In the fall of 2008, during the first semester of my freshman year here at Haverford,  I started working in Special Collections with Digital Collections Librarian David Conners to finish the Cope Evans project.  Started in 2002, the project was to digitize the Cope Evans Family Papers collection in order to make each item available on the web.  This involved reading, scanning, and transcribing almost 3,000 items dating from the 18th to the 20th century.  I had very little knowledge of the Society of Friends before coming to Haverford, and working with this collection of papers was a great way for me to really understand the essence of Quakerism.

At the culmination of the project in the spring of 2009, an event was organized to unveil the work that all of the students, interns, fellows, and librarians had been doing for the project.  Members of the Cope and Evans families were invited, as well as other members of the community, and anyone who had worked on the project in the past.  I spoke on the student panel at the event, and wrote a couple of pieces about some themes that arose from the letters, which were the compiled into a booklet about the collection.

Currently, I am working with Manuscripts Librarian and College Archivist Diana Franzusoff Peterson as the student archivist. I plan to major in Anthropology with a minor in Spanish. I also study Arabic, and plan to spend my junior year abroad in Egypt.

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!

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

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.

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 Germantown Quaker Protest Against Slavery of 1688 is best known as the first organized protest against slavery to have been penned in North America. Written by four Germantown Quakers, this extraordinary document raises objections to slavery on both moral and practical grounds at a time that Pennsylvania Quakers were nearly unanimous in their acceptance of the institution of slavery. It took another 88 years of activism among a growing number of Quakers before the Society of Friends would completely denounce slavery among its membership, and by this time the Germantown Quaker Protest had been completely forgotten. The document came to light again in 1844 and served as an important tool to the Quaker abolition movement of the 19th century. It was misplaced in the 20th century and was only re-discovered in 2005 in the vault of the Arch Street Meeting House. This document is but one famous example of the extensive records of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, which are divided between Haverford’s Quaker Collection and Swarthmore’s Friends Historical Library. A larger image and transcript of the protest can be found in Triptych: the Tri-College Digital Library.

The artist and illustrator Maxfield Parrish attended Haverford for three years but did not graduate. Among the many items in the Parrish collection is his notebook containing descriptions of thirty-three chemistry experiments carried out between February 7 and May 23, 1890, as well as a preliminary outline of laboratory procedures and equipment. In addition to the text written in india ink in Parrish’s distinctive hand, many of the experiments are illustrated with fanciful and highly decorative watercolor and ink drawings. These illustrations range from small head and tail pieces to double page representations of experiments being carried out by elfin lab assistants. The Chemistry Notebook is prized not only as a record of academic activity at the end of the 19th century but also for its unique glimpse into the formation of an important artistic talent. While sanctioned artistic outlets were very meager during Parrish’s tenure at Haverford, the college has since amassed a fine collection of artworks, most of which are available for personal study in Special Collections.

William Penn’s publication on The Excellent Priviledge of Liberty & Property was the first American printing of his translation of the Magna Carta and Haverford’s copy is the sole surviving example. In addition to the text of the Magna Carta, Penn includes in his pamphlet a summary of his charter for the colony of Pennsylvania, the Second Frame of government, and the Constitution of 1683. In all, the small publication serves to express Penn’s views on the political and civil rights of his colonists as English citizens. Once owned by Phineas Pemberton, an original member of the Pennsylvania Assembly, and passed down to his grandson John Pemberton, the volume was deposited at Haverford by Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in 1932. Additional material relating to the establishment and early governance of Pennsylvania may be found in the Papers of William Penn and other parts of the Quaker Collection.

The Cope Evans Family Papers are now available online in Triptych, the Tri-College digital library.  The collection contains almost 3,000 letters, photographs, and business documents of the closely related Quaker families of Cope and Evans of Germantown, Pennsylvania, written between 1732-1911. Letters discuss family, friends and home life, reflecting the social environment of these Quaker families. Other topics to be found within the letters include local history, Haverford history, travels in Europe, education, illness and death, health concerns, and discussions of national events such as the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln and McKinley.

Students working in Special Collections this summer have published online 1,100 letters from the Cope Evans Family Papers, beating their goal by over 100 letters.  In addition to scanning, the students researched genealogical information about the people mentioned in the letters, and cataloged the letters before posting them to Triptych, the Tri-College Digital Library.  The team consisted of (from left-to-right) Luke Mueller, MLS graduate student at Drexel University; Hannah Lonky, HC ‘10 history major; Sara Bornstein, HC ‘09 history major; and Mara Miller, HC ‘10 classics major.