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We are delighted to announce that we have purchased the inventory of LN Golay Books and that Helene has joined the team full-time as a Rare Book Specialist with a focus on archives, manuscripts, and unique material. Below you'll find a sampling of all of these, and in the coming months CHB will be sending out more E-Lists with a wide array of material, as well as exhibiting at the Bibliography Week Showcase and the New York Antiquarian Book Fair. As always, thanks for taking a look.
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Photographed the same year as the founding of the first black women's professional basketball clubs
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1. [African-Americana - Louisiana] [Webster High School]
Original Group Photograph of the Girls' Basketball Team, Webster High School, Minden, Louisiana, 1931
Minden, LA: 1931.
Shreveport, LA: 1931. Original black and white photograph (15.5x25.5cm.) depicting the girls' basketball team alongside their coach Mr. Russ, each player identified in ink manuscript along bottom of image. Photograph slightly curled with very small flaw at bottom of image, else Very Good overall. Misidentifying manuscript label mounted to verso, identifying the team in "Shreveport LA / Circa 1947 / Washington ".
The label is a red herring, misdating and misplacing the photograph sixteen years late and thirty miles west. The center player holds a basketball dated '31, nineteen years before Booker T. Washington High School was founded. The school almost certainly is Webster High School in Minden, Louisiana, thirty miles east. The building in the background and the women's slightly mismatching uniforms conform to those depicted in W.L.G. Abney's 1950s booklet "The History of Webster High School." Indeed, the simple whitewashed wooden structure sitting on a brick pile foundation appears to be either the back of the dormitory or the newly-completed library, the ground still unpaved dirt.
The story of the founding of Webster High School, less than ten years earlier in 1922, displays the dedication and financial burden of a Black community in the heart of the Jim Crow South. According to Abney's history, a Colored Board of Trustees comprised of members of the community first set out to find a suitable site for a new school, settling on a piece of land "owned and occupied as a home by one of Minden's colored citizens, Mr. Henry Harris, who was perfectly happy there and had no desire to sell." Abney glosses over the displacement of Harris, but the site was secured and approved by the (White) Parish board "with the understanding that the colored people themselves would have to make substantial financial contribution if they were to secure this site because no money had been budgeted for the cause at that time." Indeed, by 1931 the list of state-sponsored schools in Louisiana for White and Black students was sixty-eight to four. Webster was not one of those four schools.
As Abney's history delineates, however, the money was raised by the community, through the leadership and outreach of the Colored Board of Trustees, and by 1931 a library had been erected and numerous sports teams active. The date is also significant as it coincides with the founding of two of the first all-Black, all-women's professional basketball clubs, the Philadelphia Tribune Girls and the Chicago Romas. Perhaps these pioneering teams inspired the formation of Webster High School's girls' basketball team. In any case, the members listed are as follows: Coach Mr. Russ, Tena Lowery, Hazel Garrett, Willie Stewart, B. Green, M. Ford, Bran (?) Watson, M. Gafford, E. McCorey, Ella B. Gafford, Lorscie (?) Henry, and Louella Ruffin.
$1,500
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Fairbanks and Chatanika, Alaska: Huey Foto / Huey and Hyland Foto, 1909-1910.
Two original photographs from the 1909 and 1910 midnight baseball games held in Chatanika and Fairbanks, Alaska. Mounted on black card stock with "Chatanika Alaska July 4th One A.M. 1909" to first and "Midnight Ball Game Fairbanks-vs-Chatanika. June 19-1910, Huey and Hyland Foto," to second. Light edge wear and touch of spotting and scuffing to each with small patch of surface loss to bottom left corner of 1910 photo.
The 1909 photo shows a large crowd of men, women, and at least three babies arrayed across a large pile of stones and logs. The setting appears to be the same backstop as from the 1910 photo, which gives a more complete idea of the event, complete with bases, baselines, flags, and the crowd watching on.
Variously called the "Lights-Out Baseball Game," the "Midnight Sun Game," or the "High Noon at Midnight Classic," the game appears to have begun in 1905 or 1906, and has been a Fairbanks tradition ever since, with the game breaking at midnight for the crowd to sing The Alaska Flag Song.
$450
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"The sunset was magnificent in color and clouds and there we were in No Man's Land"
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3. [Art & Design - Cleveland] Lawrence Harl Copeland [L'Harl]
Professional and Private Archive of Correspondence, Original Artwork, and Published Pieces
France, Cleveland, and elsewhere: 1912-1970
Collection consists of fifty-seven (57) pieces of correspondence of which fifty-one were written by Copeland to his then-fiancée (and later wife) Helene Bander while a private serving in France during World War I, amounting to 209 pages of text; fifty-nine (59) leaves of sample letterhead designs; thirty-two (32) trade catalogs; fifteen (15) Christmas cards and letters of condolence to the Copelands; nineteen (19) pieces of original art by Harl Copeland; twenty-one (21) maquettes, including early states of plates from the author's work "Pith"; seventeen (17) Christmas cards designed by Copeland, including various states; three publications on typography, one inscribed by the author to Copeland; twenty-five (25) newspaper clippings; a copy of Copeland's artist book "Pith" (1931); two original steel cut blocks for Copeland's Christmas cards; one plaster relief of a nude woman (32.5x28cm.) designed by Copeland for the Kokoon Klub; one oil painting still life by Copeland's fellow Kokoon Klub member William Sommer (1867-1949); and two pieces of attendant ephemera, including a printed slip accomplished in manuscript noting Copeland's entry for the $1000 Sunburst Cover Prize submitted in 1921 while he was employed with Full & Smith; and one invitation to the Kokoon Klub for the Eighth Annual Auction of Kokoon Members, 1930. Copeland's collection of letterhead samples quite dampstained, else the remaining contents of the collection are in Very Good to Fine condition.
Substantial archive of the professional and amorous output of artist and typographer Lawrence Harl Copeland. Includes what appears to be the complete cache of his love letters, some with original illustrations of his environs, written to fiancée (and later wife) Helene Bander during his complete tour of duty in France during World War I. The early letters describe his distaste for military service: "the fourteenth district downstairs has everything in the mess hall these foreigners eat like hogs and never take the trouble to pass anything to somebody else" (from Camp Sherman, Ohio, April 29, 1918). Two days later: "Last evening when I was lounging on my cot there thinking of Helene there was a big [crapps] game at the foot. The environment is not one I would appreciate far less enjoy."
Of special interest is Copeland's strained relationship with his younger sister Maud during the War, his letter dated May 16 noting "Maud has been inflicted with considerable war propaganda at the college and I get it about every letter from her" while a letter from Maud to Helene dated May 20 notes "I can almost imagine how [Harl] feels with the attitude he has towards the war. With me it would be much different for I think we've either got to beat the Germans or say goodbye to freedom although I don't think Harl is much in favor or our freedom as we'll call it..." Harl's letters cover a detailed visit to his and Helene's alma mater the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, which he visited while at Camp Merritt in New York, before being shipped overseas to France. Once there the tone of the letters grow increasingly less romantic and more dire, his second letter from France, dated July 5, 1918, noting "just picture me billited [sic] on the earth floor of a French tile factory. Dust, you can't get out of it"; while a few weeks later he notes "There is one member of the Kokoon Klub here in the same regiment and I have seen him frequently. The other day he told me that he had received a letter from the president saying that the Klub has sent us a treat. While we appreciate this very much, and the spirit displayed I cannot say how we would enjoy it if we ever got it."
Copeland's vague descriptions of combat are seen keenly through the eyes of the artist, one of the earliest references to immediate danger written on September 15: "I regret very much that I did not make a sketch that evening we were out among those shattered trees. It was cold and somewhat rainy and the sunset was magnificent in color and clouds, and there we were in No Man's Land."
The bulk of the combat content only appears at the end of the war, starting with a letter dated November 24: "Two more times over the top, [?], hiking, and lined up again one morning for combat and at eleven o'clock the guns stopped firing. Thus the war ended."
In a letter from a week later Copeland expands on his combat experiences, noting that "Clarence sent me a letter telling me not to take any chances with the Huns, and kill everyone and seemed to take it for granted that I had killed some already. Well as yet I have never seen a Dutchman in combat, never shot the rifle, nor ever had an American grenade in my hand. On November ninth I sat in a shell hole all day with machine gun bullets whistling over our heads. The next morning we went over the top and I know what it is to carry a wounded friend off the field."
Following his return from France, Copeland married Helene and worked as a graphic and type designer, the contents of the archive including a typescript draft with manuscript corrections of a letter written on Copeland Art letterhead and addressed to the US Civil Service Commission, May 11, 1939: "In answer to my application for Chief Artist Designer I received R. No. 716 January 1939 marking me 50.00 and inelligible...This need not sound ugly but does anyone on the Commission know which letters in the alphabet design are wide, which are narrow and why?"
Though he may not have nailed the job application, Copeland's curriculum vitae included advertisement work for Kewpie Dolls (a maquette of which is included here), as well as trade catalogs issued by Ivanhoe Oil-Burning Stoves; the American Fruit Grower, whose Christmas issues for 1936 and 1937 feature cover art by Copeland; Gittelman's Sons fur company; and the Super Flex Oil Burning fridge. Original artwork by Copeland, including portrait and architectural sketches, span almost his entire career, from 1912 to the mid-1960s.
A substantial collection detailing the artist at work, at war, and in love.
$2,000
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Illustrated with 132 cyanotypes
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4. [Art & Design - Cyanotypes] Mildred Evans
[Unpublished Typescript] Early Italian Art: Notes from the Art Talks of Miss Mildred Evans, October to May, 1903-1904
N.p. s.i., 1903-1904.
Quarto; original plain tan cloth over flexible boards, printed paper spine label, marbled endpapers; [2],149ll. printed mimeograph from typescript in blue ink; one hundred and sixty-five (165) photographic reproductions tipped in, including one hundred and thirty-two (132) cyanotypes, one leaf of original illus. Extremities very slightly scuffed, cloth a bit soiled and spine label lettering partly effaced, else Very Good, internally clean and sound.
Presumably unique compilation of lecture notes taken by Evans for a series of weekly lectures she delivered at the turn of the last century. The lectures are organized chronologically by date delivered beginning with the Catacombs in Rome (October 30, 1903). Additional topics included mosaics and mosaic making (November 6), and the lives of individual Medieval Italian artists such as the Lorenzetti Brothers, Nicolo and Giovanni Pisano, and Giotto.
The text concludes with an appendix providing a list of symbols (a favorite topic), and an index to the illustrations. These appear to have been reproduced mostly using the cheaper (and bluer) cyanotype process, popularized "during the early hand camera era (1888-1920) as a process by which amateurs could create multiple prints from their negatives" (graphicsatlas.org).
Apparently a unique copy, we find no evidence of any others appearing on the market, auction records, or OCLC as of December, 2022. We find little about Evans herself, though conjecture that she was an American (no lecture was delivered Thanksgiving week) offering her knowledge of a rich period in art history, perhaps to a women's club or close group of friends.
$200
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5. [Children - Pennsylvania] Ida W. Kitchen
Collection of Five Small-Format Scrapbooks
Philadelphia? s.i., 1890.
Philadelphia? ca. 1890. Five volumes (11.5x8cm.) housed in lidded paper-covered box (12x9.5x2cm.), color lithographic pop-up element mounted to lid; each volume bound in stiff side-stitched pictorial card wrappers printed in gilt; all filled to completion. Light wear and soil from use, paper flaw to two leaves from damage caused by adhesive, box a bit squashed and pop-up element requires some help to "pop," else a Very Good, endearing collection.
Five small volumes of which one is signed twice by an Ida Kitchen or Ida W. Kitchen. Records locate an Ida Webb Kitchen born in 1881 residing in Philadelphia in 1900 with her family, including both parents, a sister, three brothers, and two Irish-born women named Mary McShane and Esther Montgomery, listed in the census as servants, aged 35 and 25. Kitchen's father James G. Kitchen appears to have been a rather litigious dealer in textiles, appearing in the newspapers between 1890 and 1895 as the plaintiff in cases brought against John Cadwalader, Collector of the Port, for alleged excess of customs; and against Lawrence Murray, dealer in yarns, for fraud.
In this busy household, Ida Kitchen would have been about ten years old when she began affixing illustrations, valentine cut-outs, and other colorful bits to her collection of scrapbooks. Contents include a few rebuses (uncracked by us), and an entire volume titled "Book of Mammals," which charmingly opens with a collection of pictures of humans.
$350
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"on the front seat sat a small melancholy, black-maned lion, which Madame Pagel fed from time to time with chocolate creams"
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6. [Pagel's Circus, South Africa]
[Circus] [South Africa] Two Photo / Postcard Albums of Pagel's Circus, 1920s-30s [incl. portraits signed and inscribed by William Pagel, Claudia Alba, et al]
[South Africa: ca. 1922-1938].
Two photo albums in pronged, clear-fronted folders (11.5” x 9.75”), with 96 items in 23 pages and 131 in 22. Photo-album featuring a mix of portraits and headshots (personal and promotional), postcards, pitch ephemera, and personal tour/vacation photos of Pagel’s Circus – a South African traveling performance troupe and menagerie managed by German-born strongman Fredrich Wilhelm August “William” Pagel (1878-1948) and his Yorkshire-born wife Mary Dinsdale [Pagel] (1865-1939). Photos and postcards occasionally and variously inscribed, dedicated, and captioned, the latter in either German or English, with some if not all photos having belonged to Mrs. Pagel herself – a portrait of William Pagel is signed “To my dearly beloved wife & chum / from Willy / [?] 18/3/30,” and the woman in a portrait captioned “Mrs. Pagel” on verso is the same as appears in many photos with German captions beginning with the likes of “Dies bin ich mit der…” She also appears to appear in one captioned in English “Ruth with a leopard cub,” and many of the photos and postcards are inscribed to Ruth, leading us to wonder unconfirmed if this was a name Mrs. Pagel went by (though a couple others addressed to Ruth and Jack(ie) complicate this notion). Dates on photos range from 1922-1938, with the largest photo being Claudia Alba's signed 8" x 10" and smallest a stamp-sized shot of Pagel, with the majority in the 5.5" x 3.5" to 3.25" x 2.25" range.
Highlights include the above portrait of William Pagel signed to his wife and another unsigned of him nuzzling a tiger; a signed portrait of strongwoman juggler Claudia Alba “Zum freunde erinnerung an Claudia Alba / 1933-1934 Pagel’s Circus”; a group portrait of 37 performers including the usual mix of problematic characters of assumed nationality including one performer in blackface, a few in Asian and Arab dress, one Klansman, and a smiling Jesus; promotional postcard of heavyweight juggler “Capt. Henry Smith der Kraftjongleur und seine partnerin” (Captain Henry Smith the Power Juggler and his partner) with intact costume-change flap; inscribed photo of juggling gymnast Paul Pedrini with a baboon; clown Phil Joey Williams, Claudia Alba’s photographic business card with (it appears) her manager (and husband?) Otto Alba’s inscribed birthday greetings; promotional cards of other performers including a Slovak trapeze troupe, burlesque dancers, strongmen, clowns, etc.; and numerous small behind-the-scenes shots of performances, practices, various candids and vacation-style photos including a few at Victoria Falls (on the Zambezi) and others captioned on tour in Southern Rhodesia (c. 1925).
William Pagel was born in Pomerania in 1878, joined a ship's crew at 17, met and married Mary Dinsdale in Tasmania in 1899, and worked as a strongman for the Worth Brothers Circus in Australia until buying his own two-hundred person tent in 1904 and sailing for Natal in 1905, at which point his own circus began to tour South Africa, becoming somewhat of a national institution. He died in 1948 at age 70, with some sources suggesting he went peacefully in his sleep, another proclaiming a heart attack after an attempt to lift two horses, and yet another saying the old head-in-a-lion’s-mouth trick finally went wrong. A more colorful portrait of Mrs. Pagel was painted by BBC military commentator Major Lewis Hastings in his autobiography Dragons are Extra. He writes, “Madame Pagel, the dominant partner in the concern, was an unforgettable character. She had at one time been one of those fairy-like creatures who hop lightly through hoops on the back of a prancing skewbald. But when I knew her this little Lancashire woman had the curves of an outsize Juno, a coruscating temperament, and a flow of basic English that would have broken the heart of an old-time sergeant-major…I had once the honour of driving round Bulawayo with Madame Pagel in a large rickety saloon car, while she distributed her various orders and lowered the town's level of Guinness’ stout at various houses of call. While we travelled, the admired of all beholders, I sat in the back seat, Madame Pagel drove, and on the front seat sat a small, melancholy, black-maned lion, which Madame Pagel fed from time to time with chocolate creams.”
Photos all lightly edgeworn, a few with abrasions to back and only one or two with creasing. The albums in their present state appear to have been compiled by an earlier seller, with 8 pages of their 2003 web research printouts also tucked in.
$1,250
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cursing the day "women's suffrage" won out
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7. [Education] [Pennsylvania] Rochester High School
[Two Holograph Copies of the Rochester High School's Freshman Year Book for 1912] R.H.S. Freshman "The Nightmare"
Rochester, PA: 1912.
Two volumes; small square quartos (23.5x21.5cm.); black cloth tape over brown card wrappers; both volumes 33ll. filled to completion with cartoons, quotes, jokes, and class notes. Rather worn from handling, one volume with extensive old tape repair, a few leaves separated but present. Good or better overall.
Two similar but far from identical holograph year books created for the consumption of Rochester High School's Freshman class of 1915. Both volumes include similar biographies of each member of the class, but each volume opens with a different preface and dedication. Whether the collective that made these books intended to make one for each member of the class is unclear.
In any case, a splendid portrait of the small Freshman class of 1915. R.D. Fleming Jr. is named here "Class president and sumphin' else. Can't just now remember. He is predicting on being the burgess of the state of Seattle when he gets big. He is a strong socialist." Agnes Souzane Hall is "great on women's suffrage and gives free lectures on Sat. evenings in the 'Gresey Spoon,'" while Frank Mark Goodman, the class inventor, has created a potato bug trap: "He bores holes in the leaves and when a bug goes across the hole he falls through and breaks his fool neck." Presumably nothing here can be taken at face value.
The school being co-ed, there is the usual cajolery and competition between the two groups during class voting: "The girls again hammered the boys, they so cleverly collected their forces that they elected the daffodil class flower and for class motto He conquers who conquers himself. After this the boys were so mad they cursed the day 'women's suffrage' won out."
Much is also made of each sports team, though only one of the volumes makes mention of the women's croquet team dominating the season. This was many decades before Title IX, after all.
The notebooks are dated 1912, in the spring of the students' first year. On February 24, 1914, the school was destroyed in a fire, though all students "marched out of the burning building in good order" according to the Allentown "Morning Call."
$850
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tap-dancers, water-lilies, and two kinds of organ-grinder monkey
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8. [Fashion - Costume Design] [Associated Fabrics Corporation] "Gwendolin"
Archive of Original and Published Costume Designs
New York: Associated Fabrics Corporation, 1930.
Archive comprised of twenty-one original watercolors mostly mounted to plain paper (ca. 26.5x20.5cm.); six published design sample cards (ca. 22x14.5 to 24x18cm.), and four hand-colored mimeographed advertisement broadsides (35.5x21.5cm.) depicting sixteen "Associated Patterns." A few leaves toned due to varying paper quality, occasional ownership rubber-stamps of an Ivy Randall, broadsides a bit frayed and top margins beginning to curl, else a Very Good collection overall. Nearly all designs signed in manuscript "Gwen" or in facsimile "Gwendolin."
Attractive collection of designs produced by the still extant New York (now New Jersey) fabric and costume design company. The collection showcases the Corporation's specialty in works for the ballet and music hall performances, each water-color complete with accompanying fabric suggestions in manuscript. Designs range from fluid and feminine ("Water Lily" calls for water-effect china silk for the dress and buckram for the water lilies) to over-the-top "My Fair Lady"-level gowns. All designs but one ("Policeman") are intended for female models, the showgirl samples ranging from cheeky ("Fedora Strut") to downright upsetting (two different samples for an organ grinder's monkey).
$450
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making do with what she had (WAAF maintenance forms, mostly)
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9. [Fashion] [World War II] Gladys Warren
Archive of Original Pencil Drawings and Watercolors, 1941-1945
England: 1941-1945.
Substantial collection of original amateur artwork and fashion plates dated 1941 to 1945 by a young woman named Gladys Warren (almost all pieces signed "G. Warren," "G.W.," or "Gladys Warren"). The collection consists of nine large format watercolors (56x38cm.); one small format watercolor (32.5x23); four large format pencil sketches (56x38cm.); and twelve small format pencil sketches (33.5x19cm.), totaling twenty-six (26) individual pieces. Some dust soil and minor wear from handling, watercolors not examined out of individual shrink wrap. A Very Good or better collection overall.
Collection of drawings and watercolors almost exclusively depicting women in the latest fashions or in uniform. The range of the large format watercolors indicate that this was possibly a burgeoning professional dossier, including examples of day wear, sleep wear, evening wear, and swim wear. The large format pencil drawings include two historic fashion illustrations (the only titled image in the group is "Madeira 1884") and one nude study.
Of special note, however, is the series of twelve small pencil sketches, all accomplished on the versos of what appear to be mimeographed World War II aircraft maintenance reports. Indeed, the October 28, 1941, "London Gazette" lists a Gladys Florence Warren among the members of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), though we find little else to pinpoint the artist. With the dearth of ready paper experienced during World War II, perhaps Warren filched these leaves on which to practice her art? Most of these sketches depict attractive women, either seen in close-up or, as usual, modeling the latest uniforms and fashions, while the verso details the assemblage or maintenance of engine covers, handbrakes, or a "carburettor."
A pleasing survival of the English home front, juxtaposing fashion, femininity, and aircraft mechanics.
$1,250
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10. [Food & Drink] Paterson Parchment Paper Co.
Small Archive of Sample Wrapping Papers for Mohawk Creamery
Passaic, NJ: Paterson Parchment Paper Co., 1911.
Small archiving of sample wrapping papers provided by Paterson Parchment for the Albany-based Mohawk Creamery consisting of one (1) typed letter, dated January 25, 1911, signed by company Vice President William F. Brunner, and seven (7) vegetable parchment paper samples adorned with various cow woodcuts in one or two colors (red or red and green). Faint finger soil and previous folds to letter, else a Very Good to Near Fine collection.
The opening missive is written on elaborate Company letterhead adorned in red and black with three different views of the factory and a note along bottom margin: "There is considerable difficulty experienced in printing Parchment Paper: therefore we shall allow no claims after paper is printed, unless the work is done at our printing factory" (dated November 7th, 1903).
The letter itself is addressed to Messrs. C.R. and W.J. Sutherland of Albany, offering them "several samples showing different cuts of COWS which we could print on a wrapper for you." The collection also includes two samples of an earlier, cowless, Mohawk Creamery wrapper, which advertised one pound of "Gilt-Edge" butter, "Absolutely Pure." Just wet the wrapper occasionally to keep fresh.
$250
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225 samples in the art of "tricking"
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11. [Heraldry] F.A.F. [Frances Atkinson Freeman?]
[Original Manuscript] Heraldic Vocabulary Illustrated by What Can [Be] Called in That Science "Trickings" of Arms / F.A.F. / Made and Wrote & owns the following
New Hampshire: ca. 1870-1880.
Thick 12mo (15.5cm.); contemporary dark brown morocco-backed marbled paper-covered boards, gilt-lettered spine titled "Armory," all edges speckled, marbled endpapers; x,11-234pp., the remaining approx. 200pp. blank; text interspersed with 225 original ink drawings reproducing heraldic arms, most displaying exquisite and minute detail; six pieces of ephemera, chiefly newsclippings, pasted in the later leaves of text. Boards a bit rubbed with brief exposure, else Very Good, internally fresh and fine.
Impressively executed manuscript attributed either to Frances Atkinson Freeman (1797-1883) or her son Francis Atkinson Freeman (1822-1884), their father and grandfather's own original heraldic ex libris serving as the frontispiece to this work. William King Atkinson (1764-1820) was a New Hampshire solicitor whose armor features an eagle ("one of the most noble bearings") atop a crest of four lions accompanied by the Latin phrase "Nil Facimus Non Sponte Dei," and is listed in "Bolton's American Amory" (2009 ed.), p. 6; and Charles Dexter Allen's "American Bookplates" (2019 ed.), no. 39. Atkinson's daughter Frances, who inherited John Singleton Copley's "Portrait of Mrs. Theodore Atkinson Jr." from her father and lived her entire life in Dover, New Hampshire, married Asa Freeman in 1818, and this manuscript, if in fact executed by her, would probably have been started after his death, in 1867, the only dates we can find in the text referring to an article in the London Athenaeum, May 25, 1878, and a letter received from a Mrs. Greenwood "asking for exemplification of Atkinson coat of arms," May 22, 1882, a year before Freeman's death. Her son Francis, a lawyer like his father and maternal grandfather, spent the greater part of his career in Calaveras County, California, arriving with the '49ers and only returned to Dover in 1872. A contemporary assessment of Freeman fils notes that "He was possessed of fine abilities, was a great reader in general literature, and a capital converser on subjects in which he was interested. He was understood also to have been of times a diligent student of the law, having something of the black-letter tastes of his uncle, Peyton R. Freeman...But a lack of steadiness and of regularity of habits stood in the way of his success, and he never made himself what nature intended" (Charles Henry Bell, "The Bench and Bar of New Hampshire" (1894), p. 379).
The work itself is a meticulous alphabetical glossary of armorial imagery and the art of "tricking," the indication of colors by the use of abbreviations (for example, "Argent. Silver. Expressed by the shield being plain, thus"; whereas "Azure...Blue. Represented in Engravings by horizontal lines across the shield"). Nearly all entries accompanied by hand-drawn examples in black ink, Freeman displaying an expert draughts[wo]manship. Much of the text appears to have been copied out from a myriad sources, including James Coates' "A New Dictionary of Heraldry" (1725) and Nathan Bailey's "Universal Etymological English Dictionary" (1731). A compelling survival.
$650
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"my memory is none the best"
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12. [Literature] Samuel L. Clemens [pseud. Mark Twain]
Autograph Letter Signed
Elmira, NY: 1870s-1890s.
Autograph letter signed by Samuel L. Clemens to an unknown correspondent; 23 lines (approx. 110 words) on a single side of a center-folded 10" x 8" sheet of lined paper. Top 1.25" pasted to off-white cardstock with some resulting light rippling in top margin, with cardstock itself mounted also along the top edge to red felt-covered matboard (12.75" x 11.25"). Some visible but flattened creases to paper along with afore-mentioned ripples where attached, paper slightly and uniformly toned, and edges crisp and without tears. Pencil notation at top reads "#59 1930 AM. ART ASSOC. # // #0," surely the item's lot number in a 1930 American Art Association, Anderson Galleries auction, though we as yet have not located a corresponding auction record. The letter reads:
"Elmira, N.Y. Aug 8. // My Dear Madam, Your letter reached me here a day or two ago, but I have mislaid it & must guess at the address – which I may possibly get wrong for my memory is none of the best. However, I’m only jotting a line to thank you for the kind invitation. [scratched out] You have given me & tendering regret that I am so far away as to put it out of my powers to be one of the witnesses of the performance that is to take place. I should greatly enjoy being present if the thing were possible. Very Truly yours, Samuel L Clements* // *+Mark Twain for Wilmot"
From around 1870 and for the next twenty or so years, Twain summered yearly in Elmira, NY at Quarry Farm, the home of his sister-in-law, Susan Langdon Crane and her husband Theodore. In 1874, Twain's in-laws built him a study on the property — an octagonal building designed to resemble a steamship's pilot house, set on a hill a short distance from the home with views of the Chemung River Valley — in which he worked on many of his best-known works. Twain visited Quarry Farm for the last time in 1903, and was buried in 1910 with his family at Elmira’s Woodlawn Cemetery.
$2,000
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13. [Lotteries - Franklin Benefit Association]
Unused Sheet of Ten Lottery Tickets
N.p. Franklin Benefit Association, 1866.
Unused sheet of ten pictorial lottery tickets (23.5x8cm.) printed in black, red and green. Old folds, top half of verso discolored and soiled, contemporary manuscript note at top margin of verso ("Humbug - Humbug"), else a Very Good example of an exceedingly uncommon survival.
Strip of ten five-dollar lottery tickets which, presented as a whole, made this handbill-sized packet a single fifty-dollar ticket. Each individual ticket repeats the same image of a hearty handshake, surrounded by the text "The trustees of the Franklin Benefit Association will pay to the holder 1/10 of such prize as may be drawn for this number at the distribution of Feb. 1866."
In fact the Franklin Benefit Association was a popular scam in the final years of the Civil War and after, frequently exposed in local newspapers in New England, Pennsylvania, and even Louisiana in the latter half of the 1860s. Potential victims were sent a ream of tickets with a letter providing dubious instructions, as did George Taber of Vassalboro, Maine, in 1864: "You will see by catalogue that the number sent you has drawn a prize of $200. If you will follow my instructions, you can get a part or even a whole of it. I wish you to get this prize money."
The letter goes on to instruct Taber to send a letter with a phony date stating he has failed to sell any tickets but will try his hand at the lottery himself. Together with this letter, Taber should send $5, $10, or $20 "as convenient." Luckily Taber smelled a rat, instead forwarding on the Association's missive to the Portland Daily Press where it was reprinted on March 18, 1864. Despite Taber's efforts, exposures of the Association continued to appear as late as 1867.
$200
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14. [Maritime History - New York City]
Business Archive of the Packet Ship "Splendid" while docked in New York City, 1834-1835
New York: 1834-5
Sixty-nine manuscript receipts issued by local businesses to the owners of the coppered packet ship "Splendid" while docked in New York City from November, 1834, to June, 1835. Each leaf folded approximately 21x4cm. and bundled into two ribbon-tied packets marked in manuscript "6th vo[yag]e Splendid to Liverpool" and "Splendid 7." Occasional splitting at folds, though otherwise a remarkably fresh and Near Fine collection.
The packet ship Splendid, captained by Augustus Proal, departed from Liverpool July 5, 1834, bound for New York. A contemporary advertisement promised potential travelers that "She is high and roomy between decks, and admirably adapted for Passengers." As well as ferrying passengers to the United States, the ship had also in past voyages transported to our shores one of the earliest steam engines, produced by Foster, Rastrick, & Co., in 1829. Nothing so substantial made the voyage this time around other than a king's ransom of fine, fresh teas, which were auctioned off in chests, half-chests, and boxes shortly after arriving in New York, on November 29, 1834.
The present collection comprises of the sixty-nine receipts accrued by the ship and its owners while docked in New York, including wages, victuals, and pilotage. Local strongman Robert B. Harris was first employed upon docking with the tasks of loading the sails to the loft and bringing in bread, flour, pork, beef, whiskey, and a medicine chest, for which he received £5 14s ($14.25). Four months later, in March, he was sought after again to bring in sawdust and more pork and beef, for which he received an additional £4 11s. Night watchman John Coger received a total of $39.50 for a series of stints in that capacity while at sea between August and November, 1834.
As well as manual labor and ship repair materials, of special interest to the gourmand are the lengthy receipts accrued with the local grocer Rogers & Schatzel, from whom the ship acquired, among many other items, sperm candles and oil, rum, buckwheat, vinegar, coffee and tea, bread, sweet potatoes, turnips, beans, salt and pepper, sugar, and, in a June, 1835, receipt, a smallish packet of peaches that set back the owners 50 cents.
$950
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knowing when to resort to "premature labor"
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15. [Medicine] [Women's Health] Emilie Evans
Manuscript Notebook Compiled by Nursing Student Emilie Evans at the Phoenixville Hospital, Pennsylvania
Phoenixville, PA: s.i., 1900.
Small, slim quarto; contemporary decorative tan cloth boards, red morocco over corners; 152pp. filled nearly to completion, approx. 20 internal leaves blank between sections. Cloth quite worn, especially along spine, with one-inch loss at spine foot, leather dried and significantly scuffed, hinges reinforced but still a bit weak, one leaf separated but present, else Good, contents mostly clean, sound, and highly legible.
Detailed notebook kept by nursing student Emilie Evans between November, 1900, and April, 1901, at Phoenixville Hospital in Pennsylvania. Courses taught ran from poisons (including dog bites, snake bites, and mushroom poisoning) to respiration, digestion, and bacteriology. Of special note, however, are the twenty-three pages of close manuscript text pertaining to obstetrics, pregnancy, labor, and the care of mother and baby following delivery.
Despite the natural order of things, the earliest course in this field is "Care of Mother and Child," specifically during puerperium, vaguely defined here as "time from birth of child until mother is able to be around again, which she should not be for at least six or eight weeks." The following schedule for the postpartum mother offers an intimate glimpse at the almost draconian Victorian regimen: "...all excitement and exertion of any kind are strictly prohibited, no one may be allowed to see her but members of immediate family the first week, second week patient may be propped up in bed. Third week she may be up in her room and recline on couch. Fourth week she must still stay in her room."
"Women in labor," Evans is later warned in a lecture on delivery, "are very impressible, quick to observe and frequently wrongly interpret even trifling indiscretions of word or act on part of nurse or physician. It would be dreadful for a nurse to loose self control. You must obtain your patients [sic] confidence." Significantly, in the case of hemorrhaging that is threatening the life of the mother, "the physician has to resort to premature labor" (p. 46).
During the early months of 1901 Evans would also attend lectures on diseases of the skin, surgical cleanliness, tuberculosis, diabetes, and "Death," when she learned that signs of life may be obtained by running "a needle between the 3rd and 4th rib."
$750
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"I would like you to know that I am a prostitute and I have a pimp"
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16. [Sex Work] [Maryse Choisy] Anonymous
Nine-Page Autograph Letter Addressed to Maryse Choisy by an Unidentified Sex Worker
N.p.: 1962.
Nine-page autograph letter signed simply "A Fan" on five sheets of lined paper (23x15cm.); approx. 850 words. Faint toning to extremities, else Very Good or better.
Extraordinary letter addressed to "Dr. Choisy," the French philosopher and psychoanalyst Maryse Choisy (1903-1979) by an anonymous correspondent in response to Choisy's study "Psychoanalysis of the Prostitute." First published in 1928 as "Un mois chez les filles," Choisy had set out to write an exposé of prostitution that would humanize the trade. Controversial from the first, the book waited more than thirty years to make it into an English translation with a much more academic-sounding title than "A Month with the Girls."
The unnamed author of this letter opens her epistle by praising Choisy's work, writing "It is one of the first books I have ever read on this subject where the author did not attempt to convince the reader that he or she had a complete knowledge of the facts. You candidly admit that you are simply writing about the few people in this profession which you have come into contact with. Also I would like you to know that I am a prostitute and I have a pimp."
The writer goes on, however, to "plead with you not to continue making one certain mistake that authors of books of this nature persist in making. That very simple (yet damaging to the readers [sic] point of view) mistake of generalizing." The writer then goes on to give a brief overview of her relationship with her profession: "First let me say I am in the business for one reason and that is money. I have never used the term 'lovers' for my customers but since you do I will say, I charge lovers only to make money. I niether [sic] have a like or dislike for these men. I hardly think of them as people at all. They are to me as a dinner customer is to a waitress. Someone to be served as quickly and efficiently as possible. My real 'work' is before I even get on the bed, that is trying to get the man to spend as much money as possible. Once this is done I simply get rid of him as soon as possible to get on to the next man for no other reason then [sic] to make more money...90% of the time I can see a man I have been with and he looks vaguely familiar. I'm not sure if I have just seen him around or if I have been to bed with him."
The latter half of the letter covers the author's relationship with her pimp, to whom she has been married for nearly four years at the time of writing. Choisy's text had argued that the prostitute and pimp unite "not...to love, but to hate." To this the writer responds "I am so in love with my husband I could write 20 pages on the subject alone. He is handsome, intelligent, a wonderful lover, a perfect companion. We enjoy music together. We go to the ball game together. We have many things in common. Also I know he loves me. How?? The same way a secretary, nurse, or even author knows her husband loves her."
The author then provides a short biography of how she got into the trade, "because I was broke and a cab driver asked me if I had ever hustled. I needed the money desperately so I lied and said yes. He got me a job at a hotel." A year later she met her husband "in a bar where I was working. He was not a customer he just came in to see the bass because he used to deal cards in the back room. We talked for about 4 or 5 nights and finally I let him take me out to breakfast. I didn't have sex with him until I had decided to become his girl."
The husband's biography is also touch upon: pimping at seventeen, he was arrested and served three and a half years in prison by the age of twenty. When and he and his wife met several years later, "I knew what he was and he knew what I was. There was no discussion about either of us changing our way of life." The writer concludes that she and her husband are hoping to someday save enough money for a business of their own.
The letter is simply signed "A Fan," though in nine sheets the reader is given a wonderfully detailed, thoughtful, and moving short biography or two sex workers in the early 1960s.
$1,500
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tabletop-sized evil-banishment
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17. [Tourism] [China and Hong Kong]
Tabletop Candle Screen Depicting the Eight Immortals
Hong Kong: s.i., 1950.
Octagonal collapsible tabletop candle screen composed of white cloth over stiff card stock to which is mounted to each folding panel a 3-D cloth, silk, and hand-colored paper rendering of the Eight Immortals, accompanied by a separate octagonal card paper base. Cloth slightly foxed at extremities, perished tape repair visible on the interior (but not externally), abrasion from removed sticker to base piece significantly affecting the "Made in Hong Kong" rubber-stamp, else a Very Good example.
Attractive example of a popular theme for a tabletop candle screen, the Eight Immortals holding the power to banish evil.
$50
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18. [Western Americana - Minnesota & Canada]
Original Vernacular Photo Album of a Trip from Mankato, Minnesota, to British Columbia
Mankato, MN et al: 1890.
Small oblong octavo (14x18cm.); publisher's grey card wrappers lettered in white; [16]ll. of pale grey stock to which are mounted sixteen (16) silver gelatin snapshots (all ca. 8x8cm.) on rectos only, usually with manuscript captions on facing page. Some photographs a bit overexposed at margins, else an exceptional album in Near Fine condition. Retains the album seller's ticket inside rear cover, "Ward's Souvenir Album" rubberstamped no. 11.
Souvenir album capturing the rather long journey from Mankato, Minnesota, to British Columbia. The first nine photographs appear to have been taken in the former location, possibly the photographer's home, the images depicting scenes around a woodframe house and a young girl astride a horse, before turning outward to views of the Minnesota River from the bluff of North Mankato, the cows on said bluff, Minneopa Falls, and the Minnesota River Bridge. The next location captured is a train station between Denver and Colorado Springs, presumably Pikes Peak looming in the background. The next shot shows a rather large group of people, both men and women, walking along the railroad tracks through Royal Gorge, Colorado, the bank of the Arkansas River just a few feet to their left. The following photograph jumps from the Gorge to the Cawston Ostrich Farm in Pasadena, California, where a rather substantial clutch of ostriches peer out at the photographer from behind their enclosure's gate. The farm, the first of its kind, opened in 1886 to meet the demand for newly-fashionable ostrich feathers and was immediately a major tourist attraction. Two photographs follow of a horse-back ride across Mt. Lowe, a peak in the southern folds of the San Gabriel Mountains, California. The concluding two photographs show the train ride from northern California en route to Portland, Oregon, and finally a view of Mt. Sir Donald, "highest peak of the Selkirk mountain, British Columbia."
$250
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motoring the National Parks
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19. [Western Americana] [National Parks] [Women in the West]
[Photo Album Manuscript Title] Butts-Krieger Enroute West With H.H. July 13, 1924
Colorado, Wyoming, California et al. s.i., 1924.
Oblong quarto. Black morocco flexible boards with 46 leaves of black card stock, the first 19 of which have been filled with 134 original photographs and dozens of business card-size souvenir photos, with manuscript annotations detailing the group's route from Illinois through Colorado, Wyoming, up to Washington and Oregon, through California and Arizona, and ending with some family photos in Missouri. Fraternity certificate of Carl Frederick Butts laid in at front.
The traveling group appears to consist of a man, Gustave Krieger, and three women, with Eleanor (Krieger?) at the center of most photos. We see Eleanor and her companions wending their way through the West, visiting many of the National Parks along the way. Along with a few shots of the campsite and fishing trips, we see Eleanor and the travelers at the Teton Mountains, Mammoth Hot Spring, and the beaches of Santa Monica, California, before making it to the Grand Canyon and Arizona's petrified forests. Additional landscape photographs are of Hot Sulpher Springs, Old Faithful, and Kepler Cascades, along with several shots of bears in Yellowstone. A compelling glimpse into our National Parks and a 1920s road trip out West.
Album boards a bit scuffed though binding is sound. Photographs and souvenir cards of the trip out West, constituting the bulk of the album, remain intact and pasted down, while final leaves with photographs of the family back in Missouri are predominantly loose. Very Good.
$500
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