technically an eighteenth-
century book; but in every other respect it belongs to the nine-
teenth century. It is a landmark which separates the old poetry
from the new. The volume contains the first printing of “The
Ancient Mariner,” and three other poems by Coleridge, and
also the first printing of “The Idiot Boy,” “We Are Seven,”
“Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey,” and six-
teen other pieces by Wordsworth. In an “Advertisement”
Wordsworth remarked that the majority of the poems were to
be considered as experiments. “They were written,” he stated,
“chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language of con-
versation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted
to the purposes of poetic pleasure.” He recognized that readers
accustomed to “the gaudiness and inane phraseology” of many
current writers might find the poems strange and awkward, and
“look round for poetry”; he suggested, however, that they should
ask themselves whether the book contained “a natural delinea-
tion of human passion, human characters, and human inci-
dents.” In his famous preface to the 1800 edition he further
elaborated these comments into an artistic creed, particularly
suited to his own poetry. Coleridge, in his Biographia Liter aria,
remembered their goal somewhat differently. While admitting
that some of the poems were to have “subjects chosen from
ordinary life,” he spoke at greater length of the other class of
poems in which “the incidents and agents were to be in part at
least supernatural, and the excellence aimed at was to consist
in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such
emotions as would naturally accompany such situations, sup-
posing them real” — a statement applying much more closely
to his own contributions.

LYRICAL BALLADS,

WITH

A FEW OTHER POEMS .

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR J. A. ARCH, CRACECIIURCH-STREET,

1/98.

Title-Page of the First London Edition

A GIFT OF RARE BOOKS

73

The origin of the volume was more simple. In the summer
of 1797 Coleridge was living at Nether Stowey, near Bristol,
while Wordsworth and his sister took a house at Alfoxden,
three miles away. On a walking trip in November, the two
young poets decided to compose a ballad which they might
sell for five pounds to Joseph Cottle, Coleridge’s friend and
publisher, and thus defray their expenses. The project grew
into the Lyrical Ballads , which finally appeared in September
1798. Five hundred copies were printed, but within a fortnight
Cottle sold the whole edition to the London booksellers J. and
A. Arch, who furnished a new title-page bearing their own im-
print. The book received fairly favorable notices, with the ex-
ception of Robert Southey’s review, which ridiculed “The An-
cient Mariner” as “a Dutch attempt at German sublimity.”

Copies of the Lyrical Ballads with the Bristol imprint are ex-
tremely rare. But even this issue underwent a certain transfor-
mation. In its original state it included the poem “Lewti; Or,
the Circassian’s Love Chant,” first printed in the Morning Post
for April 13, 1798, and known to have been by Coleridge. Since
the volume was to be published anonymously, at the last mo-
ment the poets decided to omit the poem and substitute Cole-
ridge’s “The Nightingale” instead. Unfortunately, “Lewti” oc-
cupied three leaves only, whereas “The Nightingale” required
four. Two pages, therefore, were ignored in the pagination;
p. 69 is followed by a blank page, and the next poem, “The Fe-
male Vagrant,” begins on an unnumbered page. Next, the
poets cancelled leaf Gi, containing pages 97-98, inserting a
new leaf on which the line “Than fifty years of reason” was
changed to “Than years of toiling reason” and the title of the
poem “Simon Lee” was condensed by the omission of the line
“With an incident in which he was concerned.” All these
changes occurred in the Bristol issue. There are only a few
copies of the London edition which retain the cancelled leaf —
and the copy now presented to the Library is one of these. It
is the Hoe copy, bound in the original brown calf, with gilt
decoration around the edges.

The Lyrical Ballads is undoubtedly the most valuable item
in the group. Apart from its rarity, the book is coveted as a
literary treasure; and one should note that its version of “The

74

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

Ancient Mariner” (still spelled “The Ancyent Marinere”) in-
cludes ten stanzas which Coleridge entirely discarded from
later editions. The Library, which has long felt the desirability
of a copy, is especially glad to have the volume — and have it
in such splendid condition.

!ShELLEY was twenty when he wrote Queen Mab, his first
long poem, and the most controversial of all his works. In Au-
gust 1812 he sent a few cantos of it to Thomas Hookham, the
London publisher, stating that he was going to write about six
more, and that “the Past, the Present, and the Future are the
grand and comprehensive topics of this poem.” He finished the
work by the following February, adding at that time the ex-
planatory notes, which occupy about as much space as the poem
itself. Hookham was afraid to publish the work, which ap-
peared in May 1813 as “Printed by P. B. Shelley, 23 Chapel St.,
Grosvenor Square.” The book, however, was not offered for
sale, and Shelley distributed only a few dozen of its two hun-
dred and fifty copies.

Queen Mab has been described as a socialistic and irreligious
gospel. The poet, steeped in the writings of Voltaire, d’Hol-
bach, Condorcet, and Godwin, and of Lucretius, Bacon, and
Spinoza, blamed the misery of mankind on tyranny and priest-
craft; he expressed the philoso plies’ view of history, together
with their unbounded belief in the perfectibility of man and the
progress of mankind. How deeply Shelley felt his poem may
be seen from the fact that he named his daughter Ianthe after
the mortal to whom Queen Mab addresses her reflections. The
book was condemned for its attacks on religion, and in 1817
was used as chief evidence against the poet in his suit for
the custody of his children, as a Work which “blasphemously
derided the truth of Christian Revelation and denied the ex-
istence of God as Creator of the Universe.” Yet Queen Mab remained
unknown to the public until 1821, when William Clark brought
out a surreptitious edition. By then Shelley had disowned the
poem. “I have not seen this production for several years,” he
wrote from Pisa to Leigh Hunt’s Examiner : “I doubt not but
that it is perfectly worthless in point of literary composition;

A GIFT OF RARE BOOKS

75

and that in all that concerns moral and political speculation, as
well as in the subtler discriminations of metaphysical and reli-
gious doctrine, it is still more crude and immature.” While
protesting that he was “a devoted enemy to religious, political,
and domestic oppression,” he regretted the publication, fearing
that the book was “better fitted to injure than to serve the
cause of freedom,” and applied to Chancery for an injunction
against the sale. Clark was subsequently brought before the
court and sentenced to four months of imprisonment — not for
the piracy, but for blasphemy.

The Library, which has a splendid copy (the Locker-Clawson
copy) of the 1813 edition of Queen Mab, is glad to have now a
copy of the 1821 edition. Clark, in fact, produced two issues,
one in a somewhat larger format on fine white paper; the vol-
ume presented to the Library is of this issue. The 1821 edition
differs from the one published by Shelley in that the numerous
Greek, Latin, and French quotations in the notes are given
also in English translation, and in that a few of the more ag-
gressive passages are omitted. The mutilations occur on five or
six pages of the poem, and in three or four of the notes. The
copy contains the dedication to “Harriet ***** ”

Clark was sent to prison, but meanwhile Richard Carlile, an-
other London printer, took hold of the sheets and, providing a
new title-page with his own imprint, issued the book in both
the complete and the censored forms in 1822. Within twenty
years no less than fourteen editions appeared. The radicals, es-
pecially the Chartists, adopted the poem as one of their most effective
propaganda weapons. The Victorians relegated Queen Mab to
Shelley’s juvenilia, but recent writers regard it, in spite of its
shortcomings, as a work of genius.

Keats began his Endymion in April 1817 at Carisbrook, on
the Isle of Wight, and, continuing at Canterbury, Hampstead,
and Oxford, he finished it in November of the same year. Dur-
ing the following winter he was engaged in revising this poem
of over four thousand lines, which in April 1818 was published
by Taylor and Hessey in London. The first line, “A thing of
beauty is a joy forever,” has become proverbial; and the work
abounds in passages of compactness and freshness found only
in the great Elizabethans. Yet, on the whole, the poem is cha-

76

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

otic. Its chief theme, in the words of Sir Sidney Colvin, is “the
passion of the human soul for beauty” ; and, testing his own
powers of invention, the poet embroidered his subject with an
almost oriental luxuriousness, interweaving the myth of En-
dymion with those of Pan, of Venus and Adonis, of Alpheus
and Arethusa, of Glaucus and Scylla, of Circe, of Neptune, and
many more. “I think,” Shelley remarked, “if he had printed
about fifty pages of fragments from it, I would have been led
to admire Keats as a poet more than I ought . . .” But Keats
himself was sensible of the faults of the work, describing it in
his preface as “a feverish attempt, rather than a deed accomplished.”
Even so, the harshness of the critics was unparalleled. “The
frenzy of the Poems” the review in Blackwood' s Magazine
stated, “was bad enough in its way; but it did not alarm us half
so seriously as the calm, settled, imperturbable drivelling idiocy
of Endymion .” It spoke of Keats as “only a boy of pretty abili-
ties”; reminded him that it was “a better and wiser thing to be
a starved apothecary than a starved poet”; and advised him to
go back to “plasters, pills, and ointment boxes.” It was prob-
ably written by John G. Lockhart, the future son-in-law of Sir
Walter Scott. The tone of the Quarterly Review was not much
better. It attacked Keats as a disciple of the “Cockney School
of Poetry,” as a mere copyist of Leigh Hunt, only “more unin-
telligible, almost as rugged, twice as diffuse, and ten times more
tiresome and absurd than his prototype.”

The poet feigned indifference. “Praise or blame,” he wrote,
“has but a momentary effect on a man whose love of beauty in
the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works. My
own domestic criticism has given me pain without comparison
beyond what Blackwood's or The Quarterly could possibly in-
flict.” But inwardly he was bleeding. His friend, Benjamin R.
Haydon, the artist, testified that the effect of the reviews on
Keats was very bad. “He became morbid and silent,” he re-
called; “would call and sit whilst I was painting, for hours,
without speaking a word.” And in his diary he added that the
poet “flew to dissipation as a relief, which, after a temporary
elevation of spirits, plunged him into deeper despair than ever;
for six weeks he was scarcely sober.” In the preface to his
Adonais, Shelley attributed the poet’s death to these savage

A GIFT OF RARE BOOKS

77

criticisms. “The agitation thus originated,” he wrote, “ended
in a rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs. Rapid consumption
ensued, and the succeeding acknowledgments from more candid
critics of the true greatness of his powers were ineffectual to
heal the wound thus wantonly inflicted.” But the charge only
made the Blackwood’s people more venomous; they parodied
the Adonais under the title “Elegy On My Tom Cat,” abusing
the dead poet with depraved cynicism.

There are two issues of the first edition of Endymion, the
first containing a single line of “erratum,” and the second, five
lines of “errata.” The Library has a remarkable copy of the
second issue, in the original brown boards, with the words
“From the Author” in Keats’s handwriting on the title-page;
however, the copy now received is of the first issue. It is a
beautiful, large volume, bound in crushed blue morocco.

I-^AMB’S first Elia essay, “The South-Sea House,” appeared
in the August 1820 issue of the new London Magazine; and the
rest were contributed to the same periodical, at the rate of at
least one a month, until December 1822. The papers attracted
wide attention, and the shy author, beloved by his friends but
little known to the public, suddenly became a celebrity. In a
letter to the publisher — the same John Taylor who issued
Keats’s Endymion — Lamb explained his nom de plume. Elia,
he wrote, was a fellow clerk of his at the South-Sea House
some thirty years before. “Doubting how he might relish cer-
tain descriptions in it [the first essay], I clapt down the name
of Elia to it, which passed off pretty well, for Elia himself added
the function of an author to that of scrivener, like myself.” To
laugh with Elia over the usurpation of his name, Lamb went
to visit him, but found that he had died of consumption eleven
months before. It is believed that Lamb had in mind Felix El-
ba, who in 1799 published a romance called Norman Banditti, or
the Fortress of Constance. The first series of the essays, which
included “Imperfect Sympathies,” “Grace Before Meat,” “The
Praise of Chimney-Sweepers,” “A Dissertation Upon Roast
Pig,” and other famous pieces, was published in the spring of
1823 by Taylor and Hessey. Soon afterwards, a second issue

78

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

appeared with a half-title added to the title-page. The London
Magazine ceased publication by the end of 1826, and some of
Lamb’s later papers appeared in the New Monthly and the Eng-
lishman's Magazine . In 1833 Edward Moxon brought them out,
in the format and typography of the first volume, under the
title The Last Essays of Elia.

The Library already had a magnificent copy of the Elia es-
says — one which once belonged to Wordsworth, whose sig-
nature is on the fly-leaf. The first volume has the poet’s pen-
cilled comment on “Grace Before Meat”: “This article is bad

— very bad. The subject is sacred whatever peoples habits may
be.” Yet the copy of the first volume now presented to the Li-
brary is very desirable, for it is in the original brown boards.
Both copies have the half-title.

There are four Tennyson items in the lot — Poems , By Two
Brothers, 1827, Poems , Chiefly Lyrical, 1830, Poems, 1833, anc^
Poems, 1842. The Poems, By Two Brothers is now a very rare
book. Tennyson was not yet eighteen when it was printed by
J. and J. Jackson at Louth in Lincolnshire. His brother Charles

— the later Charles Tennyson-Turner — was only a year older.
“The following poems,” the advertisement stated, “were writ-
ten from the ages of fifteen to eighteen, not conjointly, but in-
dividually.” In the manuscript each poem was signed by ini-
tials; these, however, were later omitted. The volume appeared
anonymously; as the younger brother wrote to the printer,
“ ‘Charles and Alfred Tennyson’ in London would not be taken
any more notice of than no signature at all.” True enough, the
volume passed unnoticed. The larger number of its one hun-
dred and two poems were by Alfred, and the rest by Charles,
with the exception of four — one of them was “The Oak of the
North” — which were contributed by a third brother, Freder-
ick, then in his twentieth year. “No doubt,” the young poets
acknowledged, “if submitted to the microscopic eye of periodi-
cal criticism, a long list of inaccuracies and imitations would
result from the investigation.” On the title-page they printed
Martial’s line “Haec nos novimus esse nihil” (“We know these
efforts are worth nothing”) — as did Edgar Allan Poe at the
end of the preface to his Tamerlane in the same year in Boston.
The volume is imitative; none of the brothers included any of

WI™ mu

Wholesale, Retail an.d for Exportation.,

BY

£0N DO H.

BRADBURY &EYANS. B0UYER1E STREET.

)84 8 •

Title-Page of the Original Edition of Dombey and Son in Parts

79

A GIFT OF RARE BOOKS

81

the poems in their later collections. Yet it would be a mistake
to dismiss it entirely. Headed by quotations from Virgil, Hor-
ace, Terence, and a wide variety of other writers, including
Shakespeare, Milton, Racine, Rousseau, Burke, Moore, and
Byron, the majority of the poems are variations on their themes,
affording the authors a wide range for excursions in both geog-
raphy and history. The versification is often surprisingly good,
nor are the contents always hackneyed.

The Poems , Chiefly Lyrical reflects the rapid development
which Tennyson achieved at Cambridge. “Claribel,” “Oriana,”
“Recollection of the Arabian Nights,” and “Ode to Memory”
are among its best. The “Ode to Memory,” described as “writ-
ten very early in life,” must have been ready at the time of the
Poems, By Two Brothers, from which the poet is known to have
excluded his more individual pieces. Without taking his degree,
Tennyson left Cambridge in 1831, returning to his unhappy
home at Somersby. His father soon died, but the family re-
remained in their house, the Rectory, for the next five years. It
was in this Lincolnshire village that Tennyson composed most
of the poems which made up the 1833 volume. “The Lady of
Shalott,” “The Miller’s Daughter,” “Oenone,” “The Palace of
Art,” and “A Dream of Fair Women” are in the volume, pre-
senting the poet at a far greater maturity of his powers. Critics
were not favorable to Tennyson; Leigh Hunt praised him, but
Blackwood's Magazine treated him with almost as much brutality
as it had Keats before. The poet’s sensitiveness may account
for his silence for nearly ten years. Finally the two volumes of
the Poems of 1842 — including “Locksley Hall,” “Morte d’Ar-
thur,” “Sir Galahad,” and “Vision of Sin” — established him,
next to the aged Wordsworth, as the greatest English poet of
the day. Within a few years the book reached several editions.
In 1850, the year of the publication of In Mcmoriam, Tennyson
succeeded Wordsworth as poet-laureate.

All four items are of the first edition. Poems, By Two Brothers
is of the large paper issue, bound in red levant morocco by
Riviere. The Poems of 1842 is bound in brown calf, bearing on
each side the arms of Francis Darby of Colebrookdale, a mem-
ber of the Shropshire iron works dynasty founded by Abraham
Darby at the end of the seventeenth century.

82

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

HE bibliographies of Dickens and Thackeray are compli-
cated affairs, for, as is generally known, these great Victorian
novelists originally published most of their works in monthly
installments before printing them in book form. These “parts,"
issued in green, blue, or brown wrappers, usually carried nu-
merous advertisements, printed in full sheets or on inserted
slips. Each of these constitutes a “point," and collectors insist
on their presence. John C. Eckel’s bibliography was a reliable
guide for Dickens until the more complete work of Thomas
Hatton and Arthur H. Cleaver superseded it; and similarly,
Thackeray’s novels must be checked against the compendious
list of Henry Sayre Van Duzer. Even more important than the
advertisements are the illustrations — steel engravings and
woodcuts, which were often mixed with lithographs. It takes
a real expert to detect the state, and appraise the quality, of
these reproductions. It goes without saying that there are many
misprints and broken types to identify the earliest copies.

Mr. Friedman’s gift includes four of the great Dickens novels.
The first is Dombey and Son. “Began Dombey : I performed this
feat yesterday — only wrote the first slip — but there it is, and
it is a plunge straight over head and ears into the story ...,’’
the novelist breathlessly reported to John Forster in June 1846.
Shortly afterwards, he outlined the plot, informing his friend
that he would slay little Paul at the end of the fifth number.
The boy’s death caused veritable mourning in England. At the
end Dickens justified it to his readers: “If any of them have
felt a sorrow in one of the principal incidents on which this fic-
tion turns, I hope it may be a sorrow of that sort which endears the
sharers in it, one to another. This is not unselfish in me. I may
claim to have felt it, at least as much as anybody else; and I
would fain be remembered kindly for my part in the experience.”
One of the installments turned out to be two pages short, and
as there was no time for further correspondence, Dickens, then
residing in Paris, boarded the diligence and was at once on his
way to London to supply the needed copy. At other times when
the manuscript turned out to be too long, he asked Forster to
cut it according to his best judgment.

The illustrations gave Dickens no end of trouble. Hablot

A GIFT OF RARE BOOKS

83

Knight Browne, better known as “Phiz,” did the engravings,
but by no means always to the author’s satisfaction. Dickens
was particularly “distressed” by the cut of Mrs. Pipchin and
Paul. “It is so frightfully and wildly wide of the mark,” he com-
plained to Forster. “Good Heaven! In the commonest and most
literal construction of the text, it is all wrong. She is described
as an old lady, and Paul’s ‘miniature arm-chair’ is mentioned
more than once. He ought to be sitting in a little arm-chair
down in the corner of the fireplace, staring up at her. I can’t
say what pain and vexation it is to be so utterly misrepresented.
I would cheerfully have given a hundred pounds to have kept
this illustration out of the book.” It is safe to say that without
the novelist’s comment the reader would hardly discover the
difference. Collectors watch the plate “On the Dark Road,” in
the eighteenth number; if it is good, the other thirty-nine plates
are supposed to be also desirable.

The copy now presented to the Library — which heretofore
lacked the first edition of the work — is in very fine condition.
The majority of the parts agree in every detail with the descrip-
tion of the Hatton-Cleaver bibliography. Only in the first,
fourth, sixth, twelfth, and last number are a few advertisements
lacking; however, the “errata” leaves show that the printing
is of an early state.

Bleak House, which appeared between March 1852 and Sep-
tember 1853, closely followed David Copperfield, and was even
more popular. Dickens’s attack on the abuses in the Courts of
Chancery met with keen sympathy throughout the country.
Of the first number, thirty thousand copies were sold, and the
figure soon leaped to forty thousand. Phiz designed its forty
plates, ten of them in two sets. These latter are the so-called
“dark plates.” They were produced by a newly invented method :
the steel was first ruled with fine lines, and the design was
etched over these; after that, the effect of light and shadow
was heightened by the process of “stopping-out.” Copies in
which dark plates occur are considered especially desirable. In
part nine, in the seventeenth plate, “Visitors to a Shooting
Gallery,” Phiz made the mistake of depicting Grandmother
Smallweed instead of the fair Judy. The plate had to be can-
celled and remade; the tenth number therefore contained three

84

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

plates, instead of the customary two. Again, the parts carried a
vast number of advertisements. Each issue had sixteen to
twenty pages of “Bleak House Advertiser,” mostly about new
books; then there were Norton’s Camomile Pills, recommended
for stomach complaints or indigestion; Allsopp’s Pale or Bitter
Ale, with testimonials from scores of famous doctors and pro-
fessors; Infants’ Restoratives; and, most important of all,
guaranteed cures for gout and rheumatism. Almost every issue
had slips advertising Dickens’s Household Words and Marsland
& Co.’s Crochet Cotton with patterns for mats, doilies, and
macassars. As a careful collation shows, the copy presented to
the Library has all the “points” ; only the crochet cotton slip gives
some trouble. Since the Library has had only the American edi-
tion of the work, the set is a welcome addition.

Dickens’s next novel, Little Dorrit , was, like the Pickwick
Papers, an attack on imprisonment for debt. Instead of the Fleet,
the Marshalsea was the scene of a considerable part of the novel.
The first number appeared in December 1855. Dickens was ex-
ultant. “Little Dorrit has beaten even Bleak House out of the
field,” he wrote to Forster. “It is a most tremendous start, and
and I am overjoyed at it.” And after the completion of the work
he stated : “In the preface to Bleak House I remarked that I
had never had so many readers. In the preface to its next suc-
cessor, Little Dorrit, I have still to repeat the same words.”
Yet the novel has been criticised as not up to the best talents
of its author; Forster thought that there was a “want of ease
and coherence” among the characters. Of the forty plates, seven
were duplicated by the new method, and there was also an
eighth “dark” plate without duplication. As before, a multitude
of advertisements went with each part. The Library already
has a copy, but its parts are bound in two volumes, with the
advertisements lumped together at the end. The copy now re-
ceived is all but perfect.

Little Dorrit was Dickens’s last book published by Bradbury
& Evans ; Chapman & Hall were his publishers for nearly every-
thing he wrote afterwards. In the next few years appeared A
Tale of Two Cities, and then Great Expectations ; Our Mutual
Friend . of which the gift includes a copy, was issued in regular
monthly installments between May 1864 and November 1865.

A GIFT OF RARE BOOKS

85

There were again forty illustrations, but this time they were
woodcuts, designed by Marcus Stone and engraved by Dalziel
and W. T. Green. The novel was very popular, although Dick-
ens wrote it under adverse circumstances, harrassed by illness
and once shaken up by a railroad accident.

T

«*- HACKERAY is represented by two novels, The Newcomes
and The Virginians , both in twenty-four monthly numbers, with
full-page illustrations as well as elaborate initials and tail-pieces
by Richard Doyle. The first issue of The Newcomes appeared in
July 1853, and the last in June 1855. Thackeray, as was his
wont, was pessimistic from the start. “I can’t but see it as a repeti-
tion of past performances,” he wrote to his mother, adding,
“One of Dickens’s immense superiorities over me is the great
fecundity of his imagination.” Yet the novel turned out well;
Colonel Newcome, for whom Thackeray’s step-father served
as a model, is one of the most attractive figures in English fic-
tion. When told by an American friend that the Colonel was
constructed from memories of Don Quixote and Sir Roger de
Coverley, the novelist quickly acquiesced. “I tried to make him
a creation of my own,” he said, “but I was conscious all the
while that my beloved heroes were blending in my mind.” One
of the characters refers to the time “when Mr. Washington
headed the American rebels with a courage, it must be con-
fessed, worthy of a better cause.” The sentence caused some
excitement in America, which was reported in the London
Times. Thackeray replied with a lengthy explanation. He was
talking, he wrote, about ’76, which could hardly be an issue to
1853. “I think,” he ended, “the cause for which Washington
fought entirely just and right, and the Champion the very
noblest, purest, bravest, and best of God’s men.”

The steel- and wood-engravings by Doyle, for long one of
the chief contributors to Punch , are extremely successful.
Thackeray, himself no mean artist and frequently an illustrator
of his own books, was a close friend of “Dicky” Doyle, whose
talents he regarded highly.

The Virginians , the first part of which was published in No-
vember 1857, was written after Thackeray’s American tour.

86

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

While here, he visited Fredericksburg and other places in Vir-
ginia, to saturate himself in the atmosphere. However, no more
than one-fifth of the book is occupied with the American scene.
Harry and George Esmond, the two grandsons of Henry Es-
mond, who came over with their mother to take possession of
the family estate, are the heroes, fighting on opposite sides in
the Revolutionary War; but it is their adventures in English
society that constitute the main events of the novel. Thackeray,
often ill, had great difficulty in getting the work under way.
“What a horribly stupid story I am writing/’ he exclaimed to
a friend, “no incident, no character, no go left in this dreary old
expiring carcass.” Unfortunately, some of the critics shared his
opinion. “I hear,” he observed to Douglas Jerrold, “that you
have said The Virginians is the worst novel I ever wrote.” “You
are wrong,” the famous author of Black-eyed Susan replied, “I
said it was the worst novel anybody ever wrote.” Yet the work
was popular, especially in America. George W. Curtis wished
that the author could have seen “the eager circle of children,
old men, and maidens” who listened to the monthly parts “with
shouts of merriment and sometimes even a tear.” The forty
plates and the many initials and tail-pieces which adorn the
novel were designed by Thackeray himself.

One should not overlook the first-edition copy, in the original
pink boards, of The Kickleburys on the Rhine , signed by “Mr. M.
A. Titmarsh,” Thackeray’s Christmas book for 1850, illustrated
with fifteen full-page drawings by him. It is a satire on the
manners of Englishmen abroad; however, this delightful liter-
ary oddity was damned by the Times, which considered it as
“the rinsings of a void brain after the more important concoc-
tions of the expired year.”

The novels of Disraeli — and he wrote nearly a dozen — are
little known today. Yet they were widely read in the 1830’s and
1840’s; and at least two of them, Coningsby and Sybil, deeply in-
fluenced the course of English politics. A first-edition copy of
Sybil, published in three volumes in 1845, is included in Mr.
Friedman’s gift (as are two of the later works, Lothair and En-
dymion , respectively of 1870 and 1880). Its sub-title is “The Two
Nations”; and it is precisely the division of the people of Eng-
land into the rich and the poor that is the subject of the novel.

A GIFT OF RARE BOOKS

87

No one before had painted the degradation of the agricultural
laborers and factory workers in such stark colors and with so
much factual realism. In Walter Gerard, one of the leaders of
the Chartists, and in the Earl of Marney, the ultra-reactionary
landlord, Disraeli created flesh-and-blood representatives of
the opposing forces, while in Charles Egremont, brother of the
Earl, he delineated the figure of the true progressive. The task
of the Crown was, according to him, to protect the people
against the oligarchy; and in the alliance of the masses with the
right-minded aristocracy he envisioned the program of the
Young England Party. His “Tory democracy” Disraeli based
upon the theories of Bolingbroke, whom he eloquently defended
in several chapters. Sybil is eminently a novel of ideas, and a
very brilliant one; but beyond this, it is also an excellent story,
which holds one’s interest throughout — as the present writer,
who has just read it, may testify.

Only three more volumes will be mentioned, mainly for their
fine bindings. The first is a copy of Giorgio Baglivi’s De Praxi
Medica, printed in two volumes in Rome in 1702. Baglivi was a
famous experimental physician, a disciple of Bacon, who fought
against the superstitious prejudices of his profession. The work
was bound for Pope Clement XI, whose richly gilded coat-of-
arms is engraved on each side. The center has a fess between a
mullet of six points and triple mound at the base; at the top is
a papal tiara, and at the sides are cinctures hanging. The second
book is the Principes de la Piete Chretienne by Blaise Monestier,
printed, also in two volumes, at Toulouse in 1756. Monestier, a
Jesuit Father, bitterly opposed the Encyclopedists, particularly
d’Holbach. The book was bound in red morocco for Louis XV,
whose coat-of-arms, with three fleur-de-lis in the center and
a crown at the top, embellishes each side. And finally, there
is a Latin translation of the first nine cantos of Klopstock’s
Messiah , published in 1770, and bound for Napoleon. It is doubt-
ful if the Emperor ever found the time, or the inclination, to read
the German epic, especially in Latin; but there is his coat-of-arms,
with the spread-eagle surrounded by an imperial toga.

All the books contain Mr. Friedman’s book-plate : the seven-
branched candlestick of the Tabernacle, with the mottoes “Veri-
tas” below and “To thine own self be true” above.

Alcott’s Search for the Child

By SHERMAN PAUL

ALTHOUGH he outlived his contemporaries and at last
became the “dean” of the Concord School, Bronson Al-
cott still had difficulties in practicing his transcendental
vocation. It was bad enough in the 1830’s, when the divinity of
Jesus wras hotly disputed, to exalt the teacher’s profession by
proposing that he make Jesus his model and the Gospel his text.
Bad enough to propose; more so, when this pedagogue from
Connecticut, who believed that “nothing is complete until it is
enacted,” set about for the better part of a decade to put his
ideas in practice. If Boston welcomed him at first, if his salary
in the years before the depression of 1837 sometimes reached
that of the minister, he was ostracized at last and nearly mobbed,
forced to sell all the fine furnishings of his school including his
books, and reduced to a penury of spirit, in which he lamented,
“I am an Idea without hands. I find no body for my thought
amidst the materials of this age.”1

This was the crisis of his life. “The untimeliness of genius,”
he wrote in retrospect, “is the tragedy of life . . .” For in the
spiritual economy of the transcendentalist, inspiration was in-
complete and self-realization as well as social usefulness impos-
sible without the materials for their expression. Never again to
teach a children’s school was more severe than the failure at
Fruitlands. The first volume of his Conversations with Children on
the Gospels, the fruit of Alcott’s experiments and method, ap-
peared in the year of Emerson’s Nature and for the most part
was favorably noticed. But by 1838, after the publication of the
second volume in which birth was discussed, Alcott became a
victim of the press, more scurrilously denounced than Emerson
for his Divinity School Address, because the immediate charge
was indecency, not infidelity. Unlike Emerson, Alcott could not
do what Emerson decided was best for himself. He could not
“leave the impractical world to wag its own way, and sit apart
and write . . . oracles for its behoof.”2 And Emerson knew this,
having noted in his Journal after one of Alcott’s early visits that

88

ALCOTT’S SEARCH FOR THE CHILD

89

“His book is his school, in which he writes all his thoughts.”3

More than Emerson, and more than Thoreau with his private
experiment in the “higher society” of Walden, Alcott was a so-
cial man whose gifts were graciousness and conversation, whose
materials were men, women, and children, and whose interests
were practical and ameliorative. Like his Concord friends, he
was wholly concerned with spiritual regeneration, but his faith
in education was proof that he believed in more immediate
means. In reply to Emerson’s advice, he wrote in his Journal :
“I desire to see my Idea not only a written , but a spoken and an
acted Word — a Word Incarnate.”4 This realization of thought
Alcott mastered in the teaching of children, who became his
chief vehicle; and he oriented the transcendental philosophy,
which he had discovered at the same time as Emerson, to this
vocation.

Judged by his written word, even by the best of his Orphic
Sayings, Alcott loses his force ; for he was not so much man
thinking as man teaching. However, in character, influence,
steadfastness, and even in achievement, he was worthy of his
great contemporaries. It is unfair to dismiss his adventure in
idealism on the grounds that he was a poor provider, or to mock
him by calling him the father of the author of Little Women. In-
stead, he was, as Emerson recognized, the embodiment of tran-
scendentalism and, as Thoreau wrote in Walden , “the last of the
philosophers . . . the man of the most faith of any alive.”5 And
even Abigail May Alcott, who for so long paid the cost of her
husband’s fidelity to his ideas, would not have had him do other-
wise. “Faith and persistency are life’s architects,” Alcott moral-
ized in Tablets, and he had them abundantly. For how could he
have justified himself otherwise, when, at the end of his life, he
wrote opprobriously of “Such idlers as on others’ earnings live”?
He at any rate, was never an idler, and having an aim, labored
in the lean years, wrote out his monumental diary,6 and tried,
in gardening and conversation, to yoke his idealism to “its
harness of uses.”

M ORE than any other American transcendentalist, Bron-
son Alcott took Wordsworth seriously: he enacted the philoso-

90

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

phy of the Ode on Intimations of Immortality . In his search for the
object most closely corresponding to the divine, Alcott came by
way of infant and elementary school teaching, his philosophical
immersion at Germantown, and the study of the psychological
behavior of his daughters, to a lifelong dedication to the child.
Perhaps the popular conception of his innocence and naivete
expresses this devotion, for he was always able to enter easily
the world of the child. Children were his fit audience, always
welcoming the allegory of Pilgrim s Progress. Pie preferred them
to carping adults : they mirrored for him the spiritual state that
the adult had forfeited by contact with debasing material affairs.7
In them, he sought a purity similar to that Thoreau saw reflected
in Walden Pond.

But although Alcott appreciated Thoreau’s employment, Walden
would have been an inadequate symbol for him. Believing in the
Plotinian “doctrine of lapse,” he did not find in nature the high-
est expression of spirit. Nature, to him, was the furthest issue
of spirit and an expositor of the divine mind, as it was for Emer-
son and Thoreau; but it was an imperfect expositor, in need of
man's transforming energies. Nature was lapsed spirit, capable
perhaps of reflecting in its objects the sensualism of lapsed
man, but it was incapable of reflecting the highest ideas, those
of divine purity and spirituality. “Nature,” Alcott wrote, “does
not contain the Personal man . . . [that is] the mind with the
brute omitted . . . Nature is sufficient for the creature, but per-
son alone for man, without whose immanency and inspirations,
man were heartless and worshipless.”

In contrast to Thoreau, Alcott desired to complete Nature
“by converting the wild into the human,” to fill out the impro-
visations of Nature with the arts of adornment and idealization.
For this reason gardens and orchards seemed to him the “sym-
bols of civility,” the true humanization of Nature. They united
man and Nature, not only to the end for which Thoreau went to
Nature, but to the end that Nature herself became spiritualized.
“By mingling his mind with nature,” Alcott explained, “and so
transforming the landscape into his essence. Man generates the
homestead, and opens a country to civilization and the arts.” The
woods, once “melancholy and morose, standing in their loneli-
ness,” were to be “meliorated.” For it was in gardens and or-

ALCOTT’S SEARCH FOR THE CHILD

9*

chards, not forests or cities, that for Alcott human history be-
gan : adorning his homestead, man made it the fitting place for
the family, for the nurture of the Child. Going beyond Words-
worth, Alcott wrote :

Childhood is greater than Nature. It teemeth with Ideas for
which Nature proffereth no image. It is above Nature — yea,
above man — for yet unfallen, unbeguiled, it is an angel and en-
joyeth the beatific countenance of the Celestial Father in Heaven
— even the selfsame face that Nature doth but dimly shadow
forth to the external sense !8

And he insisted that the true glory of the state was to maintain
the pristine brilliance of this symbol, in which he saw the fulfill-
ment of his life-long search — to discover in the untarnished
mirror of the child his own untarnished self; to find in the child
the image of the perfect and complete man, and the origin of
the laws of thought. His work was, as he put it, ‘"this chase of
myself,” a chase that all the transcendentalists undertook, some
like Emerson in alter-egos and representative friends, some like
Thoreau in Nature.9

In spite of his constant idealism, Alcott experienced the de-
jection that Thoreau called decay. With him it was the inevitable
lapse of adulthood. “Are we to be left orphans,” he asked, “when
taken from nature’s arms, robbed of all that made life desirable
before?” Are we to “despair of maintaining the virtues we es-
poused so eagerly in our youth?” Were the knowledge of sin
and mature self-consciousness lapses “out of . . . paradise?” Not,
he maintained, if we are “faithful to the beautiful vision” of
children : “Children save us,” he wrote.

But, as with Emerson and Thoreau, the former powers were
to be saved by conscious endeavor, by the control of severe
discipline. Alcott’s case, when viewed out of this context, be-
came the ludicrous failure to live on nuts and apples at Fruit-
lands. This Pythagorean asceticism was in reality an attempt “to
cleanse” the body, to purify the soul through its instruments,
to prepare himself for the self-renewal of communion with children.
In the good gifts of children, he poetized, “we hopeful see / The
fairer selves we fain would be.” In the mysteries of childhood,

92

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

he believed, “he / Must live twice that would God’s face see.”
Thus, Alcott came to believe that the process of inspiration was
social, that lacking the schoolroom the family was the per-
fect sphere for its practice. At first merely an observer of the
growth of his children, he soon saw in them the image for
which he was seeking. It was his intention to take them to his
native village, to his mother’s. “There,” he explained,

amidst the wilderness of Nature and the scenes of my own mind’s
formation, can I be to them, for a while, the father that I image in
my Ideal. Childhood’s young life would revisit me. Surrounded by
the emblems of my germinating sentiments and fancies, I should
bring forth that which, when distant, lieth latent in my being. I
should return to the being as well as to the scenes of my childhood,
and with theirs write off, in living words, types of the things and
thoughts that quickened my being — the history of my own life —
with theirs. The father shall be seen in the son’s forming being;
the language of his thoughts and sentiments, in the imagery that
surrounds his paternal home.10

In his children — and in his homeward journey, which he made
several times as he grew older — he had found the perfect sym-
bols of his desires. The children became more than his lan-
guage ; by sympathizing writh them, he was “reborn into the
same blessed Kingdom that he hath not as yet died out of.”
“Of the various media of Revelation,” Alcott wrote, “the
child is, perhaps, the most significant of all.” The word “sig-
nificant” had here all the weight of the transcendentalist’s be-
lief in correspondential meaning; and for Alcott the child rep-
resented all the “exponents” of creation: origin, growth, completion.
“The history of a child,” he thought, “including its inner as well
as outer movements, with its relations both spiritual and ma-
terial and the varying phenomena of the sensual and the super-
sensual — this Would be a Revelation indeed . . .” In the life of
Jesus he saw the history of the adult; and in the Gospels he
found an example of a record of “both his inner and outer ex-
perience.” But great as they were, to him these did not promul-
gate “the revelation of childhood” — “The ‘eyes have not seen
nor the hands yet handled the Word of God’ as presented in
infancy.” And with characteristic assurance he added: “To the
penning of this gospel, let me apply myself.”11

ALCOTT’S SEARCH FOR THE CHILD

93

His doctrine — leaving aside here his pre-psychoanalytic
theories of genesis12 — began in the child’s oneness with both
God and Nature, the extremes, he said, that fallen men had to
rejoin. To “repossess” the idea of his own divinity, however,
man had to use Nature. Here lapse was necessary in man’s
spiritual ascent, but only after he had regained the child’s in-
born gift of regarding “all outward things as emblems and ex-
ponents of its own inner being!” Then, he could “descend” into
Nature and assume the burdens of its spiritualization. But un-
less he had repossessed his Idea he could not carry out this
transcendental pilgrim’s progress of subduing Nature to himself.

If man and Nature were one ideally, and if in his unfallen child-
like state he was wed to Nature with “infinite sympathies,” his
lapse forced him out of the garden naked and alone and without
the hope of renewal. Once the “Idea of Spirit dies out of the
Consciousness,” Alcott wrote, “Man is shorn of his glories.”
In language as full of horror as Edwards, he described the lot
of the unregenerate :

Nature grows over him. He mistakes Images for Ideas, and thus
becomes an Idolater. He deserts the Sanctuary of the Indwelling
Spirit, and worships at the throne of the Outward.13

And this was the condition in which Alcott found his contempo-
raries. Having been starved of the sense of the beautiful in
childhood, they wallowed in inevitable materialism : “the Di-
vine Idea of a Man seems to have died out of our conscious-
ness.” There followed a low estimate of human nature, account-
ing for the want of great men and institutions, and, what was
worse, a low estimate of the genius of the child. This genius
Alcott regarded as “the prime endowment of humanity.” But
it was poorly cherished, blunted, and destroyed in bare and
lifeless cities. No longer — he lamented — did men seek their
salvation in the leadings of little children, but constraining
their imaginations led them and themselves into the valley of
despair.

He endeavored, therefore, to awaken a new sense of “the
divinity of the child.” Fie attempted to do what Margaret Ful-
ler suggested in “The Great Lawsuit” : “Could we give a de-
scription of the child that is lost, he would be found.” Conversa-

94

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

tions with Children was his demonstration of what he had fer-
vently recorded in Psyche, that to the “faithful observer of the
celestial phenomena” the child is a “sign,” that the “child is no
fallen, but a pure angel.” If he was at first a Lockean remedying
the physical aspects of the schoolroom, his innovations had
now been directed to spiritual culture : along with the introduc-
tion of writing desks, slates, and space for exercise, he had em-
phasized affection as a teaching principle. And if as an environ-
mentalist he had put the blame for evil on conditions rather
than on the nature of the child, it was not long after watching little
Anna and Louisa that he saw the creative elan of the Coleridgean
reason in their unfolding consciousness. He could no longer
conceive of a “child’s acquirements as originating in nature,
dating from his birth into his body . . .”; he had come so far
that to believe this was “an atheism.”

TP RAILING clouds of glory, the child came with the gifts
of inspiration and imagination that the ageing transcendentalist
realized he had once possessed freely and unconsciously, and
now could have only rarely and at great cost. From an insight
into this dilemma, he created his vision of, and the means for,
social regeneration : if the world had not starved the child’s
imagination, if he had remained in Nature to which he sym-
pathetically responded, his “essential humanity” would not
have withered. Then the child would represent “the complete
man,” who easily spanned the heaven of inspiration, the mid-
world of reason, and the earth of sense and fancy; and who was
naturally disposed, in his symbolic use of Nature, to create an
ideal world of them.

When driven from his “Temple” for practising this gospel,
Alcott applied it to his own children; and having been balked
by parental opposition, set out on his long pilgrimage to awaken
in the adults a sense of human culture. The family became his
ideal14; and Fruitlands was his experiment to plant a Family
Order. He may have been a grand failure, but he was truly a
father of little women.15 Pure himself, and having in children
the means of inspiration, he was sustained in his adventure in
idealism, and had a right to write :

ALCOTT’S SEARCH FOR THE CHILD

95

Not Wordsworth’s genius, Pestalozzi’s love,

The stream have sounded of clear infancy.

Baptismal waters from the Head above
These babes I foster daily are to me;

I dip my pitcher in these living springs
And draw, from depths below, sincerity;

Unsealed, mine eyes behold all outward things
Arrayed in splendors of divinity.

What mount of vision can with mine compare? . . .l6

{First editions of Alcott’s books have been placed on view
in the Treasure Room.)

Notes

1. Quotations are numerous in this essay because the writer desired to
reproduce Alcott’s thoughts in his own words. References, however, will be
given only for extracted passages.

2. The Loiters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Ralph L. Rusk, New York
1939, H, 75-

3. The Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. E. W. Emerson and W. E.
Forbes, Boston 1909-1914, III, 559.

4. Cited in Dorothy McCuskey, Bronson Alcott, Teacher, New York 1940, 112.

5. Walden and Other Writings, ed. Brooks Atkinson, New York 1937, p. 240.

6. Alcott’s diary, in fifty manuscript volumes, is owned by Mr. Frederic
Wolsey Pratt of Concord. Odell Shephard published a selection in The Journals
of Bronson Alcott, Boston 1938.

7. One reason Alcott preferred the West to the East was that in the West
the audiences accepted him more freely, that is, in a more child-like manner.

8. Psyche, or the Breath of Childhood, Boston 1835-1836, 425-26. This is
the first manuscript version, owned by Mr. Frederic Wolsey Pratt. Portions
are printed in Kenneth W. Cameron’s Emerson the Essayist, Raleigh, N. C.
1945, 2 vols.

9. Margaret Fuller seems to have shared Alcott’s need for children al-
though she did not erect a “system.” See Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli,
ed. by R. W. Emerson, W. H. Channing, J. F. Clarke, Boston, 1859, II,
pp. 147, 272-273, 278, 293, 300, 301, 304, 334. Alcott, especially after meeting
W. T. Harris, tried, I think, to systematize his thought in Tablets and Con-
cord Days.

10. Psyche, 112.

11. Margaret Fuller records Alcott as saying: “Seing that other re-
deemers have imperfectly fulfilled their tasks, I have sought a new way . . .
They began with men; I will begin with babes. They began with the world;
I will begin with the family. So I preach the Gospel of the Nineteenth Cen-
tury.” Memoirs, I, 171-72.

96

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

12. See Tablets, Boston 1868, 187 ff; and James Freeman Clark, ed. by E. E.
Hale, Boston 1891, 2 for an example of the significance of Wordsworth’s Ode.
Clarke prefaces his account of his ancestry with: “Wordsworth’s ‘Ode on the
Intimations of Immortality’ contains a truth which our experience must con-
firm. The germs of all that we are begin to unfold in our childhood. Those
shadowy recollections are the masterlights of our after-being. The truths
which awake then never perish. The impressions then made on the soul un-
derlie all others, and determine largely our future course.”

13. The Doctrine and Discipline of Human Culture, Boston 1836, 21. Theo-
dore Parker made a similar attack on sensationalism in A Discourse of Matters
Pertaining to Religion, Boston 1842, 50-52, 451.

14. See also Margaret Fuller on this ideal in Memoirs, II, pp. 84, 121.

15. Margaret Fuller wrote that “He [Alcott] views this relation truly.”
Memoirs, II, p. 52.

16. Sonnets and Canzonets, Boston 1882, 69.

The Anarchiad and the Massachusetts Centinel

By ABE C. RAVITZ

DURING the critical years of 1786-7 the conservative
forces in American politics saw their position jeopardized
by an increasing populism. Federalists of a literary turn
soon rallied to defend the tenets of their party, and the most
competent among them were the Connecticut Wits, who en-
tered upon a collaborative work. The end result was The An-
archiad, “a New England poem,” which is all but forgotten to-
day.1 The poem, written by Lemuel Hopkins, David Hum-
phreys, Joel Barlow, and John Trumbull, was presented in a
novel manner. It was supposed to be an ancient epic, “lately
unearthed” by a Society of Connecticut Antiquarians, and “ex-
cerpts” were presented in a series of twelve papers entitled
“American Antiquities” in The New Haven Gazette and the Con-
necticut Magazine. Included was a running prose commentary.
Since the affairs of Anarch, the personification of black chaos,
“were in so thriving a posture in Massachusetts and Rhode-
Island,”2 the authors concentrated their satiric efforts on these
states, in order to present living examples of the evils of populism
to the people of Connecticut.

Certainly Shays’s Rebellion received little sympathy from the
Boston press; but most vehement in the attack upon this march
of debtors was Major Benjamin Russell’s Massachusetts Centinel.
With the publication of “American Antiquities, No. 1,” a liaison
was established between this newspaper and The Nezv Haven
Gazette and the Connecticut Magazine. The Centinel carried full re-
prints of each number of the satire and, in addition, published
collateral material relating to the authors.

The very first number of the “Antiquities” saw David Hum-
phreys and Lemuel Hopkins bitterly attack the rebels. In a
“vision” of the troubled state of Massachusetts, a passage from
The Anarchiad reveals this situation:

Chaos, Anarch old, asserts his sway,

And mobs in myriads blacken all the way:

97

98 THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

O’er Concord fields the bands of discord spread,

Sweep their dark files, and shade with rags the plain.
Lo, the Court falls ; th’affrighted Judges run,

Law sinks before thy [Anarch’s] uncreating word;

Thy hand unbars th’unfathom’d gulph of fate,

And deep in darkness whelms the new-born stated

The number concluded with an invitation to “the several printers
of Massachusetts” to republish the work. The Centinel reprinted
“American Antiquities, No. i” six days later, in an apparently
successful venture. Shortly afterward, Russell used the satire as
the basis for another “fair vision” of conditions in his state. Un-
der the title of “Original Poetry” he printed some sixty lines of
verse in his newspaper for December 6, 1786, among them :

Now clouds and darkness spread their loud alarms,

And rouse the desp’rate to rebellious arms ;

Justice, her balance now resigns to fate;

Discord and envy, discontent create . . .4

Russell dated these couplets “September, 1786,” thus placing
them a month ahead of the Plumphreys and Hopkins effort. He
also added a note stating that the poem was “mislaid,” thereby
explaining the late insertion. Although no one can disprove
Russell’s claim concerning the date, one can seriously doubt the
veracity of the statement. The idea of the “vision,” the tonal
quality, and the diction are identical in both pieces; the usage
of the term “fate” is also the same in each. But what was the
purpose behind the claim? The newspaper poets of the era were
only too willing to document their sources, as Humphreys and
Hopkins did, by acknowledging their indebtedness to Pope,5
and it seems evident that the Centinel adapted the “Antiquities,
No. 1” in order to provide more copy on this popular topic.

In late December 1786 The Massachusetts Centinel reprinted an
article from the London Times , which vehemently denounced
the economic situation in America and concluded that “the
making of Paper Money a legal tender in the American States,
is most evidently done to injure foreign creditors.”6 The Wits
promptly took up the theme of foreign creditors in the fourth
number of their satire. The debtors, according to them :

THE AN ARC HI AD

99

Sing choral songs while conq’ring mobs advance,
And blot the debts to Holland, Spain, and France;

Lo, the poor Briton, who, corrupted, sold,

Sees God in courts, or hears him chink in gold,

Tho’ plagu’d with debts, with rage of conquest curst,

In rags and tender-acts he puts no trust . . .7

Russell, of course, did not wait long before reprinting the “An-
tiquities, No. 4.”

Two minor broadsides and two poems relating to The An-
archiad, and mentioning the poets by name, were reprinted in the
Centinel soon afterwards.8 Then, after reprinting Humphrey’s
poem on the “Genius of America,” Russell reprinted a prose
tract on the same subject from The New Haven Gazette. This in-
cluded an extract from Barlow’s Columbiad which was then “in
the press” and which sang of Trumbull who “lead[s] the train,”
“daring” Dwight hailed by “the epick muse,” and Humphreys,
the “favorite” of Washington.9 Furthermore, this article set
forth the literary nationalism which probably provided the Wits
with the germ of their treatment of the foreign critics of Ameri-
can achievement in “American Antiquities, No. 12.” It stated
that among the “literati” in Europe the idea had become preva-
lent that “almost every species of animal and vegetable life has
degenerated by being transported across the Atlantick to this
country.”10 And the final number of the “Antiquities” also de-
plored that the “learned sages” abroad found that “in this part
of the globe the animal and vegetable creation are far inferior”
and “that man has wonderfully degenerated” here.11 Indeed the
readers of the Centinel were able to keep in close touch with the
activities of their favorite poets.

Russell also added his own footnotes to the Centinel reprints
of “American Antiquities, No. 7 and No. 8.” He hoped by them
to clarify allusions that might prove obscure to Boston readers.
He identified “Wronghead” as “one of the paper-money, anti-
federal geniuses of Connecticut”; and described “Wimble” as
“a person, whose political and moral character is supposed to
bear a strong resemblance of William W-lli-ms, Esq. Chief Jus-
tice of the Court of Common Pleas . . . &c. &c. &c. &c.” He also
explained that “some of these enigmatical &c. mean an anti-

100 THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

federal paper money man; pedantick blockhead, and other apel-
latives their inseparable attendants.”12 These footnotes un-
doubtedly were fully approved of by the Hartford group, since
they preserved the savor and purpose of their poem in remark-
ably fine fashion.

With the relaxation of events, the activity of the Wits fell off
noticeably. Between April 5 and September 13, 1787, only the
last four numbers of their work appeared. The Constitutional
Convention at Philadelphia had cast a mood of sobriety over the
poets — a temper evident in No. 10 of the series. Their rela-
tive inactivity seems to have disturbed Russell. His readers no
doubt desired to see more of the writings of the Hartford group,
and so he attempted to prod the poets on. In April he printed
some octosyllabic couplets supposedly advising “a grieved poli-
tician” to wreak vengeance on his opponents :

But chiefly Hudibrastick writers,

For they are found most valiant fighters,

And wondrous deeds perform sometimes,

By means of their satirick rhymes ;

Let these attack your honest foes
With literary bangs and blows
Expose their weakness and their folly,

Their character, and name too fully,

And if they have no faults or vice,

You then must make it up with lies . . .I3

As this bit of gentle pressure passed unheeded, Russell was
back in three weeks with “Shays : A Rebel Eclogue,” which
was introduced by a statement that “the following Eclogue ap-
peareth to have been written during some particular period of
the reign of Anarch, but hath long remained hidden from the
eyes of the curious, insomuch that . . . the learned society of
Antiquarians in Connecticut have said nothing thereupon.
Could they throw some light upon this subject, great and mani-
fold would be the obligations due them from all the lovers of
polite letters.”14 However, the “mob” had by then replaced
Governor Bowdoin with John Hancock, who had promised to
deviate from the harsh policy of his predecessor in his treat-
ment of the rebels who were under control. To re-introduce
the subject would have been foolish — a fact which the poets
fortunately recognized.

THE ANARCHIAD

ioi

Yet only eight days before the appearance of the last num-
ber of “American Antiquities,” Russell printed a mock epistle
from “Shays to Shattuck,” in which the chief insurgent was
made to say :

These evils (I speak with shame and contrition)

These flow from the sorrowful stream of sedition ;

That stream, in description, to shew you aright,

Is a subject for Barlow, M’Fingal, or Dwight . . .I5

It is even a subject for America’s top painters, the verse goes
on to tell. Perhaps the purpose behind this final shot was to
instill a seed in one of the Wits that would eventually bear
fruit in the form of a mock-epic on the Massachusetts insurrections.

Notes

1. Luther G. Riggs (editor), introduction to The Anarchiad, New Haven,
1861.

2. “American Antiquities, No. 2” in The New Haven Gazette and the
Connecticut Magazine, November 2, 1786.

3. The New Haven Gazette and the Connecticut Magazine, October 26, 1786.

4. The Massachusetts Centinel, December 6, 1786. The Boston Public Li-
brary has files of both The New Haven Gazette and the Connecticut Magazine
and The Massachusetts Centinel.

5. Near the end of the first paper of The Anarchiad, the authors wrote
that “the celebrated English poet, Mr. Pope, has proved himself a noted pla-
giarist, by copying the preceding ideas, and even the couplets almost entire
into his famous poem called the Dunciad.”

6. The Massachusetts Ccntinal, December 23, 1786.

7. The New Haven Gazette, January 11, 1787.

8. “New Year’s Verse,” January 10, and “The Newsboys — An Eclogue”
on January 13, “The Soliloquy of Spectator,” February 14, and “The Female
Patriot,” February 24.

9. The Massachusetts Ccntinal, February 10, 1787. The passage is from
Book VIII of Barlow’s work.

10. Ibid.

11. The Nezv Haven Gazette, September 13, 1787.

12. The Massachusetts Ccntinal, April 4 and April 11, 1787.

13. Ibid., April 25, 1787.

14. Ibid., May 19, 1787. The work is signed “Antiquary.”

15. Ibid , September 5, 1787.

Frank W. Benson, Painter and Etcher

By ARTHUR W. HEINTZELMAN

FRANK W. BENSON, famous internationally-known
painter and etcher, a great leader in the artistic and edu-
cational fields of art, died on November 14, 1951, in his
eighty-ninth year. His students, many of whom are noted
artists today, and who addressed him as “Cher Maitre,” and
friends among artists, collectors, and connoisseurs on both
sides of the Atlantic mourn his passing.

Mr. Benson’s rich productive years and the breadth of his
interests did much to create and perpetuate spiritual guidance
to his fellow man through a life well lived. His love of beauty
and nature, and his ability to record it, were gifts possessed
by only a chosen few. His achievement was a tribute to three-
score years of activity on canvas and copper which with needle
and brush commemorate a lasting accomplishment, and has
been recognized the world over. His work has found a per-
manent place in the museums and private collections of two
continents.

Happily Mr. Benson lived to see his own work reach the
zenith of full recognition. His part in the renaissance of engrav-
ing at the turn of this century is now established history. His
prints of bird life embody the sound theories of a thorough
artistic background supported by an extraordinary talent that
placed him in the high esteem of his contemporaries. All who
knew him well felt his sincerity, the depth of his sensitive aes-
thetic nature, and the inner strength of his convictions.

As a man and artist Mr. Benson stood out prominently
against a background of troubled years of confusion and doubt
which date from the first World War. His work emanated
peace, poetry, spiritual beauty, and inspiration, which blended
with his technical knowledge into a combination of rarest at-
tainment.

A little over four years ago the Print Department of the
Boston Public Library was chosen by Mr. Benson as the place
he considered most suitable to deposit his personal collection

102

“The Marsh Gunner ” an Etching by Frank W . Benson

103

FRANK W. BENSON, PAINTER AND ETCHER 105

permanently. He wished his life’s work in etching and drypoint
to fit in with the Library’s pattern of a living collection, where
his prints could be fully appreciated and play their part artistic-
ally as well as educationally with the contemporary masters of
England and France. The collection of approximately 450
prints, states, and drawings, the most complete in existence,
was acquired in July 1947. Since that time it has been studied
constantly by students and collectors, and it has been in de-
mand for exhibition purposes.

In studying this great collection one cannot but feel the
knowledge and inspiration exercised in the creation of these
fine plates, and the high quality of the interpretation of each
individual subject. No other collection of Mr. Benson’s work
contains more beauty or brilliance in printing. The late plates,
many of them masterly, possess the same youthful spirit that
guided his hand in earlier experiments. His entrusting the Li-
brary with this unique collection is a tribute to its Print Depart-
ment. The Library deems it an honor and a privilege to be cus-
todians of this great artist’s work, which will remain a living
thesis through which he will speak to us as time progresses.

The prominent place held by Mr. Benson in the graphic arts
has done much in securing for America recognition in the realm
of contemporary prints. His plates are completely defined as an
artistic medium. All manner of mediums and a combination of
them are employed in new intentions and ideas. Individualism
is nowhere more strongly indicated than in his work. He was
always pure in both medium and composition, in contrast with
the camouflage practice employed today both in execution and
printing.

Frank Weston Benson was born at Salem, Massachusetts,
on March 24, 1862. After completing his studies at the Salem
High School, he enrolled in the School of Drawing and Paint-
ing of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. After three years there
he went to Paris, where he studied at the Academie Julien un-
der Boulanger and Le Febvre. During his second year abroad
he established a studio in the rue de Seine, dividing his time be-
tween study and creative work. Mr. Benson’s first and impor-
tant effort painted at Concarneau, Brittany, during his first
summer in France, was exhibited at the Royal Academy in

io6

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

London, in 1885. Returning to America, he settled in Salem,
painting portraits and teaching at the Portland Society of Art.
In 1888 he married Miss Ellen Peerson, the subject of his “Sum-
mer.” From 1888 to 1912 he was instructor at the Boston Mu-
seum School of Drawing and Painting, later serving as visiting
instructor. From then on Mr. Benson’s rise to prominence was
steady and secure. Many examples of his work, for which he
was awarded almost all the academic honors that America
could bestow, may be seen in the permanent collections of
leading museums and private collections.

Although Mr. Benson’s first experiments in etching were
done while he was still a student in Boston in 1882, it was not
until 1912 that he again took up his needle and the copper plate.
A number of the first subjects were done from wash drawings
in black and white, a medium in which he excelled, indicating
an experiment in technique and showing the value of the etched
line. His development in etching was very rapid, due partly to
his experience in painting, and partly to hi§ draftsmanship, in
which he combined excellent technique with genuine feeling.
His composition was often oriental in areas of spotting and
spacing with ducks and geese flying in rhythmical form and
pattern. It was the early study of the habits of these birds in
Salem Harbor that enabled him to fuse the interest of the
sportsman, artist, and connoisseur alike.

There is pure delight in the study of Mr. Benson’s prints, in
which one is able to study arrangements in simple and elusive
technique. The varied approaches which he employed enabled
him to capture all the possibilities of his subject. He was a mas-
ter in the suggesting of space and height, so necessary for birds
in rapid flight; and the rich greys and vibrant blacks of the
birds themselves are so true to their surroundings that there is
never a feeling of inanimation.

Mr. Benson made statements, in his drypoints of waterfowl
particularly, that have never been made before, establishing
him as a master-etcher. His ducks and geese are alert whether
fluttering up from their resting places, swimming in formation,
or silhouetted in beautiful pattern against the sky.

It was a privilege to look at many of these prints with the
artist himself; his descriptions were word pictures as interest-

FRANK W. BENSON, PAINTER AND ETCHER 107

ing as the plate itself. The habits and haunts of the different
species were known to him intimately whether mallard, wood
duck, widgeon, yellowleg, teal, swan, drake, redhead, pintail,
or bluebill. No wonder he could put them all in their proper
settings, each an enchanting record of wild nature. The in-
cidental landscapes and backgrounds are in perfect harmony
with the birds’ habits. One sees and feels this wild life set in
the clearing of a new day, where the mists still hover about the
water’s surface; others in the very poetry of a fading after-
noon; then there are those with sunlight over the shallows of
a stream with reeds or groups of trees. One sees a heron stand-
ing alone reflecting its shadow among waterplants, and then
the eye rests on proofs of wind and rain. Much time is spent on
a favored print of Mr. Benson‘s entitled “Geese,” with its per-
fection and beauty of flight, and on others that are nearly equal-
ly important in his mind.

To sum up, Mr. Benson’s work reflects a sensitive apprecia-
tion of the great out-of-doors, by an artist who was ever con-
scious of nature’s offerings. There have been many imitators,
but none has had the ability to interpret his mind, or that al-
most spiritual gift which reflects the poetic quality of his
artistry.

As one reflects on Mr. Benson, his fine personality and his
great accomplishment in art, one questions one’s ability to find
adequate words for full expression of the inner thought; and,
should the phrase be found, to suggest it, one lingers on it, at
length wondering if the full meaning of his loss to us and the
graphic art world has been fully expressed. The indefinable ex-
pressions of beauty, mystery, and spirit belonged to him. All
who cherish fine prints, his friends, and those of us who knew
our “Cher Maitre,” believe that he will survive through his en-
during gift, and that the world has become the richer through
his having lived among us.

Notes on Rare Books

An Early German Carnival Play

THE Library has recently acquired Pamphilus Gengenbach’s
Von ainem IValdbruder (“About a Hermit”) a copy of the second
edition of the Carnival play first printed under the title Der Nollhart.
The play was performed on Shrove Sunday of the year 1517 in Basel.
The first edition was printed in the same city, presumably in Gengen-
bach’s own printing house ; the Library’s volume was produced in
1522, without the author’s name or the place, probably in Augsburg.

The title-page is filled with the woodcut of a hermit, whose up-
raised arms hold two curling scrolls, bearing the exhortations “Keep
brotherly love. Avoid selfishness. Love God. Love thy neighbor as
thyself.” In the background rises a forest, and the whole is sur-
rounded by an ornamental border. This title-page appeared for the
first time in the second edition; the woodcuts, however, which in
the 1517 edition preceded the entrance of every character in the play,
were omitted. The volume contains some unusual border decora-
tions, flanking the text in the inner margins.

The Waldbruder is not a drama in the sense of possessing action
or dramatic development, but rather a series of dialogues. From the
long prologue one learns that in 1488 there appeared a book of
prophecies “of great dangers and torment,” and that the hermit
is none other than the author of this book, who again reveals to
the heads of Christendom the fate awaiting them. He is aided in
the task of prophesying by St. Methodius, St. Birgitta of Sweden,
and the Sibyl, who appear as interlocutors in the play. St. Methodius
was a fourth-century bishop, who was martyred in Greece in the
persecution under Maximian ; St. Birgitta, the wife of a Swedish
prince, became lady-in-waiting to the Queen of Sweden in 1335,
and lived a life of penance after the death of her husband ; and the
Sibyl is probably the Cumaean Sibyl. The characters who come on
the scene in turn to inquire anxiously about their futures are the
Pope, the Emperor, the King of France, the Bishop of Mainz, the
Count Palatine, a Venetian, a Turk, a Swiss, a soldier, and finally
a Jew. The Pope, reproached by St. Birgitta for the evils in Rome,
learns of the impending invasion by the French King. Only the
Emperor fares well, and this is indeed the tendency of the work:

108

NOTES ON RARE BOOKS

109

faith in the Holy Roman Empire and the urging of reform in the
Church. St. Birgitta prophesies that the King of France will slay
many Germans, but will be driven away at last by the Emperor,
who will reign alone from Orient to Occident. St. Methodius in-
forms the Turk that, when all Christendom will be at peace and the
Church will be reformed, the punishment of the Turks will begin.

The volume is a quarto of 24 leaves, printed with Gothic type.
The text, consisting of rhymed couplets in tetrameter, follows that
of 1517, but with some modernization of the spelling. As the title
had been changed, the name of W aldbruder or just Bruder was sub-
stituted for Nollhart , except in one place (leaf 11 r). Two lines,
preceding the brief epilogue, “Apology of the poet Pamphilus Gen-
genbach,” are also absent, in accordance with the anonymity of the
edition. Further, the date 1517, mentioned in the text, had to be
changed to 1521 ; and, since the death of the Emperor Maximilian
had occurred in 1519, it was necessary to alter a prophecy about a
future emperor from “he will be named Maximilian” to ‘‘he de-
scends through God from Maximilian.” This alteration is made
by means of a cancel, the verse containing the new line being
printed on a paper flap which covers the original text. Yet the
theory that the printer used sheets left over from the first edition
does not hold in view of the changes in the spelling; it seems, there-
fore, that this particular anachronism was overlooked and amended
when the sheets were already printed.

Karl Goedeke, compiler of the bibliography Grundriss zur Geschichte
dcr deutschen Dichtung, published in 1856 a reprint of the first edition
of the work. At that time little was known about the life of Pam-
philus Gengenbach beyond the fact that he was a citizen of Basel
and a printer of books there between 1517 and 1522. Jacob Baech-
told, in his Geschichte der deutschen Literatur in der Schweiz, 1892, in-
sisted that Gengenbach came from Nuremberg, where he worked as
type-setter for Anton Koberger, and migrated from there to Basel.
Police records preserved in Basel show that, as late as 1522, Gen-
genbach had been put in jail for careless remarks about the Em-
peror, the King of France, and the Pope — the very characters who
appear in the Waldhruder. But as a printer he must have been judi-
cious, for between 1517 and 1519 one of his draftsmen was Hans
Holbein.

Goedeke credited Gengenbach with twenty-four works of his
own, but the authorship of some of these has been questioned.
Nevertheless, a number of epic and dramatic poems are considered
indubitably his, notable among them being The Ten Ages of this

no

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

World, also a Carnival play, with which the history of modern
drama is said to have begun. Three years before his death in 1524,
Gengenbach issued a reprint of Luther’s Sermo di Poenitentia.

The Waldbruder was reprinted in 1525, and subsequently it ap-
peared in a form considerably altered by Jacob Camerlander.

Margaret Munsterberg

The Spirit of Young America

DURING the Civil War, as during all wars, children imitated
their elders by playing at battles and soldiers; and the toy
manufacturers and publishers produced a stream of books and
playthings to suit their taste. The Library has recently acquired
such a book — The Spirit of Young America , a rare juvenile pub-
lished at Fall River, Massachusetts, by the Fall River Litho-
graphic Company, in 1864. This little volume, 6 by 8 inches in
colored paper covers, contains seven patriotic poems, illustrated
by charming colored lithographs. The pictures show children
dressed as soldiers and playing their parts : camping out, standing
sentry, fighting battles, and so on, while the accompanying verses
tell the moral and patriotic story of “Fred, the little Captain, who
took no repose nor rest, till he became a Hero..”

The first plate, “The Excercise,” shows Fred, in the costume
of an officer, drilling three other soldiers with the help of a cor-
poral. Here, as in the other plates, the children are dressed in a
hodgepodge of Revolutionary, Civil War, and Napoleonic cos-
tumes. “The Marching Out” takes place the next day “in the
first beams of the morning light.” Fred is shown dividing his
army into two parties and pointing out their stations. “The Out-
posts” depicts Fred’s men sneaking up on the enemy camp be-
hind a screen of rocks and trees, about to “appear so quick that
the foe quakes with terror and surprise” ; and the next picture,
“The Captives,” shows the trial of two prisoners taken at this
engagement. Captain Fred is judging them, while another boy
is cooking their supper over a fire — which “they’ll receive as
their just punishment.” Real battle is finally joined in “The
Storming of the Bridge”; the picture shows the fight in progress,
while the poem describes the victory of Fred’s party and the
enemy’s retreat to the village. The final verses, “The Last Battle,

NOTES ON RARE BOOKS

1 1 1

and Surrender of the Enemy,” tell of the fighting in the streets
of the town, the success of Fred’s men, and the peace made be-
tween the opponents. It ends,

“Ah!” cry they, “our Fred is a hero of might,

Who leads us to act — not to prattle;

Henceforth will we often march out to the field
And follow him on to the battle.”

The cover of the book is also printed in colors with a scene
from the story; it shows the children in camp, with a sentry and
drummer on guard. Nine separate lithographic stones were used
to print each plate, producing a delicate and varied effect. The
New England landscapes which form most of the backgrounds
are one of the most attractive features of the book.

Even more than adult productions, chidren’s books tend to be
read to death, and the existence of a paper-bound volume like this
in such good condition is unusual. As far as can be ascertained,
the book does not appear in the standard bibliographies of Amer-
ican children’s literature; it is not in Sabin’s Books Relating to
America. There is a brief entry in Kelly’s American Catalogue , but
this gives no information not found on the title-page. As for the
Fall River Lithographic Company, it was not a regular publish-
ing house ; an advertisement in the city directory for 1864 lists them
merely as “designers, engravers, and printers of every descrip-
tion of labels, show-cards, etc.” By the end of the decade, the
firm had disappeared.

Alison Bishop

Trustees of the Library

Lee M. Friedman, President
Robert H. Lord, Vice-President
Frank W. Buxton Frank J. Donahue

Patrick F. McDonald

Director, and Librarian

Milton Edward Lord

Contributors to this Issue

Sherman Paul is an Instructor in English and General Education
at Harvard University.

Abe C. Ravitz is working for his doctorate in American Literature
at New York University.

Arthur W. Heintzelman, etcher and painter, is Keeper of Prints
at the Boston Public Library.

Margaret Munsterberg and Alison Bishop are members of the
staff of the Rare Book Department of the Library.

Zoltan Haraszti is Keeper of Rare Books and Editor of Publica-
tions at the Boston Public Library. He is the author of John
Adams and the Prophets of Progress, just published by the Harvard
University Press.

3.21,52. 1 M .

THE

Boston Public Library
QUARTERLY

Volume 4, Number 3

Contents

Page

A Hundred Years Ago 115

By Zoltdn Haraszti

Governor Bernard for an American Nobility 125

By Jordan D. Fiore

The Keepsake in Nineteenth-Century Art 139

By Frank W eitenkampf

Eugene Delatre 149

By Arthur W. Heintzelman

Notes on Rare Books and Manuscripts

Letters by Longfellow to Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
by Mary L. Hcgarty

A Stephen O’Meara Collection

Valentine Writers’ Manuals
by Alison Bishop

Illustrations

157

160

* *

EDITOR: ZOLTAN HARASZTI

The Boston Public Library Quarterly is published for January, April, July,
and October by the Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston
in Copley Square, Boston 17. Entered as second-class matter at Boston,
Massachusetts. Printed at the Boston Public Library in June 1952

Single Copies , 50 cents
Annual Subscription , $ 2.00

THE

Boston Public Library
QUARTERLY

July 1952

A Hundred Years Ago

By ZOLTAN HARASZTI

IT was on October 14, 1852 — a hundred years ago — that
the City Council of Boston passed an ordinance giving defi-
nite form to the organization of a public library. Many
events had prepared the establishment of the new institution,
but this act is justly regarded as the beginning of its existence.

The ordinance — City Document No. 57 — is brief, its text
occupying little more than two pages. First of all, it provided
for the annual choosing of a Board of Trustees, consisting of
one member of the Board of Mayor and Aldermen, one mem-
ber of the Common Council and five citizens at large. The
Board was to make “such rules and regulations for their own
government and in relation to subordinate officers by them
appointed, as they may deem expedient.” It gave the Trustees
“general care and control” of the Library, including the ex-
penditure of all moneys appropriated therefor, subject at all
times to any limitations or restrictions made by the City Coun-
cil. The Trustees were directed to make an annual report to
the City Council containing a statement of the condition of
the Library, the number of books added during the year, and
an account of all receipts and expenditures, together with such
information or suggestions as they might deem important.

By the two branches of the City Council, a Librarian was
to be chosen annually, removable at their pleasure. He was to

n6 THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

have “the immediate care and custody” of the Library, “per-
form any and all of the services in relation to the same and . . .
obey all rules that may be prescribed by the Trustees.” There
was to be appointed annually a Committee of five citizens at
large, who, together with a Trustee as chairman, were to ex-
amine the Library and make a report of its condition to the
Trustees. This report was to be transmitted by the Trustees
to the City Council at the time of the presentation of their own
annual report. In prescribing the regulations relative to the
care and use of books, it was made the duty of the Trustees
“to adopt such measures as shall extend the benefits of the in-
stitution as widely as practicable throughout the community.”

Nearly two more years went by before the doors of the new
library were opened to the public; yet from the date of the
adoption of this ordinance Boston already had its library.

T HE idea of establishing a free city library originated with
the Frenchman Alexandre Vattemare. Born in 1797, Vatte-
mare had a strange career. As “Monsieur Alexandre,” he was
known throughout Europe as an actor — an impersonator and
ventriloquist; then, during his travels in many countries, he
conceived the idea of an international exchange of books,
prints, and documents among libraries and museums. Having
founded such a system in Europe, in October 1839 he came to
America to extend the organization to this country. Armed
with innumerable letters of introduction, he visited Washing-
ton, where President Van Buren as well as the party leaders
— John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and
others — were greatly impressed by his scheme.

Soon he addressed a memorial to Congress: “At the instance
chiefly of your memorialist,” he wrote, “a system of exchanges
has commenced between the governments and literary insti-
tutions of the different nations in Europe, by which books,
natural productions, and works of art possessed by one are
transferred, for an equivalent value, to another which may
need them.” What could the United States offer in such a sys-
tem? “Wanting printed books,” he assured Congress, “the

A HUNDRED YEARS AGO

ii 7

natural productions of the countries . . . are sought and in-
quired for with avidity in Europe and would command returns
ten-fold of any value that the cost of obtaining them on the
spot would amount to.” And there were also the laws, statutes,
and ordinances of the federal, state, and city governments.
The Joint Committee on the Library wrote a favorable report,
recommending that the Librarian be authorized to exchange
such duplicates as might be in the Library, and that thereafter
fifty additional copies of each volume of documents be printed
for the purpose of exchange. Both Houses unanimously ap-
proved.

His work in Washington done, Vattemare began his propa-
ganda among the state governments. His campaign took him
throughout the country. Everywhere he was received with en-
thusiasm. Well did he say, with his love of beautiful phrases: “Men
from the snow-clad hills of the North, the sunny glades of the
South, the rock-bound coast of the Atlantic, and the solitudes
of the West, laying aside sectional feelings and party ties,
came together to meet upon neutral grounds ...” A number
of states agreed to print extra copies of their documents, and
appropriated varying sums to defray the expenses of the sys-
tem of exchanges.

In April 1841, just before returning to France, Vattemare
appeared in Boston. He found a good many society libraries in
the city, but no great public institution which could carry on
the system of exchanges. The great need was, therefore, to
found such an institution. One of his first visits was to Josiah
Quincy, President of Harvard and former Mayor of Boston.
The following day Quincy wrote to his son: “Mr. Vattemare’s
suggestions, on reflection, I think both feasible and desirable,
and not to be slighted because of their foreign source.” The
Frenchman’s plan, he went on, was to form a general organi-
zation among all the societies that had libraries, so as to have
a medium of communication with similar associations in other
states and countries. In aid of such an organization, Vatte-
mare’s further suggestion was that “a building should be ob-
tained either from the patronage of the city or state, or from
the subscription of private individuals, for uniting all the libra-
ries and collections in one place and under one general super-

n8 THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

intendence . . . and the whole opened freely to the public, as
such libraries and collections are in Europe.”

The younger Quincy, a lawyer near forty and a former presi-
dent of the City Council, shared his father’s views, and with
him all the younger men to whom Vattemare especially ad-
dressed himself. On April 24 they held a meeting, listening
“with great delight” to his plan of forming “a great Literary
and Scientific Institution in this city.” Moved by the same
idealism which at that very moment was leading to the found-
ing of Brook Farm, they hoped that such an institution would
break down “the factitious distinctions which separate class
from class” by disseminating knowledge and taste through
every portion of the population. A second meeting was held
on May 7, Jonathan Chapman, the Mayor, presiding. A Com-
mittee of five — consisting of such outstanding citizens as
Dr. Walter Channing, Josiah Quincy, Jr., Charles Francis
Adams, the Reverend Ezra S. Gannett, and the Reverend
George W. Blagden — was elected to correspond with the va-
rious societies concerning the amalgamation of their libraries.

Unfortunately, the project met with little success. Some of
the societies saw “insuperable objections” to the union, while
others made difficult stipulations. So the enterprise began to
lag. Vattemare’s letter of January 1843, announcing the send-
ing of fifty volumes as a gift from the City of Paris, aroused
some qualms of conscience; for the Frenchman made the re-
spectful suggestion that the resolution of 1841 should be re-
deemed and “an Institution established, which will not only
be a suitable depository for foreign works, but an ornament
to the ‘Athens of America’ and a mine of literary wealth to her
sons.” A movement was started to repay the gift of Paris, and
hundreds of volumes were donated by interested citizens. But
there the affair stopped.

^3 N his second American visit in 1847, Vattemare was obliged
to make a new start in Boston.

During the preceding six years he had sent thousands of
volumes to this country, and he brought with him twelve
thousand books, three hundred maps, and a large number of

A HUNDRED YEARS AGO

1 19

medals and engravings. Nearly a hundred volumes were ear-
marked for Boston. The system of exchanges seemed securely
established in America ; twelve states, including far-off In-
diana, were enrolled, and the state legislatures were vying with
one another in the appreciation of Vattemare’s services. In
Boston he was welcomed with special warmth. Josiah Quincy,
Jr. was now Mayor, and he was a real friend. One evening in
August he gave a party for the visitor, to which all members
of the City Council were invited, thus providing an opportuni-
ty for talking matters over. Soon afterwards a Special Com-
mittee was elected to consider “what acknowledgment and
return should be made to the City of Paris for its gift of books,
and to provide a place for the same.”

On October 14 this Committee conveyed Vattemare’s wish
that, if the City choose to reciprocate the gift of Paris, it should
not be in works of great value but rather in such books as illus-
trated the present condition of literature, art, science, and gov-
ernment in America. At the end, they pointed to the need for
a public library:

The Committee cannot close their report without recommending
to the City Council a consideration of the propriety of commencing
a public library. Many of the citizens would, they believe, be; happy
to contribute both in books and money to such an object, and the
Committee are informed that a citizen who wishes that his name
may be concealed, has offered the sum of five thousand dollars for
the purpose of making the commencement — on condition only
that ten thousand dollars are raised at large for the same purpose,
and that the Library should be as freely used by all as may be con-
sistent with the safe keeping of the property.

A room on the third floor of City Hall was set aside for the
deposit and safe-keeping of the books received from Paris; and
a new Joint Committee was appointed to discuss “the expedi-
ency of commencing the formation of a public library under
the control and auspices of the City.” The books to reciprocate
the Paris gift were also pouring in; the list of them, printed
two years later, comprised more than a thousand titles. How-
ever, no donations of money were forthcoming; Mayor Quincy’s
offer — for he was the citizen who wished to have his name
concealed — was allowed to lapse.

120

THE B. P.L. QUARTERLY

The Committee, at least, met frequently. On December 6 it
reported, again through the Mayor :

That in their opinion the establishment of a public library is
recommended by many considerations.

It will tend to interest the people at large in literature and science.

It will provide for those who are desirous of reading a better
class of books than the ephemeral literature of the day.

It may be the means of developing minds that may make their
possessors an honor and a blessing to their race.

It will give to the young when leaving school an opportunity to
make further advances in learning and knowledge.

It will by supplying an innocent and praiseworthy occupation
prevent a resort to those scenes of amusement that are prejudicial
to the elevation of the mind.

The Committee endorsed Vattemare’s plans as “worthy of
the attention and patronage of the City” ; and whereas former-
ly only the international aspects of the system had been em-
phasized, now attention was called to the benefit which all the
cities of America would derive from it. “Linked together as we
are by political and business relations,” the Committee stated,
“the character and intelligence of the people in every city be-
tween here and Oregon is of most importance to the citizens
of Boston.” If a free library is founded here, the example will
be imitated. “At all events, the establishment of public libra-
ries and a free exchange of works of science, literature and art
will be productive of great good and is well deserving an at-
tempt to obtain it.”

But even in its generous zeal, the Committee was careful
to make it clear that it was not recommending “that the City
should make any appropriation for the purchase of books, or
hold out any encouragement that it will be done hereafter” —
a statement perhaps made only to allay anxieties. The Com-
mittee merely proposed that the City “should receive and take
care of any volume that may be contributed for the purpose
and agree, when the Library is of sufficient importance to jus-
tify the expense, to provide means that shall enable all the
citizens to use it.”

In his New Year’s address of January 3, 1848, Mayor Quincy
suggested that application be made to the Legislature “for
power of aiding public-spirited citizens in the formation of a

A HUNDRED YEARS AGO

21

library/’ The incoming City Council took up the subject, and
on January 24 directed the Mayor to make such an application.
In response to the Mayor’s ensuing move, on March 18 the
Legislature of the Commonwealth passed an act authorizing
the City of Boston “to establish and maintain a Public Library
for the use of the inhabitants of the said City.” It empowered
the City Council to make such rules and regulations for the
care and maintenance of the institution as they deemed proper,
provided that the annual appropriation did not exceed five
thousand dollars. The Act was approved by the Governor on
the same day, and was forwarded at once to the Common
Council, where it was read and accepted. Finally, on April 3,
the Mayor and Board of Aldermen signalized their concurrence.

Thus the act became a statute — the first statute ever passed
authorizing the establishment and maintenance of a public li-
brary as a municipal institution supported by taxation.

H OWEVER, there was no hope that “a large public sub-
scription” could be obtained towards the establishment of a
public library. The Committee, therefore, opened negotiations
with the Trustees of the Boston Athenaeum with the view of
making its library accessible to the public. An annual sum of
five thousand dollars was offered by the City, and the promise
of raising one hundred thousand dollars (by subscription among
citizens, not shareholders of the Athenaeum) to complete the
Athenaeum’s new building on Beacon Street was made. The
City’s condition was that “the citizens generally should be ad-
mitted to all the privileges of the shareholders.” The Trustees
of the Athenaeum declined the offer, suggesting that the Athenaeum
might be satisfied with fifty thousand dollars and the annual
payment “for the admission of the citizens to the use of the
library only, without any privileges in the reading-room or
otherwise.” But the shareholders refused to authorize even
such an arrangement.

Meanwhile books from authors, publishers, and private in-
dividuals continued to pour in. “They are a noble response
from the community in favor of a free city library,” the Com-
mittee reported, adding that “the rare and valuable books re-

122

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

ceived from Paris are the nucleus around which, we earnestly
hope, a new and popular institution will speedily arise, which
shall open its doors to the public.”

The first contribution of money was received in August,
1850, from Mayor John P. Bigelow — a thousand dollars, out
of the amount subscribed for a testimonial to him. Ever since,
the income of that fund has been devoted to the purchase of
books. About the same time Edward Everett offered his col-
lection of public documents and state papers, comprising near-
ly a thousand volumes. He strongly urged the acquisition of a
building suitable for the accommodation of fifteen or twenty
thousand volumes and capable of future enlargement. “The
first principles of popular government,” he insisted, “require
that the means of education should, as far as possible, be equal-
ly within the reach of the whole population.” There was no
other place where these principles were so thoroughly carried
out as in Boston — up to the age when school education ended.
Beyond that point “the noble principle of equality” failed:

At present the sons of the wealthy alone have access to well-
stored libraries ; while those whose means do not allow them to
purchase books are too often debarred from them at the moment
when they would be most useful . . . Where is the young engineer,
machinist, architect, chemist, engraver, painter, or student in any
of the professions or any of the exact sciences, or of any branch
of natural history, or of moral or intellectual philosophy, to get
access to the books which are absolutely necessary for him to pur-
sue his inquiries to any advantage? There are no libraries in Bos-
ton which strictly speaking are public.

By January 1, 1852, the books received for the future library
numbered 4,000 volumes. In February Mayor Seaver requested
the City Council to make concrete provisions for the library.
The small room on the third floor of City Hall was insufficient,
and further donations could hardly be expected before rooms
were provided. “There should be,” he stated, “no unnecessary
delay in placing the library on such a foundation as will entitle
it to, and secure for it, the fullest confidence of the community
in its success and usefulness.” Three years before, John Jacob
Astor had bequeathed to the City of New York the sum of
$400,000 tor the establishment and maintenance of a public

A HUNDRED YEARS AGO 123

library; and Mayor Seaver appealed to the pride of the City
Council :

Boston ought not long to be far behind her sister city of New York
in the establishment of a public library; and, while we can scarcely
hope to rival her princely Astor, it cannot be* doubted that we have
many citizens who would be ready to bestow upon it large sums
in money and in books, if they can be fully satisfied of its perma-
nent foundation and ultimate success.

At the same time the Mayor suggested the appointment of
a Librarian and the formation of a Board of Trustees. His
recommendations were adopted — on May 13 the City Council
chose Edward Capen as Librarian; and on May 24 Edward
Everett, George Ticknor, John P. Bigelow, Nathaniel B. Shurtleff,
and Thomas G. Appleton were elected to serve, together with
the Committee on the Library, as members of the Board of
Trustees. The first report of the Board, “on the objects to be
attained by the establishment of a public library and the best
mode of effecting them,” was drawn up by Ticknor with Ever-
ett’s help. Submitted on July 6, it was unanimously adopted.

This is a famous document. With its vision of the library of
the future, it is justly regarded as a basis of the entire public
library movement in America.

T HE report first described the system of public education,
its achievements and limitations, emphasizing the function of
libraries. The existing social libraries, it stated, did not satisfy
the great wants of the City, for multitudes had no right of ac-
cess to any of them. Yet books ought to be furnished to all,
for, under the social, political, and religious institutions of
America, it was of paramount importance that the largest pos-‘
sible number of persons should be able to understand questions
going down to the very foundations of the social order. Al-
though the rival claims of no class, no matter how highly edu-
cated, should be overlooked, the first regard should be shown
to the needs of those who in no other way could supply them-
selves with the reading necessary for their further education.
The precise plan of the new library could not be settled before-
hand; it was “a new thing,” and one had to feel one’s way as

124

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

one advanced. Nevertheless, one might foresee that it would
fall into four classes:

1. Books that could not be taken out of the Library, such
as cyclopedias, dictionaries, important public documents, and
books which, from their rarity or costliness, could not be easily
replaced.

2. Books that few persons would wish to read, and of
which, therefore, only one copy need be kept, but which should
be permitted to circulate freely. If, contrary to expectation,
this copy should be often asked for, another copy, or more
than one other copy, should be bought.

3. Books that would be often asked for, that is, ‘The more
respectable of the popular books of the time.” Of these, copies
should be provided in such numbers that many persons, if they
desire it, could read the same work at the same moment, and
so render the pleasant and healthy literature of the day acces-
sible to the whole people at the only time they care for it —
when it is living, fresh, and new.

4. Periodical literature, which should not be taken out at
all, or only in rare and peculiar cases, but should be kept in a
reading room accessible to everybody.

The report recommended that no restriction be placed on
access to the Library, “except such as the nature of individual
books, or their safety, may demand.” Thus the Trustees hoped
to make the Library “the crowning glory” of the system of
City schools — an institution “fitted to continue and increase
the best effects of that system, by opening all the means of
self culture through books, for which these schools have been
specially qualifying them.”

The erection of a building and the purchase of an ample li-
brary the Trustees regarded as impossible at that time. They
looked only for the continuance of such “moderate and frugal
expenditure” as had already been started, and for the assign-
ment of a room or rooms in one of the public buildings belong-
ing to the City. In order to put the Library into operation with
the least possible delay, they suggested the use of the ground
floor of the Adams school-house in Mason Street.

The next step was the passing of the ordinance of October
14; 1852.

Governor Bernard for an American Nobility

By JORDAN D. FIORE

BY his inability to appreciate the American point of view
and by his unwillingness to compromise, Francis Bernard,
Royal Governor of Massachusetts from 1760 to 1769,
greatly hastened the crisis. Unaware of his faults, he constant-
ly urged the authorities in England to revise the American
colonial system and establish an American nobility to combat
radicalism. According to his own admissions, he disapproved of
many of the policies of the home government, but, since the
sovereignty lay “in the hands of the King in Parliament,” he
regarded it as his duty to carry them out.

Many of the difficulties, Bernard felt, grew out of the fact
that no definite set of rules had been established for the gov-
ernment of the colonies. With confidence in his own wisdom,
he developed such a code, and in 1764 he forwarded it to his
patrons in England under the title “Principles of Law and
Polity, Applied to the Government of the British Colonies in
America.”1 He sent three copies to his wife’s cousin, Viscount
Barrington, Secretary at War, on June 23, 1764, with the re-
quest that he transmit one to Lord Hillsborough, First Lord of
Trade, and one to Lord Halifax, a Secretary of State.3 Richard
Jackson, who soon afterward \Vas Bernard’s choice for Agent
for Massachusetts, and John Pownall, Secretary of the Board
of Trade, also received copies.3 For the next five years he was
to bombard his patrons with a request to put his plan into
practice.

The “Principles of Law and Polity” lists ninety-seven theses,
Bernard stated his purpose in his preface as follows:

The writer has avoided declamation, and kept close to argument.
He has reduced his whole subject into a set of propositions; be-
ginning with first principles which are self-evident, proceeding to
propositions capable of positive proof, and descending to hypotheses
which are to be determined by degrees of probability only .4

He agreed first with the doctrine that the sovereignty of Great
Britain lay in the hands of the King and Parliament, and that

125

126

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

Parliament had the right to make all laws. Parliament might
grant or allow separate legislation in the colonies; but this
was a grant and not an absolute right. Further, he maintained
that this privilege of separate legislation “must be exercised
in subordination to the Sovereign power from which it is de-
rived.”5 Since the Privy Council of the King could reject any
law passed by the legislature and approved by the Governor,
this did not represent any change of policy.

Principle 36 recommended that the colonies should “pay
the charge for the support of their own Governments, and of
their own defence.” One of the items on which the British
Ministry had asked the advice of the Lords of Trade in 1763
was the matter of colonial contribution to the cost of main-
taining the King’s forces in America. Thus Bernard’s principle
should have been acceptable in England, but it would certainly
have roused the colonies. Bernard reiterated the right of Par-
liament to raise taxes in any part of the Empire, yet, he stated,
“it would be most adviseable to leave the Provincial Legis-
latures the raising the internal takes.”6 Having straddled the
issue, he further advised that “it would make it more agreeable
to the people, though the sum to be raised was prescribed, to
leave the method of taxation to their own Legislature.”7

These theses were compromises between the American and
British points of view. The colonies had been paying the costs
of their own governments by provincial legislation, and accord-
ing to the Bernard plan the procedure was to continue. The
colonies had frequently been reimbursed for a large part of
the money spent in their own defense, but under the plan the
entire costs would be borne by them. In this respect, the plan
was in agreement with the recommendations of the Board of
Trade. It urged that the Ministry should prescribe the amount
that the provincial legislatures should raise for their govern-
ments and defense; the legislatures would be allowed merely
to determine the manner in which the money was to be raised.8

For those who at the time of the Sugar Act had insisted
upon the policy of “No taxation without representation, the
Governor had something to offer. In his opinion, granting a
share in the imperial legislation to the colonies would be im-
practical, but representation in Parliament might be expedient;

GOVERNOR BERNARD

127

and, although the authority of Parliament over the colonies
was not to be questioned, colonial representation might serve
“for quieting disputes” and “preventing a separation in future
times.”9

This suggestion of representation in Parliament was in keep-
ing with the demands of some members of the popular faction
at that moment. James Otis in his The Rights of the British
Colonies Asserted and Proved had approved of the principle. He
wrote in 1764:

When the parliament shall think fit to allow the colonists a rep-
resentation in the house of commons, the equity of their taxing
the colonies will be as clear as their power is at present of doing it
without, as they please.10

One of the Boston Resolutions of 28 May, 1764, which instructed
the town’s representatives — Tyler, Otis, Cushing, and Thacher
— to seek the repeal of the Sugar Act stated :

If taxes are laid upon us, in any shape, without our having a legal
representation where they are laid, are we not reduced from the
character of free subjects to the miserable state of tributary slaves?11

But Otis’s pamphlet and the Boston resolutions contained cer-
tain loopholes. Otis, while making concessions to the power of
Parliament, had ridiculed Thomas Pownall’s pamphlet, The
Rights of the Colonies Stated and Proved, which had also advo-
cated parliamentary representation.12 The Boston resolution
emphasized that the people of the town were opposed to the
Sugar Act since it “annihilates our charter right to govern and
tax ourselves.” Their idea of having legal representation in
the body in which the taxes were determined was merely a de-
mand for the continuation of tax-levying by the provincial
legislature. Indeed, Otis and other members of the popular
faction soon realized the impracticability of parliamentary rep-
resentation, for the American representatives could be at best
only a hopeless minority in Commons; any bill could be passed
over their opposition, and they would have no hope for repeal.
The principle that only the provincial legislatures had the right
to levy taxes thus became the rallying cry of the patriots, voiced
with special force in the Stamp Act Congress held in the fol-
lowing year.

128

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

H AVING developed his ideas to this point, Bernard was
now ready to reveal the glaring fault in the American system
of government and to suggest his plan for the establishment
of a colonial nobility as a means of remedy. His belief in the
necessity of such a measure grew out of a conviction that it
would balance the relationship between the King and his American
subjects. He maintained that there should be a third “real and
distinct” legislative power, “mediating between the King and
the People, which is the peculiar excellence of the British Con-
stitution.”13

In Massachusetts, for example, the Legislature had two
branches, the House of Representatives, the members of which
were elected by the town meetings, and the Council, the mem-
bers of which were elected by the House of Representatives
with the approval of the Governor. It was the Council that
Bernard wanted to reform. The Council served a dual function:
it was a legislative body wLich passed on bills originating in
the House, and it also served as the Governor’s privy council.
As a legislative branch it met under the direction of a president
chosen by the members. During the first six years of Bernard’s
tenure Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson was Council Presi-
dent; when the Council met as a privy council, usually Bernard
himself presided. The two branches of the legislature were
greatly affected by the popular will. The House was immedi-
ately responsible to the people, since its members had to face
re-election annually; and the members of the Council, depend-
ent upon the House, were indirectly responsible to the people.
Only the possibility that the Governor might negative the
election of a Councillor remained as a check upon popular ex-
cesses; and Bernard felt that the arrangement added “weight
to the popular, and lighten [ed] the royal scale : so as to destroy
the balance between the royal and popular powers.”14 At this
time the Council was conservative, and most of the Governor’s
wishes were granted; so that there was little justification for
Bernard’s distrust of the Council’s position; but the attitude of
that body after 1766 proved his point.

Through the establishment of an American nobility the

GOVERNOR BERNARD 129

King’s authority would be strengthened. Bernard made the
propositions :

Although America is not now (and probably will not be for
many years to come) ripe enough for an hereditary Nobility; yet
it is now capable of a Nobility for life.

A Nobility appointed by the King for life, and made independent,
would probably give strength and stability to the American gov-
ernments, as effectually as an hereditary Nobility does to that of
Great Britain.

Such a nobility would hold a place similar to that of the House
of Lords and would serve the same purpose, being a buffer be-
tween the popular power and the Crown.

It was in the summer of 1764 that Bernard sent copies of his
plan to Barrington, Halifax, and Hillsborough, but it took
some time before he learned what these influential persons
thought of his work. “I have nothing to add,” he wrote to Bar-
rington, “but that the Experience of explaining to the Ameri-
cans the nature of their own rights keeps encreasing as new
Pamphletts on the popular Side are coming out. If your Lord-
ship should think that this Paper affords a proper System for
such an explaination, I am quite prepared to enforce & extend
the principal propositions thereof, by observations of my own
& conclusions drawn from them . . .”l6 Not content with the
distribution of the essay, he asked Barrington to attempt “to
procure Lord Mansfields thoughts upon it.” He knew that if
the plan were approved by Mansfield, Chief Justice of the
King’s Bench and a staunch supporter of the royal prerogative,
his success would be assured.

Early in October Barrington informed Bernard about the
death of his wife, and made a brief comment on the plan: “I
have presented your work to Lord Halifax who admired it
greatly, and says it is the best thing of the kind by much that
he has ever read; I am persuaded Lord Hillsborough will not
give it less commendation.”17

In the meantime Bernard had written a remarkable letter to
Halifax, suggesting a scheme to change the boundaries of the
New England colonies. He explained that the division of New

130 THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

England into governments of suitable size would not be diffi-
cult “if it was unimbarrassed with the Politics Prejudice and
Humours of the People.” Any difficulty that might arise would
grow out of “the bad policy of establishing republican forms
of Government in the British Dominions.”18

Bernard’s plan for the reorganization of the colonies on a
geographical basis is interesting. First the governments of
Rhode Island and Connecticut should be dissolved; the new
province of Massachusetts would then consist of all the prov-
ince, all of New Hampshire and Rhode Island, and all of Con-
necticut east of the Connecticut River, while the second prov-
ince would consist of Maine and western Acadia, and all of the
land farther east would make up the third province. The Gov-
ernor did not overlook the power of religious differences. By
dividing Connecticut, two potential sources of dissension would
be removed: New Haven, the seat of Yale College, Harvard’s
Congregationalist rival, and Hartford, the province’s other re-
ligious center, would then be in separate colonies. New Hamp-
shire was good Congregationalist territory, and so there should
be no religious problem there. Only Rhode Island with its
Quakers, Baptists, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, and
Sephardic Jews might be difficult to absorb into the new colony.
In Bernard’s opinion, however, religious differences had be-
come “so entirely subservient to politics, that, if the state of
the Government is reformed, and a perfect Toleration secured,
Religion will never give any trouble.” This new province of
Massachusetts would be, he thought, an ideal place to attempt
the new experiment, which Bernard then unfolded to Halifax.

By a rather unusual logic Bernard felt certain that the popu-
lar faction would lose little by the adoption of his plan. He
reasoned that to allow the members of the Legislative Council
to be removed by the people, who had no hand in the appoint-
ment, would be unconstitutional. Yet the people would object
to the arbitrary removal of the Councillors by the King. The
answer to this problem was to appoint them for life, and thus
they would be independent of both the King and the people.
In this point Bernard certainly displayed an amazing naivete.
By keeping the membership of the Council dependent pn the
House of Representatives, the people of the province had an

GOVERNOR BERNARD

I3I

indirect control ; and the advocates of popular rights could
hardly be expected to give up this power in exchange for two
Councils, one selected by the King for life and the other serving
at the King’s pleasure. For the new Council obviously would
be filled with royal favorites, men recommended by the Gov-
ernor. The plan, if adopted, would give these officials a legisla-
tive power they did not yet possess. In England it was not un-
usual for a member of the House of Lords to serve as a King’s
appointee in an administrative, executive, or judicial capacity,
as did Halifax, Hillsborough, Shelburne, and Mansfield. But
even the possibility of serving on the Privy Council could not
have tempted the representatives who espoused the patriot
cause. Through their power of electing the members of the
Council, they already controlled the privy council.

Bernard presented to Halifax a project to create an inde-
pendent class of royal appointees. The various appointments
to royal posts were made by the King or by the Governor in
the name of the King, but the salaries for these posts were paid
by the provincial legislature. Bernard, fearing that the control
of the purse-strings gave the legislatures too much power, pro-
posed that a Civil List be established for the support of Crown
officers. He who in his plan had advocated that each colonial
government should be self-supporting, now proposed that the
home government provide a subsidy for the maintenance of
its colonial officers “that they who hold the reins of Govern-
ment and the balance of Justice may no way be subject to
popular influence.” Three events prompted his suggestion.
During the Sugar Act controversy, when the bill for appropri-
ating money for the Governor’s salary was introduced, a mem-
ber of the House said that if the British Government levied
taxes without the consent of the House, the Ministry ought to
pay the salary of the Governor. Hutchinson’s additional allow-
ance as Chief Justice was withheld by the House after an argu-
ment over a money bill in 1762; and finally Edmund Trowbridge
was forced to wait for more than a year for the salary due him
as Attorney-General. These threats would be eliminated by
giving guaranteed salaries to royal appointees filling admin-
istrative offices.

Bernard hoped that the King would present his plan in a

132

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

royal proclamation to which “the consent of the colonies
will be absolutely necessary.” If, however, the plan were adopted
by the King in Parliament, the consent of the colonies would
not be necessary, but would be “very expedient.”19

Only two groups of people would have been pleased by Ber-
nard’s plan: the royal appointees, Who would have been made
members of one of the Councils and thus have attained noble
rank, and their friends, relatives, and supporters. The popular
faction, already protesting parliamentary encroachment on
colonial rights, would have resented the further assertion of
the royal prerogative. However, there were many lawyers,
representatives (particularly from western Massachusetts),
tradesmen, and former soldiers who were not certain of their
attitudes on particular issues of the day. With the establish-
ment of a strong royalist branch of government, and with the
possibility of rewards for serving it made apparent, these men
might have been converted to the royalist cause.

Some aspects of the plan might have been put into effect a
few years earlier by Pownall, since there was little antipathy
toward him, but the pamphlets and newspapers of the 1760’s
unmistakably show that it would have been violently fought
at this time. Men like Otis, Thacher, Sam Adams, John Adams,
Hancock, and Bowdoin were not interested in English rewards,
nor were they concerned with wealth, which some already had,
and which the others might have earned with their skills.

Bernard’s plan for a balanced government in Massachusetts
was the basis of only one of the many controversies over the
same issue. The English constitution, as Cadwallader Colden,
Lieutenant-Governor of New York, stated, consisted “in a
proper balance between the monarchical, aristocratical, and
democratical forms of government,” and that principle was ex-
tended as far as possible in ten of the North American colonies.
Many colonial conservatives, and even many who espoused the
popular cause, accepted this principle. Only in Massachusetts,
Rhode Island, and Connecticut was there lacking any “aris-
tocratical branch of the provincial government.”

That the Council in Massachusetts had remained conserva-
tive and for the most part subservient, or at least agreeable, to
the Governor’s wishes was only Bernard’s good fortune. The ac-

GOVERNOR BERNARD

133

tion of the House in its control of Council membership, through
forced resignations and its refusal to elect members opposed
to the popular faction, was to provide for him later the best ar-
gument that the government of the province was getting out
of hand.

Jt^ERNARD wrote to Barrington in December 1764 that he
was “very flattered by my Lord Halifax’s approbation of the
essay.”20 However, Halifax’s approbation did not signify that
he was willing to execute the plan, for the British Ministry had
many other problems to consider before the organization of
the colonies could be debated. In the next year, with the forma-
tion of the Rockingham Cabinet, Halifax resigned as Secretary
of State for the Southern Department. Bernard, too, had his
troubles in attempting to enforce the Stamp Act, and so little
more was said for some time about his plan.

In November 1765 Bernard wrote again to Lord Barrington,
who was then Secretary of War, about his project. Recent
events did not encourage him to change his ideas.21 He blamed
the neglect of his plan on the fact that “unfortunately . . . the
Business of the Finances took the Lead.” His letter, which is
an excellently conceived attack upon the parliamentary system
of taxing the colonies, also discussed the weaknesses of the
royal government in America, the influence of the popular fac-
tion, and the lack of balance between the two. He feared that
it was almost too late to reform the administration of the
colonies. Reaffirming his belief that colonial representation in
Parliament was expedient, he advised that a system of par-
liamentary representation be evolved immediately until a set
of regulations acceptable to the colonies and Parliament might
be established. He made several suggestions, among which
were that colonial legislatures should recognize the supremacy
of Parliament and that the laws of the colonies should be re-
duced to the standards of the laws of England. He also reiter-
ated the need of a Civil List and of “a true Middle Legislative
Power, appointed by the King for Life & separate from the
privy Council.”

Throughout all his altercations with the House Bernard had

134

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

found comfort in the loyalty of his Council, headed by Thomas
Hutchinson. In 1766 the popular faction succeeded in elimin-
ating nineteen “friends of government,, from the House and
six from the Council — Judges Oliver and Lynde, and John
Cushing, Secretary Oliver, Attorney-General Edmund Trow-
bridge, and Thomas Hutchinson. Try as he might, Bernard
could not induce the House to agree to the election of the
Crown officers to the Council, and he negatived many of the
House’s choices each year. Rather than to allow the Governor
his own way, the House refused to fill the positions and at one
time twelve of the twenty-eight were vacant.

The House and Council concurred in rejecting many of Ber-
nard’s demands and in failing to adopt laws that he desired,
thus rendering him almost helpless. The Governor continued
to complain to the Board of Trade, to Barrington, Shelburne,
Hillsborough, the Pownalls, and others of influence, calling
attention to the abuses of the House. To Shelburne, who suc-
ceeded Halifax, he explained many of his ideas. Shelburne ex-
pressed his thanks, but was unable, or unwilling, to put the
plan into practice.

Bernard was greatly upset that the Council, once so coop-
erative as a legislative and privy council, had become a tool of
the popular party. In a long letter to Pownall, marked private,
he referred to the introduction of royal troops and stated that
the government was now protected but had “not yet recovered
much of its former energy.” This energy, according to him,
might never be restored under the existing situation. A com-
promise was desirable and possible, if the work of reform were
started at once,

making that necessary amendment of the constitution of this Gov-
ernment, the putting the Appointment of the Council in the King’s
hands; it will be an Event most happy for this Province . . . With
this alteration I do believe the Disorder of this Government will
be remedied and the Authority of it fully restored. Without it
there will be perpetual Occasion to resort to Expedients, the con-
tinual Inefficacy of which will speak in the words of Scripture,
“You are careful and troubled about many things but one thing
is needful” . . ,22

In the meantime the Governor, eager to institute a system

GOVERNOR BERNARD

135

of colonial nobility, was not averse to procuring such honors
for himself. Largely through Barrington’s influence, Hillsbor-
ough, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, obtained the title
of Baronet for him in 1769. At about the same time he was re-
called to England, ostensibly to advise the King and Ministry
concerning conditions in the colony.

li/VEN in the last year of his administration Bernard con-
tinued to urge the British authorities to reorganize the American
governments. Late in 1768 he recommended again to Hills-
borough that a system of fixed salaries for Crown appointees
be established and that the Civil List be set up by the Ministry.23

On February 4, 1769, shortly before his recall, he wrote an-
other forceful letter to Hillsborough. The idea of a royally-
appointed Council (which was actually established in Massa-
chusetts in 1774) was evidently gaining favor in England, and
the Governor felt that some of the members should be excluded,
at least temporarily. On the other hand, the members who
were eliminated in 1766 — the Lieutenant Governor, the Sec-
retary of the Province, and the Judges — should be restored
immediately. The less obnoxious members might be retained,
and from among the other royal officers — the Judge of Ad-
miralty, the Attorney-General, the Solicitor General, and some
of the Commissioners of the Customs, for example — the
Crown could select outstanding defenders of the prerogative.
Cautiously, Bernard suggested that the naming of Customs
Commissioners to the Council be postponed until the distur-
bances had subsided. Since the organization of the new Coun-
cil would take time, he thought it advisable to fill only twelve
of the posts, and the remainder only after the prospective can-
didates proved that they merited the appointments.

Eventually, Bernard hoped, the “middle legislature” might
be organized as a separate body, its members appointed by the
King for life, to be removed only for malconduct adjudged by
this Upper House, with the consent of the Governor, or by the
King in his Privy Council.24 The Privy Council of the province
under the new development would be composed of members
of the House of Representatives, members of the new middle

136 THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

legislature, and “upon some Occasion of Gentlemen who have
Seats in Neither.”

The Governor was careful to point out the possibilities of
patronage. The King’s position, by the new power of appoint-
ment, would be even more important and would “become . . . one of
the principal Means of balancing the Weight of the People.”
Perhaps this power could not be carried too far in America,
he agreed, but it was possible to carry it farther than it had
been up to that time. With the increase in patronage, the King
would be able to make a distinction between the friends of the
government and the popular faction. He explained that “this
method would multiply the Honors conferred by his Majesty
at least five-fold in every Province without making them
cheap.” Finally, he suggested that each member of the Upper
House should be given the title of Baron, which “is no more
than a Lord of Manor in England has a Right to, whose Court
is now called Curia Baronis”25

Ten days later, Bernard forwarded the names of twelve men
who should be named to this first Council.26 Thomas Hutchin-
son headed the list. Andrew Oliver, John Cushing, Peter Oli-
ver, Edmund Trowbridge, and Benjamin Lynde, all of whom
had been rejected annually since 1766, were also on it. The
other six whom Bernard suggested for appointment were Thomas
Flucker, Nathaniel Ropes, Timothy Paine, James Russell, Ben-
jamin Lincoln, and Thomas Hubbard, all members of the
Council in 1769. Flucker succeeded Andrew Oliver as Secre-
tary of the Province in 1774; he remained a staunch loyalist
despite the fact that James Bowdoin, the President of the Coun-
cil and a leader of the popular faction, was his brother-in-law,
and Henry Knox later married his daughter. Nathaniel Ropes
became a Judge of the Superior Court in 1772 and served until
his death in 1774. Timothy Paine of Worcester was named one
of the Mandamus Councillors in 1774 but did not take the oath;
although his sympathy was with the King, he did not leave the
province but remained in Worcester during the war. James
Russell of Charlestown, too, was named to the Mandamus
Council in 1774 and did not take the oath; two of his sons were
driven out of the province as loyalists, but he remained in
Charlestown. Benjamin Lincoln of Hingham was a member of

GOVERNOR BERNARD 137

the popular faction and served as a Brigadier General in the
Revolution.

Bernard’s plan, of course, was never adopted. His correspon-
dence with Hillsborough, fortunately for him, was not among
the letters published by Edes and Gill in 1769. The plan did not
reach the American public until the publication in 1774 of his
Select Letters , which contained as an Appendix the “Principles
of Law and Polity.” The volume included some of the letters
to Pownall and Barrington with emendations and omissions.
But by this time the Bernard letters met with almost no re-
sponse in Massachusetts, so busy was the popular faction in
other affairs.

Yet, to a limited extent, some of Bernard’s ideas were realized.
The Townshend Acts of 1767 provided that a part of the income
from the duties should be used for the support of certain royal
appointees, of whom Hutchinson in his capacity as Chief Jus-
tice was one. Bernard did succeed in 1770 and 1771 in inducing
the British Ministry to make appropriations guaranteeing
Hutchinson’s salary when he succeeded to the governorship.
The Massachusetts Government Act of 1774 called for the ap-
pointment by the King of the Massachusetts Mandamus Coun-
cil. There may be some significance in the fact that Bernard
published his letters and his plan in that same year. He thought,
perhaps, that the publication would raise him in the estimation
of the Ministry.

Notes

1. The essay was first published in Bernard’s Select Letters on the Trade
and Government of America; and the Principles of Law and Polity, (London,
1774). The Rare Book Department of the Boston Public Library has a copy
of this book, as well as many other rare items relating to Governor Bernard.
Among them are Letters to the Ministry from Governor Bernard, General Gage
and Commodore Hood (Boston, 1769); and Letters to the Right Honorable the
Earl of Hillsborough from Governor Bernard, General Gage, and the Honorable
His Majesty's Council for the Province of Massachusetts Bay (Boston, 1769).
Two works show the antagonism against Bernard in the colonies: An Address
to a Provincial Bashazv (Boston, 1769) and An Elegy to the Infamous Memory

138 THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

of Sr F — B — (Boston, 1769). The Rare Book Department also has three
autograph manuscripts signed by the Governor.

2. Bernard’s choice of Barrington as an intermediary between him and
Halifax was a wise one, for Barrington considered Halifax “one of the oldest
& most intimate friends ... in the world.” Bernard Papers (Harvard College
Library) x, 296.

3. The letter to Barrington is *6 in the Select Letters. The letter to Pow-
nall is #7.

4. Select Letters, p. 68.

5. Ibid., Principle 16.

6. Ibid., Principle 44.

7. Ibid., Principle 48.

8. Ibid., Principles 48, 45.

9. Ibid., Principles 61-65.

10. James Otis, The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted mid Proved
(Boston, 1764) p.59. The Rare Book Department of the Boston Public Library
has a copy of this rare work.

11. Instructions of the Town of Boston (Boston, 1764). There is also a
London edition of this same year, frequently bound with Otis’s work.

12. Thomas Pownall, The Rights of the Colonies Stated and Proved (Lon-
don, 1765). Pownall repeated the principle of parliamentary representation in
his Speech in Favour of America (London? 1774?) and his Administration of
the British Colonies (London, 1774). The Boston Public Library has copies
of the last two items.

13. Select Letters, Principle 86.

14. Ibid., Principle 87.

15. Ibid., Principles 88 and 89.

16. Bernard to Barrington, July 23, 1764; Bernard Papers, III, 236.

17. Barrington to Bernard, October 3, 1764; ibid., X, 195.

18. Bernard’s letter to Halifax is in Volume 41 in the State Paper Office,
London. A copy, made on November 9, 1764, is found in Jared Sparks’s com-
pilation, “British Papers Relating to the American Revolution” Harvard
College Library, II, 39-42.

19. There is nothing in the Massachusetts Charter of 1691 to indicate
that the legislature was given the privilege of approving or rejecting the proc-
lamations of the King.

20. Bernard to Barrington, December 27, 1764; Bernard Papers, III, 271.

21. Bernard to Barrington, November 23, 1765; ibid., V, 47.

22. Bernard to John Pownall, November 23, 1768; ibid., VI, 168.

23. Bernard to Hillsborough, December 12, 1768; ibid., VII, 115.

24. There is a similarity between this plan and the idea of the House of
Lords.

25. The letter is dated February 4, 1769; Bernard Papers, VII, 132-138.

26. Bernard to Hillsborough, Postscript to letter of February 4, 1769,
dated February 14, 1769; ibid., VII, 140.

The Keepsake in Nineteenth-Century Art

By FRANK WEITENKAMPF

PERHAPS the keepsake has been treated just a bit slight-
ingly in our day and is worth a re-examination and a pos-
sible revision of judgment.

The nineteenth-century keepsake flowered most in England
and the United States. France, after its seventeenth-century
anthologies and eighteenth-century Almanack des Muses , had
in the nineteenth century counterparts of the English-language
keepsakes such as Album Litter air e (1832), UEmeraude (1832),
Le Talisman (1832), Ne m’ oubliez pas (1837), Le Brick , Album
de Mer (1836), Consolation et Esperance : Keepsake Religieux
(1836), and others. These little books, some in satin bindings
and slip cases, displayed an impressive list of authors : Lamar-
tine, Nodier, Dumas, Gautier, Sainte-Beuve, Heine, Sue, Hugo,
Chenier. And Germany followed its eighteenth-century Mu-
senalmanach with early nineteenth-century Taschenbuch zum
geselligen Vergniigen , Vergissmeinnicht, Aurora , and the like,
with contributions by prominent writers.

According to Walter Thornbury, Alaric Watts is said to
have proposed “to start an annual volume (half art, half liter-
ature), in imitation of the German pocket-books,” thus origin-
ating the keepsake. And Howard Mumford Jones, in his Ideas
in America (1944), remarks that “the French and British an-
nuals were the models of the American gift books.” But, what-
ever influence continental European annuals may have had on
the English-language product, the latter was essentially the
result of British and American taste, talent, and enterprise,
with a character quite its own.

There was also counter-influence on France. Frederic Lach-
evre wrote in his Bibliographic des keepsakes et autres recueils
collectifs de la periode romantique , 1823-48 : “The Keepsakes . . .
were a response to a mode come from England, and which as-
sociated a truly artistic effort with interesting texts. The
opinion then prevalent acknowledged the decided superiority
of the English from the point of view of illustration and en-

139

140

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

graving, claiming for the French a less marked superiority on the
literary side. Hence the fusion of English engravings with French
texts.” British engravings appeared in French publications such
as Le Diamantj orne de seise gravures anglaises and Keepsake Fran-
gais for 1831. The latter has British engravings after British
artists, and French ones from French designs; so that Turner,
Boys, and Johannot are joined in a pretty mixture of styles.
American plates also found their way to French publishers.
The Keepsake Americain for 1831, issued in New York, Phila-
delphia, and Paris, with American engravings mostly after
British designs, states in its preface: “We have long felt the
desire to make an attempt to give our well-beloved public some
fine books in the manner of those rich, agreeable, and interest-
ing English galleries in which all the art of the designer and
all the skill of the engraver, united with select pieces by con-
temporary celebrities, concur to enchant both the mind and
the eye of the reader.” Next year it was announced: “Last year
we entitled our Keepsake Americain because our engravings
came from New York. This time we have searched the port-
folios of the artists of London . .

And so to the English-language product. Henry Seidel Can-
by, Arthur Waugh, and others of our day have described the
keepsakes and the larger “gift-books” (it is not always clear
which is meant) as ornaments for the parlor table. A half-truth,
really. Yes, the advertisement of at least one gift-book offered
it as “an elegant accession to the parlor table,” and Frederick
W. Faxon has pointed out that “the English publications were
known as ‘Drawing-room Annuals.’ ” But they had their read-
ing public — even the adverse criticisms of their day show that
— and can hardly be classed simply as ornaments, like alabaster
clocks or Rogers groups. The announcement of Leitch Ritchie’s
A Journey to St. Petersburg (Heath’s Picturesque Annual, 1836)
reads :

The former volumes of the Picturesque Annual, although aspir-
ing to a permanent place in the library, were yet written with some
reference to the character of drawing-room table books stamped
upon them by their gorgeous bindings and exquisite engravings.
When the author, however, undertook to travel in Russia — a
country about which so many conflicting opinions have been pub-

THE KEEPSAKE

141

lished — he thought that he would best consult the advantage of
the public by making his book a work entirely of information . . .

Noted British authors contributed to the keepsakes, includ-
ing some who, “in a state of revolt against the debased ideals
of their time,” as G. M. Trevelyan puts it in his English Social
History, scored the weak features of these publications. There
were Dickens, Thackeray, Bulwer-Lytton, Scott, Coleridge,
Wordsworth, Southey, Lamb, Mary Mitford, Leigh Hunt, the
Howitts, Macaulay, Byron, Moore, Landor, Campbell, Praed,
Hood, Ruskin, Theodore Hook, the Brownings, Tennyson,
Bryan W. Proctor, Disraeli, Douglas Jerrold, Sheridan Knowles,
Shelley and Alaric Watts. Most of these are named by Faxon,
who notes among American writers for American annuals
Hawthorne, Poe, Whittier, Edward Everett, Mrs Harriet
Beecher Stowe, Cooper, Irving, Fitz-Greene Halleck, and
others. Add Emerson, who found nothing worth-while in keep-
sakes and wrote for The Diadem of 1846, which the New York
Tribune at the time pronounced “the most gorgeous of Ameri-
can annuals and . . . the most tasteful.”

w E now come to our main topic, the illustrations. The
pictures in the keepsakes are likely to hold our main interest
today, as they may have done for the public of their time.
They probably cost more than the text. Lachevre noted that
The Amulet, edited by S. C. Hall, announced that one of the
engravings in its fifth volume (1830) cost 145 guineas and
another 180; and Kathleen Knox in Gentleman's Magazine, June
1902, tells us that the second Keepsake, the one for 1829, cost
no less than 11,000 guineas! There must have been a good-
sized public willing to pay. (For the United States, Ralph
Thompson, in his American Literary Annuals & Gift Books :
1825-1865, has information about cost of engraving and profits
of publishers.)

Steel engraving (“elegant” and “highly finished,” say title-
pages and advertisements) ruled supreme in keepsakes and
gift-books; wood engraving and lithography must have seemed
too common for such genteel publications. Dickens in Bleak
House and Bulwer-Lytton in The Caxtons had their fling at the

142

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

lackadaisical character of the plates in these recherche products,
at the smirks of the ladies “and their male counterparts, ef-
feminately exquisite.” In George Eliot's Middlemarch a young
suitor “had brought the last ‘Keepsake/ the gorgeous watered-
silk publication which marked modern progress at that time
... to look over it with her, dwelling on the ladies and gentle-
men with shiny copper-plate cheeks and copper-plate smiles . .
Goethe was more lenient; it is recorded that on January 30,
1830, he showed Eckermann the English keepsake for that year,
noting the “very fine copper-plates.” Emerson, scoring the
text, wrote of “one of those souvenirs, bound in gold vellum,
enriched with delicate engravings on thick hot-pressed paper,
fit for the hands of ladies and princes, with nothing in it worth
reading or remembering.” That is a kind word for the plates,
about which two Frenchmen also had their say, descriptive
rather than critical. Balzac in Eugenie Grandet speaks of “the
emotions of delicate pleasure given to a young man by the
contemplation of the fanciful figures of females drawn by
Westall and engraved by Finden, in the English keepsakes.”
And in Flaubert’s Madame Bovary young Emma, in a convent,
surreptitiously reads keepsakes, “delicately handling their fine
satin bindings.” Emma “trembled, her breath raising the tissue
paper of the engravings, which rose half-folded and fell back
softly on the page.”

Much of the criticism was apparently aimed at the larger,
more pretentious gift-books, in the engravings of which sim-
pering sentimentality was etiolated, and artistic incompe-
tence made more obvious by being thinly spread over plates bigger
than in the keepsakes. There was indeed a sameness in these
conceptions of female beauty, with “raven hair, delicate ex-
tremities,” and all the rest of it. (George Meredith, in Diana
of the Crossways.) And Aldous Huxley speaks ( Essays New
and Old ) of “the egg-shaped face, the slick hair, the swan-like
neck, the champagne-bottle shoulders.” “Des anglaises a pro-
fil de Keepsake,” wrote Flaubert in L’Education sentimentale .

The most detailed appraisal is found in Thackeray’s review
of “a parcel of the little gilded books” in Eraser’s Magazine for
December 1837. He wrote:

There are the Friendship’s Offering embossed, and the Forget Me

“The Parting,” from Gems of Beauty, London, 1839

M3

THE KEEPSAKE

*45

Not in morocco; Jennings’s Landscape in dark green, and the
Christian Keepsake in pea; Gems of Beauty in shabby green calico,
and Flowers of Loveliness in tawdry red woollen ; moreover, the
Juvenile Scrap-book for good little boys and girls; and among a
host of others, and greatest of all, the Book of Gems . . . Now with
the exception of the last . . . and of Jennings’s J.andscape Annual,
which contains the admirable designs of Mr. Roberts, nothing can
be more trumpery than the whole collection — as works of art, we
mean. They tend to encourage bad taste in the public, bad en-
graving, and worse painting. As to their literary pretensions . . .
such a display of miserable mediocrity ... is hardly to be found
in any other series . . . The poetry is quite worthy of the pictures,
and a little sham sentiment is employed to illustrate a little sham
art.

One of those who supplied verses for the pictures was the
Countess of Blessington, who edited the Keepsake during 1841-
50 and did “fanciful verses” for Gems of Beauty (1839). Letitia
Elizabeth Landon and Mary Howitt similarly furnished “poeti-
cal illustrations” for the annual Fisher’s Drawing Room Scrap-
Book. The reversal of the usual relation between text and
illustration is neatly indicated also by the title of George Bax-
ter’s The Pictorial Album or Cabinet of Paintings . . . With Il-
lustrations in Verse and Prose (1837). These rhyme-smiths were
parodied in Fiddle-Faddle Fashion-Book, which William Powell
Frith in his life of John Leech calls “a whimsical satire on the
fopperies and literary absurdities of the period.”

Now then to the other side of the story. The Book of Gems
(1836, 1837) which Thackeray excepted from condemnation,
was an anthology of British authors back to Chaucer, edited
by S. C. Hall. The artists included Lawrence, Etty, Mulready,
Beechey, Cooper, Creswick, Boys, D. O. Hill, and Flaxman. A
respectable showing, but there was added the inevitable and
namby-pamby E. T. Parris. His work, and that of the Misses
L. Sharpe and F. Corbeaux, and others of their kind, stood out
and invited adverse criticism. The hodge-podge of good and
bad illustrations is not infrequently found in the same book.
In Heath’s Gallery of British Engravings (1836) J. M. W.
Turner, R. P. Bonington, Thomas Lawrence, G. S. Newton,
and C. Stanfield rub shoulders with inferior artists. And in
Baxter’s The Pictorial Album or Cabinet of Paintings — a pio*

146

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

duct of pretentious elegance — together with figure pieces by
Westall, Corbeaux, and Sharpe are also landscapes, far ex-
ceeding them in worth and interest, by Samuel Prout and
George Barnard.

Landscape is the specialty in which, on the whole, the
gift-book made its best showing. That is why Thackeray’s
mention of David Roberts is significant. There is plenty of ma-
terial to prove this in such publications as Jennings’s Landscape
Annual and Heath’s Picturesque Annual, both issued serially in
the ’thirties. Turner played a particularly important part in the
landscape illustration of books, for instance in Rogers’s Italy
(1830) and in Finden’s Landscape and Portrait Illustrations of
Byron (1837). The able engravers put remarkably delicate
burin work into these small plates. The work of Turner and
other landscape artists, in such books, served and fostered an
apparent interest of the public in views of the homeland and
of foreign countries. And futhermore, Thornbury, in his The
Life of J. M. W. Turner, tells us that “about 1824 the frivolous
keepsake mania, though originating mere literary confection-
ery gave an impetus to modern art.”

In the United States as in England good work, in text and
illustrations, was mingled with the poor. “Between the covers
of American gift books,” Ralph Thompson writes “. . . ap-
peared some of the best of contemporary literature and con-
temporary art.” The development of this form of publication
brought about unmistakably American traits. That appears
notably in the plates which our painters, draughtsmen, and en-
gravers produced for these annuals. Besides reproductions of
British paintings, there were also paintings of American life
and scenery; and it is these that are significant. They show a
certain robust matter-of-factness contrasting with the senti-
mentality transplanted from London. As in other fields, the
young nation was emerging into a character of its own, which
showed through any veneer of foreign taste and tradition.

Paintings and drawings by Thomas Birch, A. B. Durand,
Thomas Cole, Thomas Doughty, R. W. Weir, Henry Inman,
W. G. Wall, Joshua Shaw, W. S. Mount, J. G. Chapman, and

THE KEEPSAKE

147

J. G. Clonney were reproduced in line engravings on steel by
capable craftsmen such as A. B. Durand, James Smillie, J.
Cheney, J. A. Rolph, and G. W. Hatch. They put before the
public scenes from everyday life, historical events, and, of
special importance as in England, landscape views. Various
parts of America were pictured: Niagara, the Delaware Water
Gap, the Hudson, Schuylkill and Juanita Rivers, the Catskills,
Trenton Falls, Passaic Falls. Noted cemeteries also were de-
scribed and pictured in gift-books. There were even landscapes
without local interest or emphasis, appealing simply to a love
of nature: Doughty’s “A lake scene” ( The Atlantic Souvenir ,
1828) and Inman’s “Storm coming on” ( Magnolia , 1837).

So the plates in keepsakes helped to bring American art to
the public. As Merle Curti notes in his The Roots of American
Loyalty , “A wider public was reached through elaborate gift-
books, beautifully embellished with American views.” And
Harold E. Dickinson believes that John Neal’s remarks in The
Yankee (1828-1829) about the plates in The Token and The
Atlantic Souvenir “must have led many a reader to pick up the
books themselves for a closer inspection of the pictures they
contained.”

A swarm of these genteel annuals appeared in our land —
“between 1825 and 1865 more than a thousand,” Ralph Thomp-
son affirms in his American Literary Annuals & Gift Books (1936).
They had flowery titles, such as Magnolia, Rose of Sharon, etc.
Some were fitted to season, as The Gift, a Christmas and New
Year's Present for 1836 and The Keepsake of Friendship, a Christ-
mas and New Year's Annual (Boston 1849-55). Possible restric-
tion of sales to season seemed to be avoided in Gift for all Seasons
(i853) and Affection's Gift, a Christmas, New Year and Birthday
Present for 1833. Various classes were served: the ladies ( The
American Ladies Pocket Book, The Ladies' Casket, The Lady's
Album) ; the religious ( The Religious Souvenir, The Christian
Keepsake and Missionary Annual)) young people; mourners;
brides; mothers; pastors; and the abolitionists. Jacksonian de-
mocracy and the keepsake were linked in an odd combination
in The Jackson Wreath (1829). Even the female mill workers
at Lowell, Massachusetts, during 1840-45 issued a Lowell Of-
fering, written “exclusively” by them, and compared favorably

148

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

with British annuals by Charles Dickens in his American Notes.

In the many years of its popularity the keepsake was con-
temporary with the soul-stirring imaginings of William Blake
and the dainty designs of Moritz Retzsch; with authors as dif-
ferent in outlook as Goethe, Balzac, Scott, Dickens, Irving,
Cooper, Thackeray, Bulwer-Lytton, and Emerson; with Gothic
romanticism and melodramatic historicalness; with the fashion
of caricature illustration by Cruikshank and Phiz, and the
straightforward realism of Gilbert and Darley; with the humor
of Hook or Leech, and the strained sprightliness of Pierce
Egan; with inane depictions of “genteel” humanity and Dau-
mier’s vigorous facing of life. The nineteenth century had a
remarkable variety. It will not do to dismiss it with airy al-
lusions to the Victorian age. “We must not think of these
seventy years as having a fixed likeness one to another,” Tre-
velyan warned.

The keepsake represents a particularly characteristic phase
of the taste of the time, and helps us to understand the ideals
and taste in literature, art, typography, binding, and book-
making as a whole. To a large extent the product of fashions
and fads, it yet yields some reflection of the deeper-lying spirit
of its age.

(From the Library9 s large collection of keepsakes ,
an exhibit has been arranged in the Treasure Room.)

Eugene Delatre

By ARTHUR W. HEINTZELMAN

BEFORE leaving for France last November on a mission
for the French Government to arrange for exchange ex-
hibits between our two countries, I received a letter from
Madame Zelina Delatre, granddaughter of Auguste Delatre,
great printer of the Golden Age of Engraving, and daughter of
Eugene Delatre, equally well known as a printer of the modern
masters of the past half-century. She wrote expressing a wish
that the complete oeuvre of her father be placed in the Print
Department of the Boston Public Library beside those French
masters, so well represented in our collection, whose plates
were printed and interpreted by her father and grandfather.
These portfolios would also contain letters and other personal
documents of great interest and of historical importance to the
print world.

This collection was well known to me as my apprenticeship
in printing of several years was under the guidance of Eugene
Delatre, and many of the plates I made during my prolonged
residence in France were printed by him. During this time a
rare friendship and an appreciation and knowledge of his work
developed.

To know the art of this rare personality who sacrificed him-
self for others, was to perceive the history of Montmartre and
the artists who worked there during the last fifty years. Eugene
Delatre was not only a great printer but an artist as well, recog-
nized as an etcher of note and an innovator in the color print
process.

In a letter to Madame Delatre I mentioned that I would be
in Paris in a few weeks, and that I would be pleased to see the
collection, and make arrangements for its acceptance by the
Boston Public Library. I remembered these prints, many of
them running through a number of states, recalling old Mont-
martre, which has now almost entirely disappeared. The old
cafe, “Le Lapin Agile,” where artists, writers, and musicians
congregated to sing, play, read, and show their latest work

149

150 THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

with the evening ending in all singing “Le Temps de Cerises,”
the Place du Tertre and the narrow streets that resounded with
the clatter of the sabots of the children, whom Poulbot immor-
talized and the walled-in gardens — all these have long since
been forgotten because of progress.

One cannot think of Eugene Delatre without mentioning his
famous father, known by the younger artists as “Le Petit Pere
Delatre,” who was their master. Eugene, working beside his
father from an early age, benefited by his craftsmanship, crea-
tive ability, and unusual imagination. His visual memory was
extraordinary, and his enthusiasm for other artists’ work held
no limitations. Auguste Delatre’s criticism was sought by
those who were more talented, and whose work is among the
masterpieces of today. His atelier was a haven for free-thinking
artists believing in progress during a moment when Paris was
ridden with unrest and revolution. He was an exacting master
and idealist, but there was the balance of great generosity and
fellowship as well.

Eugene remembered how, when he was six years old, shots
fired by a German battery outside the city bombarded Paris
every day at five o’clock. One of these missiles crashed through
the roof of his father’s atelier and destroyed it by fire. He re-
counted to me on several occasions how he and his mother
took refuge in the vaults of the Pantheon while his father was
on duty in the National Guard.

It seemed logical that Eugene should follow in the footsteps
of his father, and inevitable that he should continue as a great
printer with another generation of engravers. From his tender
years he worked in all the copper plate media, and he men-
tioned that it was through his attempts at wood-engraving
that he acquired the feeling for black and white. With the
plates of such masters as James McNeill Whistler, Seymour
Haden, Meryon, Charles Jacque, Alphonse Legros, and others
of the period as a guide, and his father’s keen interpretation of
the work before him, no better school could be imagined, for
he served an apprenticeship that could not be duplicated today.

Eugene Delatre related the story of his youth to me on sev-
eral occasions. I can well remember his telling me of a letter
written to his father by Whistler, asking him to come to Lon-

I5I

Self-Portrait oi Eugene Delatre

EUGENE DELATRE

153

don to make corrections on several of his plates and to pull
some impressions for him. The letter came at a time when his
father was in financial difficulty. Always accompanying his
father, he left for London where he remained for five years,
1871-1876. This letter will soon be in the collection of the Bos-
ton Public Library along with other original data which con-
cern Auguste Delatre’s associations with artists of the Golden
Age of Engraving. He recalled meeting Whistler and his
brother-in-law Seymour Haden, who at that period led the way
to a renaissance in etching, and the privilege of working beside
his father in Whistler’s studio while proofs were being pulled.

Although journeys to London at the request of Whistler
were quite frequent, the elder Delatre was too much of a Pari-
sian to remain there for as long as he did on this first occasion.
In 1876 he set up an atelier in the rue de la Villette for a brief
period, and shortly afterward left that address to establish
himself at No. 22 rue Tourlague, which is now the location of
the Archeological Society of Vieux Montmartre.

It was at this time, although still in his early teens, that
Eugene began seriously working with the etching and drypoint
needle. All of his training, which was in great part gained
through practical experience and constant association with his
father, was now to bear fruit. After another brief period the
workshop was finally established permanently at 87 rue Lepic,
the atelier that I knew so well. It was here that the younger
Delatre became famous as a printer after his father’s death in
1907.

One climbed the rue Lepic, almost too steep for human feet,
to No. 87, where entrance Was gained through a huge w'ooden
gate on iron hinges and with a rustic ring which opened the
latch. This led to a cobblestoned courtyard, where at the fur-
ther end one entered the famous studio which shut out the ma-
terial world, and where, could the walls speak, the history of
graphic arts would be the richer.

On entering one was conscious of serious work; there was
criticism or comparison of a newly pulled proof with the bon-
a-tirer, with artist and printer leaning over the impression
turned over on the ground of the press. Charles Jacque’s old
wooden press was still producing superb prints. It almost

i54

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

seemed as though the autographed photographs and portrait
drawings on the walls left by Auguste Delatre looked down on
the new generation with encouragement and approval. In the
midst of this setting was Eugene Delatre with large felt hat,
flowing black tie, corduroy jacket, and voluminous trousers in
old Montmartre fashion working, advising, and giving gener-
ously of his knowledge and experience. There was always a
special piece of antique papier de Chine or verddtre for a plate
he considered worthy of special recognition. On leaving this
unique atmosphere and being in possession of the master
printer’s interpretation of one’s latest effort, it seemed as though
inspiration and the desire to create held no bounds.

Many artists of note passed through the old gate at No. 87,
where Eugene Delatre took up the work of his father. Plates
of Rops, Bracquemond, Desboutin, Mary Cassatt, and the work
of Buhot, Pissarro, Renoir, Manet, and others were also proven.

Delatre’s love of Montmartre is apparent throughout his
oeuvre, and over the many years of his residence there he could
be seen with sketchbook in hand drawing the endless subjects
which confronted him on all sides. As a draughtsman and paint-
er he made his debut at the Salon des Artistes Franqais in
1881-1882 with watercolors and drawings of his beloved Mont-
marte. One of the exhibits depicted the historic monument of
the Moulin de la Galette. This old mill ceased its activity of
grinding seeds for perfume in 1872.

Delatre was one of the few artists who really got the atmos-
phere of the “Butte,” and, being so much a part of it, he knew
how it should be interpreted with needle, crayon, or brush in
all its moods, character, and poetry. He published a portfolio
of its old streets : rue des Saules, rue de l’Abreuvoir, rue de
Mont Cenis, rue Saint Vincent, rue de Norvins, and others, not
forgetting Place du Tertre, la Vacherie de la rue Constance, le
Chateau des Brouillards, the church Saint Pierre, and the
Moulin de Bray, which of necessity must be included in the set.

Delatre’s real contribution to the print world was his color
prints, in which medium he was an innovator. His contribution
was in making a color print from several plates, instead of one
as had previously been the practice in mezzotint, aquatint, and
stipple-engraving. In 1898 a comprehensive exhibition of his

EUGENE DELATRE

155

color prints was held at the Durand-Ruel Galleries in Paris.

The method of the plates and printing is interesting. After
having established a watercolor drawing using only the primary
colors (yellow, red, blue), the artist makes a detailed sketch
on the copper in pure etching, touched with drypoint, and
sometimes makes use of aquatint and even soft-ground. He
uses this first plate for the printing of the darkest tone, then he
pulls a proof in black, which he then transfers to a copper
plate. The second tone is engraved on this new plate, and so on
until the lightest tones are reached. He then prints the plates
successively, beginning with the lighter tones.

His printing proceeded in the following order : yellow, red,
blue, and black (black when there are four plates). The etcher
has previously made two holes through the plates with a drill
in order to be able to register them with the use of pins, and
prints his successive proofs, taking care that the paper should
not dry, because the shrinking might prevent the register
marks from matching.

This process was handed on to Raffaelli, de Latenay, Luigi
Loir, and Fritz Thaulow. It is the method employed by Rou-
ault and several other well-known contemporary artists. This
period was perhaps the most brilliant in Eugene Delatre’s
atelier. Steinlen, Toulouse-Lautrec, Willette, Louis Legrand,
Leheutre, and Lepere were constant visitors seeking his aid in
printing and executing their plates.

Although he never relinquished his belief that the printing
of an etching, drypoint, or engraving from one plate should be
in black and white, his interest for several years was possessed
with a passion for the color print; and in 1893 he was one of
the founders of the Society of Original Color Engraving.

Delatre’s studio became the center of printmaking, and an
old friend of the printer’s related to me that there was much
bending over proofs and long discussions about them, includ-
ing adverse criticism and praise. It was a meeting place where
true collaboration gave birth to ideas and innovations, from
which many artists of the period profited, particularly those
whose activities centered in Montmartre.

Eugene Delatre adopted the “Butte,” and like the Mont-
martre singers he sang the praises of his little native land with

156 THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

etching needle and crayon to record its history which has since
lost its artistic atmosphere and original identity. At the turn
of the century he had only to take a few steps up the rue Lepic
to dominate the entire panorama of Paris. In his prints one
finds a reflection of what Montmartre was, and there is almost
a trace of a tear in several of his later prints, “Les Derniers
Moulins” and “Montmartre s’en va.”

For a few years before his death Delatre 'made etchings,
drawings, and watercolors in several of the provinces of France.
The once active atelier bursting with creative talent now be-
came but a memory. However, Eugene Delatre, accomplished
artist and illustrious printer, could look back with rich satisfac-
tion on his great past. His oeuvre is considerable and contains
approximately six hundred items, all of which are now in the
possession of the Print Department of the Boston Public Library.

Although his name has not the universal recognition of a
number of the artists he helped to fame, we who knew him can
look back upon the accomplishment of this craftsman, inno-
vator, and etcher as an artist’s artist, which is an important
achievement in itself. All who have benefited by Delatre’s ex-
pert knowledge know that it was at a sacrifice to himself, and
that their road was made easier through his great generosity and
self-immolation. They will sing his praises personally and
through their work as long as the history of prints is written.

There had been dreams among artists and friends of creating
a Delatre Museum, similar to the famous Musee Plantin at
Antwerp, which would through its treasures recall a century
of the history of etching. This dream however is not to be
realized; but, happily for us, the work of Eugene Delatre has
not been dispersed; it is safely housed in the Print Department
of the Boston Public Library. The memory and history of Old
Montmartre depicted by one of its favorite sons can be found
among the masters whose work bears the signature of Auguste
and Eugene Delatre.

Notes on Rare Books and Manuscripts

Letters by Longfellow to Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

N the manuscript collections of the Boston Public Library areT
twelve letters written by Henry W. Longfellow to Elizabeth Stuart JL
Phelps Ward between April, 1876, and August, 1881. They are in-
teresting literary documents, recording the cordial relationship
between the aging poet and the successful young writer. The let-
ters also reflect the charm and kindliness which characterized
Longfellow, especially in his last years.

Almost entirely forgotten today, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps was
a prolific novelist from 1868, the publication date of The Gates Ajar,
until her death in 1911, at the age of sixty-seven. Her background,
as the daughter of Austin Phelps, an Andover theologian, was in-
tellectual and deeply spiritual. Still in her thirties, she was a friend
of the great New England literary figures — Longfellow, Whittier,
Holmes, Emerson, Brooks, and others. A moralist who fought for
causes such as women’s rights, temperance, and anti-vivisection,
she was best-known as a novelist; The Gates Ajar reached a cir-
culation of a hundred thousand copies in America, and was even
better received in England.

The letters show Longfellow’s modesty in a period in which he
was adored — and was imposed upon by his admirers. Through-
out the group, the harrowing effects of insomnia, which troubled
both authors, form a constant theme. On April 11, 1877, Long-
fellow thanked Miss Phelps for sleeping powders she had sent him.
‘‘Great is Hahnemann and, you are his prophet!” he declared and
he assured her that if the remedy continued successful, he would
“bless the day and the hour and the giver.” Samuel C. F. Hahne-
mann (1755-1843), the German physician and founder of homeo-
pathy, to whom Longfellow referred, was famous in both Europe
and America for his experiments with various drugs. In a later
letter, the poet sympathized with the “sleepless and suffering”
Miss Phelps, and asked :

Why will the busy brain go on all night, swinging its arms
about like a windmill, when it has nothing to grind but itself ?

Della Casa has written a beautiful Sonnet on Sleep, but he
would have been a greater benefactor to some of his readers, if
he had discovered a remedy for insomnia.

157

158 THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

Ten days later, Longfellow wrote again of the Della Casa sonnet,
offering to send his correspondent a translation of it, remarking,
however, that it did not put him to sleep but rather kept him
awake. In the same letter, he brought a “new remedy” to Miss
Phelps’s attention, that of imitating the breathing of a sleeping
person. But he had little faith in that either. “All these various
remedies seem to me,” he wrote, “like recipes for French dishes.
There is always some ingredient in them not to [be] found in this
country. The result is failure.” At the end of the letter, he referred
to his poem dedicated to the children of Cambridge, advising Miss
Phelps, “If all other soporifics fail, try this.”

Longfellow’s criticism of Miss Phelps’s writing is an example
of the encouragement he was happy to give. “Your poem is very
simple and sweet,” he wrote about “The Poet and the Poem,” on
April 6, 1876. It is not irrelevant to add that the poem concerns
Longfellow's own Evangeline , describing a Friends almshouse, the
possible model of the one in which the Acadian girl found the dy-
ing Gabriel. Replying to Miss Phelps’s question about such a
house in Philadelphia, Longfellow stated : “The cottage I do not
remember; only an enclosure, with tall trees and brick walls; just
enough for the imagination to work upon, and no more.” (The
sentence was incorporated into another letter by Samuel Long-
fellow in his Final Memorials of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
Boston, 1887, p. 245.)

One of Miss Phelps’s best-known novels, The Story of Avis , was
highly commended by Longfellow in October, 1877: “I am par-
ticularly struck by the style; so fresh and original, and different
from any other. One cannot prize such individuality too highly.
It is the flavor of fruit, or rather, is to a book what flavor is to
fruit, and tone is to the voice.” A year and a half later, he assured
her that he had neither “changed nor modified [his] opinion.”
What Longfellow most admired about Miss Phelps was her ability
to depict female characters ; and he apparently sympathized with
her “modern” woman seeking adjustment in a new and compli-
cated life. On March 17, 1879, he again wrote about Avis : “If you
should never write another book, you might be content with hav-
ing given the most beautiful analysis of a noble woman’s nature,
that I have seen in any work of fiction.” He also admired Friends :
A Duet, 1881, for its sensitive portrayal of women.

Other efforts of Miss Phelps, too, received Longfellow’s com-
mendation. “Victurae Salutamus,” written for the first commence-

NOTES ON RARE BOOKS

159

ment of Smith College, he found “original . . . and very sugges-
tive.” Sealed Orders , a collection of stories which appeared in 1880,
was praised : “The story that most touched and interested me was
‘The Voyage of the America.’ I do not know that it is better than
others in the volume, but it appeals most to the imagination, and
one might write a poem on the subject, if ‘The Ancient Mariner,'
had never been written. Fortunately it has been.”

That Miss Phelps, a woman struggling for recognition in a
literary world in which she was not wholly accepted, appreciated
Longfellow’s sympathy is evident from her autobiographical
work, Chapters from a Life, published in 1896. “I have . . . never
met,” she wrote, “any other man who showed . . . such a marvel-
ous intuition in the comprehension of an unusual woman . . .
‘The Story of Avis’ was a woman’s book, hoping for small hospi-
tality at the hands of men.”

The letters also offer a few glimpses of Longfellow’s life after
his return from his last trip abroad. His friends, George W.
Greene, the grandson and biographer of General Nathanael
Greene, and James Fields, the publisher, and his wife, Annie
Fields, are mentioned several times. References are made to Long-
fellow’s later work, such as Ultima Thule and The Poems of Places.
The poet’s daily life is described and his opinions on current af-
fairs are related. On March 31, 1877, he wrote:

Tennyson’s “roaring moon of daffodil and crocus” is ending
very quietly to-day; and though I like all kinds of weather, I am
not sorry to have the Spring come again.

This afternoon we have been to hear Wagner’s opera of
Lohengrin. It is a stupendous performance; an “exulting and
abounding river” of sound, that bears you onward with a great
rush, and without a break from beginning to end. It is really
marvellous, and has left a deep impression on my mind of Wag-
ner’s power and mastery over all instruments. The horns, which
I like so much, play a great part in the opera.

Dickens is mentioned in an anecdote. Expressing his gratitude
to Miss Phelps for a story she had sent him, Longfellow noted :
“It reminds me of my once showing to Dickens his works upon
my book-shelves, and his exclaiming; ‘Sh, I see you read the good
authors.’ ”

Longfellow cheerfully accepted the admiration of the public,
although at times it must have proved burdensome. He described
the celebration of his seventy-third birthday by the children of

160 THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

Cincinnati : “The celebration of my unfortunate birthday by the
Schools of the West has overwhelmed me with letters. Fifteen
thousand school girls have driven over me with all their horses,
as Tullia did over the body of her father in the streets of Rome.
There is no life left in me.” His reaction to the newspaper story
of the country girls who “escaped” to the city and paused outside
Craigie House, not daring to enter, is likewise entertaining:

I found in the Transcript the letter of the young Bohemian
girls. I wish they had not stopped outside my gate, but had come
in. I should have been greatly pleased to see two such erratic
heavenly bodies.

I am only afraid that such proceedings as theirs will fire too
many restless young hearts in country towns. I suppose we all
have a drop of gipsy blood in us ; and want to break through the
invisible bars of our surroundings. No one seems quite content
with a life limited to fourteen lines, like a sonnet. It might be
otherwise, if lives thus limited were really sonnets.

The poet’s last letter is dated August 21, 1881 — seven months
before his death.

Mary L. Hegarty

A Stephen O’Meara Collection

A COLLECTION of letters, speeches, testimonials, and other
items bearing on the various activities of the late Stephen
O’Meara, editor and publisher of the Boston Journal and Police
Commissioner of the City of Boston, has been presented to the
Boston Public Library by his daughters, Miss Alice O’Meara and
Miss Lucy O’Meara, of Northampton, Massachusetts. In addition,
there are thousands of newspaper clippings, excerpts from maga-
zine articles, programs of meetings, and invitations to gatherings
of local, state, and national interest, together with some items re-
lating to Mr. O’Meara’s two extensive European tours in 1903 and
1906.

The correspondence includes letters of O’Meara to his wife, and
letters from such distinguished men as Theodore Roosevelt, Ed-
ward Everett Hale, Henry Cabot Lodge, John D. Long, Samuel
Hoar, Frank A. Munsey, Joseph Pulitzer, and others. Many of them
contain comments on current affairs. The letters dealing with jour-
nalism and newspapers — particularly those about the change in

NOTES ON RARE BOOKS

161

ownership of the Boston Journal at the time of O’Meara’s resignation
as editor and publisher, and those about the Associated Press, the
American Newspaper Publishers’ Association, and the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch — are informative.

The very comprehensive group of newspaper clippings and cut-
tings from magazine articles relates to O’Meara’s public life from
1877 until his death on December 14, 1918. He served as president
of the Charlestown High School Association, and of the Boston
Press Club, and was affiliated with the New England Associated
Press and the National Associated Press; he ran for Congress in
1904, for Mayor of Boston in 1906, and again for Congress in 1910.
The itineraries of his European trips are supplemented by letters
of advice from friends experienced in European travel.

At the time of his death Stephen O’Meara was thus described by
a friend : “He was an honest, gentle, fearless, modest public servant
whose experience demonstrated the value to the community of a
man whose heart and conscience combined to guide him in the dis-
charge of public duty.”

Valentine Writers’ Manuals

THE history of valentines includes many interesting produc-
tions, and among the best of them are the “Valentine Writers”
or collections of verses, scores of which were published in England
in the early nineteenth century, when the custom of sending cards
on February 14th first became popular. The Rare Book Depart-
ment of the Boston Public Library has a number of such chapbooks.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a “valentine” was
something substantial — a present, often quite expensive, given
on St. Valentine’s Day. Pepys records spending five pounds for his
wife’s valentine, and notes that the Duke of York gave a certain
lady a jewel worth £800. At first most valentine cards were hand-
made; and, since not everyone had the talent to compose the nec-
essary poem, manuals of ready-made verses enjoyed great popu-
larity. They included three types : the serious, the comic, and the
professional, suited to some particular trade.

The earliest and one of the most charming of the group is Cupid’s
Annual Charter, published about 1810 by W. Perks. Its colored
frontispiece shows a young man in yellow knee-breeches pointing
out the way to church to a shy young woman in white. Each valen-
tine is followed by an answer. Most of the latter are kind, but some

162 the b. p. l. quarterly

are tart ; a Cottage Maid, for example, declines a rich marriage with
the remark: “Equal marriages are best, Vanity don’t fill my breast.”
The tone of the comic valentines is mild. An Old Maid is urged :
“Assume a smile, fling off that chilling frown, Discard that antique
twirling ivory fan, Hang both your parrot and your tabby cat, And
change your monkey for a smart young man.”

The same publisher, a few years later, produced The School of
Love. Here the emphasis is on verses suited to every conceivable
occupation, from actor through waterman, most of them punning
on words, or making pertinent comparisons. Thus the poem “From
a Publican or a Brewer” includes the lines “As strong as malt the
love I bear, As ale both clear and fine.” The Fishmonger likens his
sweetheart’s red lips to a lobster’s shell, while the Greengrocer
writes “No cauliflower half so white As is your skin, my sole de-
light.” One of the best verses is from the Stationer, who after com-
paring his love’s eyes to ink, and her complexion to white paper,
cries : “Like sealing-wax before the fire, I melt away with fond
desire!” But the answer that follows is scornful: “Sealing-wax
soon melts away . . Paper will tear and ink will fade, No emblem
lasting have you made.” The pamphlet has a colored frontispiece
in the style of Thomas Rowlandson, showing the “School of Love.”

A nineteenth-century owner of the Library’s copy of The Cabinet of
Love , published by T. Tegg in 1812, marked several of the poems
and rewrote others. In one case the word “damn’d” did not suit
him, and he genteelly cut out the offending line. Most of the selec-
tions are sentimental and flowery, addressed “To a Lady” or “To a
Gentleman,” but there are also several to and from various tradesmen.

Sarah Wilkinson, author of such popular Gothic thrillers as The
Spectre and Monkcliffe Abbey was responsible fGr Love and Hymen,
published about 1820. Here the verses are serious and romantic,
with many conventional references to nymphs and bowers. The
colored frontispiece, however, is in quite a different style, with
verses addressed to Cinderella, the queen of the London dust-hill.
The picture shows “a little dirty Cupid” sitting on an ash-heap,
with Cinderella holding a sieve. “Sifters” in her trade searched the
ashes for valuables, and were paid a shilling a day plus half the
worth of what they found.

The frontispiece of The Tradesman' s New Valentine Writer, pub-
lished in the 1830’s by Dean and Munday, illustrates eleven of the
forty-eight trades it covers, which include those of an anchor-smith,
plaisterer, and undertaker. Several of the verses have evidently been
taken from earlier collections ; and after each valentine are two
answers, favorable and unfavorable. Thus the Butler’s offer of

NOTES ON RARE BOOKS

163

“good cheer” can be accepted with the words : “Since so kind your
invitation, And so good your situation, Willingly I’ll taste your
wine, And gladly be your Valentine”; or he can be rebuked : “Why
should you my friend make free With another’s property? . . . Till
you buy your ale and wine, I’ll not be your Valentine.”

As time went on, valentines tended to be more sharply divided
into serious and comic, the former taking on an early Victorian tone
of solemn sentiment. In Park's Guide to Hymen most of the verses
are of the first type. Many of them have been lifted from other
sources: “From a Shepherd,” for example, is an adaptation of Mar-
lowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.” The volume has
no date, but the costumes in the elaborate folding frontispiece seem
to place it at about 1840. It shows a gentleman and lady in a park,
surrounded by cupids. Richardson' s New London Fashionable Gentle-
man's Valentine Writer dates from the same time, or perhaps a few
years earlier, for the lady on the fringed sofa in its frontispiece
wears the puffed sleeves and ringlets of that period.

Two other collections, The Ladies and Gentlemen' s Valentine
Writer and The Quizzical Valentine Writer, were printed in the 1840’s
and 1850’s. Each consists of only eight or ten pages, published as
part of a chapbook series. Neither has a frontispiece, but they are
illustrated with crude comic woodcuts ; both show how the comic
valentine, originally a mild joke, had become increasingly coarse.
In The Quizzical Valentine Writer, the verses “To an Old Maid” tell
her that she is despised by men, and only fit “to sit and chat To
some vile Monkey or Tom Cat.” When she is dead, it prophesies,
no friends will come to her funeral, but her corpse will be “by
monkeys borne, While Cats in hideous concert join.” An interest-
ing topical piece is the one addressed “To a Lady Fond of Reading
Novels” — apparently both novels of sentiment and tales of hor-
ror, for the second verse runs : “Monks, spectres, and romantic
scenes Appear to be your glory ; But study more domestic means,
And not ‘A Simple Story.’ ” A Simple Story was the most successful
novel of Elizabeth Inchbald, actress and friend of William Godwin.
It contrasts the results of good and bad education, with many tear-
ful scenes.

The custom of sending valentine cards had declined by the end
of the century. Christmas cards, invented at about that time, almost
completely displaced them. Though the custom later returned, it
has never since been observed as widely as during the early eighteen-
hundreds.

Alison Bishop

Trustees of the Library

Lee M. Friedman, President
Robert H. Lord, Vice-President
Frank W. Buxton Frank J. Donahue

Patrick F. McDonald

Director, and Librarian

Milton Edward Lord

Contributors to this Issue

Frank Weitenkampf, formerly Curator of Prints at the New York
Public Library, is author of American Graphic Art, The Illustrated
Book, and other volumes.

Jordan D. Fiore (Ph.D., Boston University) is Assistant to the
Director of the Libraries of Boston University.

Arthur W. Heintzelman, etcher and painter, is Keeper of Prints
at the Boston Public Library.

Alison Bishop and Mary L. Hegarty are members of the staff of
the Rare Book Department of the Library.

Zoltan Haraszti is Keeper of Rare Books and Editor of Publica-
tions at the Boston Public Library. He is the author of John
Adams and the Prophets of Progress, recently published by the Har-
vard University Press.

6,23,52. 700

THE

Boston Public Library
QUARTERLY

Volume 4, Number 4

Contents

Page

“Not Men, But Books" 167

By Lewis P. Simpson

The Impostures of the Devil 185

By Zoltan Harassti

Prophecies of the Popes 200

By Margaret Munsterberg

Contemporary French Prints 210

By Arthur W . Heintzelman

Notes on Rare Books and Manuscripts

Richardson Discusses his Clarissa and Grandison 217

By Alison Bishop

The Sources of Hawthorne’s “The Ambitious Guest’’ 221

By B. Bernard Cohen

A Margaret Fuller Satire on Longfellow 224

By James B. Reece

Illustrations

**

*

EDITOR: ZOLTAN HARASZTI

The Boston Public Library Quarterly is published, for January, April, July,
and October by the Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston
in Copley Square, Boston 17. Entered as second-class matter at Boston,
Massachusetts. Printed at the Boston Public Library in September 1952.

Single Copies, 50 cents
Annual Subscription, $2.00

THE

Boston Public Library
QUARTERLY

October 1952

“Not Men, But Books55

By LEWIS P. SIMPSON

ON April 16, 1815, two young Bostonians, George Tick-
nor and Edward Everett, embarked on a packet bound
out of Boston for Liverpool. In England they spent a
few pleasant weeks visiting, chiefly in London. On June 30
they left for the Continent, proceeded shortly afterward to
Germany, and on August 4 took up residence as students at
the University of Gottingen. Ticknor concluded his studies in
March 1817, Everett in September of the same year. For two
years thereafter they traveled about Europe, studying, observ-
ing, and collecting books. In June 1819 Ticknor returned to
Boston, and two months later began his teaching career at
Harvard as the first Smith Professor of the French and Span-
ish Languages and Literatures. In September Everett came
back, to assume the Professorship of Greek at Harvard.1

The four years Ticknor and Everett devoted to study and
travel in Europe bear significant relations to the history of let-
ters and learning in this country. Some of these can be readily
summarized. In the widest sense, their European sojourn
strengthened and broadened the cosmopolitan tradition in
American letters, as opposed to both the British and the national-
istic traditions. More specifically, it afforded the most intimate
and productive contact with the methods of German education
and scholarship yet made by any Americans; it prepared the

167

i68

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

way for a long succession of American youths to make the
same acquaintance; through Ticknor it influenced the intro-
duction of modern languages and literatures at Harvard and
elsewhere; and through Everett it promoted the advanced
study of Greek literature in America.

Looking back in its centennial upon the Boston Public Li-
brary’s establishment, however, one may well emphasize still
another result of Ticknor’s and Everett’s journey. It inspired
the first thinking in Boston about founding a library compar-
able to the great public libraries they had visited in Europe.
The time was far from ripe for such a venture in Boston; but
the idea persisted, for it was based on a conviction held strong-
ly by both Ticknor and Everett that books are the fundamental
resource of culture. This was the conception which had largely
inspired and shaped their first journey abroad; and some forty
years later, in 1856-57, the same idea sent Ticknor to Europe
on his fruitful book-buying mission for the newly-founded Bos-
ton Public Library.2

It would seem that the inspiration of books could hardly be
called unusual. Yet in its original context it possessed enough
novelty to lead Ticknor and Everett to embrace an educational
philosophy somewhat contrary to the one embodied in their
heritage. Because it illuminates the results of their first jour-
ney to Europe, including the genesis of the idea of the Boston
Public Library, their attitude toward books and travel is worth
attention. It is the purpose, therefore, of the present article to
present their background as European travelers, and to reveal
the significance of their intention in going abroad.

About the latter there is a diversity of opinion. One writer
defines their motive simply as a “romantic impulse”; another
states that Ticknor went overseas “to broaden his general edu-
cation and to collect a private library” ; a third remarks that
Ticknor went to the Old World “to bring home the spoils of
culture, a mission he undertook at a propitious time.” Van
Wyck Brooks, following Henry Adams, points primarily to
the influence of Madame de Stael’s De I’Allemagne and to Tick-
nOr’s and Everett’s belief in the scholar’s mission.3 These inter-
pretations imply divergent assumptions about the cultural mo-
tives of the period : the burgeoning romanticism of the century,

“NOT MEN, BUT BOOKS”

69

the traditional British attitudes toward the educational value
of travel, a spiritual and intellectual quest after cultural riches,
and finally the Anglo-Saxon awakening to German culture.
Such differences are of course not necessarily irreconcilable.
They can be fitted into a pattern. But, considered singly or col-
lectively, they do not reveal the basic intention of Ticknor’s
and Everett’s travels. This intention comes clearly to light
against the background of eighteenth-century British travel
conventions and the relation of these conventions to the liter-
ary culture of Boston.

During the period from about 1550 to 1650, the English up-
per classes turned travel abroad for their sons into a part of
the educational system. The underlying theory was a noble
one, uniting practical and moral ends. It held a Continental
tour, often called the “Grand Tour,” to be the indispensable
climax to the young gentleman’s formal schooling. It was the
means not only of educating him for service to the state, but
of bringing forth his latent social and intellectual resources. It
proposed to transform the school-boy into a cosmopolitan
gentleman. When the differences between the theory and prac-
tice became evident, the gentleman traveler fell prey to the
satirists, nowhere more than in the Dunciad. But even Pope’s
pen could not vanquish respect for a system so thoroughly em-
bedded in a tradition stemming from the Renaissance; and,
though travel for education tended to degenerate into a social
ritual, and the attitude toward it took on a dilettantish cast, its
idealism endured throughout the eighteenth century.4 This
Renaissance emphasis, in fact, found its strongest expression
in Lord Chesterfield, to whom the central use of travel was the
fusion of the knowledge of books (gained at home) with the
knowledge of men, their affairs, and customs (gained by travel).
Consequently, he looked upon his son’s tour abroad as the
most crucial stage in his education, for it must serve “to join . . .
books and the world.”5

Chesterfield’s opinion, however, is not typical of his age. In
the Spectator , No. 364, occurs a more representative comment
on the “general notion of travelling, as it is now made a part
of education.” Here travel is presented simply to make the
young gentleman “acquainted with men and things.” He is to

170 THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

learn something about the customs and policies of foreign
countries; to improve his manners “by a more, free, general,
and mixed conversation”; to heighten his taste for the classi-
cal writers by visiting the scenes of their lives; and, gazing
upon the relics of antiquity, to moralize upon “the ruinous al-
terations” of “time and barbarity” and the virtues of the great
Romans.6 Yet although the weakening of travel idealism is
well represented in the Spectator, Chesterfield's attitude was
not completely anachronistic. It was the final celebration of a
compelling social aspiration. Seldom fully realized in practice,
it continued to exert its appeal even as the circumstances which
had created it ceased to exist.

w HAT was the connection between Ticknor’s and Ev-
erett’s first European journey and the long-lived British theory
of travel for education? The question leads us to ask how travel
and education were related in the Anglicized, homogenous,
patrician society which reared the two Bostonians.

Fearing change in a changing world, the Boston intellectuals
sought in the era before the second war with England to
shape letters and learning in the secure image of the British
Augustan Age. As a result, their community tended to be a
more self-conscious provincial microcosm of the British world
than it had been in the colonial past or would be in the national
future. On the other hand, Boston’s literary culture in the late
1790’s and early 1800’s shows an inner vigor; and one should
not overemphasize its attachment to a decadent neo-classicism.
In this period the Bostonians renewed Harvard, founded the
Massachusetts Historical Society and other learned organiza-
tions, and the Boston Athenaeum. They also instituted the An-
thology Society (1805-1811) and published the Monthly An-
thology and Boston Review (1803-1811), the most substantial
periodical issued in the United States in its day; and helped to
write and edit the Literary Miscellany (1804-1806) and the Gen-
eral Repository and Review (1812-1813), two periodicals pub-
lished at Cambridge. They concerned themselves with raising
the standards of book publication and with bringing out no-
table foreign works under American imprints. The Reverend

“NOT MEN, BUT BOOKS”

171

Joseph Stevens Buckminster, for instance, aided by William
Wells, edited and published at Cambridge in 1808 an edition of
Griesbach’s Greek Testament , before the work had come out in
England.

Closely related to these activities were their travels to Eng-
land and the Continent. These were numerous; among Tick-
nor’s and Everett’s slightly older contemporaries travel abroad
was virtually a commonplace. Perhaps the most influential
among these travelers was their friend and counsellor Buck-
minster, whose early death in 1812 left vacant the pulpit, sub-
sequently occupied by Everett, at the Brattle Street Church.
Buckminster’s companion on his tour was the Reverend Sam-
uel Cooper Thacher, pastor of the New South Church. Others
included Arthur Maynard Walter, Dr. James Collins Warren,
Dr. James Jackson, Edmund Trowbridge Dana, the Reverend
Charles Lowell, and Winthrop Sargent, all with the exception
of Lowell members of the Anthology circle. Still more exten-
sively traveled were Washington Allston and William Tudor.
Allston came back to Boston in 1809 to spend two years there
painting and composing poems. He had been in Europe for al-
most ten years and would return for seven more. No other
traveler from the Boston world had such an intimate knowl-
edge of art and letters abroad as this transplanted Southerner.
Tudor, son of Colonel William Tudor who had entre to the court
of King George and many aristocratic houses, was a veteran
European sojourner by the time the Anthology Society was
organized. One might also mention John Pickering of Salem,
Harvard graduate and corresponding member of the Antholo-
gy Society.

None of these men thought of travel as the ordained climax
to his graduation from Harvard. Travel for education in the
sense of the Grand Tour had never been a custom in America,
much less a part of the educational system. In colonial days
missions of business, health, or professional training sent
American youths abroad, and after the Revolution travel con-
tinued to remain of an expedient character. Yet the Bostonians,
bred to respect letters and learning, seriously endeavored to
exploit the educational possibilities of travel. They went to
Europe to “be made acquainted with men and things” as well

172 THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

as to do business, seek health, or learn a profession; and some
of them went more for literary and intellectual reasons than
any other. To make the most of their travels they followed the
theory of travel which they had inherited from the British
eighteenth century. It largely determined the kind of educa-
tion they got in Europe. A glance into their letters and jour-
nals will sufficiently prove this.

First, they sought an education in men, chiefly men of let-
ters whom they revered and imitated before they met them.
When his friend Walter left for England in 1802, William
Smith Shaw remarked: “He has letters which will introduce
him to gentlemen of respectability, and thus render his journey
pleasant and improving.”7 So with his fellows. In Liverpool,
London, Edinburgh, Paris, Rome, and the cities of the Low
Countries, the Boston youths assiduously searched out literary
celebrities. Walter himself found Liverpool “a place for the
slave trade . . . dirty, smoky and disagreeable,” but the city’s vile-
ness was alleviated by that great literary attraction, William
Roscoe, who founded the Liverpool Athenaeum and wrote the
Life of Lorenzo de Medici. Lawyer, business man, patron of the
arts and learning, and scholar, Roscoe was the kind of gentle-
man Walter himself aspired to be. “Fie is a plain, grave looking
man,” Walter informed Shaw, “silent in company, and rich.”8
London naturally was a far more abundant hunting ground
than Liverpool or even the European cities. Here the young
Bostonians made numerous acquaintances with well-known
scholars, editors, critics, and ministers. In his London journal
Buckminster notes :

Tuesday , June 26th. [1806] Dined with Dr. Rees, editor of the En-
cyclopedia. Introduced to Dr. Aiken and his son Charles. To Mr.
Jones, the author of a Greek grammar. At the dinner there was a
truly pleasant and instructive conversation. It turned upon the evi-
dences of a future state from the light of nature. Dr. Rees is a man
of amiable manners, various learning, some anecdote, and talents more
than common.

Thursday, June 28th . Breakfasted with Mr. Jones. We had a truly
learned and delightful conversation. Mr. Jones had studied with Gilbert
Wakefield . . .

Tuesday. Dined at Dr. Rees’s, with Belsham, Mr. Tooke, Mr. Wil-

George Ticknor at Thirty-Seven
( After Sloane’s Copy of the Portrait by Sully)

“NOT MEN, BUT BOOKS” 175

liam Taylor of Norwich. Conversation delightful. The tone is certainly
higher than with us.9

And so for a month the young American minister educated
himself according to “the voice and conference of men.”10

The illustrations can be multiplied. Charles Lowell, father
of James Russell Lowell, studied informally in Edinburgh un-
der the philosophers Dugald Stewart and Thomas Brown, and
made other distinguished acquaintances in the Scottish capital.
From there he went to London and Paris. Earlier in the
French capital, John Collins Warren was moving in the circle
of Napoleon’s savants , and John Pickering at one of Madame
de Stael’s soirees met Benjamin Constant. Leaving Paris, Pick-
ering journey to Brussels, Ghent, Antwerp, Rotterdam, The
Hague, Leyden, Utrecht, Amsterdam, and Haarlem, seeking
out well-known persons in each city. On April 28, 1801, to cite
one instance, he called upon John Luzac, noted professor of
Greek at the University of Leyden, who escorted him to the
bookshops and the University. In the evening he attended a
party at Luzac’s. He notes : “Cards played, supper, songs after-
wards. Great gayety. Many of the company spoke English and
French.”11

If the travel records of the New Englanders show us how
they educated themselves in men, they also suggest their re-
sponse to the characters and sights of foreign cities and na-
tions. This aspect of their education abroad illuminates the
Boston sensibility in the period. It helps us to understand
Ticknor’s and Everett’s inheritance as travelers, with its
strong predisposition to British culture, its antipathy to Euro-
pean squalor, and its superficial grasp of the Catholic impact
upon Western civilization. Only the barest illustrations can be
given here. John Collins Warren remarks upon his arrival in
England in 1799 :

I was impressed with a kind of pleasing solemnity, when I
touched the land of our forefathers, while I recollected how many
important events had been transacted there ; how many heroes,
statesmen, and philosophers had there displayed their greatness ;
and how important a part in the theatre of the world was at that
moment filled by this little island . . ,12

176 THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

William Tudor records his entrance into the Port of Naples
in 1802:

The first day after our arrival we were besieged with beggars
of every sort. They come off in boats and surround the vessel. One
moment a capuchin would extend his cowl, and in a submissive at-
titude ask our charity ; hardly rid of him, before a band of music
would be under the stern, till something was obtained ; the serenade
finished, a woman with three or four miserable children would be
screaming for something. These scenes are so new to an American,
that we always gave them ; and in consequence were so surrounded
with supplicants, that we were obliged at last to refuse our charity
altogether.13

Joseph Stevens Buckminster describes the Cathedral of Stras-
bourg in the most enthusiastic terms.14 Such descriptions and
observations imply a great deal about the literary and social
education of the Bostonians.

A third feature of this education, one closely associated with
the Grand Tour tradition, was the classical pilgrimage. But
the Italian tour was not as easily made as the English and
French tours, and only a few New Englanders before Ticknor
and Everett seem to have found it possible. One was William
Tudor, who called himself “a classick pilgrim.” Reminiscent of
Addison's Remarks on Several Parts of Italy, his observations on
various ancient ruins indicate the intimate classical awareness
of the mind schooled from childhood in Roman literature.
“Every foot of the place is classick ground,” Tudor comments
upon the region around the Mare Monte and the Elysian
Fields, urging the visitor “to read the sixth book of the Aeneid
before he makes this excursion.” His remarks also suggest the
convention admonishing the traveler to moralize about “the
ruinous alterations of time and barbarity” as he views the relics
of ancient civilization. “The little ruin called the Tempio di
Venere is the most beautiful I have ever seen,” Tudor writes:

These and some other shapeless ruins are all that remain of an-
cient Baiae . . . What a reverse! Even in the most luxurious days
of ancient Rome, this place became a proverb from the sensuality
and debauchery of its inhabitants, the beauty of the climate, and
those fascinating shores, once the theme of the poets and the resort of
the dissipated.13

“NOT MEN, BUT BOOKS” 177

Mr. Spectator, needless to say, would have approved the sen-
timent.

Thus one may see how the British travel idealism, as a part
of their cultural heritage, shaped the aims of the Boston travel-
ers. Without the limitations placed on travel by the Napoleonic
wars, its educational uses would undoubtedly have been more
fully exploited. Even so, the New England travelers, protected
in part perhaps by the immunity of innocence, moved about
with considerable freedom. They had the opportunity if not
“to join books and the world” in Chesterfield’s sense, at least
to see “men and things.”

Yet no matter how seriously the Bostonians responded to
the travel idealism, they could not make it truly meaningful to
their situation. For it hardly accorded either with their needs
or their ambition. Theirs was a becoming, not an established
world. Harvard was small, its library severely limited, and its
curriculum still rigidly circumscribed; the Boston Athenaeum
was no more than a reading room and a repository for curi-
ous coins and medals; the Monthly Anthology was supported by
less than five hundred subscribers. Consider in contrast an am-
bition like Arthur Maynard Walter’s, who, before leaving for
Europe in 1802, wrote in his journal:

Literature is my object. I shall buy a good library in London.
I shall expend $1,500 in law books and a private, choice collection.
I mean to buy the corner-stones of learning. These must support
the building; and others, gradually attained, must contribute to
its strength and beauty. The gigantic names of Cudworth, Locke,
Milton, Selden, and others, will be first obtained, and, if my money
be sufficient, my library will not be small. There is a pathway open
in this country to a goodly land. I mean to offer my passport at
the turnpike-gate. I mean steadily to study when I return from
Europe .... All knowledge must be acquired from books, conver-
sation, or reflections upon human nature. Genius may quicken
progress, give an energy to our researches ; it may illuminate what
is obscure. But to know what have been the collected treasures of the
old countries, to investigate our nature by their productions, to measure
the mind by the stores of intellect which former ages have furnished, to
knozv how to systematize our researches, how to direct our inquiries, can
only be learned from books by continued perseverance in our studies,
and by indefatigable diligence in exploring what has been discovered .l6
Obviously, this went far beyond the British idea of travel for

178 THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

education. Walter’s organizing motive was scholarship; he in-
tended “to measure the mind,” not by men, but “by the stores
of intellect which former ages have furnished.” Among the
sources of knowledge, therefore, books assumed priority; they
afforded the pathway to the “goodly land” the scholar would
create in the New World when he possessed himself, as he
was morally bound to do, of his inheritance from the Old World.

Walter’s point of view was shared by his friends. Buckmin-
ster garnered an elegant private library while he was in Eu-
rope, containing more than twenty-six hundred volumes, and
probably exceeded in or around Boston only by John Quincy
Adams’s library. The young minister’s library was, Ticknor
remembered, “really rich and select.”17 At the same time Buck-
minster, serving as a voluntary agent, was purchasing a “pre-
cious deposit of books” for the Athenaeum.18 As this interest
in books grew, it became increasingly cosmopolitan. Most sig-
nificantly, it extended to German letters and learning. One
can almost certainly ascribe Ticknor’s curiosity about things
German to his Anthology Society days, when he must have
read translations in the Anthology of two essays by Charles de
Viller, one a description of Gottingen, the other a survey of
German literature; and when he must have interested himself
in Buckminster’s studies in German biblical criticism and in
the various books by Germans in the minister’s library.19

But despite their best efforts, the Boston youths continued
to feel the poverty of their literary resources. How could they
realize their ambition to be men of letters when the books they
needed were mostly still in Europe? Could they only wait for the
seemingly distant time when America would have libraries,
universities, and traditions like the Old World? These ques-
tions Ticknor and Everett attempted to answer.

B ORN in Boston in 1791, George Ticknor was the young-
est active member of the Anthology Society, which he served
as secretary during its declining days. His education was not
strictly according to the usual pattern, for he attended Dart-
mouth, his father’s alma mater , instead of going to Harvard.
After two years at college, which as he recollected in later

“NOT MEN, BUT BOOKS”

179

years afforded him scant instruction, he returned to Boston to
study under the private tutelage of the Reverend John Sylves-
ter John Gardiner, the rector of Trinity Church and president
of the Anthology Society, a political and literary conservative.
In 1810, Ticknor entered William Sullivan’s law offices to pre-
pare for a legal career. “I read law,” he remembered, “with some
diligence, but not with interest enough to attach me to the pro-
fession. I continued to read Greek and Latin, and preferred my
old studies to any other.”20 By the time he was nineteen he had
became an intimate of the circle that gathered in Buckminster’s
library on Sunday evenings for supper and conversation. A
few years later he decided to give up the law, go to Europe,
and become a scholar.

Edward Everett, born in 1794, entered Harvard at the age
of thirteen, graduating in August 1811, a short time after the
Anthology Society expired. Like Ticknor, he was greatly in-
fluenced by Buckminster. Hoping to emulate him, he dedicated
himself to the ministry. After receiving his master of arts de-
gree from Harvard in 1813, he was called to fill the pulpit at
the Brattle Street Church. He was highly successful as Buck-
minster’s successor, until he decided to accept the new chair
of Greek at Harvard and to go to Europe in preparation.

As literary travelers, Ticknor and Everett had certain ad-
vantages over Walter, Buckminster, and their precursors. For
one thing, they were free to go abroad solely for literary reas-
ons; for another, they traveled chiefly after the Napoleonic
wars had ended; for still another, they went to Europe in an
era of vigorous American assertion following a long period of
uncertainty about the “Great Experiment.” Possibly above all
they had the benefit of an assurance in the importance of their
mission derived from a perceptibly growing sense of literary
community in New England. Yet these favorable circum-
stances did not in themselves assure the Boston youths an edu-
cational experience of Europe essentially more productive than
Walter’s or Buckminster’s. They simply helped to make fruit-
ful the signal advantage Ticknor and Everett enjoyed. This
was an advantage they created for themselves, and it lies in
their attitude toward the traditional concept of travel for edu-
cation. In a letter to his friend Nathaniel Appleton Haven of

i8o THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

Portsmouth, New Hampshire, written in July 1814, Ticknor
states :

My plan, so far as I have one, is to employ the next nine months
in visiting the different parts of this country, and in reading those
books and conversing with those persons, from whom I can learn
in what particular parts of the countries I mean to visit I can most
easily compass my objects. The whole tour in Europe I consider
a sacrifice of enjoyment to improvement. I value it only in propor-
tion to the great means and inducements it will afford me to study —
not men, hut hooks. Wherever I establish myself, it will he only with a
view of labor ; and wherever I stay, — even if it be but a zveek, — I shall,
I hope, devote myself to some study, many more hours in the day than
I do at home.

A month later he elaborates upon the purpose of his European
journey to Charles Davies of Portland, Maine:

I began, long ago, a course of studies which I well knew I could
not finish on this side the Atlantic ; and if I do not mean to relin-
quish my favorite pursuits, and acknowledge that I have trifled
away some of the best years of my life, I must spend some time
in Italy, France, and Germany, and in Greece, if I can .... The
truth is, dear Charles, that I have always considered this going to
Europe a mere means of preparing myself for greater usefulness
and happiness after I return, — as a great sacrifice of the present
to the future; and the nearer I come to the time I am to make this
sacrifice, the more heavy and extravagant it appears.21

The significance of Ticknor’s plans is apparent in his simple
intention “to study — not men, but books” and in his fixed de-
termination to organize his life in Europe around study. His
phrasing, “not men, but books,” indicates that he was con-
sciously reversing the accepted theory of travel for education.
Unlike Walter, who meant “steadily to study,” when he returned
from Europe, Ticknor realized Europe itself must be the scene
of study. The American scholar longing to inquire into “the
stores of intellect” must seek out opportunities commen-
surate with his ambition. A haphazard tour spent chiefly in
conversing, enjoying the scenery, meditating upon antiquity,
and collecting books did not yield the requisite opportunities.
That Everett regarded his European sojourn in the same way
is not explicitly documented by a similar statement. It is, none-
theless, borne out by his interest in study wherever he traveled

“NOT MEN, BUT BOOKS”

181

in Europe. For instance, explaining his decision to reside in
Paris during the winter of 1817 instead of going to Oxford as
he had originally planned, Everett says : “But I find even at
Paris that I have no object there but study; and Professor
Gaisford, at Oxford, writes me that it is in every way better
that I should be there in summer, as the library is open a
greater part of the day.”22

I-/EST we interpret Ticknor’s and Everett’s scholarly am-
bitions too narrowly, however, we must recall the other side
of their story. No matter how devoted to books, they were not
in any sense cloistered scholars. Like Chesterfield’s, their in-
terest in men was strong and resolute ; and in their travels it
always overshadowed the Addisonian concern for the scenic
and pictorial.

Everywhere they went they made themselves known to
those who constituted “the best company.”23 The salons and
drawing rooms of Paris, Rome, London, Edinburgh, Madrid,
Lisbon, and Athens knew one or both of these Bostonians; and
they were not unknown in certain retired settings that har-
bored celebrities. Indeed the records of their travels echo with
the names of the illustrious : Goethe, Madame de Stael, Cha-
teaubriand, Humboldt, Lafayette, Talleyrand, Benjamin Con-
stant, Sismondi, Byron, Wordsworth, and Scott, to mention a
few. Ticknor especially was an observant student of men. His
“precocious sense of the world”24 informs almost every page
of his letters and journals and renders his impression of post-
Napoleonic society vivid and entertaining even today. Perhaps
it also gives the clue to his acceptance by the intimate circles
of that society. To take one example, he visited at the home
of the Duchess de Duras at her “delightful party” for the
Duchess of Devonshire when “only five or six persons” were
present, among them Chateaubriand, who “read a little ro-
mance on the Zegri and Abencerrages of Granada, full of de-
scriptions glowing with poetry . . .”2S Everett, too, moved
freely in European society. On one occasion he was presented
to King Louis XVIII; at another time he visited the Duchess
d’Angouleme, the daughter of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

1 82 THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

However, their absorption in the world of men clid not un-
dercut the two young Bostonians’ original intention. When
Ticknor arrived in Paris from Gottingen, he instituted a routine
of language studies beginning at seven in the morning and
lasting until five in the afternoon each day. In Rome he studied
Italian and, with the aid of “the many books he carried with
him” and the advice of an archaeologist, compiled a copious ac-
count of ancient Rome. In Madrid, fortified by “a cup of Span-
ish chocolate, so thick it may almost be eaten with a fork,” he
sat down to his books at half past five each morning. Later in
the day he studied, as he had in Paris, with instructors who
came to him. In Lisbon he established himself “near the book-
sellers, and the Public Library” to pursue his Portuguese re-
searches. Back in Paris he was soon in “full operation” among
the “great treasures” of the King’s Library.26 Everett was per-
haps not so methodical as his friend, but his scholarly aims
were as determined. In Paris he too spent “many hours a day”
in the King’s Library, and in Rome he devoted himself to ex-
ploring the Vatican libraries. During the latter part of his stay
in Europe he was less given to books, since he undertook a
hazardous pilgrimage to Greece.27

Ticknor and Everett, it becomes apparent, went abroad with
a more definite and significant intention than students of their
journey have comprehended. It was this intention — “to study,
not men, but books” — that shaped their visit to the Old
World. Out of it grew an experience of Europe no American
had yet had. Transmitting their inspiration to others, they be-
came the vanguard of a long procession of their fellow country-
men including such men as Joseph Green Cogswell, George
Bancroft, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and John Lothrop
Motley. The cumulative impact of these travelers upon the de-
velopment of American literary and intellectual traditions and
institutions would be difficult to overestimate.

More conclusively than any of their predecessors, Ticknor
and Everett represented Margaret Fuller’s “thinking” Ameri-
can traveler. He is the American visitor to Europe “who, recog-
nizing the immense advantage of being born to a new world
and on a virgin soil, yet does not wish one seed from the past
to be lost. He is anxious to gather and carry back with him

NOT MEN, BUT BOOKS”

183

every plant that will bear a new climate and new culture. Some
will dwindle; others will attain a bloom and stature unknown
before. He wishes to gather them clean, free from noxious in-
sects, and to give them a fair trial in this new world. And that
he may know the conditions under which he may best place
them in that new world, he does not neglect to study their his-
tory in this.”28

Every student of New England’s culture during the first
half of the nineteenth century — from the creation of the An-
thology Society to the establishment of the Boston Public
Library — must weigh the germinal influence of the resolve
of Ticknor and Everett “to study — not men, but books.”

Notes

1. See Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor, ed. G. S. Hillard,
Mrs. Anna Ticknor, and Miss Anna Eliot Ticknor (Boston, 1876), I, 48-320;
Paul Revere Frothingham, Edward Everett, Orator and Statesman (Boston and
New York, 1925), 36-60. Unless otherwise noted, these works are the sources
of information about Ticknor and Everett throughout this article.

2. See Life of Ticknor, II, 299-400.

3. See Orie William Long, Literary Pioneers, Early American Explorers of
European Culture (Cambridge, 1935), v; Robert E. Spiller, The American in
England During the First Half Century of Independence (New York, 1926), 57-
63; Discovery of Europe, ed. Philip Rahv (Boston, 1947), 63; Van Wyck
Brooks, The Flowering of New England, 1815-1865 (New York, rev. ed. 1937),
75-7', Henry Adams, History of the United States During the Administration of
Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1903), I, 94; Samuel Lee Wolff, “Scholars” in
Cambridge History of American Literature, ed. William P. Trent and others
(New York, 1921), IV, 452-3.

4. See E. S. Bates, Touring in 1600, a Study in the Development of Travel
as a Means of Education (Boston and New York, 1912). Also, see Clare How-
ard, English Travellers of the Renaissance (London, 1914); Ruth Kelso, The
Doctrine of the English Gentleman in the Sixteenth Century in University of Il-
linois Studies in Language and Literature (Urbana, 1929), XIV, 142-6; George
B. Parks, “Travel as Education” in Richard Foster Jones and others, The
Seventeenth Century, Studies in the History of English Thought and Literature
from Bacon to Pope (Stanford, 1951), 264-90.

5. The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, Fourth Earl of Chesterfield, ed.
Bonamy Dobree (New York, 1932), 111,1148. The words occur in a letter
from Chesterfield to his son dated May 10, O.S., 1748.

6. In The British Essayists, ed. A. Chalmers (Boston, 1864), IX, 304-7.

7. Joseph B. Felt, Memorials of William Smith Shaw (Boston, 1852), 160.

1 84 THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

8. Ibid., 161-2. The letter is dated December 22, 1802.

9. Quoted from a portion of Buckminster’s journal printed in Eliza Buck-
minster Lee, Memoirs of Rev. Joseph Buckminster , D.D. and of His Son , Rev.
Joseph Stevens Buckminster (Boston, 1849), 256.

10. The words are in Walsingham’s advice to a nephew. See Conyers
Read, Mr. Secretary Wal singh am and the Policy of Queen Elisabeth (Cambridge,

1925), I, 19.

11. Quoted from a portion of Pickering’s diary printed in Mary Orne
Pickering, Life of John Pickering (Boston, 1887), 194.

12. Edward Warren, The Life of John Collins Warren (Boston, i860), I,
26. This passage occurs in a letter from Warren to his father dated August 19,

1799.

13. “Letters from Europe, No. 1.” Monthly Anthology and Boston Review,
III (January, 1806), 4.

14. Lee, Memoirs of the Buckminsters, 274-5. From Buckminster’s journal.

15. “Original Letters from Europe, No. 5,” Anthology, III (May, 1806),
227.

16. Quoted in Josiah Quincy, History of the Boston Athenaeum, with Bio-
graphical Notices of Its Deceased Founders (Cambridge, 1851), 15-6. The italics
are mine.

17. From a review of Mrs. Lee’s Memoirs of the Buckminsters in the Chris-
tian Examiner, XLVII (September, 1849), 183.

18. Lee, Memoirs of the Buckminsters, 408. The remark occurs in a letter
from Buckminster to William Smith Shaw dated April 3, 1807.

19. See Anthology, II (November, 1805), 607-8; VIII (May, 1810), 345-56.
Buckminster’s library may be studied in Catalogue of the Library of the Late
Rev. J. S. Buckminster (Boston, 1812), an auction catalogue. On the general
subject of German inffluence in New England, see Harold S. Jantz, “German
Thought and Literature in New England, 1620-1820,” Journal of English and
Germanic Philology, XLI (January, 1942), 1-45. Jantz points out Ticknor’s
inaccurate recollection of his introduction to German letters.

20. Life of Ticknor, I, 9.

21. Ibid., I, 23, 24. The italics are mine. Cf. George Ticknor to Elisha
Ticknor, July 6, 1816, in ibid., I, 102; Elisha Ticknor to George Ticknor, Au-
gust 9, 1815, in ibid., Ill, 501. Also, cf. George Ticknor to Stephen Higginson,
May 20, 1816 in Long, Literary Pioneers, 12-3.

22. Frothingham, Edivard Everett, 42. For the full letter from which this
is quoted see T. W. Higginson, “Gottingen and Harvard Eighty Years Ago,”
Harvard Graduates' Magazine, VI (September, 1897), 14-15. It is dated Sep-
tember 17, 1817; the addressee, however, is not identified.

23. Chesterfield, Letters, III, 1148.

24. Rahv, Discovery of Europe, 63.

25. Life of Ticknor, I, 255.

26. Ibid., I, 1 3 1-2, 1 71, 187, 248, 252.

27. Frothingham, Edward Everett, 42-60.

28. The Writings of Margaret Fuller, ed. Mason Wade (New York, 1941),
424. From a letter by Margaret Fuller to Horace Greeley’s Tribune in 1848.
This letter is quoted in part in Rahv’s Discovery of Europe, 166-70.

The Impostures of the Devil

By ZOLTAN HARASZTI

ONE of the noblest and most important — and also one
of the least known — ■ books of the sixteenth century is
De Praestigiis Daemonum ( The Impostures of the Devil ) by
Johann Weyer, first published at Basel in 1563. The author,
who wrote under the Latinized name of Wierus, was a native
of Grave on the Maas in Brabant and served as physician to
the Duke of Cleves from 1550 till 1588, that is, from his thirty-
fifth year until his death.

Weyer was a deeply religious man, yet it is doubtful that he
believed in the existence of the devil. To be sure, he often
speaks of Satan and his demons as the direct originators of
many obsessions; but all such references of his leave a taste of
scepticism behind, as if they had been used in irony, as a mere
form of speech, or simply to cover cases which seemed impos-
sible to explain. And he certainly did not believe in the exist-
ence of witches, those poor deluded women — mulierculae ,
miseriae, dementate delusiae — who as the allies and instruments
of the devil were supposed to perform the most fantastic super-
natural deeds, or rather misdeeds. In an age when the horrible
delusion exacted the torture and death of innumerable thous-
ands all over Europe, this simple doctor dared to come forward
and declare that all the cruelty and bloodshed were due to
bigotry and ignorance. The works of the witches, he stoutly
maintained, were nothing but fables, for “all acts which were
beyond nature were nothing but illusion and fantasy.” Thor-
oughly versed in Scripture and the writings of the Church
Fathers, Weyer was ready to meet all theological arguments;
yet he wrote first of all as a medical man. In recognizing a
large number of mental diseases, and in prescribing the proper
treatment for them, he was the founder of modern psychiatry.
But beyond that, he was one of the foremost emancipators of
the human spirit.

The De Praestigiis Daemonum may be regarded as a reply to
the Malleus Maleficarum, which had been the guide and manual

185

1 86 THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

of all witch-persecutors in the past seventy-five years. Weyer
frequently quotes from that terrible book, but only to show up
its barbarity. “One has only to read this volume, the silly and
often godless absurdities of the theologians Jacob Sprenger
and Heinrich Kramer and compare it with my work,” he states
at the outset, “to see clearly that I expound an entirely differ-
ent, a totally opposite point of view.” Every chapter of the De
Praestigiis contains some novelty — the new interpretation of
a Biblical text, the unmasking of a fraud, or the fresh analysis
of a case history — for the demolishing of the old superstitions.

The work aroused, of course, great interest. New and con-
stantly enlarged editions appeared in 1564, 1566, and 1568, and
two more in 1577 and 1583. In 1565 a German translation by
Johann Fuglin was published and later twice reprinted. Dis-
satisfied with this unauthorized version, Weyer issued his own
in 1567. A French translation by Jacques Chouet appeared in
1569 and was reprinted in 1579. Finally an edition of Weyer’s
collected works was issued in 1660.

The De Praestigiis won over some people and exasperated
many more. His followers greeted Weyer as a liberator of
their consciences, but his enemies branded him “a witch-advocate”
and “a master wizard.” Cornelius Loos, a canon of Mainz,
Simon Sulzer, Bishop of Basel, and the Jesuit Fathers Paul
Laymann and Friedrich von Spee were among his most promi-
nent pupils, as was the Englishman Reginald Scott, whose The
Discoverie of Witchcraft , published in 1584, was largely based
upon the De Praestigiis. Above all, several German princes lis-
tened to Weyer. For a time he had reason to be optimistic. “I
cannot offer enough thanks to God,” he wrote in his De Lamiis
( Of Witches ), “that Pie has let me present proofs which have
in many places dissipated the rage of wading in the blood of in-
nocents, and have stopped the wild cruelty of the devil in the
torture of human beings. The reward of my book about the
impostures of the devil is that certain high authorities not only
treat those wretched old women whom the mob calls witches
more mildly, but even absolve them from capital punishment.
Congratulatory letters from the ablest scholars of every class
and creed amply testify to the success of my waking nights, as
they apparently are adopting my views with all their hearts.”

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187

But the fury of Weyer’s enemies did not wait long. The theo-
logical faculties of Heidelberg, Trier, and Cologne could hardly
find words strong enough to express their condemnation.
Among his bitterest antogonists were Jean Bodin, the French
political thinker, who devoted a long session of his Demonoma-
nie to a refutation of Weyer’s teachings, and Martin Del Rio,
the Spanish Jesuit of Antwerp, whose Disquisitiones Magicae, a
worthy sequel to the Malleus , regards the slightest doubt on the
subject of witchcraft as heresy. Indeed, the good effects of the
De Pracstigiis were only temporary. The persecution of the
witches went on with even greater ferocity than before, reach-
ing its most savage excesses at the close of the century.

The Boston Public Library has copies of the 1568 and 1577
editions of the De Praestigiis. The first is an octavo of over
seven hundred pages, and the second a large quarto which in-
cludes also Weyer’s later works, namely, the Liber Apologeticus,
the Pseudo -M onarchia, and the De Lamiis. This latter volume be-
longed to Theodore Parker, whose library, numbering nearly
sixteen thousand volumes, is one of the most valued posses-
sions of the institution. Parker’s signature with the date “Janu-
ary 27, 1851” appears on the fly-leaf of the book.

T HE De Praestigiis was dedicated to William III, Duke of
Cleves. Weyer was lucky in his patron. Duke William was an
enlightened man; and, as a son-in-law of the Emperor Ferdi-
nand I, was also powerful enough to secure immunity for his
physician from persecution. It was at his castle at Hambach,
near Jiilich, that the De Praestigiis, the result of some twelve
years’ labor, was composed.

“Of all the misfortunes which, through Satan’s help, the count-
less fanatical and corrupt opinions have brought in our time to
Christendom,” Weyer wrote in his address to the Duke, “not
the smallest is that which under the name of witchcraft has
spread out like a venomous plant.” The theological quarrels
may have torn people asunder, but even they have not pro-
duced such a disaster as does the notion that childish old hags
can do any harm to men and animals. “Daily experience shows
what accursed apostasy, what friendship with the Evil One,

1 88 THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

what hatred and dissension among neighbors, what brawls in
city and country, how many murders of innocent people such a
belief in the power of witches brings forth . . . For a time one
hoped that, through the sound teaching of the word of God, its
poison would be gradually eliminated; but in the terrible
storms of these days it reaches farther and wider than ever.
Almost all the theologians are silent regarding this godless-
ness; doctors tolerate it, and jurists treat it under the influence
of the old prejudices : no one extends a hand to heal the deadly
wound.” But the Duke, Weyer knew, agreed with him “that
witches cannot harm anyone, even through the most malicious
will or the ugliest conjuration; that it is their imagination, in-
flamed by demons in a way not comprehensible to us, and the
agonies of melancholy that make them fancy that they can
cause all sorts of evil. For when the whole matter is laid on the
scales and is weighed, its absurdity and falsity becomes clearer
than the day.”

In the third edition of his work Weyer inserted an appeal
also to the Emperor and to “all worldly and ecclesiastical
Princes” : he hoped that his labors would help to destroy the
centuries-old superstition. “This will come about,” he wrote,
“when in all your countries, provinces, and estates all cases of
witchcraft are properly judged. Reason will triumph then over
the impostures of Satan, the blood of innocent people will cease
to flow so profusely, the pillars of public peace will stand firmer, and
the needle of conscience will sting our hearts less often . .

In its final form, the De Praestigiis is divided into six books,
each consisting of thirty to forty chapters. The first book deals
with “the devil, his origin, purpose, and influence”; the second,
with the magicians of the Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, and their
latter-day disciples; the third, with the witches and their sup-
posed power; the fourth, with the alleged victims of witch-
craft; the fifth, with the treatment of the “bewitched” and the
“obsessed”; and the sixth, with the punishment of witches,
conjurers, and poisoners. Like earlier writers on witchcraft,
Weyer jams his chapters with histories of actual cases; but in-
stead of swallowing their supernatural import, he shows that
most of them can be explained by natural causes, either by ill-
ness or clever fraud. In many instances he speaks from personal

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189

experience; indeed, he treated several “bewitched” girls in
his own family, restoring their health with simple diet and rest.

From his first chapters on Weyer insists that it is wrong to
attribute natural phenomena to evil spirits, even if we cannot
tell their cause. The might of the devil is limited; and since he
cannot do anything without the permission of God, it is sacri-
legious to believe that God has resigned his power to the arch-
enemy. Further, because of their age, poor health, and stupid-
ity, the so-called witches would hinder, if anything, the work
of the devil, who is prompt and quick. As a spirit, the devil can
do many things which, on account of our corporality, go be-
yond human nature; and if anyone objects that the witches per-
form their feats through their communion with these spirits,
the answer is that the natural power of man cannot be greatly
increased beyond his original endowments.

However, for much of the mischief Weyer blamed the doc-
tors. “Ignorant and unskilled physicians,” he suggested, “as-
cribe to witchcraft all illnesses that are incurable or in the cure
of which they have made a mistake. They talk about it as a
blind man does about color. Thus they cover their ignorance,
as do crude surgeons their bungling, with the fantasies of magical
malefactors, when they themselves are the real malefactors.
With them belong also the swaggerers of the school of Para-
celsus. Aping their master, they promise golden mountains,
use all kinds of tricks, trample on the old art of healing, yet ac-
complish nothing . .

TT HE Malleus Maleficarum describes two ways for the sur-
render of witches to the devil : the first is at a solemn gathering
of the witches in the presence of Satan; and the other at a pri-
vate meeting with Satan. The new witch promises to deny the
Christian faith, not to adore the Holy Sacrament, and to trample
the crucifix under foot. She is to cook children, to eat them
and make salves out of their limbs, and, rubbed with these
salves, to go on flights through the air.

Weyer called the whole ceremony a gross absurdity. “That
all this nonsense does not deserve credence is clear,” he wrote.
“The pact comes about through the fact that the devil poisons

190 THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

the imagination of the individual, letting him see all sorts of
visions and hear all sorts of voices. But the pact which one party
enforces only by means of deceit is no pact. Further, the devil
cannot associate with people in such a visible and tangible way
as the witches say, because he is a spirit.” And he goes on : “It
is a devilish fantasy when the witches believe that they are
able to kill new-born children with their ceremonies, or that
they take the bodies out of the graves and cook unguents of them . . .
But supposing that it were true — whence could such an un-
guent have the power to carry someone rubbed with it, or sit-
ting on a chair rubbed with it, through the air, as the Malleus
Maleficarum states? All such ideas are mere madness and illu-
sion. The witches do not inflict the diseases upon us, as they
themselves confess to do. This is all a fable. The mental confu-
sion of the accused and the greed of the judges are at the root
of the darkness.” Chapter 5 of the third book, dealing with the
phantoms which the imagination can produce in melancholy
persons, is a little treatise in itself.

As is well-known, a large part of the Malleus Maleficarum is
occupied with the sexual orgies of the witches ; the De Praestigiis
devotes about as much space to the refutation of these queer
notions. What are commonly called incubus and succubus, Weyer
maintains, are nothing but nightmares. “They are caused by
vapors which rise from the phlegm and the spleen and cloud
the brain. A person in that condition imagines that something
heavy sprawls over his body. This usually happens when he
lies on his back and his stomach is loaded with food. But why
should not melancholy women when they sleep lying on their
backs be occasionally seized with this illness and then fancy
that an unclean spirit has violated them?” The stories which
he relates in this connection prove that Weyer, though a sober
and decent man, was not devoid of humor.

Great Biblical examples are supposed to prove beyond
doubt the sufferings which witches can inflict. The author
shows that the Bible speaks of the devil and not of witches.
“The devil can sneak into human beings or animals and ruin
their bodies,” he writes. “In this way Job was harmed; Nebu-
chadnezzar ate grass; and the Savior healed those who were
possessed.” He ironically adds: “It is fortunate that they are

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191

not walking around today; one would burden old women with
the guilt of their misery. And they are so crazed that, under
torture, they would confess long lists of their pretended shame-
ful deeds.”

One of the most frequent means by which the witches were
supposed to torment their victims was by forcing them to
swallow rags, nails, needles, all sorts of objects. The bewitched
vomited them forth at the hearings, thus supplying “irrefut-
able” evidence of the witches’ supernatural power. But Weyer
denied that these strange articles came from the stomach. “The
fact that they are often larger than the throat proves that the
artful devil puts them into the human being’s mouth, without
our seeing it.” Whether the author would have insisted on the
agency of the devil, or would have been satisfied with a clever
sleight-of-hand, is not difficult to guess. At any rate, he ex-
plains: “It is impossible that all that stuff should come up from
below, even if the alimentary canal should be stretched as far
as possible. At Nimwegen someone at Easter wanted to swal-
low a hen’s egg, but got suffocated. If one examines the stom-
achs of such people by pressing and rubbing them, one will find
nothing there.” Personal observation in the case of a girl
showed the author that the objects thus produced were moistened
only by a bit of spittle, and had no traces of food such as one
would expect after a meal. He also had a chance to see how
Satan distorted the girl’s eyes, locked her hands convulsively,
and kept her mouth closed. Her father and the people gathered
around maintained that they could be opened only by making
the sign of the cross. “I opened both her hands and mouth only
with trust in God,” Weyer relates. “By this I surely do not
want to say anything disrespectful against the cross, only
against its misuse.” This girl had accused a decent woman as
the originator of her illness, and the latter, together with her
mother, was thrown into prison.

Epidemics of the witchcraft delusion often visited convents.
The author tells the stories of several. At Uvertet, in the county
of Horn, a poor woman borrowed from the nuns three pounds
of salt, which she afterwards repaid in double measure. But
from that time on the nuns began to hear voices; were dragged
from their beds by their feet; were raised into the air and then

192

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

dropped to the ground. Two of them talked of a black cat,
which was in their dormitory shut up in a basket. Sure enough,
when the basket was opened a cat sprang out. The woman, sus-
pected of being a witch, was put in prison with seven others.
“There can be no doubt that Satan did possess these nuns,”
Weyer writes, slyly observing: “Even if the cat was a natural
one, we must not doubt that the devil had placed it in the bas-
ket.” At the convent of Nazareth at Cologne the nuns were tor-
mented in a similar manner. Among them was a fourteen-year-
old girl named Gertrude, who had often seen mad apparitions
in her bed. Soon the same thing happened to several others.
Finally a solemn investigation was instituted. “The whole cal-
amity,” Weyer writes, “was started by certain debauched
young men who, having made the acquaintance of some of the
nuns, gained their way into the convent . . . But due to stricter
precautions they had to desist, whereupon the crafty devil cor-
rupted the imagination of the poor women, representing to
them the images of those wanton persons.”

The strongest bulwark against Satan, Weyer insists, is pure
faith. And he goes on: “If pastors would build upon this ground,
the devil’s spook would become rarer and rarer in their par-
ishes. But how many souls perish through their false teachings?
They consider the magical absurdities as their inherited privi-
lege, and refer wrongly to several popes who are said to have
been magicians. The ecclesiastical exorcists deceive the people
with their cures of the possessed. They are usually ignorant
and illiterate . . . and abuse the name of God in a disgraceful way.”
His family seems to have supported Weyer valiantly in his
ceaseless fight against superstition. “A young girl, who was at
times terribly tormented by a demon,” he relates, “had a little
piece of paper wrapped in leather hung round her neck. That
would help her, she was told; and if she lost it, her sickness
would return. Everybody worried about the safety of the paper.
My wife Judith heard of the case, and asked the girl to come
to our house. She exhorted her to trust only in God, the pro-
tector of all who are in trouble, and to despise the ruses of the
devil. Then she built up her strength with food and drink, and
took the amulet off from her neck. The people watching her
were frightened and ran away, thinking that the raging and

THE IMPOSTURES OF THE DEVIL

193

ranting of the girl would start again at once. But the girl, left
alone with my wife and my daughter Sophia, remained calm.
My wife opened the leather and found no writing at all on the
paper. She threw it into the fire in the presence of the girl who,
comforted through the lesson, enjoyed a good appetite, ap-
peared merry, and with a lively faith in God remained in good
health from then on.”

T HE last book of the De Praestigiis deals with the punish-
ment of the supposed witches. Weyer points out that the Con-
stitution of Emperor Charles V prescribes the greatest possible
care in cases of magic, decreeing that false accusers should be
punished and the innocently accused be paid damages. “How
differently such people are treated nowadays!” he exclaims.
“Malicious accusations and the foolish suspicion of the crude
mob suffice for the judges, who throw poor old women, whose
minds have been disordered by the devil, into holes that are more
dens of robbers than prisons; who deliver them over to hideous
torture through the hangman, and have them interrogated by
unutterable torments. Guilty or not guilty — it is all the same;
they cannot get freed from the bloody agony until they have
confessed. So they prefer to render their souls to God in flames
rather than to endure the torture of these savage butchers any
longer. If then they die, crushed by the cruelty of the rack
while still in the hands of the hangman, or after they, turned
to skeletons, have been taken out of the prisons, people cry in ju-
bilation that they have taken their own lives or that the devil
has broken their necks.”

He addresses the judges directly:

“When one day He will appear to whom nothing remains
hidden, the Searcher of hearts and souls, the true Judge of
all things, then shall your works be manifest, oh you hard
tyrants, you blood-thirsty, inhuman and merciless magistrates!
I call you herewith before the Last Judgment! God will decide
between you and me. The trampled and buried truth will rise
up, leap into your face, and cry for vengeance for your murders.
Then will appear how much you know of the truth of the Gos-
pel with which you parade; then will appear what the true

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THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

word of God has meant to you; then will you be measured on
your own scale.”

As so often, the author gives a case from his own experience.
A count who was well-known to him had two women tortured
and burnt at the stake on suspicion of witchcraft. One of them
was already dead in consequence of the torments she had suf-
fered when they dragged her out of the dungeon. The other
was forced to confess that with the help of a servant maid she
had tried to make a nobleman insane. This maid, too, was im-
prisoned and put on the rack. Weyer asked the count for the
records of the examination of the two women; and that was
why the judge told him that he had never encountered such
unbelievable resistance to torture as that of the maid. To
brand her as a witch, she was also subjected to the water-ordeal,
but she floated, which was considered as evidence of her guilt.
Weyer persuaded the judge that the nobleman was not be-
witched but possessed by a demon. Then he begged the count
to set free the innocent girl and deliver her to his family for
protection ; but not till after several months did she get out of
the hands of the hangman. Meanwhile the count himself —
evidently a paranoiac — broke down, to spend the rest of his
life in bed.

The witches, Weyer emphasizes, must not be confounded
with the heretics. They are feeble-minded old women deceived
by Satan, whereas the heretics are given to false creeds. Such
women ought to be instructed in the right religion, instead of
being thrown into dungeons. In any case, they should be pun-
ished less severely than men, considering that the mind and
spirit of women are generally much weaker, and that by their
very constitution they are more apt to be victims of delusion.
In a misogynist age Weyer, like his teacher Cornelius Agrippa,
pleaded for the considerate treatment of women — the favorite
targets of the fervor and horror of ascetics.

Some maintain, the author continues, that the will to do
harm itself should be punished, regardless of whether it is ef-
fective or not. One should distinguish however, he demands, be-
tween the intact will power of a sane man and the corrupted
will of a troubled person. Madmen and little children may have
such a will ; indeed, it is easy to make them believe that they

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195

have done things which they have never done. “How can any-
body tell that these poor women have contracted an alliance
with the devil? No one was present, no one can swear that he
was a witness. We have only the confession of stupid, dis-
traught creatures. Such a confession is either made under du-
ress or voluntarily. If under duress, it has no weight; if volun-
tarily, the acts themselves, such as flying through the air,
being transformed into animals, having carnal relations with
the devil, and so on, are impossible and therefore false. A legi-
timate confession must be both true and possible.”

On the last pages of his work Weyer reaffirms his strong
convictions. Turning to the theologians, doctors, and jurists,
he sums up :

“I do not doubt that many people will reward my labors
only with anger and calumny. They will censure what they do
not understand, and hold fast at any price to what is traditional
and deep-rooted. There will be some who will not neglect the
opportunity to let me feel the claws of their malice. Theolo-
gians will cry that it is unseemly for a medical man to go out
of his profession and attempt the explanation of Biblical pas-
sages. To them I answer that Saint Luke was a physician of
Antioch, and I count myself among those who endeavor by all
means of inquiry to belong to that royal priesthood of which
St. Peter and Isaiah speak.

“Some ecclesiastics I have accused of being sorcerers, with-
out however calling them by name. If they believe that they
have been wronged, I expect them to appear publicly for the
defense of their cause. I will answer them.

“My medical colleagues will doubtless discover many a de-
ficiency in my work; they would have liked certain matters
more precisely explained and the whole linked together by a
better method. I know how inadequate my powers are; if they
will prove my mistake, they may be sure of my thanks. Never
will I be ashamed to admit a fault.

“May the jurists take no offense that, in spite of the authority
of the Twelve Tables, I do not believe in the enchantment of
harvests and other like things. But if malicious men will ac-
cuse me of misdeeds, I will pray God to give me grace to endure
their attacks with patience.”

196 THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

In his last challenge Weyer assured the magicians them-
selves that he was not afraid of their impostures and delusions,
even if they intended to change him into a beast, throw him to
the ravens, or smother him in a sewer : “I have contempt for
the Delphic oracles by which vicious persons will prophesy mis-
fortunes for me because I have desecrated the temple of Pythia.
Against such visions of terror I need neither holy water nor
candles; they cannot scare me with spooks. I am not in the
least worried if a miserable conjurer pursues me with his crude
and silly mutterings. His charms by which he claims to pro-
duce prodigious sicknesses I hold not worth a penny. It is only
the mixers of poison that I fear, people who through drugs and
beverages can harm us in actuality and not only in imagination.
These I have not defended; I leave them to their just punishment.”

With this he submitted his work to the Church, “ready to
correct and renounce any error” of which he might be convicted.

T HERE is no English translation of the De Praestigiis. For-
tunately, however, we have a remarkable study of the work in
Dr. Gregory Zilboorg’s “Johann Weyer, the Founder of Mo-
dern Psychiatry,” first delivered as a lecture and then published
in his volume The Medical Man and the Witch during the Renais-
sance (The Johns Hopkins Press, 1935). Dr. Zilboorg, a distin-
guished psychiatrist, discusses Weyer’s book from the medical
point of view.

“From the very outset,” he writes, “Weyer proceeded to
look upon the demoniacal world about him as an enormous
clinic teeming with sick people. He set himself the task of mak-
ing careful clinical studies and of using his spare time to sub-
ject to critical analysis the entire literature of his field.” He
describes the work as “perhaps the most complete, at any rate
the most intelligent and scientific collection of psycho-patho-
logical case histories that the sixteenth century has bequeathed
to us.” Weyer’s analyses of demoniacal possessions and witch-
craft, he believes, have covered the majority if not all of the
psycho-pathological conditions met with in his time. He was
“the real inaugurator of scientific method in relation to medi-
cal psychology.”

THE IMPOSTURES OF THE DEVIL

197

Weyer was a systematic scientist, whose rationalistic mind
rejected mere speculation and demanded experiment. “First,”
Dr. Zilboorg writes, “he obtains a detailed story or written
record; second, he talks to the patient personally whenever and
wherever possible; third, he follows up the case; fourth, he
looks upon the whole procedure as a medical method which is
true to the laws of physiology and psychology; and fifth, he
looks upon the affliction as an illness even when he sees that in
some cases the patient’s will apparently participates in the pro-
duction of symptoms (malingering or similar behavior).” The
author lists a number of diseases which Weyer carefully
studied. The Brabant doctor described what appears to have
been trichinosis; gave an account of the English sweating sick-
ness; characterized “pestilential cough,” probably influenza, and
erysipelas, and left an essay on scurvy. He investigated the
phenomenon of pseudo-pregnancy, and observed various atre-
sias in women and the new-born. He wrote a whole volume
about fhe disease of wrath, which he regarded as one of the
mass-psychoses of the age.

Long sections of the De Praestigiis are devoted to drugs and
poisons, to which Weyer ascribes the somnolent and stupor-
like states of the witches. Thus he observes the effects of atro-
pin or belladonna, and of Thebiac opium and henbane, and de-
scribes “the atropin jag — the state of excitement, the state
of tremulous anxiety, the optic hallucinations, which are remi-
niscent of our present-day delirium tremens .” Weyer attributes
the sexual phantasies of witches to the fact that they frequently
abused the salves. It was under the influence of such drugs
that they thought they saw “theaters, beautiful gardens, feasts,
ornaments, clothes, handsome young men, kings, magistrates
. . . and devils, ravens, prisons, deserts, and other torments.”
Weyer’s discussions of veterinary medicine were also of great
importance, considering that one of the most frequent accusa-
tions against the witches was that they harmed cattle and
beasts. Instead of condemning these witches to death, he ad-
vised the fumigation of stables with sulphur.

With calmness and objectivity he dealt with the graver sorts
of mental maladies, prominent among which was the belief
in transformation into animals, and particularly lycanthropy.

198

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

People who speak of their wanderings as werewolves, he in-
sisted, have a disordered mind; and he further suggested that
on encountering dangerous wolves which roam about and
which are thought to be witches, one should consider them real
and shoot them accordingly. In analyzing nightmares, he dis-
covered that there was “no essential difference between the de-
lusionary and hallucinatory trends of our schizophrenias or
the delirious experiences of some of the toxemias and the
dreams of normal individuals,” a truth whose significance has
become clear only recently to psychiatrists. Moreover, Weyer
not only attempted to describe the process of the formation of
delusions and hallucinations, but also conceived it as “a series
of gradations in the relationship between sensation conceived
from external stimuli and their intra-psychic representation.”
With equal courage he dealt with the most advanced forms of
the various monomanias and paranoid suspicions. All along he
emphasized the need of individualization in therapy. In treat-
ing epidemics of hysteria, he advocated the separation of the
patients from each other, knowing that the affliction was con-
tagious. Above all, he recognized the fact that the patient’s in-
sight into his own trouble could enormously help recovery.

Weyer fully deserves the eulogy of Albrecht von Haller, the
great eighteenth-century physiologist: “He was a man whose
spirit tore itself out of the confines of his age, and who actively
and forcefully exposed the true nature of witches and the possessed.”

THE IMPOSTURES OF THE DEVIL

199

Note

The literature on Weyer is still meager. All histories of medicine recognize
his merit, but usually accord only a few paragraphs to him. Kurt Sprengel’s
great Histoire de la Medicine (Paris, 1815-20), however, includes a brief but
substantial discussion of the De Praestigiis. (Ill, 232-36.) Wilhelm G. Soldan
in his Geschichte der Hexenprocesse (Stuttgart, 1843) devotes a good chapter
to the work. (Pp. 335-45.) In July 1865 Dr. Alexandre Axenfeld read a paper
before the medical faculty of the Sorbonne on “Jean Wier et la Sorcellerie,”
which was published in book form in the following year. The first and so far
only full-length biography, Doctor Johann Weyer, is by Cad Binz and was
first published in Berlin in 1885 and a second time in 1896.

The old French translation of the De Praestigiis (1569) was reprinted in
1885, in two volumes, under the title Histoires, Disputes et Discours des Illu-
sions et Impostures des Diables ... As mentioned in the present article, the
work has never been translated into English. The Encyclopccdia Britannica
does not even have a notice about Weyer; it mentions him only indirectly, in
connection with the Faust legend. One is doubly indebted, therefore, to Dr.
Gregory Zilboorg for his illuminating study. The same writer also has an ex-
cellent chapter on Weyer in his History of Medical Psychology (New York,
1941), 206-44.

Materials toward a History of Witchcraft collected by Henry Charles Lea
contains an extensive abstract of the De Praestigiis, giving brief summaries, or
at least indications, of almost every chapter (University of Pennsylvania Press,
1939, II, 490-532). This abstract is very useful, although Dr. Lea does not
seem to have done full justice to Weyer’s freedom of mind. He thought that
Weyer was logical only as regards the witches, but was himself credulous
concerning the magicians whom he believed to be “taught and aided by the
devil.” Yet even Dr. Lea admitted that Weyer’s devil was “evidently a very
different being from that of popular belief, and he has gone a long way to-
wards dethroning him”; and that “if he had gone further, he probably would
not have been listened to at all.”

Prophecies of the Popes

By MARGARET MUNSTERBERG

THE Boston Public Library has added to its manuscript
collections two curious little volumes — copies of the
Prophetiae de Pontificibus by the twelfth-century Abbot
Joachim of Calabria. The work, which was extremely popular
in the Middle Ages, is a series of prophecies relating to the
reigns of the popes. Both copies contain additional material at-
tributed to Anselm, Bishop of Marsico. The first manuscript
was apparently done in the late fifteenth century, as the last
pope mentioned died in 1484. The other manuscript probably
dates from the early seventeenth century.

The earlier manuscript consists of twenty vellum leaves, all
except one having the portrait of a pope, or a picture symbol-
izing the reign of a pope, on one side and the interpretative
text on the other. The exception is the impressive portrait of
the Abbot Joachim himself, bearded and in a monastic habit,
sitting at a desk and writing his prophecies. The pictures may
be the work of a Florentine artist. The drawing betrays con-
siderable skill, for the postures and gestures, and especially the
facial expressions, are individual and alive. The tinting, mostly
in crimson, blue, brown, and scarlet, is less carefully carried
out. The text of the prophecies is in Latin, but the biographical
notes about the popes are in most cases in Italian.

The later manuscript has twenty-eight paper leaves bearing
the papal portraits and symbols on the recto side with the text
in Italian beneath, while the Latin is opposite, on the verso of
the preceding picture. These pictures, which follow for the
most part the same designs as those of the earlier manuscript,
are drawings in ink outline, with shadings of a light brownish
wash. The faces are commonplace in comparison with those of
the earlier work. The names of the popes, written in large let-
ters to the left of the pictures, do not correspond to the names
accompanying the same designs in the fifteenth-century manu-
script, but seem to be inscribed with complete arbitrariness.
The first picture represents the Abbot Joachim, holding in

200

PROPHECIES OF THE POPES

201

each hand a volume with the words “Vitae Patrum,” which he
presents on one side to a group of monks and on the other to
a group of nuns. The title states that the volume also contains
the prophecies of Father John Maria de Vevallo-Vercellese.

The first printed edition of Joachim’s Prophecies appeared
in Venice, published by Hieronymus Porrus in 1589. In 1600
Giovanni Battista Bertoni produced, in the same city, another
edition, of which the Library’s Sabatier collection of Francis-
cana has a copy. Entitled Vaticinia sen Praedictiones Illustrium
Virorum, the volume consists mainly of the prophecies made sup-
posedly by the Abbot Joachim and by his contemporary,
Bishop Anselm of Marsico. The book has finely executed en-
gravings, similar in design and symbolism to the drawings of the
two manuscripts; the text, which has variant readings in the
margins, also corresponds to the manuscript texts, although
the juxtaposition of text and portrait differs in the three books.
The printed volume contains diagrams of the prophetic wheel
(rota) which apparently was in vogue at the time. This is a
disk, with the spokes of a wheel in the center, divided into
a certain number of sections, each with the name and the ac-
cession date of a pope. The book has one wheel for the pro-
phecies of Joachim, one for those of Anselm, and others which
extend through the sixteenth century.

This volume is invaluable for the understanding of the manu-
scripts. In the first place, it makes it evident that the twenty
prophecies in the early manuscript include not only those at-
tributed to the Abbot Joachim but also those of Bishop Anselm.

DaNTE, in the twelfth canto of the Paradiso, sees in the
circle of the sun :

Raban e quivi, e lucemi da lato

II Calavrese abate Giovacchino,

Di spirito profetico dotato.

“Raban [Maur] is there and, shining upon me at his side, the
Calabrian abbot Joachim, endowed with prophetic spirit.”
One must take the great poet’s word for it that Joachim had
prophetic vision, even though, according to his biographers,

202

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

the Abbot said of himself that he was not given the spirit of
prophecy, but the spirit of intelligence. Perhaps one may say
that there are two Joachims, one, the historic monk about
whom certain facts are known, and the other, a semi-legendary
figure, whose ideas were interpreted by later generations in
accordance with particular spiritual trends.

Giovanni Gioachimo (Joachim) was born in Celico near
Cosanza, in Calabria, about 1132. At an early age he made a
pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Gabrielle Barrio, a Franciscan
biographer of the sixteenth century, tells of miracles, such as
the emergence of a river in a desert, when Joachim was dying
of thirst; and of a sudden illumination which took place on the
Mount of the Transfiguration, where he had passed the Lenten
weeks in fasting and prayer. After his return from Jerusalem,
Joachim entered the Cistercian monastery of Sambacina di
Luzzi in his native province, then the Abbey of Corazzo, and,
after being ordained priest, was made Abbot in 1177. He had
connections with several popes, and visited Urban III at
Verona. Clement III ordered him to complete his written works,
and Celestin III sanctioned his new monastic foundation.
For the Abbot Joachim was not content to remain a conven-
tional administrator ; his restless spirit drove him to the
greater austerity of the hermitage Petralata. Finally, he went
with some companions into the Sila mountains and founded
there the monastery of St. Giovanni in Fiore, with a more
ascetic rule of his own. A number of his followers, as the
Franciscan biographer relates, “flourished in sanctity,” and
out of this center grew the wide-spread Florensic Order.
Joachim was revered during his lifetime as a saintly man and
a prophet. He died in 1202.

Among the numerous works to which Joachim’s name has
been attached, the Jesuit scholar Franz Ehrle listed (in the
Kirchcnlexikon ) nine as genuine, of which only three are un-
questionably accepted — the Concordance of the Old and New
Testaments, the Commentary on the Apocalypse and the In-
strument of Ten Strings. The doubtful and spurious works
number fifteen, among them the Prophecies of the Popes.

Joachim expressly submitted to the judgment of the Church.
After his death, however, his reputation underwent transform-

PROPHECIES OF THE POPES

203

ation in two directions. The Lateran Council of 1215 con-
demned his doctrine of the Trinity as set forth in a treatise
against Peter Lombard; but five years later Pope Honorius
III forbade any construction of this decision which would re-
flect on the orthodoxy of Joachim, and declared his Order to
be “regular and salutary.” The significance of the Joachimite
movement and the controversies it roused lies elsewhere,
namely in the interpretation of his visionary doctrine of the
Eternal Gospel. (Those who wish to study the subject may
turn, among other works, to Renan’s lucid chapter on the
Eternal Gospel in his Nouvelles Etudes d’Histoire Religieuse
(Paris, 1884) ; Paul Fournier’s Etudes sur Joachim de Flore
(Paris, 1909) ; Felice Tocco’s L’Eresia nel Medio Evo (Florence,
1884) ; Guido Manacorda’s Poesia e Contemplazione (Florence,
1947) ; Reuter’s Geschichte der religidsen Aufkldrung im Mittel-
alter (Berlin, 1875), and the learned articles by Heinrich Deni-
fle and Herman Haupt respectively in the Archiv fur Literatur
und Kirchengeschichte , volume 1, and the Zeitschrift f iir Kirchen -
geschichte , volume 7.)

The Eternal Gospel envisaged by Joachim derives its name
from Revelation, Chapter 14, 6: “And I saw another angel fly
in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach
unto them that dwell on the earth . . .” The life of the world
was, according to Joachim, divided into three periods: the first
was dominated by the Old Testament, the second, which would
last until 1260, by the Gospel of Christ, and the third would be
the time of the Holy Spirit and the Eternal Gospel. The first
period belonged to laymen, the second to the clergy, and the
third would belong to the monks. This prophetic doctrine was
readily adopted by the Spirituals, the ascetic branch of the
Franciscan Order. In 1254 Gerard di Borgo S. Donnino pub-
lished an Intro due tor ius in Evangelium Aeternum, a crystallization
of the Joachimite teachings, which was condemned, at the end
of the fifteenth century, by Pope Alexander VI. However, the
Church never censured Joachim’s own works on the Eternal
Gospel; it was only a provincial council at Arles which in 1263
forbade the circulation of his works — a decree which did not
in the least hinder their being copied and read.

It was in the middle of the thirteenth century that Joachim

204

THE B. P. L, QUARTERLY

had the greatest influence. Indeed, John of Parma, the General
of the Franciscan Order, was accused of preferring the Joachi-
mite doctrine to the Catholic faith. The Franciscan chronicler
Salimbene credited Joachim with a prevision of the two great
mendicant Orders founded within the decade after his death;
but the texts which may be interpreted as prophetic of these
events are now known to be apocryphal. The reputation of
Joachim as a prophet was not affected by the circumspect judg-
ment of Thomas Aquinas that Joachim “foretold some things
true, but in others he was deceived.” The great scholastic could
not be expected to be rapturous about a mystic. The prophecies
attributed to Joachim became increasingly popular in the
Middle Ages.

In examining the contents of the Library’s manuscripts,
chief attention will be given to the earlier one. The prophecy
accompanying each picture in this manuscript was probably
copied from manuscripts of a much earlier date; how large a
part oral transmission may have played in formulating the
text is, of course, impossible to determine.

The first portrait in the early manscript is that of Nicholas
V (1446-54), who, crowned with a tiara and holding his crim-
son mantle, watches a dog gripping three green-white-red flags
in its mouth. The writing on the verso begins : “And there will
be raised a virtuous man who has the first name of the monk in-
habiting the rocky land.” The same text in the printed book
goes with the picture of Calistus III, with which it properly
belongs. The motto reads: “With good words he will dispense
treasure among the poor” — a reference to Pope Calistus’s
charitable activities.

The second picture is intended to represent Clement V
(1305-14). The Pope, holding a book in one hand, points a
finger of the other at the serpent coiled round an apple-tree. A
dove perches on his shoulder. This picture — in the printed book
attached to Benedict XI — has nothing to do with the text, which
belongs with a later picture depicting a pope on horseback,
leaving a woman, “The Babylonian spouse,” standing discon-
solate in a doorway. It may be noted that the old manuscript

Boniface VIII from the “ Prophecies of the Popes ”

205

PROPHECIES OF THE POPES

20 7

gives “babillonicam sponsam,” whereas the later manuscript
and the printed book have “mulieris Babilonicae sponsum”
(“the husband of the woman of Babylon”) which is rather
more intelligible. In the printed volume this text goes with the
picture of Clement V, friend of the French king Philip the Fair ;
with him began the residence of the popes at Avignon, referred
to as the Babylonian captivity.

The next picture is interesting because of its symbolism.
The Pope, intended to be Honorius IV (1286-87), is stabbing
a small black eagle with his staff. (In the printed book this pic-
ture belongs with Martin IV, who “will worry the eagle.”)
The text in the manuscript, which again has no connection with
the picture is not flattering: “Take, you usurper, the highest
honors; you useless and sterile tree, who think you are doing
great things, while you are weak in mind and body . . In the
later manuscript both text and picture for Honorius IV cor-
respond to those in the printed volume; the picture shows a
young man swinging a club at the helpless pope, who holds a
large key. In the older manuscript the same design, carried out
with more effectiveness, appears with the text for Nicholas IV.

The following leaf has, in place of a figure, the picture of a
city surrounded by a wall. A fortress, with round tower and
pinnacles, rises above the red-roofed buildings. The printed
book has, with the corresponding picture, a text which begins,
“Woe to you, city of seven hills.” The city is supposed to be
Constantinople, taken by the Turks in 1453, during the pon-
tificate of Nicholas V. The later manuscript also has the pic-
ture of a city, showing the front view of a high gate with bat-
tlements, which has been identified as Basel defending itself
against the French troops in the time of Eugene IV. The
printed volume has engravings of both Constantinople and
Basel.

Now comes the picture of a nude man sitting on a treasure
box, dispensing gold pieces, which belongs to Calistus III.
However, the text, beginning “Dead now and forgotten” seems
to point, as it does in the printed book, to Pius II. The motto
“Bona intentio, charitas abundabit” might apply to either pope.
The later manuscript has the same juxtaposition of text and
picture as the printed volume.

208

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

There follows a striking design which is represented in both
the manuscripts and the printed book. A sword extends from
the Pope’s chin and pierces a haloed lamb at his feet; beside
the lamb is a small figure with wings outspread and with a
tiara on its head. The old manuscript assigns it to Benedict XII,
but it evidently fits the text about John XXII which begins:
“From the last generation there will ascend a bloody beast who
will cruelly devour his own innocent son,” and which goes on
to say that a pseudo-prophet will arise and seduce many, “be-
cause you with your evils have inflicted most cruel wounds on
the most gentle lamb . . It was during the pontificate of John
XXII that the sect of the Fraticelli, an outgrowth of Franciscan
zealots, refused to submit to the papal authority. It is not un-
natural, therefore, that the author or authors of the Joachimite
prophecies should have scorned this pontiff.

The most startling of the pictures is a green dragon with a
horned human head. A sword, a crab, and a salamander are be-
low, and a moon rises above. The text, which names Boniface
IX, is unquestionably misplaced; the proper text, which goes
with the same picture in both the later manuscript and the
printed book, refers to Urban VI, with the motto “Thou art
terrible, who shall resist thee?” The legend explains: “This is
the last wild beast which will pull down the stars. Then the
birds will take flight, and only reptiles will remain.” Following
the prophecy, some historical information is given about Ur-
ban VI, “in whose time there was a schism in the Church, as
another Pope, who was called Clemens, was elected at Fondi.”

A picture of a Pope holding keys in one hand and a three-
pronged staff in the other, while an eagle clings to his mantle
and a cock to the staff, belongs in the early manuscript with
Benedict XI. It is the same design which in the printed book
represents Boniface VIII, with the text: “He wounds the cock,
deplumes the eagle, and does not fear the dove . .

It is unnecessary to make a comparison of all the pictures
and legends. The popes to whom the early manuscript assigns
its remaining pictures are Alexander V, John XVIII, Gregory
XI, Urban V, Pius II, and finally Sixtus IV.

The impression that one gains on examining the two manu-
scripts and the printed book is that certain basic patterns of

PROPHECIES OF THE POPES

209

symbolic design were transmitted through generations, varied
according to the imagination of the artists. These were linked
with the prophecies, but the pictures and their texts sometimes
appeared in odd combinations. What they all have in common
is a bold, rebellious attitude — and the association with the
name of the Abbot Joachim, which stood originally for the cult
of pure spirit but was forced in the course of centuries to lend
its sanction to partisan strife and bitter invective.

Contemporary French Prints

By ARTHUR W. HEINTZELMAN

IN January of last year the Print Department of the Boston
Public Library was asked by the Cultural Division of the
United States Embassy in Paris and the Comite National
de la Gravure Franqaise to organize exchange exhibitions in
the graphic arts by living artists. An Honorary Committee of
Curators of Prints and Directors of a number of our leading
museums chose and sponsored a representative exhibition by
American artists, which was inaugurated by special invitation
in the Galerie Mansart of the Bibliotheque Nationale on De-
cember io, 1951. These prints are now traveling through the
important art centers in the Provinces of France, and at pres-
ent are in Rouen.

The French exhibition had its vernissage in the Albert H.
Wiggin Galleries of the Boston Public Library early in Oc-
tober. In introducing this comprehensive group of prints, it is
hoped that this remarkable collection of contemporary work
will be the precursor of future exchanges between our two
countries.

A number of the older artists included in this exhibition
were among those who created a renaissance in the graphic
arts just before the turn of the century. This rebirth came with
an impetuous forward movement which included all print me-
diums, and it seems only natural that France should have fos-
tered the revival. As in the past, Paris, the center of creative
temperament, led the way with her inventiveness, imagination,
and interpretive independence in developing a new approach
to the copper, wood, and stone mediums.

Rarely does one have the opportunity to view so complete
a representation of prints by contemporary French masters.
It is composed of one hundred and seventy-three prints, which
give a comprehensive idea of the important place occupied in
the art world by the fifty-six artists and of the tremendous in-
fluence they exercise in the realm of prints. To indicate in a

210

CONTEMPORARY FRENCH PRINTS

21 1

measure the importance of contemporary print-making in
France, its possibilities, aims, and influence on other nations,
a short survey of the work created in this new movement —
and well represented here — should be of great interest to
American artists, collectors, and laymen.

It should be noted that in no instance is there any peculiarity
of method. On the contrary, the results are based upon a thor-
ough foundation of experience and technical training. The work
is the result of natural development, profound perception, and
experiment. It is manual only in that it possesses enough stress
on technique to capture the fluidity and originality of the
artist’s mind as a contributing force and not as a means to an
end. These prints, representing all schools of thought, contain
in their contemporary ideas and manner of handling evidence
of the natural outgrowth of an earlier and profound appren-
ticeship.

The present high standard in French print-making is, to a
great degree, the result of the fertile imagination of Ambroise
Vollard, who envisioned the impressionists as graphic artists
using the same principles and means as they did on canvas, even
though they were painters and not engravers by profession. He
stimulated their interest by commissioning them to carry out
a series of subjects in the medium of their own choosing. He
believed in their innate judgment and in their ability to produce
prints which would be sensitive accompaniments to their paint-
ing. That Vollard was rewarded in this far-reaching vision is
revealed by the fact that the modern school of French engraving
is known to be one of the most brilliant and diversified of any
period in France. Not only the graphic arts but modern book-
craft owes much to these artists. During the past half-century,
some of France’s greatest artists, including several whose works
form an important contribution to this exhibition, found an
outlet to their creative expression through book illustration.
Among these are such illustrious artists as Picasso, Matisse,
Braque, Segonzac, Derain, Rouault, Dufy, and Chagall.

“Grand Profil de Femme,” “Les Saltimbanques,” “Le Bain,”
“Homme et Femme,” and “Femme dans un Fauteuil” are charac-
teristic of the genius of Picasso, and represent several of his in-
teresting periods. The amazing directness with which they are

212 THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

executed makes us feel that they concern only himself, and are
done with as much individuality and freedom as his painting's.

The prints by Matisse are familiar in America, and it is a well-
known fact that they have influenced many young artists here
and abroad. In his three plates of “Visage de Femme” and
“Buste de Femme, de Profil a Gauche,” done in pure line, we
find that his needle possessed the same sensitive and distinct
qualities as his brush. In “L’Apres-midi,” a lineoleum cut, there
is an immediate reaction to his cutting tool, which is domin-
ated by his original and fertile mind.

It is interesting to note that Dufy’s etchings and lithographs,
“Baigneuses,” “L’Odalisque a Nice,” “L’ Antiliaise,” “Petite
Baigneuse,” and “Mozart,” lose none of the adventurous spirit
that he achieves in other mediums, although they are entirely
different. They are executed in a scintillating manner in an
even light, with the same decision and clarity which is charac-
teristic of all his work.

Utrillo is a singer of Montmartre in both his paintings and
lithographs. His five prints, “Montmartre, rue St. Vincent,”
“Montmartre, rue de Mont-Cenis,” “Le Maquis a Montmartre,”
“Rue des Saules,” and “Moulin de la Galette,” are strong ren-
ditions of favorite subjects which, although limited in area, be-
speak an art that is free and big in feeling. Utrillo possessed a
natural gift for setting down tone values of light and shade,
and of open-air perspective. His work indicates that his subject
exists in his subconscious mind, for one is at a loss for an ex-
planation of that which seems to be his limitation and is at the
same time his strength and simple means of expression.

Dunoyer de Segonzac’s early drawings in pen and ink had
always held promise as preliminaries to his work on copper.
That he is a natural-born etcher is evidenced in his five prints
of Versailles, Chaville, and St. Tropez, where his needle grazes
over the plate in a feverish pattern of lines which range in
value from a rich accumulation of vibrant blacks to the most
delicate suggestions. These subjects demonstrate an intuitive
sense of being in tune with nature in that they suggest atmos-
phere, movement, time of day, and season.

In whatever Georges Rouault attempts, whether it be lith-
ography or etching, he reaches a high pitch of force in chiaro-

Utrillo: “ Moulin de la Galette”

A Lithograph, Reduced

213

CONTEMPORARY FRENCH PRINTS

215

scuro and dramatic values, as his contributions to this exhibition,
all plates from the “Miserere” series, will testify. They hold
one by their unfinished qualities, as if each accomplishment
was but a fresh experiment.

Other men of this “old guard” still living, and who were asso-
ciated with Vollard, have important names which have made
French print history. Braque’s interest in etching, although
limited, displays singular beauty in two cubistic compositions,
“Bass” and “Nature Morte.” The lithographs, “Nature Morte”
and “Hera,” are patterns of color in characteristic design
which, like the etchings, are pure in simple compositional facts
typical of the artist’s creative imagination. Chagall’s lone
print “Nu a l’Eventail” well supports his fame as an etcher. It
demonstrates the sensitivity and feelings which are behind his
power, finesse, and consciousness of delicate rhythm and natural
ease in transposing his thoughts to copper. Derain’s nudes and
“Visage Brun” and “Visage Blond” demonstrate his power in
draughtsmanship by suggestion and hold our interest as mas-
ter drawings on stone.

The imprint of individualism which was made by artists of
this group on the younger generation of print-makers consti-
tutes an important factor in the development of the graphic
arts in France. The interchange and dovetailing of old and
new groups in the past half-century is remarkably demon-
strated. This is perhaps due in great part to the formation of
the Society of “Young Contemporary Engravers” by Pierre
Guastalla in 1929, through which new artists of talent were
given an opportunity to show their work beside that of the es-
tablished masters. Among the younger artists of this group are
Robert Cami, Camille Berg, Michel Ciry, Gerard Cochet, Andre
Jacquemin, Robert Lotiron, and Andre Minaux, whose per-
sonalities in the graphic arts were not fully revealed in this
country until quite recently. There are other men also, new to
many on this side of the Atlantic, whose work does not suffer
by comparison and carries the same high standard of achieve-
ment. Between the younger men and those of the older school
there is an intermediate group, which brings these two genera-
tions together to form a sequence of unbroken development.
Prominent among them are Edouard Goerg, Jean-Eugene Ber-

216 the b. p. l. quarterly

sier, Roger Vieillard, Roland Oudot, and others of equal im-
portance.

There are so many bonds between nationality, subject, and
artist that it is often difficult to decide what one owes to the other,
and it is hard to ascertain how posterity will decide the issue.
With established individuality brought about by a background
of inherent creative force, it is impossible to conceive of these
artists other than as being wholly attuned to the cultural atmos-
phere of France. Their presentation and manner of approach
is personal, and goes hand-in-hand with the best traditions of
the past as well as the developments of our age. Their work as
a whole is composed of an emotional approach and intellectual
impulse, combining directness and feeling totally void of com-
monplaceness and monotony.

Here is an exhibition in which every artist contributes to
the success of the show, and which in its completeness gives a
well-rounded knowledge of wihat is being done in France by
living French artists. One is conscious of the fact that the artists
have striven for something deeper than individual expression, and
have created a sense of unity among themselves far beyond the
mere desire for personal recognition. One can understand and
appreciate these prints without prejudice or limitation, for the
results are free from circumscribed formulas. Any attempt at a
summary of this French exhibition becomes involved from the
beginning, for every print is important and deserves the honor
of special mention.

For the interesting and untiring efforts which the exhibition
implies, sincere thanks are due the Comite National de la Gra-
vure Francaise. This exhibition is an example of one of the
most useful and expressive instruments of exchange in cultural
understanding.

Notes on Rare Books and Manuscripts

Richardson Discusses his Clarissa and Grandison

ONE of the most interesting items in a distinguished group of
manuscripts recently given to the Boston Public Library,
and described in the January 1952 issue of this magazine, is a long
letter by Samuel Richardson discussing his Clarissa and the re-
cently published Sir Charles Grandison. Addressed to Lady Eliza-
beth Echlin, the wife of an Irish peer, and dated May 17, 1754, it
has apparently never been published. (However, it is difficult to
ascertain such a fact ; any information to the contrary will there-
fore be welcome.)

As a boy of thirteen, he once wrote of himself, Richardson was
bashful and “not fond of play” ; already he preferred the company
of “young women of taste” to that of other boys, and spent his
time reading aloud to their sewing circle and writing love letters
for them. As an adult, he preferred to bask in the admiration of
female friends rather than to associate with his famous literary
contemporaries, such as Johnson, Fielding, and Sterne. It was for
the admiring ladies, and often with their advice, that he wrote
Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison — long novels of love
in epistolary form.

Lady Echlin was the sister of Richardson’s favorite corres-
pondent, Lady Dorothy Bradshaigh (“Lady B.” in the letter),
who dominated his life and work after 1749. Though not as viva-
cious and strong-willed as Lady Bradshaigh, Lady Echlin was
equally fond of Richardson’s books; she was known, for her piety
and charity, as “the phenix of Dublin ladies.” It was perhaps jeal-
ousy rather than prudence that prompted Lady Bradshaigh to
caution her — as mentioned in the letter — against corresponding
with the novelist. At any rate, the warning did not take effect, for
the relationship continued until his death.

Richardson’s friends discussed his novels heatedly as the vol-
umes appeared, arguing over the plots and often seeming to assume
that the characters were real. They followed with passionate in-
terest the tragic career of Clarissa, abducted and seduced by the
rake Lovelace; and many wished that he could have been saved.
Lady Echlin, indeed, was so disappointed that she sent Richardson

218

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

a new ending, in which Lovelace, reformed by a Dr. Christian, dies
of remorse for his crimes.

Clarissa (the Library has a set of the first edition, published in
1747-48) was Richardson’s greatest success. The reception of his
final novel, Sir Charles Grandison — the last volume of which ap-
peared in March 1754, two months before the letter now in the
Library was written — was not entirely favorable. The critics
praised it, but they thought it over-refined and far too long. Rich-
ardson himself, as the letter shows, was willing to admit that he
had almost tired the world’s patience by being “so voluminous a
scribbler” ; but he was hurt by being told so bluntly by the outside
world. And some of his readers did not think the book too long; he
was, he wrote, “pestered with letters and applications for another
volume of Grandison.”

One reason for the lukewarm reviews of Grandison may have
been that it was planned in part as a reply to Fielding’s Tom Jones,
which Richardson criticized in the “Concluding Note.” Grandison
was intended to provide a contrast to the “profligate” character
and life of Fielding’s hero, by portraying the perfectly virtuous
gentleman ; the original title of the novel was “The Good Man.”
Richardson’s hatred of his great contemporary, though certainly
unbecoming, was not altogether unfounded, considering the lat-
ter’s two parodies of Pamela — Shamela and Joseph Andrews. Even
now that Fielding was very ill (he died within six months), Rich-
ardson still found it hard to pity him, as the letter shows.

“Mr. Hildersley,” of whose silence Richardson complains, was
Mark Hildesley, Bishop of Sodor and Mann, who had written an
appreciative letter to him in December 1753. Hildesley, who de-
scribed himself as “a little obscure man, a country vicar,” appar-
ently heard from Lady Echlin — or from Lady Lambard, his in-
fluential patroness — that Richardson was offended, for on July n
he wrote again, regretting that his modesty “has made me suffer
in your opinion of my decency and good manners.” Richardson re-
plied at once, and they began a correspondence and friendship
which lasted until the novelist’s death in 1761.

The letter is printed here in full, with the original spelling and
punctuation.

Alison Bishop

Most cordially do I thank my good Lady Echlin, for her kind
Acceptance of my Grandison. Half-naughty Lady B. pray let me

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219

beg of you to be more sparing of your Cautions where they are
.not needed — Cautions against condescending to favour a Man,
who has a due sense of the Favour; and cannot be ungrateful for
it. Have I, dear Lady B. so much abused those you have conferred
upon me (multiplied as they have been, almost monthly) that you
should caution a Sister against me? In that Light I must take ye
Caution given to her.

“Your Ladiship has often lamented that I did not reform Love-
lace.” Not after his last Outrage on the Honour of Clarissa, I dare
say. All that could have been obtained, as to Instruction by ye
Reformation of a Rake, is obtained by that of the once Libertine
Belford, who had not sinned up to the other’s size of Enormity.
Your dear Sister too, would have been glad, once, that Lovelace
(reformed) had been the Husband of Clarissa. What an Example !
so to reward a Rake so atrocious! How had the moral of my Work,
in that Case, been destroyed !

“Your Ladyship is informed, that I have not finished my Story
of Grandison.” Your informants, Madam, have wanted Attention,
if they have read the Volumes. Yet this has been said and written
to me, by many Persons, some anonymously. By so many, that I
thought proper to print the Answer I made to one Lady, in order
to send it, or give it, to as many as should make the Objection, or
hear it made.

I have had near as many letters sent me, on the Subject of Sir
Charles’s offered Compromise with the Porretta Family, of suffer-
ing his Daughters, had his Marriage with their Clementina taken
Effect, to be brought up Roman Catholics ; a Circumstance which
your Ladiship also, with a laudable Zeal for the purest Religion
on Earth, blames. To the Letter to the Lady on the former Occa-
sion, I have added one I wrote to a Gentleman on this Subject.
They are both Enclosed. I should be glad they may give Satisfac-
tion to your Ladiship. I think to send a Number of them to Mr.
Main, to give to those who have bought the Book of him. This
Effect they will have, if no other, To shew the World, that I was
willing to lay aside the Pen, before I had quite tired its Patience ;
having been so voluminous a Scribbler. 19 Volumes in Twelves,
close Printed — In Three Stories — Monstrous! Who that sees
them ranged on one Shelf, will forgive me?

“Will I give you Leave to think, that Harriet is superior to
Clementina?” Indeed I will. I have owned the Superiority to dear
Lady B. And have reflected upon the Judgment of those who are
struck with the Glare of a great Action, which was owing princi-

220 THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

pally to a raised Imagination. Your belovd Sister is of Opinion with
you, Madam, in preferring Harriet: And I will not choose for my
Judges of the Work, any of those, who are of a contrary one.

I revere Mr. Hildersley: But have a good mind to complain of
him to your dear and good Lady Lambard, that to the Answer I
wrote to a very kind Letter he favoured me with, in which I re-
quested the Favour of his Friendship and Correspondence, he has
not, and it is a great while ago, returned me one Line in Reply.
A Slight from a good Man, who had warmly professed himself
(and Spontaneously too), one’s Friend, must be a little ( not a
little) mortifying.

Your Ladiship is very humble when you descend to blame your
Self, on Comparison with your over-gay Neighbours of your own
Sex. It is a bad Age we live in, when we must pronounce, that to
be singular is to be virtuous.

If any thing were to happen to F. that could tame the wildest
Vanity that I have ever known in a mean Man, I should pity him
for the rest.

I admire your Ladiship for what you say of Clementina, and
the Count of Belvedere. I have half a dozen of my female Corre-
spondents, who (sweet Romancers, as they are, yet know it not)
cannot bear the Thoughts of that noble Lady’s resolving to reward
the Count for his persevering Love. Till now, I thought Constancy
and Fervour in a Lover sufficient to make any Man, not unworthy
from want of Rank, Fortune, Morals, a Merit in the Heart of the
noblest Woman. But some Ladies had rather forgive (and this
perhaps to the Praise of their Generosity!) real Faults in a Lover,
than reward passive Virtues. It is not often given to Woman, when
addressed by more than one Man, to choose for Happiness. Some-
thing glaring, active, bustling, will engage her, as it has done
those sitting in Judgment on the Characters of Clementina and
Harriet, prefer that of Clementina : Who, however, I think of as
an admirable Woman; and as a Sister not unworthy of the gener-
ous love of Harriet.

I should not so long have delayed acknowleging the Favour of
your Ladiship’s Letter before me; but was desirous of our Elec-
tions being so far got over, as to be able to have mine (the rather
because of the inclosed) pass free to your Hands. We are as par-
tial to ourselves at the Post-Office, as elsewhere, in our Nation’s
Dealings with Yours. A letter from a common Clerk will have
Honour done it, going to Ireland. But Letters from thence very

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221

often are charged, tho’ freed by the greatest Hands. But never, I
beseech your Ladiship, delay your Favours to me one Hour on
this Consideration. The Difficulty on our Side is nothing.

Lady B. has mentioned, with Love and Pleasure to me, more
than once, her dear Mrs. Ashurst. She has even promised me the
Honour of a personal Acquaintance with her. I dispatched your
Ladiship’s inclosed letter to her, the moment, I received it.

I am, Madam, with the greatest Respect,

Your Ladiship’s most faithful and obliged
Humble Servant

London, May 17, 1754.

S. Richardson

The Sources of Hawthorne’s “The Ambitious Guest”

PROFESSOR NELSON F. ADKINS, in his article “The Early
Projected Work of Nathaniel Hawthorne,” states that although
contemporary written accounts of the landslide in the White Moun-
tains upon which Hawthorne based “The Ambitious Guest” must
have been common, none has come to his attention.1 Yet a com-
parison of such an account with the short story is essential for a
proper understanding and appreciation of the latter. That Haw-
thorne knew of the event is certain. He must have heard of the
landslide during his trips to the White Mountains ;2 he may even
have learned of it earlier from the Salem newspapers. 3 Above all,
he was probably acquainted with the facts as they were presented,
with substantial accuracy, in Samuel Griswold Goodrich’s A Sys-
tem of Universal Geography (1832). This is how the account in that
volume reads :

The Notch of the White Mountains will long be remembered
for the tragical fate of a whole family, who were swept away by
a slide, or avalanche of earth from the side of the mountain, on
the night of the 28th of August, 1826. This family by the name

1. Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, XXIX (1945), 141-42.

2. Elizabeth Chandler, “A Study of the Sources of the Tales and Ro-
mances Written by Hawthorne before 1853,” Smith College Studies in Modern
Languages, VII, No. 4 (July 1926), 4, 16.

3. See Essex Register, September 7, 1826, and Salem Literary Observer,
September 9, 1826.

222

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

of Willey, occupied what was called the Notch House, in a very
narrow interval between the bases of the two mountains. No
knowledge of any incident from the mountains in former times
existed to create any apprehension of danger in their situation.
Their dwelling stood alone, many miles from the residence of
any human being, and there was an aspect of rural neatness,
simplicity and content in their manner of life, that strongly in-
terested the traveller whom chance and curiosity led into their
neighborhood. For two seasons previous, the mountains had
been very dry, and on the 28th of June there was a slide not far
from the house, which so far alarmed them, that they erected a
temporary encampment a short distance from their dwelling, as
a place of refuge.

On the morning of August 28th it began raining very hard
with a strong and tempestuous wind. The storm continued
through the day and night, but it appears the family retired to
rest without the least apprehension of any disaster. Among them
were five beautiful children, from two to twelve years of age. At
midnight the clouds which had gathered about the mountain,
seemed to burst instantaneously, and pour their contents down
in one tremendous flood of rain . . . The avalanche began upon
the mountain top above the house, and moved down the moun-
tain in a direct line toward it, in a sweeping torrent which seemed
like a river pouring from the clouds, full of trees, earth and rocks.

On reaching the house it divided in a singular manner within
six feet of it, and passed on either side, sweeping away the stable
and horses, and completely surrounding the dwelling . . . The
family, it appears, sprang from their beds, and fled naked into
the open air, where they were instantly carried away by the tor-
rent and overwhelmed . . .

In the morning, a most frightful scene of desolation was ex-
hibited . . .

The barn was crushed . . . but the house was uninjured. The
beds appeared to have been just quitted . . . The bodies of seven of
the family were dug out of the drift wood and mountain ruins,
on the banks of the Saco.4

In accordance with the report, Hawthorne indicates the solitude
of the family in his story and describes their simple contentment;
and it was probably the mention of a traveller that suggested to

4. Cincinnati 1832, 27. The story also appeared, in substantially the same
form, in other “Peter Parley” books edited by Goodrich — The Child’s Book
of American Geography , Boston 1831, 15; The First Book of History for Children
and Youth, Cincinnati 1831, 14; and Peter Parley’s Book of Curiosities, New
York 1831, 141-42.

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him the guest. The “temporary encampment” of the account be-
comes the “barrier” which had been reared for an emergency. He
speaks of the wind that “came through the Notch,” of the slide
which “broke into two branches,” and finally of the valley of the
Saco.

However, Hawthorne made many changes in the account to
suit the artistic mold of his story — the folly of excessive am-
bition and desire for earthly immortality. For example, he does
not have the family sleeping when the slide occurs, for he needs
them awake to greet the guest and to serve as an audience. In his
version the bodies of the victims are not discovered, because he
wishes the guest to remain unknown, his ambitions for fame and
immortality a grim irony lost in the debris.

But it is in the account of the people killed that the most inter-
esting changes occur. Hawthorne introduces a daughter of seven-
teen, “the image of young Happiness,” to whom the guest is im-
mediately attracted, and also an aged grandmother, “the image of
Happiness grown old.” With these additions the family represents
every important age of man ; becoming a symbol of mankind itself.

The ambitious guest, of course, is entirely Hawthorne’s own
creation. Around him the author weaves the theme of his story.
The structure is a series of modest wishes on the part of humble
people, which contrast with the lofty aspirations of the guest. He
tells his hosts, “. . . I cannot die till I have achieved my destiny.
Then, let Death come! I shall have built my monument!” The
young girl desires nothing more than the comfort of home life. The
father wants a farm somewhere among the White Mountains that
would afford security from slides. “I should want,” he says, “to
stand well with my neighbors and be called Squire, and sent to
General Court for a term or two . . .” When he dies, he hopes for
a simple slate gravestone with something on it to let people know
that he lived “an honest man and died a Christian.” One of the
children, who are “outvying each other in wild wishes, and childish
projects of what they would do when they came to be men and
women,” clamors that all of them should go to take a drink out of
the basin of the Flume. Only the grandmother has a weird desire.
Troubled by the old superstition that if anything in the attire of a
corpse were amiss it would attempt to mend the error, she requests
one of the children to hold a looking-glass over her face when she
lies in her coffin, so that she can see if everything is arranged cor-
rectly.

224

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

The guest seizes upon each wish as a point of departure to ex-
press his own desire for an immortal monument on earth. The
final irony is the manner of their death : if they had remained in-
side, they would have been spared, for the slide divided immediate-
ly above the house and left it untouched. The stranger now has
his nameless sepulchre. The grandmother’s vanity remains un-
satisfied; the father will have neither his farm nor his simple
gravestone; the young girl will have no husband or comfortable
fireside; the child will never again drink from the Flume. Using all
the other ambitions merely to emphasize the zealous aspiration of
the stranger, Hawthorne is ready to sum up his moral :

Woe for the high-souled youth, with his dream of Earthly Im-
mortality ! His name and person utterly unknown ; his history,
his way of life, his plans, a mystery never to be solved, his death
and his existence equally a doubt ! Whose was the agony of that
death moment?

Much could be said about the artistic techniques Hawthorne
uses : line movement,5 contrast, prefiguration, and so forth. All
these devices add skillful strokes of art. The mere reporting of a
freak accident has been raised by Hawthorne to an artistic expres-
sion of an enduring truth.

B. Bernard Cohen

A Margaret Fuller Satire on Longfellow

ON August 23, 1845, there appeared in the Broadway Journal, of
which Edgar Allan Poe was editor, an amusing satire on the
sentiments concerning woman’s place in society expressed by Vic-
torian, the hero of Longfellow’s The Spanish Student. The author
of this piece, entitled “The Whole Duty of Woman,” was in all
probability Margaret Fuller, then in New York City writing for
Horace Greeley’s Tribune. The satire affords a glimpse of Miss
Fuller in a less serious mood than was usual with her.

Several facts point to Miss Fuller’s authorship of “The Whole
Duty of Woman.” In February, 1845, had appeared her plea for
greater freedom for women, Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Her
lack of admiration for the writings of Longfellow she was to make

5. See Leland Schubert, Hawthorne the Artist, Chapel Hill 1944, 47-9.

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evident in the same year in her review of his Poems.1 The satire in
the Broadway Journal is signed with an asterisk, the signature she
frequently used to mark her contributions to the Tribune.2 Poe
twice named Miss Fuller as a contributor to the Journal ,3 though
nothing in the paper appeared under her name. The handwriting of
the following letter, which accompanied the satire to the Journal
office, is said to resemble that of Miss Fuller.*

To the Editors of The Broadway Journal.

I was much obliged to you for your ready acceptance of my
article entitled “A Peep behind the Curtain” and I was very
much gratified that you were not alone in your estimate of it,
as it was copied very extensively into the public papers. I hope
I shall always be equally fortunate.

The object of the present communication speaks for itself. It
is to ridicule a style of writing very common in your sex, when
discoursing of ours, but which deserves no better epithet than
inefjable silliness. I am aware Longfellow is a popular poet & de-
servedly so, but I am sure he will not be offended at such a mere
piece of pleasantry, coming as it does from one of the party to
whom such soft nonsense is addressed. I also wished to make
some slight acknowledgment to the writer in the Whig review
for the very flattering view he takes of the weaker sex.

X.

“A Peep behind the Curtain,” a satirical portrait of a man selfishly
in love, had appeared in the Journal for May 24, 1845, and was
signed S****, probably a disguise for “Sarah,” Miss Fuller’s first
name.

The speech of Victorian which Miss Fuller satirizes (and, inci-
dentally, misquotes) is found in The Spanish Student , Act I, Scene
iii. Preciosa fears that, since Victorian is a scholar, the distance be-
tween them is too great. Victorian replies that he wishes woman’s
affection, not her intellect; that the “world of the affections,” and

1. Tribune , December 10, 1845.

2. See her letter to Eugene Fuller (February, 1845?), in Mason Wade,
The Writings of Margaret Fuller, (New York, 1941), p. 575: “If you see the
Weekly Tribune you will find all my pieces marked with a star.”

3. Broadivay Journal, II, 184 (September 27, 1845), and II, 200 (October
4, 1845).

4. “The Correspondence of R. W. Griswold,” Boston Public Library
Quarterly, III, 154 (April, 1951). The letter is in the Griswold Collection of
the Library. It has been published in part in Mary E. Phillips, Edgar Allan
Poe — The Man (Chicago, 1926), II, 1166-1167. Miss Phillips identifies the
writer as Miss Fuller but offers no evidence.

226

THE B. P. L. QUARTERLY

not that of man’s ambition, is woman’s world ; and that, sitting
“by the fireside of the heart,” woman feeds its flame ; and so on.s
The article in the “Whig review” to which Miss Fuller refers
in her letter and in a prefatory note to her satire is “American Let-
ters — Their Character and Advancement” by “II Secretario” (Ed-
ward W. Johnston), published in the June, 1845, issue of the
American Review ,6 The writer’s opinion of woman’s social function
is similar to that expressed by Victorian :

Nature — happily careful of her fairest work — has fenced her
within the crystal sphere of domestic life, from the stir, the thrill,
the athletic contest of the outer world. Bright creature as she is,
of the affections only, the gracious inhabitant of a fairy land of
the heart . . . what has she to do with heroism? Is it not enough
that she prompts it in men? She has beauty: must she have
strength, too?

His view of education for woman must have irked Miss Fuller. He
foresaw a period when woman would become

... a sort of feminine man ... a little hard-featured, of rectangu-
lar limbs, bearing before her the worse than Gorgonian terrors
of a diploma of some she-university, and enriching her natural
gifts of ugliness with disputatious tongue, the attire of a slat-
tern, and the propensities of a pedant.

When Poe printed the satire in the Broadway Journal (August 23,
1845; II, 101), he added a footnote:

We give place to this jeu d} esprit, merely through our sincere
respect, as well for the honesty of intention, as for the ability,
of its author. We feel it our duty, nevertheless, to protest against
the doctrine advanced. The opinions of our fair correspondent
are by no means our own. — ED. B. J.

“The Whole Duty of Woman” consists of a brief preface and an
unrhymed “poem” of slightly more than a hundred lines. In both
Miss Fuller’s ostensible speaker is a man who agrees with the
opinions set forth by Longfellow and Johnston but who, inadver-
tently, causes those views to appear absurd. In the prefatory note
he states that “the accompanying effusion was written to make the
true meaning of the poet more apparent” to the “limited capacity”
of women readers. He admits that women are “undoubtedly a

5. Graham’s Magazine, XXI, hi (September, 1842).

6. I am indebted to Professor Jay B. Hubbell for the information that
Johnston used the pseudonym “II Secretario.”

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227

legitimate part of the human family, and until something can be
invented that will supply their place, are to be tolerated, and even
well treated . . Of the meter of the poem he observes that, if it
is not as correct as it should be, “we presume it is at least as good
as that of some of our philosopher-poets — and indeed very much in
their manner.” In the poetical portion he quotes Victorian’s speech
bit by bit, offering specific application of its views. A few excerpts
will illustrate the author’s method and tone:

‘The world of affection is thy home,

Not that of man’s ambition.’ True, most true!

You cannot go to Congress, nor can serve
In the militia, nor be heard
Within the halls of justice. ’Tis your part
To mend his hose — delightful task!

And patch his ancient vestments. ‘In that stillness
Calm and holy, which most becomes a woman,

Thou sittest by the fireside of the heart
Feeding its flame.’ Canst take a hint?

Well, I’ll explain to you — it simply means
Pray keep the fire a-going, but don’t intrude
Your vapid observations!

The feeling most becoming in a woman
Is ‘just as my husband wishes’ —

And as affection is the thing we crave,

Be liberal in the outward demonstration.

Think not of self, nor call your soul your own ;
But when the loved one steps within his bower
Be sure to meet him with a raptured smile,

E’en if he’s cross and snappish.

If ’tis winter’s cold, prostrate yourself
And take his rubbers — or in summer’s heat
Fan his moist countenance. ’Tis these tender acts
That make life blissful, and he expects them.

‘The element of fire is pure, it cannot change its nature
But burns as brightly within the gypsey camp
As in the palace hall.’ Be sure it does;

And Jock the ploughman feels

As genuine a flame toward Sal the housemaid,

As that which glows within the poet’s heart,

Or, in briefer phrase, one kind of love
Is just as good as t’other.

James B. Reece

Trustees of the Library

Lee M. Friedman, President
Robert H. Lord, Vice-President
Frank W. Buxton Frank J. Donahue

Patrick F. McDonald

Director, and Librarian

Milton Edward Lord

Contributors to this Issue

Lewis P. Simpson is Assistant Professor of English at Louisiana
State University.

B. Bernard Cohen is an Instructor in English at Wayne University.

James B. Reece is working for his Ph.D. in American Literature
at Duke University.

Arthur W. Heintzelman, etcher and painter, is Keeper of Prints
at the Boston Public Library.

Margaret Munsterberg and Alison Bishop are members of the
staff of the Rare Book Department of the Library.

Zoltan Haraszti is Keeper of Rare Books and Editor of Publica-
tions at the Boston Public Library. He is the author of John
Adams and the Prophets of Progress, recently published by the
Harvard University Press.

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