Quakers have had an uneasy relationship with music since the late 17th century.

Although singing was recognized as an authentic expression of the connection with Spirit, too much music could become amusement and a diversion. Popular culture played with this dichotomy as demonstrated by this sheet music cover of 1919. Special Collections’ online exhibit ‘Sing ye in the spirit’ : Music & Quakerism in Harmony will show you more on the subject.

Some of the newest notes among Friends are being sung by Jon Watts who blends spirituality, Quaker history and rap. Listen to him and watch to see if your shoulders don’t begin to shake, too!

A recent Google search reveals that our Keats letter to Fanny Brawne—discussed in previous posts on this blog—has been transformed into something called a “poetic animation” and placed on YouTube.  One can only imagine what Oscar Wilde might have said about this!

Special Collections was open on Saturday, October 24th, and we had about 35 visitors for Family and Friends Weekend.  Some came with very specific interests, including viewing the 1711 charter of the William Penn Charter School signed by Penn and with his great seal, but others came in as family clusters and were drawn to the displays we made available for them.  There was a good bit of ooh-ing and ahh-ing, as they inspected:

• The 1711 King James Bible and its miniature version
• A 1683 plat survey of Philadelphia by William Penn’s surveyor, Thomas Holme (see illustration), which is essentially the  lay-out of Philadelphia even today

• Amos Nattini’s lithographic illustrations of all 100 cantos of Dant’e Divine Comedy, along with a miniature version of the famous text
• The Germantown Quaker Protest Against Slavery, 1688, the first such protest in North America
• Maxims by William Penn published in the Select Works of William Penn, 1771, along with a miniature of the maxim on Time
• A photograph of a dorm in Barclay with army gear in evidence in the 1940s when a percentage of the students were army men
• A pointed letter by Supreme Court Justice, William O. Douglas to his friend Fred Rodell, class of 1926, indicating dismay at a meeting of the other justices while he (Douglas) was away that overturned his vote for a stay of execution in the Rosenberg spy case
• And last, but by no means least, the extraordinary illustrated chemistry notebook of Maxfield Parrish while a student at Haverford in 1890.

The event by all counts was most satisfactory.

The publication of Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus’s De revolutionibus orbium caelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) caused a stir among both scientific and religious communities in the mid 16th century. Postulating that the earth turned on its axis and with the other planets orbited the sun, Copernicus’s work challenged the long-held theories of Ptolemy that claimed the earth was the center of the universe. Likewise, De revolutionibus was condemned by the Church for challenging the centrality of man and the literalness of the Bible. Haverford’s copy includes underlinings and marginal annotations in two hands, including passages to be censured. This volume is part of the William Pyle Philips Collection of Rare Books, which contains many fine volumes representative of Western humanistic thought.

Our letter from John Keats to Fanny Brawne which makes an appearance in the form of dialogue in the Jane Campion movie Bright Star came to Haverford with the autograph collection of Charles Roberts, Haverford class of 1864. Roberts began his collection of autograph letters while a student at Haverford and went on to amass one of the premiere collections in the United States.  After his death in 1902, his widow Lucy Branson Roberts gave the collection to the College, along with the funds to build an assembly hall which would long house the collection.

Whether it was Roberts himself who purchased this letter when it was put up for auction on March 2, 1885 is not certain, but realized prices marked in an extant auction catalog indicate that the letter went for 11 pounds, 10 shillings. The letter has received a fair amount of attention since it arrived at Haverford.  In a future blog post we will divulge who said what about our letter and even how it got caught up in a forgery scheme in the 1950s.  In the meantime, please enjoy images of the letter and a transcription below.

[October 13, 1819]

25 College Street

My dearest Girl,

This moment I have set myself to copy some verses out fair. I cannot proceed with any degree of content. I must write you a line of two and see if that will assist in dismissing you from my Mind for ever so short a time. Upon my Soul I can think of nothing else. The time is passed when I had power to advise and warn you against the unpromising morning of my life. My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you. I am forgetful of everything but seeing you again – my life seems to stop there – I see no further. You have absorb’d me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving. I should be exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing you. I should be afraid to separate myself far from you. My sweet Fanny, will your heart never change? My love, will it? I have no limit now to my love. You[r] note came in just here – I cannot be happier away from you. ‘Tis richer than an Argosy of Pearles. Do not threat me even in jest. I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion. I have shudder’d at it – I shudder no more. I could be martyr’d for my Religion. Love is my religion – I could die for that – I could die for you. My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet – You have ravish’d me away by Power I cannot resist; and yet I could resist till I saw you; and even since I have seen you I have endeavored often “to reason against the reasons of my Love.” I can do that no more – the pain would be too great. My love is selfish. I cannot breathe without you.

Yours for ever

John Keats

Charlotte Brooks, Marlis Gildemeister, Laurence Wylie, and an unidentified woman learn auto mechanics as part of the Relief and Reconstruction master’s degree program during World War II.

The College Archives maintains a collection of historic photos organized by subject for patrons to view. This photo and many others are available online through Triptych, the Tri-College Digital Library.

As mentioned last week, text from a letter in Special Collections is featured in the new film, Bright Star. Jane Campion’s period piece tells the story of the tragic love between sickly poet John Keats and fashionable girl-next-door Fanny Brawne.

Following the death of John Keats in Italy, Fanny Brawne spent several years in mourning, “wandering the Heath,” as the film tells us. But eventually she did marry, and she bore three children. She never told her husband of her relationship with John Keats, but she did keep his letters-over three dozen of them.

After both she and her husband had died, Fanny’s children decided to sell the letters at auction. The news of this sale shocked the literary world. The letters, of course, are intensely personal and many believed they showed the poet in a desperate and pitiful state. One commentator on the sale was none other than Oscar Wilde, who, one day before the auction, penned this sonnet:

On the sale by auction of Keats’ love-letters

These are the letters which Endymion wrote
To one he loved in secret, and apart.
And now the brawlers of the auction mart
Bargain and bid for each poor blotted note,
Ay! for each separate pulse of passion quote
The merchant’s price. I think they love not art
Who break the crystal of a poet’s heart
That small and sickly eyes may glare and gloat.

Is it not said that many years ago,
In a far Eastern town, some soldiers ran
With torches through the midnight, and began
To wrangle for mean raiment, and to throw
Dice for the garments of a wretched man,
Not knowing the God’s wonder, or His woe?

A first batch of letters was sold by Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge on March 2, 1885 and fetched a sum total of 543 pounds. While Oscar Wilde was offended by the sale the day before, he found it in him to attend the auction and purchased one of the letters himself.

In a future blog post, we will describe how our particular letter made its way from this auction to Haverford and we’ll present a facsimile of this most famous billets-doux.

The Haverford News was the College’s weekly student newspaper from 1914 to 1968.  From the March 30, 1915 issue, we learn that the library has had a feline visitor.

LIBRARY BECOMES SARCOPHAGUS FOR UNFORTUNATE FELINE

Last week the library set aside traditions and became a “sarcophagus for cats,” besides being a “cemetery for books.” An unfortunate feline took up its residence in one of the walls and was forced to remain in spite of all efforts towards its dislodgement.

At twenty minutes past eight last Wednesday evening, the inmates of the library were awakened, some from thought, others from sleep, by a howl. A cessation, then two more howls, echoing and re-echoing through the lofty rafters. Another interval and then the storm broke, to vibrate unceasingly for an hour and a half in human ears, and dear knows how long in the ears of the wall through the long night. The whine was quickly located as coming from the topmost corner of the wall of the magazine section, and various sceptics hinted at its identity. Harding, looking round a book-case, said it was a rat, but this theory was dispelled when biologist Dunn declared it a kitten. It seemed as though all the horrors of Poe were to be staged in real life, but the source of the noise was far above investigation and it was with great regret that Dunn locked the creature in its grave at ten o’clock.

When Miss Sharpless and Miss Ingalls entered the library the next morning they were greeted with “a cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, then quickly swelling into one, long, continuous, screaming, utterly inhuman howl.” Mr. Collins and his crew answered the calls for assistance and brought ladders which were placed on the outside of the building. Sharpless, star tumbler of the Gym team, offered his services and after ascending without tumbling reported the chimney bricked solid. Mr. Collins, on interview, said that “puss” had crawled up an old flue and did not possess “animal instinct” enough to crawl out again. Whereupon “puss” was left to his or her fate.

Friday: After a long search the noisy animal was located in a portion of the cellar between the old library and the new stock room, and thereupon released.

Cast of characters:

Harding: William Hover Harding (1892-1964), class of 1918, left in 1917. Went on to work for the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railway in Chicago, Illinois.

Haverford College Library, ca. 1915, Gift of Helen Sharpless, 1951.

Dunn: Emmett Reid Dunn (1894-1956), class of 1915. Went on to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University and became Professor of Zoology at Smith College. Later joined the faculty of Haverford where he was Professor of Biology from 1929 to 1956.

Miss Sharpless: Miss Helen Sharpless (1878-1969), daughter of Haverford President Isaac Sharpless.  An 1896 graduate of Bryn Mawr College, Helen received her library degree from Drexel College in 1901.  She served as Assistant Librarian at Haverford College from 1896 to 1902 and Acting Librarian from 1914 to 1920.

Miss Ingalls: Florence L. Ingalls, a 1912 graduate of Mount Holyoke College and a 1914 graduate of New York State Library School.  She served as Assistant Librarian from 1914 to 1917.  She married Fred Vosburgh in 1917.

Mr. Collins: William Henry Collins (1859-1939), class of 1881.  Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds from 1897 to 1920.

Sharpless: Francis Parvin Sharpless (b. 1894), class of 1916, captain of the Gymnasium team.  Went on to serve in the Reconstruction Unit in France for 18 months, and became a salesman for Woodward & Company, Grain Brokers, and later Resident Manager of the Columbia Milling Company, in Columbia, Pennsylvania.

Puss: No one knows what became of Puss.

Bright Star, a movie by New Zealand film maker Jane Campion, tells the story of the secret love affair between English poet John Keats and the fashionable girl next door, Fanny Brawne.  The film makes use of several love letters between John and Fanny, including one from the Charles Roberts Autograph Letter Collection in Haverford College Special Collections.  The movie premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May and was shown at Haverford alumnus Harlan Jacobson’s Talk Cinema in Philadelphia and Bryn Mawr this past weekend.  It is scheduled to open commercially on September 18.  Subsequent posts on this blog will reveal more about the Haverford Keats letter.

“The Haverford Hebrew Bible” was a gift of J. Rendel Harris, 1890. Part of the J. Rendel Harris “Oriental” Manuscript Collection, the Bible is the oldest Hebrew Bible located in North America and one of the treasures of Special Collections. In addition to the standard columns of biblical text, each page of the Haverford Hebrew Bible is bordered by intricately woven lines of textual marginalia that serve as a concordance on selected passages of the main text. Side margins are decorated with colorful abstract ornaments and at the beginning and end of the volume are “carpet pages,” richly colored patterns of diamond shapes and interlocking chains that resemble the patterns of carpets.

This exceptional bible was copied in Spain in 1266 by “Solomon, son of Moses.” Remaining in Spain until the expulsion of the Jews in 1492, the Bible then made its way to Egypt. Three further changes of ownership are documented in the Bible itself: one in 1714-15, one in 1755-56, and the last in 1890 when it was acquired by J. Rendel Harris, professor of Ecclesiastical History at Haverford. Harris’s gift of the Bible plus 46 additional Semitic language manuscripts form the nucleus of the J. Rendel Harris “Oriental” Manuscript Collection.