As my student assistant, Sophia Durand, began the physical processing of the 131 letters in the Leon Simon collection (1915-1916, 1918), she noticed something intriguing. Leon Simon addressed each letter to his future wife, Esther Ellen Umanski, differently. Until they made official plans to marry, she was “My Dear Nellie.” But once the date was set, Simon became creative and effusive, his word choices sometimes questionable as endearments.
Romantics everywhere tend to be sugary in their pet phrases. Simon was no different, perhaps just more over-the-top. He addressed his letters to: My essence of honeycomb, My exquisite Peach Melba, My lump of sweetness,My peachiest apricot, My succulent meringue, My belovedest mimosa, My jujubious confection, My sweet Sugar plum(p).
As you can already tell, Simon was quite fond of food and cooking. Other highlights in the letters include My stewed apricot, My eversweet parsnip, My most succulent kipper, My pickled herring (You know how I love them!), My pickledest onion (=on’y ‘n =only one), My own dumpling, My coo (k) ing dove, My rapturous codfish, My toasted crumpet, and–my personal favorite–My incandescent soup-tureen.
Occasionally, Simon sought to be reassuring about his odd turns of phrase. On October 20, 1915, he wrote to Nellie, who was studying German, “My most exquisite Stumpfenbach, (Don’t worry about the meaning of this; it is a term of endearment invented for the occasion & means nothing at all except that all recognized terms of endearment are hopelessly inadequate)…” A Duke German professor says that he was unwittingly referring to a city in Bavaria.
So, if on this Valentine’s Day your terms of affection seem stale, why not borrow one coined by Simon: My adorable whelk, My kitchy-kooish boo-woo, My jokaceous blue bottle, My bilingual Scaramouche, My unique joy, My tender flamingo, My early paradise, My copious ink-pot, My imperative necessity, My darlingpetangelanddelightallrolledintoone. Perhaps you and your loved one will then share in one of his closings, a “Quintessence of hugs & kisses ad lib.”
Sheesh.
Post contributed by Alice Poffinberger, Original Cataloger.
One of my favorite Rubenstein collections is the C.C. Clay Papers, which document the life and times of Clement Claiborne Clay and his family. The Clays lived in Alabama in the nineteenth century, and sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War. In the war’s early years, C.C. Clay served as a Confederate States senator. His opposition to raising soldiers’ pay (it would have been too expensive!) led to his being voted out of office in 1863. Clay and Confederate States President Jefferson Davis were good friends, however — Clay was godfather to Davis’s son Joseph — and rather than send Clay back to his plantation, Davis sent him on a secret mission to Canada to spy, bribe, and generally foment rebellion. (Clay’s mission did not end up helping the C.S.A.)
Clay was in Canada from mid-1864 through early 1865. He returned to the South just in time for the Confederacy to surrender. President Lincoln was assassinated shortly after his return, and both Davis and Clay were arrested by the Federal government on suspicions of treason relating to Lincoln’s assassination. (Clay’s time in Canada looked extremely suspicious.) The men were imprisoned in Fortress Monroe, Virginia. Clay was held for about a year without being charged until finally his wife, Virginia Clay, convinced President Andrew Johnson to pardon him. (She was a cool lady. You can read her 1905 memoir here.) Davis was imprisoned until 1867 before finally being released on bail.
What does all this backstory have to do with Jefferson Davis’s hair? Well, there are giant clumps of it in the Clay Papers, and for years we did not know why. The mystery behind the hair did not stop us from displaying it in a Perkins Library exhibit three years ago. The only clue was from an envelope, where Virginia Clay had written, “Hair of Jefferson Davis cut off in Fortress Monroe, given me by Mrs. Dr. Elva Cooper.”
Recently, in reading through the Clay Papers correspondence, I came across the letter that explains it all. Virginia Clay wrote to Elva Cooper in April 1866, days before receiving Johnson’s pardon for C.C. Clay, asking her to “do send the hair if possible as directed.” Later on in the letter, Virginia recounted the number of donations received toward Jefferson Davis’s bail, adding that “the hair will sell like wildfire + will be my contribution.”
It appears that the plan was for the clumps of hair to be sold to Davis supporters as souvenirs, raising money for his aid. This explanation makes a lot more sense than the various reasons we had thought up over the years. Hair tokens are not rare in manuscript collections, but the fact that the Clays had so much of it struck us as a little odd. Fortunately, the story doesn’t end there. An annotation from Ada Sterling, the editor for Virginia’s memoir, offers this extra gem:
Even Davis’s contemporaries were not interested in purchasing locks of his hair! Sterling explained that as she helped write the memoir in the early 1900s, the hair was still lying in “‘mussy’ bundles, among Mrs. C’s things.”And so it now remains forever in the Rubenstein. Mystery solved!
Post contributed by Meghan Lyon, Technical Services Archivist.
For several months now, I have been working my way through several thousand acetate negatives transferred to the University Archives from the Sports Information Office.
Several weeks ago, I wrote about finding negatives of women students playing baseball, which was an unexpected, yet welcomed, find. Today I came across another unexpected image, seen above. Described as “football miscellany,” it features football players, Leonard “Dinkey” Darnell and Jasper “Jap” Davis, in an iconic archery pose, dated July 1939. I wish I knew the story behind this image. Was it from a physical education class on archery? The Women’s Athletic Association had an archery season. Maybe the men joined them one afternoon for a bit of fun? I hope you enjoy the image as much as I do.
Post contributed by Kim Sims, Technical Services Archivist for University Archives.
We are wrapping up processing on the John Hope Franklin Papers — more on that soon! — but I couldn’t let this project end without sharing a bit of its lighter side. Newspaper drawings and cartoons of Franklin popped up throughout processing, often having been clipped and sent to Franklin by his friends and admirers. Here is a case where we see Franklin’s reaction to one of his cartoons, shared with him by a friend in Raleigh.
The sketch in question appears to have been published as part of a syndicated comic strip in newspapers around the country.
Here is Franklin’s response:
“It is not the best drawing I have seen of myself, but I don’t complain.” Understatement of the year, maybe? Franklin’s friendly good humor is prevalent throughout his papers, which has made them particularly enjoyable to process over the past year. Stay tuned for more information about the conclusion of the Franklin Papers processing project.
Post contributed by Meghan Lyon, Technical Services Archivist.
As strong advocates for the importance and vibrancy of the humanities, we here at the Rubenstein Library greatly enjoyed Duke President Richard Brodhead’s appearance on The Colbert Report last Thursday. As custodians of thousands of rare books, we were especially interested in Mr. Colbert’s mention of his “beautiful copy of [Moby-Dick] — hand-tooled leather, everything.” Colbert went on to say, “I don’t really want to crack it open, ’cause it’ll ruin the resale value.”
Which leads us to our quick pop quiz for the day: which of these copies of Moby-Dick is more valuable?
The answer: the second copy — this is the 1851 first American edition of Moby-Dick, in its original variant red binding cloth. The first copy, in “hand-tooled leather,” is a 1977 Easton Press publication, and copies can be found for sale online for roughly 600 times less than you’d need to pay for the first American edition. Book historians and collectors, like Richard and Nancy Riess, who donated the Rubenstein copy of the first edition of Moby-Dick, generally prize first editions in their original bindings, for the evidence they preserve of the process by which a book was seen through the press and first encountered by readers.
The lessons, we hope:
Appearances can be deceiving, as Mr. Colbert and students of the humanities around the world know very well.
And it pays to know your book history — the kind of thing you learn with a quality humanities-based education.
Post contributed by Will Hansen, Assistant Curator of Collections.
Last week, we watched “Duke Stone” panels going up on the construction fence surrounding the Rubenstein Library and the West Campus Union. So we thought we’d take a few moments to write about the real Duke Stone!
Did you know that Duke Stone comes from a quarry in Hillsborough, North Carolina, just about 10 miles away from campus? Or that there are 24 distinct colors in the stone: 7 primary colors with 17 distinct variants of the primary colors? Or that, before choosing the Hillsborough stone, there were several other stone contenders?
Before the Hillsborough stone was chosen to construct West Campus, and before it was known simply as “Duke Stone,” the architects, designers, builders, and James B. Duke himself looked at many different stone samples. They even constructed test walls of stone from other quarries on the East Coast to determine which one they liked the best. Here’s one of the test walls constructed during that phase:
And in this October 15, 1925 photo of construction on East Campus, the test walls are visible off in the distance.
It’s safe to say that we all know and love Duke Stone today—so much so that the panels are going up on the construction wall so that we don’t have to be without the look of it for too long. Next time you’re on campus, see how many primary and variant colors you can find in the stone. Let us know how you do!
Post contributed by Maureen McCormick Harlow, 175th Anniversary Intern for the Duke University Archives.
Nothing says Fourth of July like friends and family, outdoor barbeques and, for the adults of course, a cooler of refreshing canned beer.
Check out these examples of vintage beer cans found in the corporate archive of the JWT Advertising Agency in the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Marketing and Advertising History in the Rubenstein Library. The Hamm Brewing Co. was a client of the agency in the 1960s and early 1970s. The agency collected the beer cans of their competitor’s accounts as part of their market research. And just like clothing and automobiles, there’s something here for everyone.
For the conscientious buyer that appreciates brute honesty in advertising, there’s Gablinger’s Beer, “Not Diatetic or Theraputic.” If an element of regal refinement is more your speed why not try a Duke Beer, “The Prince of Pilsner,” or perhaps a Stite, “Pale and Dry as Champagne.”
If you’re not easily wooed by fanciful slogans and colorful graphics then there’s the subtle simplicity of “Cold-Aged!” Genese. If you like a beer can that looks like it’s constructed of wood paneling (and who doesn’t?), then Meister Brau is the beer for you.
For all of you classicists, there’s the iconic Leinenkugel’s of Chippewa Falls, WI, and the “Original” Pabst Blue Ribbon.”
Whatever your choice, we at the Rubenstein wish you a wonderful holiday!
Post contributed by Joshua Larkin Rowley, Research Services Dept.
I was absolutely taken with this albumen image as I reviewed the “From Atlanta [,] Georgia to Mammoth Cave [,] Kentucky, November 1895” photograph album prior to my cataloging it. The children are laughing and making faces, perhaps interrupted in a game of “cops and robbers,” since many of the boys are holding guns or rifles. Their sense of fun is infectious and it reminded me of the neighborhood games groups of us played during my childhood. Yet I was surprised that such a large interracial group would have been playing together at this time. Is this a late-nineteenth-century South I never dared imagine?
Post contributed by Alice Poffinberger, Original Cataloger in the Technical Services Department.
Dispatches from the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University