index rerum, John Q. and Annie Leland Scammon’s copy

Fourth Edition, Northampton......J. H. Butler, 1839.

Bears the bookplate and initials of John Q. Scammon, but appears to have been used not by him, but by A. Leland Scammon — probably Annie Leland Scammon (1860-1945). The book contains not citations but extracts from literary and other sources. It also contains loose sheets (listed at the end of this page) in the same backward-slant hand as entries in the book. At right of bookdealer’s stamp is written 1837 to 1860.

A Scammon Genealogy lists a John Quincy Adams Scammon (1814-98, born and died in Saco, Maine). His inclusion in The Saco register with Old Orchard (1906: p116) suggests he may have been an attorney. If I read the genealogy entry right, John Q. Scammon married a Julia Augusta Cutler Cutts (1826-1868) in 1845, who bore five children : Ella Adelaide (1850-); Albert Quincy (1852-1918); Annie Leland (1860-1945); Walter Evans (1862-1925); and Alice Cutts (1864-). Albert is noted as having been an actor.

A. Leland Scammon wrote poetry. Some of it is found in sheets loosely inserted into this volume (and transcribed at the end of this page); some appeared in Ballou’s Monthly Magazine :
Song (March 1880),
At My Lady’s Feet (June 1880), and
My Dream Is My Love (September 1884). (note: lots comes up from a search for the phrase I love my love, including this from the American Girl’s Book: or Occupation for Play Hours, by Miss Leslie, Boston and New-York, 1831.)

Her poetry is intensive, eliptical, philosophical; the manuscript poetry seems less confident (and even more eliptical) than the published verse. The manuscript verse bears dates and locations: Lansdown, Newport, Isle of Wight (October 2, 1892); Portland (August 31, 1894); Berlin (February 8, 1891).
 

 

For this copy of Todd’s book, I have listed every extract and, in most cases, found the original of the extract online, either in Google Book or Internet Archive. I have several motivations for this: (1) A. Leland Scammon the writer and reader interests me; and (2) Here is a genuine record of someone’s reading ca. 1900, that might merit inclusion in a turn-of-the-century reader experience database — many of the transcribed authors are unfamiliar to me, yet were certainly widely read in their time; I should know them. There is also (3) the sense, with this copy as with others, that the index rerum played a role in its user’s self-fashioning and self-understanding.

Who was A. Leland Scammon? What was she doing in England and Germany? Who were her friends, like Margaret Scott Jarvie? What did the passages she copied out signify to her? What to make of her eliptical verse? What happened after Europe?

The project is far from finished.
 

AaaA

• Count Leo Tolstoy. Resurrection (Maude translation, 1900)
• Elizabeth and her German Garden (1899)
  (published without author's name, the author being Elizabeth Von Arnim (1866-1941).
• Hervey White. Quicksand (1900) something on Hervey White here
• James Arnold Blaisdell. At eventime, starting Tonight my soul be still and sleep. (widely printed (as At Eventide.
• S. Weir Mitchell. A Canticle of Time.
• Wait. Found as Wait a while, in Herbert Wolcott Bowen. In Divers Tones, (Boston, 1890), here
• Susan Coolidge. Commonplace. found in Good Housekeeping here and in Susan Coolidge her A Few More Verses (Boston 1889) here.
• George Macdonald. If I am low and sinful...,, from The Father’s Hymn.
• Richard Chevenix Trench. Refreshment. Found in his Poems (10th edition, London, 1889) here
• George Macdonald. Consider the Ravens. Found in his Poetical Works (London 1893), here.
• W.M.L. Gay. A Thousand Years
• Each man should follow, as near as may be, that line of effort which will do most for him, which will enable him to realize the best possibilities of his own lie... Unattributed, David Starr Jordan, Modern College Education (part 11, A consideration of Herbert Spencer’s essay on education, in volume May-October 1900: 266-276).
• Irving Bacheller. Eben Holden: A Tale of the North Country (New York and London, 1905), numerous passages. More on Bacheller (1859-1950, journalist and founder of the first modern newspaper syndicate in the United States, here.
• aC through Da — numerous extracts from Hallam Tennyson. Alfred Lord Tennyson, a Memoir by his Son. Pagination matches the 1898 Macmillan edition, here.
• Eu — Mary G. Seward. Day by Day, eight lines, of which the last four can be found in W.M.L. Jay, Good Cheer for a Year: Seletions from the writings of the Rt. Rev. Phillip Brooks, D.D. (New York, 1907), entry for August 10, though by a Mary C. Seward.
• C. G. Hazard. Progress. Unable to locate this six-line poem under that title, but the whole is available in W.M.L. Jay, Good Cheer for a Year: Seletions from the writings of the Rt. Rev. Phillip Brooks, D.D. (New York, 1907), entry for December 3.
• Frederick William Faber. The Thought of God, as found in his Hymns (1904) here.
• A Sermon in Rhyme, attributed here to J. H. Brown, frequently reprinted by anonymous,, or with other attributions, as here
• Fe through Fu — Booker Tagliaferro Washington. Numerous extracts from Up from Slavery: An Autobiography (1901), beginning with the passage on obstacles overcome, rather than position achieved, as the better measure of success.
• Fu through Ga — Booker T. Washington. Numerous extracts from The Future of the American Negro (Boston, 1899), beginning with this passage on education.
• aG through Ge — A passage entitled Home-Made College Men,, attributed to George Horace Lorimer, editor of at. Evening Post., Nov. 9, 1901 and available in full in the July 11, 1903 number of Onward (a publication of the Young People's Christian Union of the Universalist Church), here. Lorimer was author of Letters from a Self-Made Merchant To His Son (Boston, 1905).
• An excerpt from The Solitary Summer, beginning Suddenly the certainty of grief, taken from the 1901 edition of that novel by Elizabeth Von Arnim, here.
• eG through Gu — Numerous extracts from James Lane Allen, The Reign of Law: A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields taken from a 1900 edition, but paginations agreeing with this later printing. Allen (1849-1925) was a significant Kentucky author, described by George Brosi here.
• Gu through Ha — At least seven extracts from The Benefactress (Macmillan, 1901), by Elizabeth Von Arnim. Pagination agrees with the 1902 printing here
• Numerous extracts from Poultney Bigelow, his History of the German Struggle for Liberty (1896), the first being taken from vol 1, chapter 3, What sort of a bringing-up had Queen Luise, and commencing Queen Luise, who wished to set the young woman at her ease, here.
• eH through Hi — Three extracts from William Stearns Davis, God Wills It!: A Tale of the First Crusade (New York and London, Macmillan, 1901), here. Davis (1877-1930) is treated at wikipedia here.
• Ho through aI — A long extract from Lyman Abbott (1835-1922), Anarchism: Its Cause and Cure, in the journal The Outlook (22 February 1902), passage beginning Law is the exercise of one will enforced upon another will at page 468 here. Lyman Abbott (1835-1922) authored numerous books and edited The Outlook;; he is described at wikipedia. His argument here: anarchism will flourish, of laws are not administered equitably.
• aI through iI — A long extract from Henry S. Pritchett, What is Truth? An Address to College Students, in the journal The Outlook (8 March 1902), passage beginning The scientific method of study is characterized rather by a distinctive attitude of mind to truth... at page 620 here. Henry Smith Pritchett (1857-1939) was an astronomer and educator, president of MIT (1900-06), and was long involved with the Carnegie Institute; he is treated at wikipedia here.
• iI through Io — An extract from The End of Prince Henry’s Visit, in The Outlook (15 March 1902), passage beginning The scientific method of study is characterized rather by a distinctive attitude of mind to truth... at page 655 here.

  Scammon writes : This happened in Cambridge, Thursday, March 6th, 1902. M.S.J. and I were standing with the crowd opposite Memorial Hall and saw Prince Henry as he came out after receiving his this degree. M.S.J. is presumably Margaret Scott Jarvie, whose name is written on a single loose sheet (possibly detached from a book) found loose in this Index Rerum. An obituary of a Margaret Scott Jarvie appears in the Cornell Alumni News of April 26, 1911 :
  MARGARET JARVIE ’02. — Margaret Scott Jarvie died on March 1, 1911, at her home, 1134 Pacific street, Brooklyn, after an illness of several months. Miss Jarvie was a graduate of the Brooklyn Girls’ High School. She entered Cornell in 1898 with a state scholarship, was a member of the Alpha Phi fraternity, and graduated in 1902 with the degree of A. B. She took the degree of M. A. at Columbia in 1904. She was teacher of English at the Richmond Hill High School for several years and at the time of her last illness. In February Miss Jarvie’s engagement to Mr. Richard Ward Childs, of Boise, Idaho, was announced. All her plans had been practically completed for her approaching marriage and her anticipated life in the West, and the suddenness of her death (sudden at the last) made her loss even more keen to the many friends who mourn her. Her mother, Mrs. Robert Fairlie, of Brooklyn, is the only near relative who survives her.

  References to two other documents by Jarvie turn up: The heresy among the Beghards and the Beguines in Flanders and Germany (1903) and A study of Crabbe with especial reference to the history of his reputation (1905). A memorial notice about Jarvie appeared in the Alpha Phi Quarterly of 1911, here.

  And today (29 April 2010) in the 1905 edition of the Blue Book of Cambridge, we find that Miss Margaret S. Jarvie and Miss A. Leland Scammon lived at 31 1/2 Mellen Street.
   

IuuI

• Io through Ja — A transcription of the largest part of Edward Bok, his essay She Dasn’t, that appeared in The Ladies’ Home Journal 19:4 (March 1902). The essay is concerned with women’s enrollment in various clubs, where they ought rather get themselves off to a quiet corner once in a while for some self-reflection. She hesitates to live her own life: she is afraid to do what she feels and knows is the right thing to do... The American woman’s greatest fault is her fear of being judged by her neighbors...

  The full text is available via American Periodicals Series Online, but not via Google Books or Internet Archive at this time (22 November 09). Bok was editor of The Ladies’ Home Journal for thirty years, 1889 to 1919. More at wikipedia, here. A young immigrant from the Netherlands, he worked as an office boy for Western Union for several years.

• aJ — A transcription from James Lane Allen, With a Writer Life is always at the Beginning, from Success (February 1902). This is the second extract from Allen in this volume. The extract (the last of eight paragraphs in the original article) —

  If I had only one word of advice for a young man wishing to enter the profession of literature, what would it be? I think I should tell him to look to his own character, not to publishers or editors. No great book was ever written that was not sincere and fearless, and no such book was ever written without a sincere and fearless human being to write it. The question of success in literature is always a question of the character of the author. Thousands of people have enough mere intellect to succeed, but no man or woman succeeds in literature by intellect alone. An inseparable element of success in literature is always the ethical. One vital quality in an author is absolute fearlessness. No intellectual hypocrite or coward will ever succeed. One must have self-reliance, alacrity for hard work, grit, pluck, passion for attacking and overcoming obstacles, fortitude, power to bear anything and everything, to stand hard blows and continue straight on toward what he has determined to do,—to look his own situation squarely in the face. Nothing else so enables you to see the real relations of life and their consequences to you. It will also train you to look your own thoughts squarely in the face, and to treat them on their own merits; if your thoughts are full of subterfuge and hypocrisy, and you cannot state them openly and fearlessly, they are doomed to failure, and it were best for you neer to have attempted a writer’s career.

  Success Magazine was founded by Orison Swett Marden (1850-1924) in 1897; something on Marden here; his many motivational books remain in print. The magazine preached success through hard work: Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and others featured on its covers in the year from which Scammon wrote out the above passage. Some cover art can be seen at a website devoted to Ellis Parker Butler, who frequently appeared in the pages of Success.

• aJ through Je — A passage from an editorial entitled The Reading Public, in the The Outlook (April 19, 1902), commencing at page 949 here. Scammon’s first sentence captures the idea of the whole: Books of the finest literary quality are to-day certain to receive very wide reading, provided they deal with vital matters in a vital way.
• aJ through Je — An extract from Lyman Abbott, The Mission of the Christian Church, in The Outlook (12 April 1902), commencing at page 911 here.
• Ji through iJ — Some extracts from John H. Ingram's volume on Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in the Famous Women series (Boston 1888). Pagination of the 1893 edition agrees with the earlier edition. The first passage is from p105 :
  A bird in a cage could have as good a story. Most of my events, and nearly all my intense pleasures, have passed in thoughts.
• iJ — Edward Everett Hale, from Memories of a Hundred Years (New York: Macmillan, 1904) here. He [Mr. Everett] was hopelessly sensitive to what the press printed, not knowing what I, who was bred in a newspaper office, know, first, that of whatever is put in the newspaper, half the people who see it do not read it; second, that half of those do not understand it; third, that of the half who understand it, half do not believe it; fourth, that of the half who believe it, fully half forget it; fifth, that the half who remember it are probably of no great account anyway.
• iJ — Helen Keller, from The Story of My Life in The Ladies’ Home Journal (September 1902), but here from the 1905 edition :
  Once, when I was puzzled to know why there were so many religions, he [Phillips Brooks] said: There is one universal religion, Helen — the religion of love. Love your Heavenly Father with your whole heart and soul, love every child of God as much as ever you can, and remember that the possibilities of good are greater than the possibilities of evil; and you have the key to Heaven.
• iJ through Jo — Two brief passages from Mrs Humphrey Ward. Lady Rose's Daughter, (New York and London, Harper Brothers, 1903), here. The first,, at page 385: Teach our young men how to endure and how to suffer for a great idea...
   

JuuJ

• Jo through uJ — Henry van Dyke. Several excerpts from his The Ruling Passion: Tales of Nature and Human Nature (New York, 1901) here, including the entirety of the proem A Writer's Request of His Master —

  LORD, let me never tag a moral to a story, nor tell a story without a meaning. Make me respect my material so much that I dare not slight my work. Help me to deal very honestly with words and with people because they are both alive. Show me that as in a river, so in a writing, clearness is the best quality, and a little that is pure is worth more than much that is mixed. Teach me to see the local colour without being blind to the inner light. Give me an ideal that will stand the strain of weaving into human stuff on the loom of the real. Keep me from caring more for books than for folks, for art than for life. Steady me to do my full stint of work as well as I can: and when that is done, stop me, pay what wages Thou wilt, and help me to say, from a quiet heart, a grateful Amen. here

  more on the theme of writing from the preface, and then some excerpts from the chapter The White Blot, e.g., this —

  The real location of a city house depends upon the pictures which hang upon its walls. They are its neighbourhood and its outlook. They confer upon it that touch of life and character... ¶ By this magic of pictures my narrow, upright slice of living-space in one of the brown-stone strata on the eastward slope of Manhattan Island is transferred to an open and agreeable site...

  The chapter is about the theme love, and remains readable.

• Two statements on Japan, from Mortimer Menpes (1859-1938), Japan: A Record in Colour, Transcribed by Dorothy Menpes, published by Adam & Charles Black, London, 1901 (and several reprints, including 1905 here). The statements are:
  Danjuro — the greatest living actor. Sir Henry Irving of Japan; and
  Fuchichi — Japan’s greatest dramatist.

  Engraver, illustrator, printmaker, author and carnation grower, Menpes can't be captured in a sentence; see his page at wikipedia here, with links to DNB and beyond.

• uJ through aK — Extracts from Norman Duncan. Doctor Luke of the Labrador (New York, Fleming H. Revell / Grosset & Dunlop, 1904), pagination agreeing with this.

  The first extract —

  ...You’d cast un off because he’ve sinned? Ecod! I’ve seldom heard the like. Who is you? Even the Lard God A’mighty wouldn’t do that. Sure, He loves only such as have sinned. Lad, he went on, now, with a smile, with a touch of his rough old hand, compelling my confidence and affection, what’s past is done with. Isn’t you l’arned that yet? Old sins are as if they never had been. Else what hope is there for us poor sons of men? The weight o’ sin would sink us. Tis not the dear Lard’s way t’ deal so with men. To-day is not yesterday. What was, has been; it is not. A man is not what he was—he is what he is. But yet, lad—an’ ’tis wonderful queer — to-day is yesterday. ’Tis made by yesterday. The mistake—the sin—o’ yesterday is the straight course—the righteous deed—o’ to-day. ’Tis only out o’ sin that sweetness is born. That’s just what sin is for! The righteous, Davy, dear, he said, in all sincerity, are not lovable, not trustworthy. The devil nets un by the hundred quintal, for ’tis such easy fishin’; but sinners—such as sin agin their will—the Lard loves an’ gathers in. They who sin must suffer, Davy, an’ only such as suffer can know the dear Lard’s love... (p252)

  Norman Duncan (1871-1916) is treated briefly here in wikipedia.

• aK — One sentence extract from Mrs Margaret Deland (1857-1945), The Awakening of Helen Richie, Illustrated by Walter Appleton Clark, (Harper & Brothers, 1906) :
  ...When personal happiness conflicts with any great human idea, the right to claim such happiness is as nothing compared to the privilege of resigning it... (p250, here )

  Something on Deland here.
   

  More to come; the extracts end at Lu.
   

maintaining the self

All of the index rerum are writing books. In some copies, we find handwriting exercises, and in two of our examples (Stockman and Scammon), great attention to initials. I take from these the suggestion that these volumes played a role in maintaining their compilers’ self-identities. This, obviously, in parallel with the curatorial practices we see in these owners’ various uses of Index Rerum : in which they manage their readings both by bibliographic reference, or full transcriptions. Not to mention their inclusion of other even physical matter in these books.

In the Scammon copy, the initials are the only instance of writing by the original owner; the reading notes that fill a good half of the volume are his daughter’s.

Some of the reading may be aspirational, a habit of study, a spiritual or emotional retreat. All, it seems to me, are a way of developing, asserting, maintaining a self.
 

drafts, written in Europe

Loose sheets containing seven separate writings are contained in the volume. All are listed below, some with complete transcriptions. These appear to be by A. Leland Scammon.

1. Ballad of a book, 6pp

   A ballad of a book,
   and how it took.
   A Leland Scammon
   Feb 21, 1882

   There was a little author
   Who wrote a little book;
   He laid it on the public shelf,
   And waited till it took.

   It was all about a woman,
   Who was married to a man;
   His christian name was John, you know,
   And hers was Mary Ann.

   And it told about their habits,
   That they ate three times a day,
   And slept at night, and rose with morn,
   And sometimes went away.

   And it said that she was rosy,
   Good natured, healthy, young,
   That he was old, and worn and thin,
   And that he sometimes sung.

   And this same little author —
   Believe it if you can —
   Had never seen just such a John,
   Or such a Mary Ann.

   But when he was a little boy
   He chanced to hear of such,
   Who had long been dead and buried;
   And he liked their story much.

   And he thought the public liked it, —
   This wretched little man!
   For it brought full many copies
   Of his John and Mary Ann.

   And when upon his table
   Letters many he did see,
   He sat him down with pleasure
   And opened sixty-three.

   But his hair did rise with horror,
   And his teeth were ground with rage,
   For either John or Mary Ann
   Was signed to every page.

   And roundly they abused him,
   And swore to make him smart,
   In such a wretched little book,
   For giving them a part.

   For each had daily habit
   To eat three times a day.
   Each slept at night, and rose at morn
   And sometimes went away.

   The Mary Anns all wrote him
   Of cheeks of palid hue,
   And that he wickedly had said
   Of them things most untrue.

   And every Ann among them
   Called him a sly old elf;
   Perhaps he was sarcastic,
   But she knew he meant herself.

   He needn’t try deny it,
   Refuse the proof who can?
   Not another thing was needed
   Than her name,— ’twas Mary Ann!

   But not a John who wrote him
   Was very thin or old,
   Or ever thought to sing a song;
   Yet roundly they did scold.

   That he had dared to sketch them
   With in his little book,
   And parody, and satirize
   Their every deed and look.

   For well they knew, yes every one,
   This wretched little man
   Slily meant this particular John
   Or this same Mary Ann.

   Zounds! what an age! the author cried,
   Was never seen in truth
   Such a stupendous christening
   Of any epoch’s youth.

   For every child brought into church
   Girl babe, or baby man,
   Was surely christened by these names,
   Either John or Mary Ann.

   The man and wife I wrote of
   Died a hundred years ago:
   They are resurrected multiplied
   — These letters prove it so.

   If I have ghosts to fight, he said,
   Let every one come on,
   First I will deal with Mary Ann
   And then I’ll settle John.

   O wretched little author!
   Now crazed he was you see.
   His sudden woe was deeper far
   Than had been his sudden glee.

   And he tore these letters madly
   That crazy little man!
   And thought he strangled slim old John
   And smothered Mary Ann.

   But they haunted him forever;
   Though in course of time he died;
   And his little book was laid away
   On a shelf, at his right side.
    

2. Beautiful sound, 5pp
   three sheets, one folded
   October 1892, Lansdowne, Newport, I. of Wight
3. Das gute was, 1 sheet 2 sides
   penciled
4. Verse Subjects / Prose Subjects, 1 sheet 2 sides
   Verse subjects:
   Chaplet of Fancies; Rhodopsis; Mary Elizabeth (Angel of Rebuke); Booth’s Thoughts in Hamlet; The Artist; The Picture; The Fading of the Picture; The Restoring of the Picture; The Singer; The Violin; Christmas Stories in Rhyme.
   Prose subjects: Holiday Stories (Easter, Christmas, Guy Faukes Day, Thanksgiving Day, Washington’s Birthday, Fourth of July); A German Life; An English life; A German Birthday; Experiences in Lodgings; Fairy Tales; The Children’s Crickets

5. My griefs lie heavy, 1 sheet 1 side
   verse, dated Portland Aug 31, 1894
6. Slumber deep! / To night! 1 sheet 2 sides
   verse, one side dated Oct. 11, 1892
7. Jenny Worm [?] / Chicken Little
   2 sheets, sewn to make 8 sides
   verse
8. Das schonate Marchen is das Leben
   Anderson

   Down in the depths of the sea
   Lies an embodied thought;
   Deep as eternity,
   The changes it has wrought.
   Inert is the form it wears,
   Miles upon miles its span.
   Silent and sure, it bears
   A message from man to man:
   There is nothing I can see,
   Though I gaze with vision clear;
   Sense is useless unto me,
   There is nothing I can hear;
   So that cable in the sea,
   Is a fairy tale to me.

   2

   Above on the housetop high
   Stands an embodied thought;
   Fine lines against the sky;
   What have those lines not wrought?
   Below in the city's heart,
   Are voices two can hear,
   Many a mile apart,
   And only drawn wires near.
   I know that these wires speak,
   And answer, and speak again,
   Ay! many and many a week,
   The voices of living men:
   Yet these lines that I can see
   Are a fairy tale to me!

   3

   In a country far away
   Is a city by the sea,
   And the streets are, day by day,
   Worn with footsteps known to me.
   [] gaze at [] near,
   (Mine is like them) voices speak
   [] if I could only hear,
   What my [] was other week.
   And a lady lives apart,
   With such sunny, golden hair,
   And her eet uon my heart,
   As she mounts her chamber stair: —
   Ah, those people by the sea
   Are a fairy tale to me!

   4

   Alone in the city's heart
   I — and those faces fair:
   Our souls are worlds apart: —
   God! she has sunny hair .—
   Above is the sky so blue,
   With its worlds no man can know,
   And what have we not in hue
   Alivve in this world below.
   Women, children, and men
   Voices, flowers, and sleep,
   Beauty, and love, and then —
   Words! but mysteries deep.
   All life, as I dimly see,
   Is a fairy tale! to me. A. Leland Scammon,
   Berlin, Feb 8, 1891.

9. two pages

   Come ouf of the Past a face
   Let me look up and see
   The beaming of lustrous eyes
   The tremulous, tender mouth
   Come up again from the South
   Before I am old and wise
   Look at my face, at me
   Out of the dark past, dark face!

   Faces in crowds come between
   Over the hears I gaze
   See, and yet see only one
   Only one face full of life
   Only the face of my wife.
   Beautiful dark eyes you won
   Over all heads I gaze
   Transparent faces between!

   Beautiful, fathomless face:
   Let me look up and see
   Once more your soul in your eyes,
   Once was enough as God knows
   Let me look under my woes
   There was a hushing surprise
   Immortal, that I did see,
   Dead?— Nothing lives but that face.

   Aug 12, 1890

10. The Sausage the Mouse and the Dried Pea
    8pp
11. This June is full of sunshine
    5pp, on various stock, including envelope postmarked Washington, D.C. and addressed to a Miss M. S. Jarvie, 70 Part St. Southport England
12. a list of items for sale, two sheets four sides of items and prices (including knocked down prices)