Baker's Friends

Fifteen years of persevering effort by The Friends of the Dartmouth Library have brought literary riches to Hanover

IN 1933 during a speaking engagement at Yale's Elizabethan Club I met the Yale Librarian, James T. Babb, then a broker, well-known book collector, and head of the Yale Associates which had obtained for the Yale Library the famous Conrad collection of George T. Keating.

That weekend, talking with several collectors, I wondered somewhat casually why Dartmouth coudn't have some such organization; and during the next few weeks I corresponded with Mr. Babb, and sounded out a few people in Hanover who might be interested in the idea.

However, it was not until January 1938 that positive action was taken. With Mr. Babb as moral support I was able to persuade Nathaniel Goodrich, then Baker's Librarian, a conservative and cautious Yankee who had himself been building up many fine collections at Dartmouth, to allow me to be the spokesman for a new organization to be known as "The Friends of the Dartmouth Library." This group was. to have no official connection with Baker Library; it was to be organized independently, and its sole reason for existence was to enrich the Library with rare books and other valuable material.

In the April 1938 issue of the DARTMOUTH ALUMNI MAGAZINE the writer made a brief announcement concerning The Friends. It stated: "The purpose... should be to get, when and where possible, complete collections, single rare volumes, manuscripts, diaries, letters, books and pamphlets which throw light on the cultural history of this or other countries; in other words, any original or rare material."

Now, 15 years later, we make our first extensive report, in these pages, to the alumni of the College in an attempt to show some measure of our success in this venture. In many ways it has been extraordinary.

Basil O'Connor '12 agreed to serve as the first Chairman of the Executive Committee, which was selected by Harold G. Rugg '06 and myself, on the basis of interest in book collecting. "Doc O Connor generously gave to launch the new organization.

The other members of the first Executive Committee were Victor Cutter '03, who served up to a few years before his unfortunate death this winter; Thomas W. Streeter '04; Sumner B. Emerson '17; Walter P. Chrysler Jr. '33; Mrs. Bella Landauer; Thomas B. Curtis '32; and Richard H. Mandel '26. Of this group Messrs. O'Connor, Streeter and Mandel are still active on the board.

The present Executive Committee, in addition to the three mentioned above, are W. W. Grant '03, John C. Sterling '11, Allerton C. Hickmott '17, Dr. Robert M. Stecher '19, Francis Brown '25, William J. Bryant '25, Charles D. Webster '26, Arthur L. Gale '27, H. N. Carver '28, Paul W. Cutler '28, Henry S. Embree '30, William T. Adams '34, Frederick G. Schmidt '45, George Matthew Adams, Perc S. Brown, and Colonel Marston E. Drake.

In the beginning we did not ask for any dues, leaning backward, practically horizontally, in order not to interfere in any way with the Alumni Fund.

During the war we asked for no money as we thought - rightly, I think - that in those years there were far more important causes to support than ours.

This procedure led us into strict habits of economy which we probably overdid. We mimeographed our reports instead of printing them; we spent little or no money on secretarial help. We struggled along.

About 1945, however, we did get permission from the Alumni Council to ask for dues which were set at $5 a year minimum, though we hoped for more from those who could afford it and who believed in our work.

Since the College took over the handling of our accounts in 1945 we have deposited with them approximately $11,000, almost all of which has gone to buy for the Library rare material which it feels, rightly or wrongly, that it is not justified in buying with its own funds. This money has been raised by the secretary with one ordinary mailing appeal each fall.

Let us look at our figures for the last two years as an example of how we manage financially. In 1952, 58 persons gave $1,775, and in 1953, so far, 116 persons have given approximately $3,000. This larger sum is partly explained by the fact that it includes $1,000 given by the W. L. Bryant Foundation of Springfield, Vt., to buy a famous Chester Harding portrait of Mrs. Grace Fletcher Webster, Daniel's first wife. Also, a pamphlet, John Sloan'sLast Summer, of Dartmouth interest, was distributed to every member, which undoubtedly helped to swell the number of contributors.

The Friends have worked independently of the Library now for 15 years, though during that entire time the secretary has worked closely and harmoniously almost daily with Associate Librarian Harold G. Rugg. He will be greatly missed when he retires in June.

The Friends strictly speaking have never had an office, and only for the last two or three years have we had a filing cabinet. A part-time secretary now helps with correspondence, which is especially heavy at fund-raising time; but in the early years this would have been an undreamed of luxury. My wife and I often addressed our mailing list by hand, and there were wearisome difficulties and discouragements; but the conviction that The Friends were doing an essential job and were strengthening the Dartmouth Library carried us through.

At one time we had an unwieldy mailing list of some eight hundred persons. We now have a membership of about half that number, but all of them have a genuine interest. Many are non-alumni.

We are an extremely loose organization. We have no constitution, no by-laws, no minutes of any meeting, and no records, save financial ones in the Treasurer's Office and in our files, and the bulletins which the writer sends out about three times a year. There are no time-consuming committee meetings, described by one wag as the taking of minutes and the wasting of hours. At the executive end, it is strictly a one-man job, and the secretary happens to be that one. Our general plan also calls for one spring meeting a year in New York City where the secretary has reported to members of the Executive Committee.

The chairmen of the Executive Committee have been, beside Basil O'Connor '12, Thomas W. Streeter '04, George Matthew Adams, father of a Dartmouth son, and Richard H. Mandel '26. Our next chairman is to be Perc S. Brown of California, also a non-alumnus, father of two Dartmouth sons, who promises to keep up the high standards set by his predecessors. All these men have been extremely generous donors.

As our organization is set up, the secretary is permitted to make most of the decisions. He has always had the most sympathetic understanding and support from all the members of the Executive Committee.

THE FRIENDS have brought to Baker Library around half a million dollars worth of rare material it would not otherwise possess, all without cost to the College. If a great library adds prestige to an educational institution, and Baker Library is, in my opinion, the very heart of the College, then I think The Friends have had a small share in bringing prestige to the College. Already, some of our collections have brought to Dartmouth not only American scholars, but Europeans as well.

We have tried to encourage book buying and book collecting among the undergraduates by offering a yearly prize of a rare book (a duplicate) to the student who has brought together the most purposeful collection of books.

One of our real problems, not solved as yet, is to induce faculty and students, as well as visiting scholars, to use our collections of books, manuscripts and letters to a greater extent than is now the case. Colton Storm, of the Clements Library in Ann Arbor, told me that this situation was also true at the University of Michigan, and I fancy it is generally true in every great university or college library.

We have not done much publishing, owing to lack of funds, but we have had printed a bibliography of the Stephen Crane and Vachel Lindsay collections.

Just recently, The Friends have formed a publications committee headed by Victor Reynolds '27 of the Cornell University Press. We hope to do a book a year, and at the moment are planning the publication in 1953 of an important and hitherto unpublished poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson, called Indian Superstition. This poem, according to its editor, Dr. Kenneth W. Cameron of Trinity College, will throw a great deal of light on Emerson's early reading, thought and intellectual development.

Although Baker Library for too long has hidden its light under a bushel, in recent years there has been a great improvement in the exhibition of its treasures. Much of it is still to be exhibited, and few, if any, realize what a vast amount of rare and valuable material has been acquired during the last 15 years.

Space here allows but a mere cataloguing, with no description, of only a fraction of the acquisitions received through The Friends, but I think, even so, that the quality and quantity will impress the alumni who may be interested.

Since our modest beginnings in 1938 the following author collections have been given to the Library. I mean by an "author collection" that we possess all of a writer's books in the first, limited, and special editions, books concerning him, together with manuscript material, holograph letters, pamphlet material, clippings, photographs, etc. Sometimes one collection will include hundreds of items as do, for example, the Cunninghame Graham, Stephen Crane, James Gibbons Huneker, and H. L. Mencken collections.

When an asterisk follows the name it means that the collection is really outstanding and would attract scholars, here or elsewhere, who might be working on that particular author. It would take a small library to hold these 70 collections, 36 of which have been given by three men: George Matthew Adams, Richard H. Mandel '26, and Herbert F. West '22.

These are: Joseph Conrad*; Herman Melville*; Erskine Caldwell*, outstanding and definitive; H. L. Mencken*, outstanding and definitive (given originally by Mr. Mandel and added to by Mr. Mencken and many others, it is one of the finest collections in the country); Aldous Huxley; James Gibbons Huneker* (given by Mr. Mandel and added to by the late Mrs. Huneker whose gift of hundreds of letters, photographs, books, clippings, etc. undoubtedly makes this the best Huneker collection in existence); Katherine Mansfield; George Blake; Vachel Lindsay*; E. W. Howe*; Willa Cather; Edward Thompson; Rudyard Kipling* (including about seventy books plus more than two hundred pieces of sheet music with Kipling interest); Lafcadio Hearn; John Masefield*; Walter de la Mare; Edmund Blunden*; Henry Miller* (probably the second best in the country, with many letters and manuscripts); James M. Barrie* (letters, music, etc.); Sinclair Lewis; Stephen Crane* (a wonderful collection given by George Matthew Adams which has attracted European attention); Richard Curie*; W. H. Hudson; H. M. Tomlinson; Kenneth Roberts*; W. W. Gibson; John Buchan; Winston S. Churchill, the statesman; Winston Churchill*, the Cornish, N.H., novelist; James Branch Cabell*; Lord Byron; Evelyn Waugh; Roark Bradford*; Edward Thomas; Walt Whitman; Richard Jefferies; Francis Brett Young; Michael Fairless; Ambrose Bierce*; T. E. Lawrence; Howard Fast; D. H. Lawrence; Norman Douglas*; R. B. Cunninghame Graham* (the best collection in the world, given by his biographer); Edward Garnett; Wilfred Scawen Blunt*; C. M. Doughty; Henry Williamson*; George Santayana; Roy Campbell*; Auden-Spender-MacNiece-Cecil-Day-Lewis; Theodore F. Powys; Ernest Hemingway; Thomas Hardy; A. E. Coppard; Sir Hugh Clifford; A. W. Newton; James Elroy Flecker; Eugene O'Neill* (with 68 holograph letters); Thomas Boyd; books illustrated by George Cruikshank; and Ronald Firbank.

A Spanish collection, which will be outstanding, is being gradually built up by W. J. Bryant '25, a member of our Executive Committee.

SOME years ago Prof. Churchill P. Lathrop, then chairman of the Art Department, asked if The Friends might not include in their plans gifts for the Carpenter Galleries and the Department. We agreed to undertake this and some of the paintings secured are herewith listed: A landscape, "The Hunt Farm," by Maxfield Parrish; "Lake Superior," a large canvas by Lawren Harris, given in memory of his uncle, the late Prof. William K. Stewart; several fine John Sloan oils; hundreds of oils, watercolors, sketch books, and war notebooks by Paul Sample '20; oils, watercolors and drawings by Use Bischoff; drawings and paintings by Sanford Ross; an oil by Alfred E. Jones '31; two Dickens paintings by William Frith and Hablot J. Browne (Phiz); William Willard's portrait of Rufus Choate; a large collection of Timothy Cole wood engravings; a self portrait of John Butler Yeats which came to us through the efforts of Mrs. John Sloan; paintings by Henry Miller, Armstrong Sperry, and many others.

One of our greatest and most consistent donors is Perc S. Brown, father of Bruce L. Brown '41 and Gordon S. Brown '42. I can give only a faint idea of the riches he has poured into the Library. Presentation copies include Ambrose Bierce's first book, The Fiend's Delight; Wordworth's Yarrow Revisited; the New Testament and Book of Prayer given by R. L. Stevenson's father to R.L.S. in 1863: Wilde's HappyPrince to his mother; Bullen's Cruise ofthe Cacholot; Whitman's A Strong Birdon Pinions Free, the poem he read at Dartmouth; Prescott's Conquest of Peru and Conquest of Mexico; six Conrad novels; Dickens' Bleak House; Gissing's three deckers: Demos, The Unclassed, Thyrza, and The Nether World, which are also autographed.

Mr. Brown has also given us Madame Curie's first articles on radium, in six volumes; eight Thomas J. Wise forgeries; Thackeray's Vanity Fair; James Russell Lowell's The President's Policy; Sterne's Tristram Shandy; one of six known copies in the United States of Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, one of the most valuable books Dartmouth possesses; Tennyson's own copy of Idyllsof the King; Whittier's Mogg Magone; documents signed by Lord Dartmouth in 1774; an autographed copy of Whitman's Leaves of Grass; Mark Twain's own set of Burns; and hundreds of other first editions, all notable for their fine condition, association value, and other qualities.

Other outstanding gifts deserve mention. The late Judge Walter L. Hetfield Jr. gave us one of the very few 12-volume sets of the Hauptman trial; Philip Hofer presented the rare Madrid 1780 EscuelaPaleographica o de Leer Letras Antiguas; Harold G. Rugg '06 gave us many bookplates, 35 Frost letters, and many presentation copies of modern novelists; John R. McLane '07 has been most generous in gifts of first editions of Thomas Hardy, including the rare 1903 Dynasts, rare Americana, and other books; Basil O'Connor '12 saw to it that we got valuable Franklin D. Roosevelt material; Leland Powers 'io has given much rare Americana; Thomas M. Beers a complete set of the Lakeside Classics; Robert M. Stecher '19 a complete set of the Rowfant publications, and many other fine books; Victor Reynolds '27 many fine volumes of Americana; Henry S. Embree '30 has built up collections of Masefield, Buchan, de la Mare, and has contributed rare volumes by nineteenth century writers; and from Harry S. Truman, through the late Charles Ross, we got a signed copy of the Civil Rights Bill.

In the summer of 1952 an outstanding contribution to the College was made through The Friends (mainly through the efforts of Ned Warren '01) by Dr. Herbert B. Wilcox, of Oxford, N. H. Dr. Wilcox is a lineal descendant of Samuel Morey whose steamboat Aunt Sally is supposed to have antedated Fulton's Clermont by 14 years. The gift consisted of ten letters patent issued to Samuel Morey, the earliest dated January 29, 1793 "for turning a spit," and signed by Washington; and there were others signed by Madison, Monroe, Adams, and Andrew Jackson. There were letters, pamphlets, and clippings pertaining to his steamboat. In addition there was an original charter, signed by George 111, for a ferry; a contemporary copy of the Orford charter, and the original manuscript for a plan of Orford, dated June 2, 1770.

Prof. Donald L. Stone of the Dartmouth faculty has given many fine books. To mention only a few: the second and third folios of Shakespeare, Locke's Essay onthe Human Understanding, Raleigh's History of the World, Boswell's Johnson, Camden's Brilannica, Wycherly's Poemsand Satires, Fox's Book of Martyrs, a 1770 Plutarch, and several volumes of Dickens and Thackeray.

Arthur L. Gale '27 has given an extremely valuable Vitas Patrium, 1495, printed by Wynkyn de Worde, Caxton's successor.

Thomas W. Streeter '04, our most distinguished bookman, has been an especially generous donor. Among his gifts are a rare Verona 1486 edition of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura, a first of Melville's Marquesas (1846) and nearly 500 railroad pamphlets. He heavily subscribed toward the purchase of the Rupert Brooke collection and to other special purchases.

Sylvia Clark, of Derry Village, N.H., who used to teach school with Robert Frost at Pinkerton Academy, has given us a collection of New Hampshire memorabilia, Whittier letters, and other material.

Among the most valuable manuscripts received are the following: 18 manuscripts by Daniel Webster; the holograph manuscripts of Henry Beston's The OutermostHouse; Kenneth Roberts' Rabble in Arms, and pages from Lydia Bailey; Charles Jackson's The Lost Weekend; Ben Ames Williams' Owen Glen, Come Spring,Strange Woman, and House Divided; the original Wreck Record of the Nauset Coast Guard Station from the 1880'S on; an original diary of an 1849 California Gold Rush, written by a prospector named J. B. Breyfogle; the diaries of Robert Fletcher; a Civil War Diary; and individual literary manuscripts by Joseph Conrad, Robert Frost, H. L. Mencken, Norman Douglas, Bill Nye, Walt Whitman, Conan Doyle, Sean O'Casey, and others.

Allerton C. Hickmott '17 has given us many fine press books, together with two plays from Shakespeare's first folio, the only two we possess, and three from the second folio, beautifully bound, together with Cabell books, and many others.

We have been given many finely printed books, such as a large collection of Bruce Rogers' items; books from such presses as Nonesuch, Kelmscott, Doves, Vale, Ward Ritchie, Grabhorn, and Ashendene; and many valuable items from the press of the late Edwin B. Hill.

Among the most valuable purchases we have made for the Library are the following: An immense amount of correspondence by and to Silas Dinsmoor, Class of 1796; also business papers and documents relating to the Cherokee and Choctaw Indians collected during his service as Indian agent in the West; the Hyperotomachia, 1499, the most famous woodcut book in existence; 18 Masefield presentation copies, the nucleus of our now large collection; the limited edition of Percy Mackaye's Hamlet; W. H. Hudson's Fan, A Crystal Age, and The PurpleLand; Alden's Victoria Regina; Alexander Mackenzie's Voyages; Abel Chapman's original watercolor sketchbook of the Arctic; several literary manuscripts by C. E. Montague, Roy Campbell, Joseph Conrad, Edmund Blunden, James G. Huneker, Rupert Brooke, R. B. Cunninghame Graham, and others; various documents relating to Thomas Fessenden, Class of 1796, signed by Washington, Jackson, and others; a valuable pamphlet by Ethan Allen and Jonas Fay relating to New Hampshire, of which only 13 copies are known; Crane's rare Pike County Puzzle; and letters written by Conrad, Robert Frost, Huneker, Francis Parkman, and many others.

Among the thousands of holograph letters given us, we are especially strong in those written by Eleazar and John Wheelock, Daniel Webster, H. L. Mencken, Henry Beston, Kenneth Roberts, J. J. Lankes, Henry Miller, Theodore Dreiser, J. M. Barrie, Norman Douglas, Cora Crane, Robert Frost, Eugene O'Neill, Henry James, John Addington Symonds, Lady Ritchie (Thackeray's daughter), Paul Lemperly, and R. B. Cunninghame Graham. Other valuable items include Civil War letters, World War I and II letters, letters written during the siege of Paris in 1871, and hundreds of others written by George Sterling, Conrad, Thomas Lipton, George Moore, Taft, Coolidge, Cordell Hull, Romain Rolland, Whittier, Thackeray, Sean O'Casey, and Francis Parkman.

These long lists of acquisitions make fairly heavy reading, but they are the most effective way of giving some idea of what has been accomplished by The Friends during the past 15 years. To give credit to all the Dartmouth men and friends of the College who have made our efforts successful would call for tremendously longer lists and would require far more space than the ALUMNI MAGAZINE can give us.

The riches that have been added to Baker Library serve only to whet our appetites to acquire more. Many gaps remain to be filled. The Friends have never hesitated to ask for desired items, and in closing we will add still another list of volumes which stand high among our desiderata: the rare and costly Kilmarnock Burns, 1786; the first edition of Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom, 1922; James Joyce's Ulysses; Bruce Rogers' OxfordLectern Bible, published in 1935; E. M. Forster's Where Angels Fear to Tread; Mason Lock Weems' The Life of Washington the Great, 1806; Washington Irving's A History of New York, 1809, in two volumes; William Holmes McGuffey's The Eclectic First Reader, 1836; Ralph Waldo Emerson's An Oration Deliveredbefore the Phi Beta Kappa Society atCambridge, August 31, 1837; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Ballads and OtherPoems, 1842; Clement C. Moore's Poems, 1844; Edgar Allan Poe's Tales, 1845; Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and The Gettysburg Solemnities, both 1863; Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, 1868, and Little Women, Part Second, 1869; A. Montgomery Ward's First MailOrder Broadside, 1872, and First MailOrder Pamphlet, 1874; Frederick Jackson Turner's The Significance of the Frontierin American History, 1894; and Luther Emmett Holt's The Care and Feeding ofChildren, 1894.

KEY WORKER in the successful efforts of The Friends during the past 15 years has been Prof. Herbert F. West '22, secretary. He is shown in Baker's Treasure Room, holding a rare first edition of Stephen Crane's "Maggie." The cases hold the Crane and Tomlinson Collections given by George Matthew Adams and the H. L. Mencken Collection given by Richard Mandel '26.

A PRIZE ITEM, perhaps the most valuable single book possessed by Baker Library, is the rare first edition of Gray's "Elegy," given recently by Perc S. Brown, a preeminent friend among The Friends.

MANUSCRIPTS are among the varied literary treasures acquired through The Friends. Shown above are the manuscripts of Kenneth Roberts' "Rabble in Arms/' Charles Jackson's "The Lost Weekend," Henry Beston's "The Outermost House," and Rupert Brooke's "Mary and Gabriel," and the note-books compiled by Ben Ames Williams '10 in writing "House Divided."