Spooks and Books: Exploring Literary Haunts

 

        Illustration from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, 1903, Arthur E. Becher.

Ghost and other supernatural creatures seem drawn to books and to places containing many books – libraries, bookstores, the private studies of scholars and philosophers. We have explored the connection of books and manuscripts to the paranormal in several previous blog posts: books of magic spells (“Spellbinding: Works of Magic in Fantasy Literature”), books that are cursed or that deliver curses (“You Have Been Warned”), and volumes that predict, or even write, the future (“Spellbinding, Part II: Books of Power on Screen”). Some of these volumes are real, while many are fictional works in fictional settings. Either way, they speak of the lure of words, signs, and symbols in conjuring our imagination and perhaps something more! Add to this the fusty atmosphere of old libraries, the dark, eerie recesses of antiquarian bookshops, and the lonely, dimly-lit alcoves of a scholar’s study, and one can see and feel the attraction for the otherworldly.

Forgotten Lore

Libraries full of Edgar Allan Poe’s “quaint and curious volume[s] of forgotten lore” are a staple of horror fiction. Sometimes the book-lined shelves seem to attract the forces of darkness. At other times, the book collector himself is the source of the evil.

In Poe’s poem “The Raven,” the bird – clearly a denizen of the spectral plane – visits a grieving scholar in his study, offering cold comfort.

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow

From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore

 

In his novella The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, horror writer H.P. Lovecraft describes the “special” library of an evil occultist, intermixing real and imaginary works:

The bizarre collection, besides a host of standard works … embraced nearly all the cabbalists, daemonologists, and magicians known to man; and was a treasure-house of lore in the doubtful realms of alchemy and astrology … Mr. Merritt turned pale when, upon taking down a fine volume conspicuously labelled as the Qunoon-e-Islam, he found it was in truth the forbidden Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, of which he had heard such monstrous things some years previously….”

Famed ghost story writer M.R. James litters libraries throughout his tales of ghosts, demons, and cursed texts. In the short story The Tractate Middoth, a young librarian at a “certain famous library” goes to retrieve a book (containing a magical secret) from the Hebrew section for a visitor. He is found in a state of shock. Later he speaks to his friend about the occurrence:

I’ve noticed it the last day or two – a sort of unnaturally strong smell of dust. But no – that’s not what did it for me. It was something I saw…I saw an old parson in a cloak taking [the book] out…Well, I made a bit of a noise on purpose, coughed and moved my feet. He turned around and let me see his face…the upper part was perfectly dry, and the eyes were very deep-sunk; and over them, from the eyebrows to the cheek-bone, there were cobwebs – thick. Now that closed me up, as they say, and I can’t tell you anything more.

The (Re)animated

Boy: “They say this library is haunted.

Bully: By who? Ernest Hauntingway?

(Casper: A New  Beginning, 1997)

Cartoons and comics are rife with magical books, haunted libraries, and bookstores.

Gravity Falls offers a story arc centered on a set of mysterious journals containing information on otherworldly beings, instructions for building an interdimensional gateway, and an incantation for raising the dead. In the Netflix series Hilda, the title character and her friend Frieda find that the Trolberg library contains a labyrinth of secret staircases, passageways, and rooms – all lined with ancient texts – and that the fabled “witches tower” lies beneath all of these.

In the Disney series The Ghost and Molly McGee, a tiny ghost known as a story sprite invades the local bookshop and wreaks havoc by slurping up the words of the books. According to lore introduced in the story, the sprite is responsible for bringing on the Dark Ages by consuming all the books of the day. In The Owl House, young witch-in-training Luz visits the Bonesborough Library where she encounters the demon decimal system, an “encyclopsedia,” and books that come to life under certain astrological conditions. There is also a “forbidden section,” which would seem to sort of defeat the purpose.

And in the episode “Knight Terrors” of Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated, the gang visits the spooky Burlington Library and encounters disturbing phenomena, including a ghost train.

A Japanese book series, The Haunted Bookstore, has been adapted in manga-style. The book shop of the title contains a portal to the spectral dimension; many spirits from Japanese folklore enter to purchase or borrow books.

“Real” hauntings

And what about real literary hauntings? A simple internet search uncovers dozens of “real” library hauntings across the world. Since those events are well covered elsewhere, we won’t discuss them here. Suffice it to say, when next you find yourself in a secluded corner of your favorite library or bookshop and hear rustling, well, it may not be simply pages turning.

A monk surprises a ghost in the abbey library, 1704 German illustration

The Ghostly Tale of Old Book

 

The old Peoria State Hospital, 2010, Courtesy Willjay via Wikimedia Commons

A young man leaned against an old elm tree and wept for the man whose grave he had just dug. This was his habit upon each interment at the Peoria State Hospital, a mental institution in Bartonville, Illinois.

The young man was an inmate at the hospital and its resident gravedigger. He had been born in Austria. He was either mute or did not speak English. No one seemed to know his real name; he was called Manual [sic] Bookbinder after his trade before his hospitalization. He was also called “Old Book,” although he was not old. He was about 31 when he died in 1910.

The ghostly part of the tale of Old Book began at his death. It seems there were many people at his funeral, due to his popularity among patients and staff. Witnesses, including the hospital’s superintendent, swore they heard crying coming from the elm tree; some claim they saw Old Book standing by the tree. So convinced were they, that they opened his coffin to check if he was there. (He was.)

Further embellishments to the tale center on attempts to remove the elm tree from the property; efforts which caused the tree to weep and wail scaring off the groundskeepers. (Perhaps it was a weeping elm.)

Old Book’s grave can be seen at the Peoria State Hospital Cemetery, Marker No. 713. Unlike many inmates, he was given a full headstone with a recent plaque that reads:

IN EACH DEATH HE FOUND GREAT SORROW.

HE WEPT AT EACH PASSING TEARS FOR THE UNLOVED AND FORGOTTEN.

NOW, “OLD BOOK,” WE WEEP FOR YOU.

 

 

This story was originally published on the blog of the American Bookbinders Museum.

Their Own Voices: World War II Victory Girls, Venereal Disease, and Rapid Treatment on Puget Sound

 
Toward the end of 1943, the federal government, in partnership with the City of Seattle, opened a Rapid Treatment Center for young women infected with venereal disease. The facility was located at the Crittenton Home for unwed mothers in Rainier Beach, leased to the city for the duration of World War II. The project was part of a wider effort to keep syphilis and gonorrhea from sapping the strength of the nation’s fighting forces. About the same time, the state of Washington set up a second RTC at the existing girls reformatory in Grand Mound. Ultimately, the two entities merged. Hundreds of women and girls in Washington state were involuntarily quarantined and treated during the war emergency with little regard for civil liberties, while service men faced little in the way of consequences.

Public health reports from the agencies concerned offer a dizzying array of statistics and theories about “the problem.” And while officials often spoke and wrote about the sad backgrounds of the women involved, little can be found from the point of view of the women themselves. In this essay, we’ll listen to a few voices that come through the din.

The Crittenton Home

In 1899 a group of women in the Seattle area, inspired by the message of millionaire-philanthropist Charles Crittenton, formed a “rescue circle” to help “fallen women” in their community. The establishment quickly evolved from one meant to rescue prostitutes to a sanctuary for pregnant teens and unwed mothers. When the original wooden home in Rainier Beach proved inadequate, the ladies replaced it with a sturdy brick structure at the same location. The Crittenton Home weathered changing economic times and social norms for nearly three quarters of a century, with one significant interruption during World War II.

Uncle Sam Needs You

In 1943, the Crittenton Home was transformed, temporarily, into a Rapid Treatment Center (RTC) for women with venereal disease (STDs). Many of the women targeted were the “Victory Girls” who populated Seattle’s downtown and waterfront, as well as other ports of embarkation, during the war years. Not exactly prostitutes, these good time girls were willing to give their all for the war effort. Unfortunately, the resulting outbreaks of syphilis and gonorrhea threatened to sap the fighting power of the armed forces, so punitive measures were taken. In many places, women and teens were arrested and jailed if suspected of being infected; if contagion was proved, they could be quarantined, even when no laws had been broken. In an obvious double-standard, infected enlisted men were treated on base and were not subject to arrest. Nor was the very young age of some of the girls considered a cause for charges against the men involved.

So serious was the perceived threat to public health that the federal government established an agency, headed up by one Eliot Ness, with funding from the 1941 Lanham Act, to combat the problem.[i] The Seattle treatment center, run jointly by the city and the feds, was one of dozens nationwide under the aegis of the Division of Social Protection of the Federal Works Agency. Many were set up at former Civilian Conversation Corps camps in rural areas. The Crittenton Home, already fitted up for the care of girls and young women and far removed from temptation, seemed a perfect location for what were, in most cases, first offenders. (The word “amateurs” is often used in government reports.) The trustees of the home were persuaded to lease the building and grounds to the city for the duration.

In some ways, the program for the residents was quite similar to that of the Crittenton girls – school studies, chores, occupational training (typing, sewing), and fun and games interspersed with medical exams and treatments. A type of self-government prevailed, including elected officers. However, unlike their predecessors, the inmates of the euphemistically-titled Lake View Manor School for Girls were all court-mandated. Further, they were not (necessarily) pregnant. The grounds were patrolled by guards. When one “faithful and respected guard” passed away, the inmates raised funds for a floral arrangement. 

Situated as it was within an urban area, the home found itself something of a curiosity. Visitors included society women such as Mrs. Kenneth B. Colman (Edith, 1905-1970) and attorney Lady Willie Forbus (her name, not a title, 1892-1993), Seattle Mayor William Devin (1898-1982), and Father (later Bishop) Thomas Gill (1908-73), all in addition to a steady stream of public health and military officials. The residents were often called upon to entertain visiting dignitaries with skits and songs.

Lake View Manor did aspire to something more than medical cures; the authorities hoped fervently for moral rehabilitation and “individualized redirection,” as well.[ii] A memo to Ness written by his local representative invites him to come and see “what can be done with promiscuous girls.” The writer, Edwin James Cooley, adds that the inmates are “worthwhile human material.” [iii]

Cooley enclosed copies of the Tattler, a typewritten newsletter written by the residents, as evidence of their creative spirit. True to its name, the Tattler offered up gossipy, often catty, tidbits about both residents and staff, using full names. For example,

“Where on earth did Alice Flowers get those bedroom slippers? For a while we thought someone had dyed their French poodles red and turned them loose in the house.”[iv]

Cultural affairs

Treatments at the time consisted of sulfonamides for those with gonorrhea and a combination of drip and injection therapy with drugs containing arsenic for those infected with syphilis. “Rapid treatment” typically meant six to ten weeks of confinement, as opposed to a year or more of outpatient treatment. The use of penicillin, which could effect a cure in a far shorter period of time, was just around the corner. In fact, a short item in the Tattler refers to the experimental use of penicillin:

“To our extreme gratification, on March 8 [1944], we received our first quota of Penicillin, released to the U.S. Public Health Service by the War Production Board. Until this time, it has except in rare cases been used exclusively for the armed forces. Sulfa resistant patients were immediately started on Penicillin treatment and results have been definitely successful.”[v]

Sketch of Medical Director Harb by Marilyn Rogers, in Tattler.

The war on VD included weapons familiar to other epidemics, including AIDS in the 1980s and COVID-19 in the 2020s: swab tests, isolation, contact tracing, and medical monitoring. For the Lake View Manor women, medical follow-up meant periodic tests to assess whether disease was still present. Three negative gonorrheal cultures were required before a woman was eligible for release. Tattler snippets refer frequently to the intimately-obtained cultures in humorous terms:

“Wonder why some of the girls are having such a hard time sitting down recently? Essie, you should be built more like Doreen.”

“Sweet consolation, girls. Mrs. Knippel insists the ‘pointed’ part of treatment hurts her worse than it does us.”

And….in words many of us may relate to:

“The way Irene Francis’s culture came back, we would like an explanation in language we all can understand. How about that, Dr. Harb?”

The use of the Crittenton Home for a treatment center by the city lasted from late fall 1943 until sometime in 1946, a little more than two years. Estimates of numbers served at any given time range from 43 to 100 women. The annual budget was $100,000. Early on, planners had promised that inmates would receive assistance with placement in jobs once they left. Unfortunately, no quantifiable information is available to determine actual outcomes.

The Washington Infirmary

The push for rapid treatment of venereal disease during wartime was a nationwide effort; across the country at least 59 RTCs were established. In the Puget Sound area another RTC was set up at roughly the same time as that at the Crittenton Home. The second Washington facility was located in a cottage at the state’s Training School for Girls, a reformatory at Grand Mound near Centralia. Priority placement was given to women from the Tacoma area and, then, to others outside Seattle. Preliminary planning documents indicate that girls were to be quarantined for not less than four weeks nor more than eight, with the goal of complete cure. Inmates were to be segregated by race (black and white) and by their sexual history (amateur vs. professional).[vi] Given the tight quarters that must have existed in the dormitory-style cottage, it is doubtful that either of those dictates were carried out. Planning documents note that “patients should be allowed to have choice in making plans for rehabilitation.” That last word implies that the inmates were not simply diseased patients to be cured, they were moral misfits who needed to be reintegrated into society.[vii]

Six months into operations, that Grand Mound facility reported curing 94 of 150 women treated at what was then called the Washington Infirmary. While the treatment center at the Crittenton Home was run by the Seattle Department of Health, Washington Infirmary was a state operation. Both, of course, relied heavily on federal funds to operate.

Early in 1945, despite the objection of medical personnel, Seattle officials moved to shut down operations at the Crittenton Home citing vacant beds due to rapid turnover resulting from the new penicillin regimen. At this point, the state stepped in with a new plan: move the women and girls remaining at Grand Mound to the Crittenton Home, merging the two entities. The transfer happened in March 1945.

From here the timeline becomes a bit hazy. It is likely that rapid treatment under state auspices continued at the Seattle location for another year. Probably early in 1946, the Washington Infirmary moved to a structure at the little-used Paine Field airbase near Everett. Two years later, it moved again, this time to the campus of Firland Sanitorium, a tuberculosis hospital in what is now the city of Shoreline. On June 10, 1949, with the war emergency far in the rearview mirror, the 60-bed wing of Firland devoted to VD treatment closed permanently.

Meanwhile, because the Crittenton board had only leased the property to the city, the trustees were able to re-open the home to unwed mothers by August of 1946.

Behind the Numbers

Reports of the Seattle Department of Health are full of statistics about the VD problem, including age and race of the (female) offenders, the “place of meeting” (tavern, hotel, dance hall, street, etc., the location of “actual exposure” (hotel, home, street, taxi, brothel, etc.); types of treatment, cure rates. The occupation and marital status of the women arrested is noted. In the reports from 1944, occupation categories include “prostitute,” “waitress,” and “other.” In some reports, women are categorized as “amateurs” or “professionals.” One striking statistic that emerges from the records is the number of uninfected women who are arrested. In the first trimester of 1944, infected women make up only 17% of the women arrested and examined – indicating a huge number of unnecessary invasive procedures.

Missing from the reports is any sense of the humanity of the women. A much different picture emerges from the pages of the Tattler, the home-made newsletter printed semi-regularly by the inmates of Lake View Manor. In addition, reports from officials made in the course of trying to track down runaways and girls who had left the Washington Infirmary owing money provide glimpses of what life held for them.

In May 1944, the Tacoma Department of Health tracked down a young woman who had left the Washington Infirmary in order to collect $7.19 owed to the facility presumably for small items such as stationery and postage. Lois K. was found working at the Puyallup Laundry and living with her mother; she promised to remit the funds after her next pay day. Another young woman, Ruth T., was located working at the Tacoma Elks Club.[viii]

One Garnetta F. was the subject of much concern by the Pierce County Welfare Department. It seems she had bounced in and out of the Grand Mound facility, her abusive mother’s home, and the county jail. As of December 1944, she was 17, pregnant and without any clear plans, although she claimed to have a fiancé who was not the father of her child. She readily admitted to many sexual encounters of which she was not ashamed. According to the report of the county placement officer,

“Garnetta has no particular plan for the future and said she had not allowed herself to think ahead. She did not want to go to the White Shield Home [a Tacoma maternity hospital for unwed mothers] and hoped that she could marry her boyfriend, a sailor from the U.S.S Commencement Bay, and that they could work out some plan.” [ix]

For her sins, Garnetta earned a place in the sheriff’s jail records alongside men held for burglary, drunkenness, car theft, and disorderly conduct. Her arrest record simply states: “Held for Board of Health.”[x]

Despite the many strikes against her, Garnetta was a survivor. Public records reveal that she married another man and had a daughter in 1946. She died at the age of 62 in Skagit County. No information is available on the outcome of her earlier pregnancy. [xi]

From the pages of the Tattler, we learn more about the young women of Lake View Manor, their hopes and dreams, their thoughts on their confinement, and, in some cases, their lives after quarantine. Although the stays were relatively short, it seems that bonds were formed and friends kept in touch. In the column “Let’s Follow Our Alumni,” we learn that Adela G. is “dishing out ice cream and smiles at Bartell’s Drug Store,” Connie M. is working at the Port of Embarkation, Eleanora S. and Sally S. are “beating out that ‘hup-one-two-three” at the Wave [sic] Station, Hunter’s College, New York, and that others are working at Sick’s Brewery, Boeing Aircraft, and the Seattle-Tacoma Shipyards. Katherine S. reports that she is married and living in Toppenish.[xii]

A news clipping from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, contained within the files of the National Archives, shows Frankie Gribbin, a former resident of the treatment center, in uniform as a recruiting petty officer for the Waves.[xiii]

As noted above, the pages of the Tattler are filled with many humorous anecdotes revealing an effort to cope with confinement and obligatory treatments with humor. The institution is regularly referred to as a school and the inmates as students. Jokes, poems, sketches, and news from “The Grapevine” give a fairly rosy picture of life behind the walls, albeit with some hints of deeper concerns. An anonymous poem is titled “Contemplation of Suicide:”

I wonder if, to the place I’m going

All my sins will follow me –

And point their ugly fingers

And say, “you’ve sinned, you see, you see.”

Or if, when this life is over

I can draw a carefree breath,

And find a friendly solace –

When I leave this earth in death.

As for hopes and dreams, it seems they continued to revolve around men in uniform.

Conclusion

The war emergency of the 1940s caused upheaval in many lives. The women and girls who found themselves quarantined during this time might have much to say about civil liberties. Many more suffered arrest and intrusive testing for little more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nonetheless, looking beyond the statistics, we can find plenty of evidence of resiliency, courage, and the human spirit.

We’ll conclude with these words from the Tattler:

“It’s nearly time for your roving reporter to be in bed, girls, so before the Matron catches me giving out with all this gossip, I’ll take my leave. But, I’ll be watching you – better be good. Bye, now.”

 

Sources

Odin W. Anderson, Ph.D., “Syphilis and Society: Problems of Control in the United States, 1912-1964,” Health Information Foundation, Research Series 22, 1965, pp. 18-21.

Edwin James Cooley, Regional Representative, to Eliot Ness, Director, Division of Social Protection, Community War Services, February 17, 1944, Seattle Rapid Treatment Center, Subject Classified Central Files, 1940-1947, the Office of Community War Services (Record Group 215), National Archives;

Edwin James Cooley, Regional Representative, to Eliot Ness, Director, Division of Social Protection, Community War Services, March 7, 1944, Seattle Rapid Treatment Center, Subject Classified Central Files, 1940-1947, the Office of Community War Services (Record Group 215), National Archives;

Edwin James Cooley, Regional Representative, to Eliot Ness, Director, Division of Social Protection, Community War Services, May 9, 1944, Seattle Rapid Treatment Center, Subject Classified Central Files, 1940-1947, the Office of Community War Services (Record Group 215), National Archives;

Lakeview Tattler, various issues, typescript, undated, Seattle Rapid Treatment Center, Subject Classified Central Files, 1940-1947, the Office of Community War Services (Record Group 215), National Archives;

John C. Cutler, M.D., M.P.H., and R.C. Arnold, M.D., “Venereal Disease Control by Health Departments in the Past: Lessons for the Present,” American Journal of Public Health, Vol. 78, No. 4, pp. 372-376;

Marilyn E. Hegarty, Victory Girls, Khaki-Wackies, and Patriotutes: The Regulation of Female Sexuality During World War II, Kindle Edition (NYU Press, 2007), 61-84;

A.L. Ringle, M.D., Director, State Department of Health, to Rogan Jones, Director, Department of Finance, Business & Budgets, February 19, 1945, Box 12, Institution Files, 02-A-449, Washington State Archives, Olympia, Washington;

“Lack of Funds Hits Health Unit,” Seattle Daily Times, April 10, 1949, p. 3;

“Infirmary Cures 94 Women,” Ibid., May 18, 1944, p. 4;

“Social-Disease Center May Be Run by State,” Ibid., January 9, 1945, p. 5;

“City to Operate Woman Hospital,” Ibid., July 29, 1943.

 

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[i] The city’s application for Lanham Act funding  states that in April, 1943, Seattle was “the third most important source of venereal diseases in the entire country among the personnel of the U.S. Navy.” Not for nothing did the city’s port area earn a reputation as a sailortown.

[ii] Edwin James Cooley to Eliot Ness, February 17, 1944.

[iii] Edwin James Cooley to Eliot Ness, May 9, 1944.

[iv] Tattler. Note the pages of the Tattler are undated and unpaginated.

[v] Tattler, undated. Item likely submitted by the facility’s medical director.

[vi] Memorandum, “Results of Talk with State Health Department,” undated, Washington State Archives.

[vii] Ibid.

[viii] Correspondence, RTC Grand Mound, Washington State Archives

[ix] Placement Officer to Ines Taylor, Pierce County Welfare Department, December 29, 1944, retrieved from Washington State Archives.

[x] Arrest records, Pierce County, retrieved from Ancestry.com

[xi] Ancestry.com

[xii] Tattler, undated. WAVES were “Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service,” part of the naval reserves.

[xiii] "Husband Killed in Action, She Joins Waves Here," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, undated clipping.

A Machine for the 19th Century: The Iron Hand Press

Originally published on the blog of the american bookbinders museum

The duke said what he was after was a printing-office. We found it; a little bit of a concern, up over a carpenter shop — carpenters and printers all gone to the meeting, and no doors locked. It was a dirty, littered-up place, and had ink marks, and handbills with pictures of horses and runaway slaves on them, all over the walls. The duke shed his coat and said he was all right now.

— Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Twain’s imaginary print shop may well have used an iron hand press, a type of letterpress invented in the first part of the 19th century and favored by newspaper printers. Twain knew whereof he wrote. While a teen he worked as a typesetter and apprentice printer in his brother’s newspaper office in Hannibal, Missouri, going on to work in a variety of print shops around the country.

Like wooden presses, the iron press used movable type set in a frame, along with pre-cut graphic images such as woodblocks.

The iron hand press offered improvements over the four-centuries-old wooden press, although it never completely replaced it. Made of cast iron, it was of course sturdier, less susceptible to damage, and easier to clean of, say, ink stains than its wooden counterpart. But the real advantage came in the improvements that drove the ‘press.’ In place of the long wooden bar that had to be pulled by a brawny arm to bring the platen onto the type, the iron presses used a variety of levers, counterweights, and coils to lower and release the platen. Though brawn was still required, the amount of force required for each “pull” was less, allowing the work to go much faster; it also allowed larger sheets of paper to be printed at one go.

The first iron hand press in the United States was created by George Clymer in Philadelphia in 1813. His very ornate Columbia Press, covered with symbols of Americana, did not take off stateside. Moving to England Clymer found a much more receptive market. (Lord Stanhope had invented the very first iron press in 1800, so the British were familiar with the concept.) Within a few decades his press and a number of others modeled on it were common across Europe.

Eight years following Clymer’s invention, fellow American Samuel Rust designed a somewhat simpler iron press which he called the Washington Hand Press. Like Clymer’s press, the design was not proprietary; many manufacturers began offering the Washington press in the decades that followed. Improvements included steam power and a rotary printing surface. The iron hand press continued to be popular into the early years of the 20th century, although by this time it was often adapted as a way to get a quick proof for a job that would be printed on a more mechanized machine.

One notable advantage of the Washington press was its ability to be dismantled for shipment, an important matter for a heavy object in a far-flung country. As their names indicate, these presses were big and heavy. For example the famed Kelmscott Chaucer was printed by William Morris on an iron hand press standing seven feet tall and weighing over one ton. (Apparently no one is willing to obtain an exact weight on the machine.)[1]

The American Bookbinders Museum obtained its Washington press from the local Odd Fellows Hall in San Francisco. It was manufactured by Ostrander Seymour Company in Chicago about 1904. Rumor has it that it was last used by book designer and printer Adrian Wilson (1923-1988) in the City by the Bay, but this has not been substantiated. Considered one of this country’s significant book artists, Wilson designed and printed a number of books and booklets at his studio, “The Press of Tuscany Valley,” including the influential volume The Design of the Book. If, indeed, our press was used by Wilson, it would have been a secondary piece of equipment.

Meanwhile back in a fictional Mississippi backwater town, circa 1845, Twain’s con man turns out to be something of an artist himself:

[The duke] had set up and printed off two little jobs for farmers in that printing-office – horse-bills – and took the money, four dollars. He set up a little piece of poetry, which he made himself, out of his own head — three verses — kind of sweet and saddish — the name of it was, “Yes, crush, cold world, this breaking heart” – and he left that all set up and ready to print in  the paper, and didn’t charge nothing for it.

— Eleanor Boba

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[1] David W. Dunlap, “Mature, Muscular, Literary and Available,” New York Times, 5 Dec. 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/06/arts/design/kelmscott-press-a-thing-of-iron-musculature-is-to-be-sold.html?_r=0 (accessed 12 June 2014).

 

Ink In Their Blood: Print Apprentices Make Good

 This essay was originally published on the blog of the American Bookbinders Museum

“James Franklin, printer, in Queen’s Street, wants a likely lad for an apprentice.”[1]

The life of a printer’s apprentice or “devil” was no picnic. It usually involved long hours of arduous labor for little or no pay with only small hope of advancement. Apprenticeship – until at least the middle of the 19th century – meant a multi-year iron-clad contract of indentured servitude. Runaway apprentices, and there were many, could be hunted down in similar fashion to escaped slaves.

Yet for boys of a bookish bent work in the printing or bookbinding trades offered opportunities to read, write, and mix with the educated. For a few “likely lads” apprenticeship was a springboard toward a literary career.

Silence Dogood was an opinionated widow in old Boston who liked to express herself in lengthy epistles to the New England-Courant. Widow Dogood was also the pseudonym of a 16-year old Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790). As an apprentice in his brother James’ print shop, Franklin was frustrated that his literary ambitions were confined to the “occasional ballads” he was allowed to print at the shop and sell on the streets. He hit upon the Silence Dogood persona as a way to express his opinions on a variety of topics in a public forum. His brother’s paper, like many of the day, was hungry for content and happy to print the 14 letters that were slipped under the office door after-hours.

An engraving based on an 1876 oil painting “Young Franklin at the Press” by Enoch Wood Perry, in the collection of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.

It is easy to see the future patriot and statesman in the widow’s pronouncements:

I am naturally very jealous for the Rights and liberties of my Country, and the least appearance of an incroachment on those invaluable Priviledges, is apt to make my Blood boil exceedingly. I have likewise a natural inclination to observe and reprove the Faults of others, at which I have an excellent Faculty. I speak this by Way of Warning to all such whose Offences shall come under my Cognizance, for I never intend to wrap my Talent in a Napkin. (Silence Dogood letter #2, printed April 16, 1722)

Otherwise, Franklin put his time as apprentice to good use by reading everything he could get his hands on. He would beg, borrow, and buy books, even skipping meals to save up his pennies. (Franklin may or may not have coined the term “A penny saved is a penny earned”.) He also learned the print trade well enough to run the paper while his brother was briefly jailed for offending the local authorities.

A century and a half later Samuel Clemens (1835-1910) found himself in Franklin’s shoes. Like Franklin, he was apprenticed to his brother as a printer’s devil. He was allowed a bit more latitude for self-expression than Franklin, and apparently did not suffer the beatings Franklin endured at the hands of his brother. However, his association with his brother was not without friction of a different kind.

A Young Sam Clemens with a printer’s composing stick spelling out his name in reverse, as it would be for typesetting. The daguerreotype image is sometimes reproduced reversed so that we may read the name “SAM.” The date of the image is estimated at 1850 when Clemens would have been 15.

Clemens was allowed to contribute humorous pieces to the Hannibal Journal, his brother’s paper. And, like Franklin, he was allowed editorial control during shorts stretches of time when his brother was otherwise engaged. However, his brother Orion did not take kindly to some of Sam’s antics, including his habit of lampooning local figures in the paper. In one case Sam slipped a piece into the paper making fun of what may have been an actual suicide attempt by the editor of a rival paper; the story was accompanied by an unflattering woodcut.

Both Franklin and Clemens ultimately broke the bonds of apprenticeship and “lit out for the territories” – Franklin for Philadelphia where he paid more dues as a printer’s assistant before setting up in business for himself, producing a famous almanac, and entering into the political fray that was to result in the American Revolution. Clemens trained as a riverboat pilot and wandered around the country before returning to the newspaper business and, ultimately, a celebrated career as author and humorist.

“Wanted: An Apprentice to the Printing Business. Apply soon.”[2]

Clemens’ fascination with the printed word took him to the brink of financial ruin. Perhaps remembering the tiresome task of setting type by hand, Clemens – now Mark Twain – invested a huge share of his literary earnings in the development of an automatic typesetting machine, the Paige Compositor. Only two of these monsters were ever made and they didn’t work well. Twain lost his shirt.

In the last year of his life, the famed storyteller gave credit to the years when he paid his dues in the print industry:

One isn’t a printer ten years without setting up acres of good and bad literature, and learning – consciously or unconsciously – to discriminate between the two.” (From essay “The Turning Point of my Life,” Harper’s Bazar [sic], 1910.)

Walt Whitman (1819-92) had fond memories of his days as an apprentice and, like Twain, credited his early experiences with the start of his literary career:

I commenced when I was but a boy of eleven or twelve writing sentimental bits for the old “Long Island Patriot,” in Brooklyn; this was about 1832. Soon after, I had a piece or two in George P. Morris’s then celebrated and fashionable “Mirror,” of New York city. I remember with what half-suppress’d excitement I used to watch for the big, fat, red-faced, slow-moving, very old English carrier who distributed the “Mirror” in Brooklyn; and when I got one, opening and cutting the leaves with trembling fingers. How it made my heart double-beat to see my piece on the pretty white, paper in nice type.” (Whitman, Specimen Days, 1892).

Whitman’s career in printing and publishing gave him a thorough understanding and appreciation of type, design, paper, and binding. He brought these skills to bear on the publication of the various editions of Leave of Grass, his magnum opus, even setting some type himself for the first edition. He obsessed over the exact look of each page, each image, and the binding of each edition. He haunted the offices of the typographers hired to create the book, watching over every detail. In a letter to his brother concerning the 1860 edition, he wrote:

The typographical appearance of the book has been just as I directed it. The printers and foremen thought I was crazy, and there were all sorts of supercilious squints (about the typography I ordered, I mean)—but since it has run through the press, they have simmered down.[3]

The spine of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, second edition, 1856. Whitman included a sentence from a private letter from Ralph Waldo Emerson without that author’s permission: “I greet you at the beginning of a great career.”

Technological breakthroughs in the printing and publishing industries had a huge influence on Twain and Whitman and their ability to achieve fame and some fortune. In Franklin’s day, the print industry was of an even more manual nature, but still a critical element in the service of political ideas. In 1953 a young Sam Clemens marveled at the progress that had been made in printing upon viewing Ben Franklin’s wooden hand press on display in the Museum of the Patent Office.[4]

The bed is of wood and is not unlike a very shallow box. The platen is only half the size of the bed, thus requiring two pulls of the lever to each full-size sheet. What vast progress has been made in the art of printing! The press is capable of printing about 125 sheets per hours; and after seeing it, I have watched Hoe’s great [iron hand press] machine throwing off its 20,000 sheets in the same space of time, with an interest I never before felt.” (from Mark Twain’s Letters, published 1917)

Franklin the inventor may well have predicted such advancements in the trade of his youth. He was always a printer at heart and felt strongly enough about the profession to incorporate metaphors of printing and bookbinding into the epitaph he wrote for himself as a youth and continued to espouse into old age:

The Body of

B. Franklin, Printer;

Like the Cover of an old Book,

Its Contents torn out,

And stript of its Lettering and Gilding,

Lies here, Food for Worms.

But the Work shall not be wholly lost:

For it will, as he believ’d, appear once more,

In a new & more perfect Edition,

Corrected and amended

By the Author.

 

When Franklin died, the printers and apprentices of Philadelphia took a prominent spot in his funeral procession.

 

— Eleanor Boba

Sources:

Branch, Edgar Marquess. The Literary Apprenticeship of Mark Twain. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1950.

The Electric Ben Franklin. Independence Hall Association. http://www.ushistory.org/Franklin.

Fanning, Philip Ashley. Mark Twain and Orion Clemens: Brothers, Partners, Strangers. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003.

Michelson, Bruce. Printer’s Devil: Mark Twain and the American Publishing Revolution. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006.

The Walt Whitman Archive, Ed Folsom & Kenneth M. Price, editors. The Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. http://www.whitmanarchive.org.

[1] Actual text of advertisement published upon Benjamin’s Franklin running away from apprenticeship at his brother’s print shop.

[2] Actual text of advertisement published upon Samuel Clemens’ running away from apprenticeship at his brother’s print shop.

[3] “Whitman Making Books/Books Making Whitman: A Catalog and Commentary,” by Ed Folsom. The Walt Whitman Archive, http://www.whitmanarchive.org/criticism/current/anc.00150.html. Visited August 30 and 31, 2014. This extensive article describes Whitman as a book artist, the influence of times on his design work, and the influence of design on the interpretation of his poetry.

[4] The press Clemens saw is now in the collection of the National Museum of American History, part of the Smithsonian Institution. It is associated with Franklin’s sojourn in England in the 1720s and was obtained by an American banker in that country in 1841. Seventy years later it was sold to the Smithsonian.