Hypocrite Lecteur: The Beggar Boy

Posted on February 25, 2014 by Melissa Watterworth Batt

“The Lady of the Castle!—Are we then to journey through deserts waste! Forests drear!—encounter one-eyed giants—destroy fell enchanters—lay waste castles, where ladies fair, and courtly and courageous knights have for centuries remained immured and spellbound—to come at—THE BEGGAR BOY?” (Bellamy 5).

Thus begins Thomas Bellamy’s The Beggar Boy, and to answer his own question, No. Our Mr. Bellamy was avowed to have “no talent for satire” (Baker 33), but has actually tricked us for a moment, led us on to think this is one kind of tale while it is actually another, a contemporary tale of his own time and place: Bellamy was “born in 1745, at Kingston-upon-Thames, in Surrey” (Baker 31), and had “a mind, susceptible to the pleasures of poetry, and indulging in propensities of innate genius. . .[which could] not long relish the business of common life” (Baker 32).

Bellamy thus became a writer, but “from this prospect of happiness he was summoned by death, after an illness of four days, Friday, August 29, 1800” ( Baker 33). Then was the unfinished Beggar Boy without a home, though Bellamy’s “good qualities secured him many friends” (Baker 33), one of whom—Elizabeth Sarah Villa-Real Gooch—completed the novel out of “a sincere friendship for Mr. Bellamy, which commenced many years ago, and continued, without interruption, to the day of his death” (Bellamy 3).

We are thus left with quite a story: after a complex first volume—in which Dame Sympkins, “the lady of the Castle,” dies; her husband remarries, then dies; his new widow Fanny remarries to a man named Goodwin, whom she abandons, while her brother at sea is thought dead (leading to their mother’s death) and returns after being wrecked on French shores and meeting a sympathizer who knows his mentor Admiral Sydney, who has died; and Sydney’s daughter Louisa has disappeared, so that it is necessary for their friend Mr. Lucas, the curate, to go and find her—“’Well!” says the reader, ‘and now we have travelled through one volume, out of three—and no Beggar Boy!’” (Bellamy 101).

Ay, where is he? “The child of misery is on his way,” the narrator assures us, “refuse not, fair and gentle country-women, your commiseration for—The Sorrows of Alfred!” (101), and so: Louisa Sydney runs away from home, falls into debt, marries, runs away, gives birth to Alfred, and dies; Alfred is abducted by Gypsies, and Martha, his new guardian, rescues him; Alfred is sent to Jamaica; Alfred returns and rescues a rich lady from a band of thugs; the rich lady is employing Martha; knows an admiral M’Bride, who knows Mr. Lucas, and knew Admiral Sydney; Alfred’s father pops up as a robber and M’Bride kills him out of self defense; M’Bride and Lucas get Alfred his grandfather’s estate back, and Alfred marries the rich lady’s daughter, surprising us all that he has now grown up.

The End. Finis. What are we to make of this? If things aren’t already clear enough: this is a moral tale, just as we would expect from a man with “an acute moral perception and an invariable affection for the best graces of the heart” (Baker 33), and so the novel concludes, “thus terminated the sorrows of ALFRED, whose infancy and youth had hitherto been marked by calamitous vicissitudes, resulting from the imprudence of a mother, involving herself in the fashionable dissipations of the time; while his own conduct had invariably claimed the protection of that providence, which pays no respect to persons” (340).

Gentle reader, harken then: Alfred is happy because of “the virtuous principles, and rectitude of heart, which had uniformly distinguished [his] character” (340), securing providence. Note, reader, the constant manner in which virtue is rewarded and vice is punished: coerced into “the abominable vice of drunkenness” (252), “[Alfred’s] ruin was accomplished and inevitable” (251): he is conscripted against his will, and sent to Jamaica. Such incidents abound throughout, echoing similar sentiments towards drink in American pamphlets found in our archives: “The Advantages and Disadvantages of Drunkenness” (1821), says “if you would effectually counteract your own attempts to do well, be a Drunkard ; and you will not be disappointed” (Collins 3); Nathaniel Gage’s “An Address on Intemperance. Pronounced at Nashua Village, N.H. April 4, 1829,” warns that “intemperance is destroying the fruits of intelligence, the strength of the people” (Gage 12).

So always in moderation, reader. Note, too, though, Bellamy’s main message, on providence. Providence is the unseen force guiding the novel, illustrated as both human and divine. At some point in the history of our volume, a reader highlighted the passage “alas! My friend, we are apt to murmur at the painful events which nature, in its appointed round, is sure to produce” (Bellamy 65), lamenting cruel fate, yet for Bellamy, providence can be secured through moral action. Alfred behaves well, and is so rewarded. Yet his fortune is due mainly to the people around him acting providentially on his behalf, making providence non-divine: Admiral M’Bride works to get Alfred his inheritance, and explains to others “that Alfred should remain ignorant of the object of the present journey, in case it should prove fruitless of any good to that young man” (Bellamy 297), personally enacting providence in Alfred’s life.

Bellamy’s moral? A sort of golden rule: do well unto others, and others will do well unto you, or, perhaps simply do well to yourself, and others will do well unto you. Take this away if you will, but I take away something more: a novel that through its haphazard plotting enacts its moral, and so a deeper understanding of the form of the moralistic novel, and an appreciation for their apparent absurdity; a closer look at more popular writing of this time period, from a forgotten novelist; and some perspective on the concerns of the time. And what a story! There may be no Deserts Waste! Forests Drear! Fell Enchanters! Castles! or Knights and Ladies! yet where else can you find a story where two ostensible protagonists die within the first ten pages; where our real protagonist shows up late; is kidnapped repeatedly; and can cross the Atlantic and come back in the space of ten pages as if nothing happened?

I think it’s safe to say, only in The Beggar Boy.

Daniel Allie is a senior undergraduate student in English. For his blog series Hypocrite Lecteur he will spend the Spring 2014 Semester exploring nineteenth-century literature in a variety of genres from the Rare Books Collection housed in Archives and Special Collections at the Dodd Research Center.

Works Cited

Baker, David Erskine. “Bellamy, Thomas.” Biographia Dramatica: or, a Companion to the Playhouse. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, et al. 1812. 31-33. Web. Google Books. Accessed 16 February 2014.

Bellamy, Thomas. The Beggar Boy: A Novel. Alexandria: Cottom and Stewart, 1802. Print. [Dodd Center Call Number: A619]

Collins, F. “The Advantages and Disadvantages of Drunkenness.” Cambridge: Trustees of the Publishing Fund, 1821. Print. [Dodd Center Call Number: WHV 25]

Gage, Nathaniel. “An Address on Intemperance. Pronounced at Nashua Village, N.H. April 4, 1829.” Dunstable: Thayer &Wiggin, 1829. Print. [Dodd Center Call Number: WHV 56]

Hypocrite Lecteur: Our New Guest Blogger

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Melissa Watterworth Batt

Studying literature means anthologies. There’s no way around it. If you are enrolled in a college literature course, you’ll have an anthology. These are large and heavy textbooks, with thin pages and flimsy covers, so delicate that the pages wrinkle at the touch and the corners crush or bend during normal use.

Perhaps even more fragile, though, are the contents. The canon of British Literature, or of American Literature, or of poetry, or drama, or the short story, will never be the same from one year to another. We still read Samuel Taylor Coleridge in our anthologies of Romantic-era British literature, but where now is Robert Southey, his once more-popular contemporary?

Point is, the canon is always changing. Our nineteenth century canon is different from the twentieth century’s nineteenth century canon. We constantly change our perspective of what literature was in a given time and place. Anthologies reflect current views of a time and place, shaped by scholarship, cultural tastes, and social or institutional values of the time period.

The Rare Books Collection here in Archives and Special Collections does not have this problem. Here are thousands of books, none of which have been placed there by an editorial committee, or singled out to fit a specific idea or interest. Here we have the opportunity to be that editorial committee ourselves, to find our own scholarly ideas or interests, to find what past literature has to offer to us, without mediation or abridgment. Why should we not read The Poetical Works of Joseph Addison (1805), or learn how life is to be lived from John Anstey’s The Pleader’s Guide, A Didactic Poem (1803)? While we are looking more at women writers, why not consider Jenny Fenno’s Original Compositions in Prose and Verse (1803)?

All of these works have something valuable to offer. By engaging in a conversation with the text and by putting the texts in conversation with each other, we can find that value. To the reader these texts may at first seem obscure, irrelevant, or even silly, but the purpose of this blog series is to guide you through this process, to come to appreciate the non-canonical and the forgotten, and to question our assumptions.

Writing in the mid-nineteenth century, Charles Baudelaire wrote the phrase I use now to title this series, Hypocrite Lecteur. In “Au Lecteur,” (“To the Reader”) the preface poem to Les Fleurs du Mal (1857), Baudelaire accuses his readers of a common indifference to art and the world, a lack of critical thought which endangers us all, finally naming the cause of this menace, ennui:

It’s BOREDOM. Tears have glued its eyes together.
You know it well, my Reader. This obscene
beast chain-smokes yawning for the guillotine—
you—hypocrite Reader—my double—my brother! (Trans. Robert Lowell)

Let us take Baudelaire’s warning in hand and question the canon and our own former thoughts. In my blog series Hypocrite Lecteur, I will leave anthologies, leave even Baudelaire, and discover the literarily obscure for myself, on a journey through what the Rare Books Collection has to offer. Over a series of months, I’ll be reading and reporting back.

Come along, this will be fun.

Congratulations to the 2013 National Champions…

Posted on February 3, 2014 by Betsy Pittman

from those who played before. The University of Connecticut field hockey team defeated Duke by a score of 2-0 to earn the program’s third National Championship at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va. The program also won championships in 1981 and 1985. Women’s athletic teams in the early years of the institution established the foundation on which today’s champions have continued to build. Congratulations to all and Go Huskies!

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Winter Wonderland

Posted on January 27, 2014 by Betsy Pittman

Winter in Storrs can be quiet and tempestuous, sparkling and drab, fun and dangerous, in turn or all at once. In all its phases, winter has a beauty all its own, despite the many inconveniences it may bring. Images from the University Photograph Collection illustrate Winter in Storrs in all its glory.

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A hearty welcome to Coach Diaco…

Posted on January 6, 2014 by Betsy Pittman

…from the football coaches of 1934!

Football coaching staff, 1934

In 1934, Connecticut State College welcomed J. O. Christian as the new football coach. The team was small and it’s record unremarkable. The Nutmeg [yearbook] saw hope for for the struggling team and its new coach which saw a string of losses but still fighting to win with no serious injuries. The season ended with only one win (against Coast Guard) and the now infamous ram-napping of the Rhody Ram (URI mascot)! Although unidentified in the photograph, the Nutmeg identifies four coaches and a manager in the team photograph–Coaches Fisher, Christian, Moore, and Heldman and Manager Gilman can be seen on page 190 of the 1935 issue of the Nutmeg (http://doddcenter.uconn.edu/asc/collections/nutmeg/1935.pdf).

The World Is Being Ripped

Posted on December 23, 2013 by Graham Stinnett

In conjunction with the Dodd Center, the Archives & Special Collections has acquired NYC artist Seth Tobocman’s The World Is Being Ripped, a series of 14 narrative posters. This limited edition is the last spray art version which Tobocman released, making its unique street art aesthetic a historical document of design and propaganda. These stenciled graphics were originally created in the early 1980s to critique the militaristic individualism of the American Cold War economy and its impact on society:

The World is Being Ripped was originally a response to the Cold War, but it came to address a larger question: In a society as predatory and self destructive as this one, can there be any basis for morality? Is ethical behavior even possible in such a context? I like to think that in adopting these images as their emblems, people are answering that question in the affirmative.

– Seth Tobocman

The stencil art form was created to be an accessible, reproducible, inexpensive and temporary demonstration of design and often political critique or message. This collection provides a unique glimpse of street art yet intended for the gallery with its rich use of color and linear narrative. To see this collection in the reading room, contact the curator of Alternative Press Collections.

For Private Eyes Only: Why We Write Diaries

Posted on December 13, 2013 by Melissa Watterworth Batt

I’d like to return to the diary of Ann Winchester in my final blog post of the series. In the 1940s, UConn final exams took place during the final week of January, several weeks after students returned from their holiday break. Ann’s feelings toward her final exams vaguely resemble my own:

January 25: Got up at 6:30 to study bac[teriology] but couldn’t take much of it (had gone stale). Final was at 8:30 I thought it was easy. Lab final was at 11:00 – it was a practical and rather hard…Studied psych again tonite but not too enthusiastically.

Ann’s exam week ended five days later after suffering through a “stinking, unfair” Education exam.

Though I’ve spent the semester reading and writing about various different journals, I’ve occasionally returned to Ann’s because her entries are so relatable. Though practical details of life at UConn in the 1940s are very different from the realities of modern life, the experience of being a student here remains the same in many ways. This semester, I reviewed four diaries, each unique in their description and purpose: there was the daily chronicling of Ann, the chatty 1940s UConn co-ed reflecting on her present, past, and future; the superficial impressions recorded by Mr. Dean Walker, a 19^th-century bourgeois American traveler making his way through Europe for the first time; the shared sentiments of friendship collected by Mary Clark, a young lady from Massachusetts ostensibly preparing to depart for school; and the four-year attempt made by Sherwood Ransom, a working-class seamen in the New London whaling industry, to maintain some semblance of privacy while living and working intensely in the same, shared space.

My goal in researching each of these diaries was to understand the reasons why people have written diaries now and in the past. I wanted to challenge the oft-repeated contemporary assumption that a diary is simply a place for superficial, personal reflection. This assumption can hurt our understanding of diaries as historical objects and sources, and it obscures our understanding of the various reasons why people committed their thoughts to paper.

So why do we write diaries? The answer ultimately hinges on the writer and the context of their world. But there are similarities between all four of these that gets us closer to a more general answer: we write journals to disclose, to reflect, to collect objects and thoughts of importance, and to pass the time.

Still – there are at least a dozen more journals in this collection that I did not read, which means there may also be at least a dozen more answers to this question. Writing is always situational. We learn the purpose of a diary to its writer by reading its contents, not by assuming that its “personal” nature gives it a universal purpose.

And as for my own writing? My interest in keeping a journal relates to something author Joan Didion wrote about her own journal-writing tendencies: “My stake is always, of course, in the unmentioned girl in the plaid silk dress. Remember what it was to be me: that is always the point.”

Rebecca D’Angelo is a senior undergraduate student in History and Anthropology. For her blog series For Private Eyes Only she spent the Fall Semester studying diaries available in Archives and Special Collections at the Dodd Research Center and exploring the history of journal writing and reasons why we write journals.

For Private Eyes Only: Between East Haddam and Otaheite – A Nineteenth Century Whaling Journal

Posted on November 22, 2013 by Melissa Watterworth Batt

In February of 1845, Sherwood B. Ransom of East Haddam, CT visited the Island of Otaheite (Tahiti) in the Northern Pacific Ocean for his second time in two years. At the time, Ransom was sailing as a crew member aboard the Morrison, a whaling ship bound from New London, CT on what would become a lengthy cruise for whales through the Indian and Northern Pacific Oceans.

At Otaheite, Ransom was greeted by a pleasant surprise: here, he reunited with “Henry and Lyman,” two friends from home. Henry, probably Henry C. Griffens of East Haddam, had sailed with Ransom on a previous whaling voyage in 1842 aboard the New London ship Indian Chief, when Ransom made his first visit to Otaheite. “Lyman” (William Lyman Cole of East Haddam) was a “green hand,” or first time whaler. Ransom writes the following about his encounter with his friends:

got into the harbour about Eight[.] found three New London Ships there the India, Jefferson, and Neptune[.] went aboard of the Nep. Saw Henry and Lyman, found them well…came aboard about dark and started for the Sandwich Islands…Lyman likes whaling first rate[.] we had a first rate visit[.] I took dinner with them, and shall see them at the S. [Sandwich] Islands again.

This run-in with friends, though rare, but not unlikely, with so many New London ships at sea following similar voyage paths in the 1840s.

Opening page of Sherwood Ransom’s journal. The whale stamps at the top were typically used in whaling logbooks to provide a visual record of the number and type of whales caught.

I was over the moon when I saw that the diary collection in Archives and Special Collections at the Dodd Research Center included a whaling diary from a New London ship. In my other life as a student, I am researching the history of New London-based whaling in the southern Indian Ocean for my University Scholar project. During the nineteenth century, New London, CT became the second largest whaling port in the nation (New Bedford was the largest), employing men to sail throughout the Atlantic, and later the Pacific and Indian oceans in search of whales to kill for their blubber. When boiled, the blubber became oil that was used for lighting and as an industrial lubricant.

The Morrison’s journey lasted a total of four years (September 1844 – May 1848), but the majority of Ransom’s diary is composed of daily entries from 1844 and 1845, with a few entries penned in 1847. Ransom served as a boatsteerer on this voyage, a “promotion” from his previous work on the Indian Chief. Though not quite an officer, boatsteerers commanded authority on whaleships, different from regular crewmen in that they were hired for their specialized ability to harpoon whales and to steer the small “whaleboats” deployed from the main ship from which the whalemen hunted whales.

For Ransom, writing in a journal seems to have been both a refuge from the claustrophobic realities of whaling life as well as a way to pass the time. The majority of working time during a whaling voyage was spent performing mundane, shipboard duties or boiling blubber on a ship’s “tryworks” until a lookout sighted whales to hunt. In between, there was plenty of time to write. That being said, with the routine of the ship always contingent on the whims of nature (the availability of whales or changing wind patterns that made it necessary to adjust the sails) leisure time could easily transform into work time.

The lack of distinction between work and leisure is clearly evident in Ransom’s journal, with daily entries including both personal details and descriptions of routine shipboard work. “No[t] all hands to day and not much doing except two hours scrubbing decks and two spells setting up some of the head gear” he writes on September 22 (1844). “[H]ave had a good wash and shave and feel much revived after the operation. Stiff breeze as yesterday.” A report on the direction and strength of the wind is included in each of Ransom’s entries.

Ransom also scribbles details about latitude and longitude, as well as any whales captured on a given day in the margins of his journal. These details, normally committed to official ship’s logbooks, suggest that Ransom was understandably doing a bit of unofficial record-keeping himself. With the ship being both his workplace and his home, details that were important to the ship’s work became important to him; they determined his routine, his fatigue, and his happiness on any given day.

The regular timing of Ransom’s journaling suggests that writing became part of his shipboard routine, but was uniquely one of the only activities that afforded him a sense of privacy and security. The sense of refuge gained from writing in his journal is indicated by Ransom’s use of the diary to disclose intimate concerns. His entry from New Year’s Day 1845 reveals his feelings about missing home and family:

This is the first day of the year[.] how I wish I was at home to enjoy it by meeting in the social circle of young friends and to greet them a Happy New Year. But fate was so ordered that this poor devil is to be here in the ship Morrison many thousand miles from home and friends[,] though not friendless I hope and if my life is spared will be here twelve months from this. I have thought of home much to day, and of the past summer which I spent in East Haddam and how differently I am situated from what I was then.

However, the refuge provided by writing was only temporary; the intrusion of life at sea is continuously present. A page, smeared with ink includes the following note: “While I have been writing the foolish old ship gave a lee lurch and capsized. My ink on my book and has made a pretty spot so I think I will below and wait for better weather.”

As the voyage progressed, Ransom used his diary to voice frustrations about the officers on board, notably Captain Samuel Green. He writes the following after Green scolds him for an unsuccessful whale hunt:

Friday 25^th [May 1845]: …I darted at him [the whale] but did not get fast and off he went as if the Devil was after him[.] came aboard and the old man [Capt. Green] was savage Enough but who cares for his lip[?] I do not[.] if he does not like my boat steering he can get some one else and I shall tell him so if he says anything more on the subject.

It is likely that writing these frustrations in a diary was the only way that Ransom could safely voice them without running the risk of being overheard, which would have resulted in him “catching it,” or being punished, by one of the officers.

At one point in 1845, Ransom, fed up with his captain, work, abysmal living conditions, and the inexperienced “fools” who were his fellow crewmen, threatens to abandon the operation altogether: “..[I]f ever I get into a good port,” writes Ransom, “I shall ask him [Captain Green] for my charge and if he does not give it to me he must keep a good lookout for me[.] he is a drascal as has ever lived these are my feelings at the present.”

The lock of hair and letter of reference for George Ransom included in the back of Sherwood Ransom’s whaling journal.

Whether or not Ransom ever did abandon the voyage is unclear – his journal ends abruptly in 1847.

Though his quick promotion to a boatsteerer indicates he was a competent whaler, it seems clear that Ransom was more interested in returning to East Haddam to work and live. Close ties to home are suggested by his New Year’s lamentations and his excitement over seeing Henry and Lyman at Otaheite, but they are also a physical feature of his journal. Tucked in the back pages are military papers and a letter of reference written for his father, George Ransom, as well as a lock of hair, likely belonging to a deceased family member.

Though these were likely added by Sherwood or another family member upon his return, their presence in the journal is tantalizing and indicative of a larger trend – most whalemen did not stay in the whaling industry for all of their lives. Many worked as whalemen for only a few voyages before earning enough money to return home and start a family; it appears Sherwood did this, marrying Abbie Payne, a woman from Colchester, CT in 1851, and living out the rest of his life on land until his death in 1893.

Rebecca D’Angelo is a senior undergraduate student in History and Anthropology. In her blog series For Private Eyes Only she studies diaries available in Archives and Special Collections at the Dodd Research Center and explores the history of journal writing and reasons why we write journals.

Hartford dandies

Posted on November 15, 2013 by Laura Smith

Hello! Who are you?

We have no idea who these men are. We only know the photograph was in the Hartford Electric Light Company Records and was taken in 1902, probably in Hartford.

For Private Eyes Only: Signature Albums – Collecting Expressions of Shared Sentiment

Posted on November 1, 2013 by Melissa Watterworth Batt

They say you are who your friends are. To anyone reading Mary Clark’s 1835 signature album, this statement is almost literally true. Presumably a resident of Lowell, Massachusetts in the 1830s, we know very little about Mary’s life, except what friends wrote about her and to her in her signature album, now a part of the Diaries Collection.

Signature albums, more commonly referred to as autograph albums, are pieces of nineteenth century ephemera, commonly owned by women. In the analogous spirit of a modern high school yearbook, signature albums were used to collect personal sentiments from friends. During the nineteenth century, these sentiments “while rarely original,” generally took the form of transcribed poems about friendship, or Bible verses.[1] Friends signed, dated, and included their hometown at the bottom of each entry.[2]

The entries in Mary Clark’s signature album are not chronological. They are scattered throughout the album, separated by empty pages; all date between 1834 and 1838. Though Mary does not seem to have written in her own album, her book includes items that appear to have been created or collected by her, including a carefully drawn map of Eurasia (pictured). Female friends wrote most of the entries, though her album includes an entry from an “Oliver Brooks,” presumably a male friend.

Historian Anya Jabour thinks that autograph albums were particularly important to women during moments of transition in their lives, such as following commencement from school or in the weeks leading up to a marriage, allowing “young women’s friendships with each other to survive separation and even death.” [3] Mary’s album includes an undated “Quarterly Bill” (report card) from Bradford Academy, an institution in Bradford, Massachusetts, which operated as a women’s college between 1836 and 1931. Most of the entries are written by friends from Lowell, suggesting that perhaps Mary’s signature album was a way for her to stay connected with friends from home while she was attending Bradford.

The content of the entries in Mary’s album reflects this purpose. An 1836 entry from an “S.J. Messinger” of Lowell (pictured) includes the following handwritten poem borrowed from a Scottish author:

Though many a joy around thee smile

And many a faithful friend you meet

Whose love may cheer[e] life’s dreary way

And turn the bitter cup to sweet

Let memory sometimes bear thee back

To other days almost forgot

And where you think of other friends

Who love thee well Forget, me not!

Other entries, expressed in common language of Christian “virtue” suggest how these women conceived of, and dealt with such separations. An 1834 entry from Eliza Brooks of Lowell, MA, potentially the wife or sister of the aforementioned Oliver Brooks includes a poem, copied from an unknown source, that imagines a world where “virtue round us ever shed/The influence of her gentle light.” The poem’s author then goes on to admit that such a world will never be possible, nor desirable, for if the world was always virtuous:

We then might never thoughtful turn

Our minds to nobler scenes above,

Nor let within our bosoms burn,

Aught purer than an earthly love.

But Dearest Friends [author’s emphasis] are from us riven,

And pleasures gayest hours are brief;

And hope by stern misfortune driven,

Will wither like the Autumn leafe.

Then may we seek an endless Friend

Whose smiles are never shaded,

And hope for life that never shall end

Nor fade, as earthly scenes have faded

And calmly on life pathway move

To those Blest Mansions far above.

Eliza Brooks underlined “Dearest Friends,” in the fourth line, suggesting that this sentiment refers to Mary specifically. The “endless Friend” in this poem is assumed to be God. This poem is then one of several entries in Mary’s album recommending religion and investment in virtue, charity, and humility as ways to transcend the reality of being separated from friends, and the pain that comes with that separation. Other entries refer to virtue, Godliness, and eternal blessings outside of the context of friendship, suggesting a shared common experience and concern with upholding Christian values.

Presumably, Mary read these entries. This considered, her album becomes a dialogue between friends and herself, a place to receive and reflect on shared sentiments regarding friendship, separation, Christian virtue, and happiness.

But is this a journal? So far, I have been unintentionally vague about what I mean by a journal or diary, assuming (until now) that the term didn’t really need a definition. In my first entry, I described diaries as “something extremely personal, a continuous letter to self.” Mary’s signature album differs from previous diaries I’ve discussed in that she did not write in it, and other people did; it is not “a letter to self,” but a series of entries written to Mary by others. But it is personal, in the same way that a scrapbook or a signed yearbook is personal. The entries she collects from friends are a physical manifestation of existing friendships and interests.

Furthermore, this album differs from, let’s say, a collection of letters, in that it is contained in an album, and Mary’s presence is discernible through materials she’s intentionally inserted into it, including her map and a typed, published entry intended “For an Album” that has been removed from a primer or magazine and carefully glued to her album’s opening pages. Though Mary was not this album’s scribe, she was its owner and curator. Her album then, though not a journal, serves many of the same purposes, reminding us that diaries, in the traditional sense, are not the only self-curated historical documents that were used to record and reflect on the intimate details of a person’s life.

Rebecca D’Angelo is a senior undergraduate student in History and Anthropology. In her blog series For Private Eyes Only she studies diaries available in Archives and Special Collections at the Dodd Research Center to explore the history of journal writing and reasons why we write journals.

[1] Anya Jabour, “Albums of Affection: Female Friendship and Coming of Age in Antebellum Virginia,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 107 (1999): 128.

[2] Lisa Ricker, “Performing Memory, Performing Identity: Jennie Drew’s autograph Album, Mnemonic Activity, and the Invention of Feminine Subjectivity” (Proquest, UMI Dissertation Publishing, 2011).

[3] Ibid.

Unusual researchers

Posted on October 31, 2013 by Betsy Pittman

The staff in Archives & Special Collections has answered some unusual questions in the past, but today the unusual one was the researcher.

Researcher in the Reading Room today

Happy Hallowe’en from everyone in Archives & Special Collections!

Collections now available

Posted on October 29, 2013 by Betsy Pittman

John P. McDonald Reading Reading Room, Archives & Special Collections

Below is a list of collections that are now open and available for research (links to finding aids provided), arranged by broad collecting area. Researchers are encouraged to contact the staff with any questions.

Business Collections:

Somersville Manufacturing Company Records

https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/931

Administrative and financial files and volumes, marketing material, photographs and scrapbooks, and correspondence and other materials associated with the Somersville Manufacturing Company and the company’s founders and owners, the Keeney family of Somersville, Connecticut.

Children’s Literature:

David M. Carroll Collection

https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/287

One folder containing correspondence, notes, sketches and a calendar created in conjunction with an exhibition held in the Libraries in 1996.

Anna Kirwan Papers

https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/918

Books, posters, manuscripts, proofs, clippings, research notes, promotional material, and correspondence, dating from 1991-21012.

Barbara McClintock Papers

https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/945

manuscript sketches, correspondence, artwork, notes, and correspondence having to do with Animal Fables from Aesop, adapted and illustrated by McClintock.

Labor Collections:

AFSCME, Council 4 Records

https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/897

The collection contains correspondence, financial records, meeting minutes, manuscripts, publications, and files of union locals represented by AFSCME, Council 4, including corrections officers with Council 16 which later merged with Council 4.

Railroad Collections:

Max Miller Collection of the Connecticut Valley Railroad

https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/937

Shipping documents of freight shipped out of the North Haven, Connecticut, freight yard and real estate records of properties in Middletown, Connecticut, which was a point between Hartford and Old Saybrook.

University Archives:

Center for Economic Education Records

https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/185

Administrative records, correspondence, publications, financial records and other materials related to the establishment and running of the Center.

Environmental Health and Safety Records

https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/189

Committee minutes, reports, and various records. Included in the collection are unit safety minutes, lab safety minutes, radiation waste shipment records, and radiation dosiemtry reports, 1965-2003.

Josef Gugler East African Survey Collection

https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/900

Questionnaires, clippings, correspondence pertaining to surveys about East Africa conducted by Dr. Gugler from 1955-1999.

Walter R. Ihrke Papers

https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/452

scores and recordings as well as correspondence, publications and documentation of Ihrke’s “Automated Musical Training” [“Ihrke Method”].

Louise T. Johnson Papers

https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/33

Personal and professional materials pertaining to her tenure at the University.

Irene and Merle Klinck Papers

https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/933

Photocopies of the text from two plaques presented to Mr. Klinck in recognition of his services and contributions to the town of Mansfield Highway Crew and the Eagleville Fire Department, Inc. as as a resolution recognizing Mr. Klinck’s six years first Selectman. Mr. Klinck’s Eagleville Fire Department badge is also included. A notebook containing lecture notes, scores and pamphlets related to the piano has Irene E. H. Klinck scratched into the verso of the cover.

Puerto Rican/Latin American Cultural Center Records

https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/905

Administrative records documenting the programs and activities sponsored by the Center.

School of Allied Health Records

https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/190

Administrative records documenting the work of the School of Allied Health at the University of Connecticut.

School of Nursing Records

https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/668

Faculty meeting minutes, project documentation, photographs, multimedia and ephemeral materials associated with the School of Nursing.

University Communications Office Records

https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/113

Administrative Records, correspondence, notes, publications, media contacts, student and faculty activity, biographies, departmental communications, news releases, campus-wide communications as published in the UConn Chronicle, UConn Advance, Announce-L, and, Daily Digest, from 1979 to present.