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.
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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.     

While working with the Cope Evans family papers, Special Collections student worker Thea Hogarth recently came upon a surprising letter.  Written by Clementine Cope over a span of days in April 1865,  the personal letter covers many topics including education, the weather, …and the assassination of the President Lincoln.   On pages three and four, Clementine chronicles her reaction to the “the presidents dreadful death, wh. seemed dreadful enough to strike every one dumb with horror & astonishment.”  The letter can be seen in Triptych: the tri-college digital library. A transcription can be seen by choosing “page and text” from the view drop down menu and the clicking the go button.