BANCROFTIANAN E W S L E T T E R O F T H E F R I E N D S O F T H E B A N C R O F T L I B R A R Y

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“Sinners & Pilgrims”Colonel Denny’s Journal and Photo Album Give Different Version of The Innocents Abroad

—by Robert Hirst

In October 1867, near the end of thefive-month-long Quaker City

“excursion to Europe and the HolyLand,” Mark Twain wrote to his oldfriend Joe Goodman: “This pleasureparty of ours is composed of thed—dest, rustiest, [most] ignorant, vul-gar, slimy, psalm-singing cattle thatcould be scraped up in seventeen States.They wanted Holy Land, and they gotit. It was a stunner. It is an awful trial toa man’s religion to waltz it through theHoly Land.”

That intemperate outburst gives us afair idea of the animosity that had de-veloped between Mark Twain and mostof the 64 other passengers. When theship reached home in November, hepublished a savage blast at the “pil-grims” in the New York Herald.

“Well, I was bitter on those passen-gers,” he explained to Mary MasonFairbanks, one of the few who remainedon good terms with him. “You don’tknow what atrocious things women, &men too gray-haired & old to have theirnoses pulled, said about me. And butfor your protecting hand I would havegiven them a screed or two that wouldhave penetrated even their muddy intel-lects & afforded them something worthabusing me about.”

Indeed, he obviously hoped his Her-ald letter would “bring out bitter repliesfrom some of the Quaker City’s strangemenagerie of ignorance, imbecility, big-otry & dotage, & so give me an excuseto go into the secret history of the ex-cursion & tell truthfully how that curi-ous company conducted themselves inforeign lands and on board ship.”

The “strange menagerie” of passen-gers wisely refrained from answeringMark Twain in print. But he never re-ally needed any “excuse” to go into thesecret history of the excursion, and thatvengeful impulse soon began to fuel thesatire he ultimately directed at his fel-low travelers in The Innocents Abroad(1869).

Essentially a factual account, Inno-cents nevertheless contained elements offiction — incidents and charactersbased only remotely on the facts. Mucheffort has therefore been spent over theyears to find independent or parallelaccounts of the trip, the better to un-derstand how Mark Twain altered orembellished the facts.

Colonel William R. Denny’s journaland photograph album, written andcompiled while he was a passenger onthe Quaker City, were recently given toBancroft’s Mark Twain Papers byDenny’s great-grandchildren. These

remarkable documents are among themost illuminating collateral accountsever found for the Quaker City excur-sion.

In a narrow sense they are not en-tirely new to us. It is 25 years now sinceI first set eyes on Colonel Denny’s al-bum and journal, in the summer of1973. I stumbled on their existencewhile working as a graduate student forthe Mark Twain Papers, visiting thelibrary at the University of Virginia inCharlottesville. At the time I was also

William R. DennyA former Confederate colonel and spy fromWinchester, Virginia. The back of the photographis signed, “An Innocent Abroad,”probably in hisson’s hand.

Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain)Embarked on a five-month-long “excursion toEurope and the Holy Land” in 1867—a voyagehe would describe in “The Innocents Abroad”(1869), which became his first best-seller.

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From the Director

Students? In Bancroft?

Charles B. FaulhaberThe James D. Hart Director

The Bancroft Library

First, some statistics: Last year, thelargest single category of Bancroft users

—Cal undergraduates—accounted for23% of the 16,207 visitors to Bancroft.Cal graduate students comprised the nextlargest category, 17.5%. Thus, just over40% of Bancroft’s patrons were Berkeleystudents. All told, 58% were students fromCal or other institutions — 32% graduatestudents, 26% undergraduates. Not sur-prisingly, over half the visits to Bancroftwere for the purpose of doing research ondissertations, theses, or term papers.

This is a far cry from the situation as re-cently as the 1970s. Undergraduates werenot admitted to Bancroft on a regular basisuntil 1973, several years after professor ofEnglish James D. Hart became Bancroft’snew director. He was well aware of the im-portance of exposing students to primarysource materials — the raw material ofscholarship. Reading a sanitized, regular-ized printed text is simply not the same asworking with an original manuscript.

One of the principle tasks of highereducation is teaching how to exercise criti-cal judgment, how to find and evaluateevidence.

Over the past 25 years, faculty and staffhave made effective use of Bancroft’s col-lections to teach this lesson. Leon Litwack,for example, Pulitzer Prize-winning profes-sor of history, regularly sends studentsfrom his introductory U.S. history courseto work on term papers using Bancroftsources. The first time he did this, in 1989,700 students descended on Bancroft’s 35-seat Heller Reading Room without priornotice (students and faculty being whatthey are). The resultant chaos has becomelegend. Currently we work with about 120students from the class each time ProfessorLitwack teaches it, showing them thekinds of documentary materials we haveon topics ranging from the opening of the

American West to social protest move-ments of the 1960s and 1970s.

Other faculty members regularlyschedule semester-long classes in Ban-croft’s three seminar rooms. ProfessorsJoseph Duggan (French) and Alan Nelson(English) teach French and English pale-ography and textual criticism using liter-ary and documentary manuscripts rang-ing from 13th-century French Arthurianromances and the Roman de la Rose to thehousehold records of Thomas Howard,Earl of Surrey.

This past spring Professor RobertBrentano, one of Cal’s most distinguishedmedievalists, held several sessions of hisupper division course on medieval Englishhistory in Bancroft in order to show someof our 15th-century English manuscripts,including both of our Wycliff Bibles.

And the Classics Department offered,for the first time, a class on papyrology us-ing Bancroft’s collection of ancient Greekpapyri — the largest in the U.S. and anincomparable resource for the study ofHellenistic Egypt, especially now thatmany of these papyri have been digitizedand made available on the internet(http://sunsite.Berkeley.EDU/APIS/).

One of the most interesting classestaking place in Bancroft these days isEngineering 24, a freshman seminar on“Sources in Engineering, Science, andTechnology” organized by Deputy Direc-tor Peter Hanff and Professor JamesCasey, Associate Dean of the College ofEngineering. Beginning engineering stu-dents are encouraged to think about prob-lem-solving by looking at classical in-stances, using sources such as the treatiseson calculus (originally called fluxions) byLeibnitz and Newton in the 17th century,a 19th-century steamship engineer’s diaryof experiments to improve the perfor-mance of steam engines, the designs ofsteam car pioneer Abner Doble, and thepapers of nuclear physicist E.O.Lawrence,creator of the cyclotron. (See the Spring

1998 issue of Bancroftiana, p. 12.)Sometimes instruction takes place one-

on-one, between a student with a questionand a staff member behind the referencedesk. Last spring a student came in to findout if we had any information on Rosy theRiveter, the World War II heroine of thehome front. Circulation Supervisor SusanSnyder guided her to a large (and unfortu-nately still largely uncatalogued) collectionof war posters. The result was a muchmore complex and interesting paper onthe portrayal of women in the war effort.As Susan states, “she had come intoBancroft with trepidation, but she left asthe devoted and grateful author of asmashing paper.”

At the graduate level, thanks to thegenerosity of Kenneth and Dorothy Hillof San Diego, we’ve been able to awardtwo fellowships each year to studentsworking on dissertations that require theconsultation of source materials inBancroft. This year Elizabeth Leavy (ArtHistory, UC Berkeley) has been studyingthe social and intellectual context of JohnMuir’s Picturesque California (1888); whileRick Warner (History, UC Santa Cruz)has been working on the Cora Indian cul-tures of northwestern Mexico.

Bancroft’s two editorial offices, the Re-gional Oral History Office (ROHO) andthe Mark Twain Project, have also beeninvolved with instruction. This is the sec-ond year that ROHO has sponsored aWorking Group on Oral History in col-laboration with the Townsend Center forthe Humanities. It brings together stu-dents and faculty from many departmentsto share insights and problems withROHO staff. And for the past two years,Bob Hirst, general editor of the MarkTwain Project, has been sharing his knowl-edge of America’s favorite author withgraduate and undergraduate students inthe English Department.

Students? In Bancroft? You bet!

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Habent sua fata libelli: “Books havetheir own destinies,” wrote the

Roman poet Ovid.When it comes to books and desti-

nies, he should know, since he wasbanished by the emperor Augustus tothe shores of the Black Sea in 8 CE fora book — “Arts of Love,” publishedsome years before — and some moreproximate unspecified offense. Ovidcooled his heels in what is now Roma-nia until his death in 17 CE.

As for his books, they lived on andwere copied hundreds of times throughthe Middle Ages. Early printers issuedmyriad editions.

When in early March Anthony Bliss,Curator of Rare Books and LiteraryManuscripts, e-mailed me that theBancroft had just acquired a 1583 copyof Ovid’s longest and most famouspoem, Metamorphoses, I have to admitI expected to be underwhelmed. “Justanother 16th-century impression!”I thought to myself.

I was in for a surprise, for it turnsout not to be an edition of the poem atall. Instead, it is a Parisian printing ofan illustrated reworking of Ovid’s poemby Johannes Spreng (1524-1601), aremarkable Augsburg Meistersinger.

Just detailing the various traditionsand practices out of which the bookemerged opens a window on a fascinat-ing set of cultural currents in Germanyand France in the second half of the16th century.

Ovid’s Metamorphoses is treasured bycurrent scholars of Latin literature forits witty, often ironic shifts of perspec-tive, its complex narrative structure, itsjuxtaposition of literary styles. But overthe long run of its European reception,Ovid’s magnum opus was treasuredabove all as a compendious collection ofclassical myth. Glosses and commentar-ies indicate how much attentionmasters and students paid to themythological lore it contained. Transla-tions into just about every European

Ovid’s Metamorphoses Metamorphosed —by Ralph Hexter

language, not to mention thousands ofworks in every medium inspired by talesfrom the Metamorphoses, brought Ovidout of Latin schoolrooms into the widervernacular world.

Then as now, such obviously “irrel-evant” learning had both cultural cachetand cultural opponents. The tales ofpagan gods and heroes (and theiramorous adventures) had often raisedconcerns among Christian educators.From the late 12th century, but withincreasing fervor in the 13th and 14thcenturies, Latin commentators variouslymined the tales for universally appli-cable morals or allegorized them inspecifically Christian terms, not onlyjustifying continued study of theMetamorphoses but creating a newindustry — a complementary traditionitself inexhaustible and infinitelymalleable. Vernacular audiences pre-sented new challenges and new oppor-tunities, as did, of course, the greattechnical novelty of printing.

By the end of the 15th century,enterprising printers engaged scholars toprepare more and morematerial for publication.Latin books predominated,but the 16th century sawincreased printing of ver-nacular texts, which openednew markets and called fornew promotions. So it wasthat near the middle of thecentury, a German publisher,Ivo Schöffer, got JörgWickram to prepare aGerman translation of theMetamorphoses for printing.

Wickram didn’t translatethe 12,000-some lines ofOvid’s Latin anew. Instead,he got hold of a manuscriptof a rare, late-12th-centuryGerman verse rendering ofthe Metamorphoses by monkand poet Albrecht vonHalberstadt, likely written

for the great literary patron Hermann,Landgrave of Thuringia.

Wickram updated the language toappeal to contemporary tastes (thinkcolorizing technician working for a16th-century Ted Turner). The bookcame out in 1545 and had an immedi-ate impact. No less a figure than HansSachs in the two months followingpublication of Wickram’s Metamorpho-ses created over 40 songs inspired bytales from Ovid.

Collections of engravings based ontales from the Metamorphoses were alsopopular, and printers were quick toexploit the fact that the same set ofwoodcuts could be used to illustrateeditions in Latin and multiple vernacu-lar languages. This principle is wellillustrated by the work of BernardSalomon, master of the Lyons school ofwoodcutting. (Lyons was a much moreimportant center for printing at thetime than Paris.)

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A portrait of Johannes Spreng taken from the first, posthumousprinting of Ilias Homeri (Augsburg, 1610).

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Salomon created an influential set of178 illustrations for a 1557 edition ofthe Metamorphoses in which the text issubordinate to the pictures: while thedrawings are inspired by Ovid, we readnot Ovid’s verse but verse summaries ofthe “fables.”

By 1563 the very enterprisingFrankfurt printer Siegmund Feyerabenthad commissioned a Nürnberg artist,Virgil Solis, to produce a series ofillustrations closely based on Salomon’soriginals. Feyerabent used these 178woodcuts in no fewer than three booksin that one year, all aimed at slightlydifferent markets.

Accompanied only by four-line versecaptions in Latin and German com-posed by Johan Posthius, they appearedin what was primarily a picture book.They also appeared in Micyll’s editionof Ovid’s Latin text, with a variorumcommentary in Latin for the learned.Somewhere in between fell Spreng’sbook of fables from the Metamorphoses,published in 1563 in Latin. Spreng andFeyerabent would bring out a Germanversion of the same work the followingyear; nor was that the last timeFeyerabent used the Solis woodcuts.

Spreng himself exemplifies the wider,bourgeois public who snapped up suchbooks and for whom the stories inOvid’s Metamorphoses comprised averitable 16th-century “dictionary ofcultural literacy.”

Spreng studied at the famous univer-sity at Wittenberg and taught highschool, first in Augsburg and then inHeidelberg, before returning toAugsburg to marry, practice as a notary,and participate in Augsburg’s circle ofMeistersinger.

Neither as a classical scholar nor as apoet is Spreng of the first rank — mostwould say, “not even of the second” —yet his accomplishments are by nomeans slight. Given his own educationand pedagogical activities, his facility atLatin in no way surprises, but Sprengalso had more than a little Greek.Indeed, Spreng was the translator of thefirst complete German version ofHomer’s Iliad, for which (typical of thetime) he made use of existing Latintranslations as well as the Greek origi-nal. That poets like Spreng, or themuch greater Sachs, adapted materialfrom Homer and Ovid shows that the“classical” and the popular were mostdefinitely not incompatible.

Spreng’s Metamorphoses (Latin, 1563;German, 1564) begin with a dedicatoryepistle to the two oldest sons of emperorMaximilian II, the archdukes Rudolf andErnst. In a foreword to the general reader,Spreng explains his mode of presentation,highlighting the educational aims andvalues of his Metamorphoses. For each ofthe 178 fables — and he is quite frankthat he has a foreign source for thisparticular division of the Metamorphoses— Spreng provides a brief prose argumentor summary. This appears directlybeneath the woodcut on the recto of

each folio. On the verso he then retellsthe tale in Latin elegiac couplets, a verseform derived from but not identical tothe hexameters of the original. Withshorter syntactical units and more easilyrecognized patterns of agreement, theseare certainly more quickly digested byintermediate readers. (Students ofEnglish might contrast Milton’s verseparagraphs with Pope’s heroic couplets.)As he says in his letter to the archdukes,Spreng often uses vocabulary fromOvid’s own poetry. His aim is both togive all readers a shortened, simplifiedversion with some Ovidian color and togive a leg up to those readers who, afterreading his version, would move on toauthentic Ovid.

Finally, filling out the verso, he addsfor each tale a brief allegory, also inLatin elegiacs. All are “moral,” in linewith his claim (and not his alone) thatbeneath the fictions of the poets liemeanings that can help us advance onthe “path of virtue” and avoid the “wayof perdition.”

For example, he provides the follow-ing allegory for Ulysses’ comradesturned into pigs by Circe’s hospitality:“The draughts of Circe represent theempty pleasures that fill hearts withblinding madness. Lethal poisondestroys the human image in all whorashly love their charm. In filth, theyare justly called pigs” (165).

Satan appears in quite a few of theallegories. The last, 178th metamorpho-sis — Caesar’s transformation into astar — is overtly Christian:

Venus bore the soul of Caesar to the vaults on highand placed it among the brilliant stars.

So Christ carries off from the body’s narrow prison pioussouls to the free temples of heaven.

For when the tabernacle assembled from fragile dustreturns at death’s summon to ashes,

Then the most joyous mind rejoices in the pure visage of God,and happy lives ’midst choirs of angels.

Until that most certain bound arrives, the final day,on which God moves the buried bones from the tomb,

Then body will be joined with soul, and both willbear the rewards which they have merited by their deeds.

Metamorphoses continued from page 3

A Solis woodcut from Bancroft’s new Metamorphoses.

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This is the text we have at Bancroftin our new book, which represents,however, yet one more transformation.Spreng was initially inspired by Solis’recreations for a Frankfurt printer ofSalomon’s original Lyons engravings.Much more faithful, almost exact copieswere effected in France, in particular forthe Parisian printers Jerome de Marnefand Guillaume Cavellat, who usedthem in a series of books printed inParis from 1566 on.

In 1583 de Marnef and Cavellat’swidow combined Spreng’s Latin textwith these French copies of Salomon’sillustrations to create the quite rareexemplar now in Bancroft.

It would be risky to suggest that thisparticular set of summaries and moral-izations had a particular attraction inFrance in the 1580’s, especially sinceprinters often grasped whatever was athand. Yet in the immediately precedingyears, France had been wracked bybattles between Protestants and Catho-lics. Those who urged any kind oftolerance or accommodation wereattacked by extremists on one or bothsides. Spreng’s allegorizations wouldseem capable of appealing to readers ofall factions. At least from the Frenchvantage point, the Augsburg educatorrepresents a pleasing balance in everyregard.

It is a coincidence, but tellingnonetheless, that only three years earlierMontaigne stopped at Augsburg andmarvelled at, among other things, thecity’s many churches, Protestant andCatholic.

Ovid’s Metamorphoses, illustrated andallegorized, distracted readers fromcontemporary crises, but more impor-tantly, taught lessons that predated andtranscended them.

Ralph Hexter is Professor of Classicsand Comparative Literature and

Dean of Humanities in theCollege of Letters and Science.

“You discover what your real passion iswhen you find time for it no matter howbusy you are,” says Bonnie Hardwick,who will retire Sept. 1 at age 55. “I’vecome to a point in my life, however, whenI no longer want to ‘fit in’ my passions.Now is the time to let them flourish.”

Curator for Western Americana at TheBancroft Library, Hardwick will move toher 18th-century adobe home in Santa Fe,N.M., to paint sacred icons, take photos,and work on a book about Richard Kern’sdrawings of the Gunnison Expedition of1853— an army foray surveying routesfor a railroad to the Pacific.

“This plan has been a long time in themaking,” says Hardwick, “but I didn’twant to leave Bancroft just as a newdirector was taking over and with so manyprojects unfinished. Now, with the libraryin better fiscal shape, I know that myposition will be filled.”

In the interim Hardwick also pursueda Master of Theological Studies degree atthe Graduate Theological Union, whichshe started three years ago as a way ofhealing after the death of her husband.“His death taught me that life is such afragile gift, and that if you’ve got a dream,you should follow it if you can,” she says.

Hardwick received her MTS with athesis on “Santos of the Southwest: TheIconographic Tradition.” She will con-tinue work on the subject in New Mexicoand will probably return to the GTU nextsummer to lecture on it.

With a PhD in American literature,Hardwick had intended on a professorialcareer. But then she discovered that whatshe really loved—one-on-one contactwith students and researchers — was bestdone as a research librarian.

She fell into a job at Denver PublicLibrary’s western history department,where she had done research for herdissertation on “Science and Art: TheTravel Writings of the Great Surveys ofthe American West after the Civil War.”After receiving her MA in Librarianshipand Information Science, she becamemanuscripts librarian there, leaving in

Bonnie Hardwick Follows Her Passions—by Julia Sommer

1985 to become head of the manuscriptsdivision at Bancroft.

One of Hardwick’s biggest coups atBancroft has been winning grants forseveral important projects, among them“Bancroft Library Manuscripts Retrospec-tive Conversion and Access ImprovementProject,” “Documenting 100 Years ofConservation: The Sierra Club Records,”and “Preservation of the JapaneseAmerican Evacuation and ResettlementRecords.” She will probably continue as aconsultant in archives and historicalresearch.

“I really love the University and theBancroft,” says Hardwick. “I will alwaysbe dedicated to the Bancroft collections.I’m emotionally tied to the place—thatmakes leaving difficult. I have a wonderfulposition here—one of the best in theU.S.,” Hardwick continues. “Bancroft isby far the most-used special collection inthe country. But maybe it’s time forsomeone new to take over, someone withnew ideas, new energy.”

Asked what she will miss most,Hardwick answers, “collegial relationswith staff, faculty, and researchers.”

But New Mexico calls. “It’s a spiritualcenter for me,” says Hardwick. “I feel athome there—the landscape feeds mycreative spirit.”

Julia Sommer is editor of Bancroftiana

Phot

o by

Jane

Sch

err

Bonnie Hardwick

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writing a dissertation on “The Makingof The Innocents Abroad,” so I was morethan a little excited to get wind of previ-ously unknown primary documentsfrom the Quaker City.

I was also preternaturally naive in1973, but the Denny clan proved will-ing to overlook that, and were in factquite eager to satisfy my curiosity abouttheir documents. A single telephone call(and a Greyhound bus) got me to aninterview with Elizabeth ChapmanDenny Vann, one of Colonel Denny’sgranddaughters, then living in Rich-mond. She showed me a photocopy ofher grandfather’s extensive journal andurged me to visit Westminster, Mary-land, where one of Denny’s great-granddaughters stood guard over thephotograph album.

That was my reason for asking tovisit Elizabeth Denny Dixon Whitfieldand her husband Theodore, who kindlyagreed to let me come, then insistedthat I stay the weekend, which I did,enjoying their company, their matchlessazaleas and leatherleaf viburnum, not tomention the family stories about MarkTwain handed down from earlier gen-erations. Mrs. Whitfield showed me thephotograph album in which Denny hadcollected nearly 50 portraits of the pas-sengers Mark Twain later characterizedso rudely to Joe Goodman. (BeforeDenny’s album, we knew of photo-graphs for fewer than half a dozen pas-sengers.) I can only say that these pho-tographs proved to be a window onMark Twain’s world unlike any other Ihave looked through, before or since.

Even more remarkably, perhaps, afteronly two days’ acquaintance, Mrs.Whitfield entrusted me with the photo-graphs long enough to have them mi-crofilmed in Charlottesville. I don’tbelieve I had the wit even to offer tosign a receipt for them!

To make a long story short, Ibrought that microfilm back to Ban-croft, hoping to use it in our plannededition of The Innocents Abroad. I alsoused it to help write my dissertation,

after which I went to UCLA to teachfor three years before returning toBancroft in 1980. In 1990 we used ahandful of the photographs to helpdocument Mark Twain’s Letters,Volume 2: 1867-1868, but I stillthought the full and proper use of themicrofilm would come only with ouredition of Innocents, which is even nowseveral years off.

Then, just last year, word reached me(through her brother, John Dixon) thatMrs. Whitfield wanted to give the al-bum to the Mark Twain Papers! It was abreathtaking idea, especially because wehad never discussed such a possibility,even in our desultory correspondencesince 1973. But she was very firm, verygracious, and as generous and deter-mined as always. She also urged me towrite to her cousins, Collins Denny IIIand his brother, Clifford, to whom theDenny journal had been given by theirfather. She warned them that I was “theworld’s worst correspondent” (which istrue), but eventually I managed to ex-plain why Bancroft might be a goodplace for these documents to live, howthey would be used and cared for, andwhy Mark Twain’s papers would providea meaningful context for them.

In late October and early November,Denny’s great-grandchildren made their

decision, the photo album and journalarrived, were appraised, and made perma-nent parts of the collection. The journal,and especially the photographs of the“pilgrims,” will make a major contribu-tion to our fall exhibition, “Mark Twain atLarge: His Travels at Home and Abroad,”opening September 25.

Why all the excitement about docu-ments that Mark Twain did not write,and that don’t even quote him or referto him all that often? In part it is simplyinvaluable to have Denny’s perspectiveon his rambunctious traveling compan-ion: “Saml L Clemens of SanfranciscoCalafornia, a wicked fellow that willtake the name of the Lord in vain, thatis no respector of persons, yet he is lib-eral, kind and obliging, and if he wereonly a christian would make his mark.”

In part, however, it is important toremember that Mark Twain “liked toget hold of true stories to tell them inhis own fashion.” Denny’s journal givesus an independent view of the facts asset down by someone of quite differenttemperament, religious persuasion, andsocial expectation — a pillar of theMethodist Episcopal Church, South, alongtime Sunday School superintendentfrom Winchester, Virginia, and an ex-Confederate colonel and spy.

Yet Denny was also someone MarkTwain knew and liked well enough totravel with. They and six others took aside trip to Tangier; they and only twoothers risked arrest during the famousmidnight visit to the Parthenon (Dennywas mentioned five times by name inMark Twain’s chapter about it); andthey and six others traveled for threeweeks on horseback down through theHoly Land, the trip which Mark Twainsaid was a “trial to a man’s religion.”Mark Twain was 31 and a charter mem-ber of the “Quaker City night-hawks,”while Denny, who was only 44, natu-rally allied himself with a much moresober and devout faction — “sinners”and “pilgrims,” as Mark Twain put it.

Yet we know from the journal (andfrom Denny family stories) that it wasMark Twain who sought out Denny as

Sinners continued from page 1

Dr. William M. GibsonMark Twain reported that Gibson tirelesslycollected pebbles and other samples for “that pooruseless, innocent, harmless old fossil, theSmithsonian Institute.”

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a companion for the trip through theHoly Land. He also borrowed and readall the books on the subject whichDenny had brought along. Denny atfirst declined to permit Mark Twain tojoin his party, saying that he had beenplanning this trip all his life, and knewhe could not enjoy it in the company ofsomeone who regularly took the nameof the Lord God in vain. Only bypromising to refrain from blasphemyfor the entire three weeks did MarkTwain succeed in changing Denny’sresolve. His reasons for doing so werepurely practical — he needed Denny’shelp as an informed guide — but inretrospect we can see that Denny paid aprice for having exacted that promise ofgood behavior.

Consider just one piece of the newevidence — Denny’s description of hisattempt to sail on the Sea of Galilee:“While the others were resting I rode tothe sea shore and hailed a sail boat manwho was gliding swiftly over the water.He came and I called our party andtried to get them to give us a sail overthe sea to Tiberias but he asked such anexorbitant price that we would not give

Bloodgood Haviland CutterPersisted in sending his endless doggerel to port officials“with the compliments of the Laureate of the Ship.”Mark Twain therefore dubbed him the “Poet Lariat,”but Denny was inclined to be kinder: “We were edifiedthis evening by an original poem by its authorMr. Cutter of Long Island.”

way and in the matter of going slowand being serious and bottling up slang,and so crowded in regard to the matterof being proper and always and foreverbehaving, that their lives have become aburden to them, would not lag behindpilgrims at such a time as this, and winkfurtively, and be joyful, and commitother such crimes, because it wouldn’toccur to them to do it. Otherwise theywould. But they did do it, though, andit did them a world of good to hear thepilgrims abuse each other, too. We tookan unworthy satisfaction in seeing themfall out, now and then, because itshowed that they were only poor hu-man people like us, after all.”

Robert Hirst is general editor of theMark Twain Project and curator of the

Mark Twain Papers. He first began work onthe Papers as a graduate student in 1967.

He became general editor in 1980.

Mary Mason Fairbanks“‘Mark Twain’ may have ridiculed our prayer-meetingsand our psalm-singing—that is his profession—and hisnewspapers expected it of him; but the better man,Samuel L. Clemens, I believe in his heart reverences thesacred mission of prayer.”

it, and he seemed independant becausehe thought we were in his power and hereluctantly left, and we reluctantly sawhim leave. So thus we were disap-pointed and so was he. He lost themoney he could have made and wesaved it.” That is all he says.

Mark Twain seized upon this event asa way to cast comic doubt on the sin-cerity of the pilgrims’ piety. He dwelt atlength on their anxiety to “take ship-ping” on Galilee, saying that he fearedthey would “squander millions” in orderto fulfill it. Then, when two Napoleons(about $8) were demanded by the boat-men, all such plans collapsed:

“...in a single instant of time, as itseemed to me, that ship was twentypaces from the shore, and speedingaway like a frightened thing! Eightcrestfallen creatures stood upon theshore, and this — this after all thatfrenzied zeal, that o’er mastering ecstasy!Oh, shameful, shameful ending, aftersuch unseemly boasting!... Instantlythere was wailing and gnashing of teethin the camp. The two Napoleonswere offered, more if necessary, andpilgrims and dragoman shoutedthemselves hoarse with pleadings tothe retreating boatmen to comeback. But they sailed serenely awayand paid no farther heed to pilgrimswho had dreamed all their lives ofsome day skimming over the sacredwaters of Galilee...and then con-cluded they had better not, becauseit would cost a dollar apiece!”

This result is scarcely fair toDenny, who is deliberately notnamed in the Holy Land section.But Mark Twain was at least moretruthful about his own motives atthe time: “How the pilgrims abusedeach other! Each said it was theother’s fault, and each in turn deniedit. No word was spoken by the sin-ners — even the mildest sarcasmmight have been dangerous at such atime. Sinners that have been keptdown and had examples held up tothem, and suffered frequent lectures,and been so put upon in a moral

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Rube Goldberg: An American Genius —by William Roberts

That appellation has been applied tomany, but the work of Rube

Goldberg, ’04, seems peculiarly Americanin nature, especially in conjunction withthe intrusion of the machine age intoeveryday American life at the end of the19th century.

Bancroft’s collection of Rube Goldbergpapers, received in 1964, includes morethan 5,000 original cartoons, correspon-dence, manuscripts of articles and plays,congratulatory cartoons, and scrapbooksof clipped cartoons relating to his longand fruitful career. (On Nov. 1, 1963,Goldberg wrote Chancellor Strong: “Ihave literally thousands of originalcartoons on hand and am wondering justhow many I should send. I do not want toclutter up the Library.”)

Reuben Lucius Goldberg was born inSan Francisco in 1883, attended JohnSwett Grammar School, Lowell HighSchool, took art lessons, and declared tohis disapproving father, Max, that he wasgoing to be an artist.

Max Goldberg, who had emigrated tothe United States from Prussia before theCivil War, dealt in real estate and wasactive in Republican politics in SanFrancisco. He convinced his son to enrollin the University of California School ofMining Engineering, from which Rubegraduated in 1904.

Goldberg also foundtime to create cartoons for

the Pelican — the studenthumor magazine founded in1903 — and the Blue and Goldyearbook, to which he contrib-uted even after graduation.

Thanks to a summer job,Goldberg discovered thathe hated mining, and hedetermined to forsake that

glorious career for one of hisown choosing. He was soon

drawing for the San Francisco Chronicle,at first only on the sports page, but soonGoldberg began producing political aswell as humorous cartoons. Still, his

assignments there and later at theBulletin did not give him enoughscope, and he eventually succumbed tothe lure of New York.

By the end of 1907 he had landed ajob at the New York Evening Mail andwas coming into his own. In October1908 his first big successful cartoonseries was born: Foolish Questions. By1910 he had drawn 450 cartoons inthis series and published a book withthat title.

Goldberg’s fascination with machin-ery (his education in engineering

was not entirely in vain) led to his bestknown series — his inventions — and to“Rube Goldberg” becoming a householdword. He was the first living person tohave his name become an entry in thedictionary!

His inventions, dating back to 1914,were elaborate mechanical devices to helpwith those small daily tasks ignored by

academics and industry. Pencil sharpeners,screen door closers, dishwashers, type-writer erasers, corkscrews, humanemousecatchers — all attracted Goldberg’sattention.

His assemblages of improbable devicesappealed to the popular imagination.People could immediately see that theseintricately designed solutions to some ofthe trials and tribulations of everyday lifewould work, although it was easy tooverlook the uncertainty posed byburning candles, frightened rabbits andother cogs in the Goldberg wheel whichmight not obey the laws of nature in apredictable fashion, or certainly notquickly enough for the device to workimmediately. Between 1914 and 1935Goldberg churned out one or two of theseelaborate inventions every week.

In the early 1940s he started doingpolitical cartoons for the New York Sun,which demanded an entirely new style.Gone were the intricate drawings that

Rube Goldberg circa 1910

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people could dwell on, savoring everycurlicue and penstroke. The politicalcartoon demanded immediate recognitionand appreciation of its message.

While Goldberg’s political cartoonswere successful — indeed many of thembecame classics — they do not representhis best work, for several reasons. Hisheart lay with pen and ink, not with fatgrease pencils; the format did not allowfor second thoughts and side panels ofcommentary; he did not adapt to thenegativism of the political cartoon; andthere was no place for his own prose,which had always been part of his humor.

However little personal pleasureGoldberg reaped from his politicalcartoons, they brought him at least onevery tangible success: the Pulitzer Prize in1948 for his cartoon, “Peace Today,”

which occasioned numerouscartoon congratulations fromhis colleagues. In 1959 hereceived the Silver Ladyaward from the famousNew York luncheongroup, the Banshees,given annually to anewspaper writer or artist.

Goldberg transferred toWilliam Randolph Hearst’s New YorkJournal in 1950, where he continued hispolitical cartoons until the age of 81, in1964. He produced nine books in thecourse of his career and even turned tosculpture toward the end of his life. Hedied in 1970.

William Roberts is the University Archivist.

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William P. Barlow, Jr.—A Friend Indeed

“I am an accountant and a biblio-phile.” This is how William P. Barlow,Jr. described himself in his farewell ad-dress as President of the BibliographicalSociety of America a few years ago. Thissuccinct formulation reveals two essen-tial elements of his involvement withThe Bancroft Library, but it cries outfor amplification.

The accountant part is relativelysimple: Bill Barlow received his AB inEconomics at Berkeley in 1956 and hasbeen practicing his profession in theBay Area ever since, currently as partnerin the firm of Barlow & Hughan in hisnative Oakland. A glance at the list ofprofessional organizations to which hebelongs and the committees on whichhe serves is evidence of his prestige andof the respect accorded him by hispeers.

The bibliophile part is more com-plex. Bill Barlow the book collector wasborn in 1953 when the 19-year-oldfreshman at the California Institute ofTechnology in Pasadena walked into abookstore and bought a copy ofMilton’s Paradise Lost & Paradise Re-gained printed by John Baskerville inBirmingham in 1758.

—by Bernard M. Rosenthal

Being by nature both inquisitive andvery thorough, Bill went to the Pasa-dena Public Library to find out moreabout this English printer who had pro-duced such a handsome book, and hedecided to acquire other works fromthis press. Today, the Barlow Collectionof Baskerville is the largest and mostsignificant collection of its kind inprivate hands.

Fond of facts, Barlow decided tomake a survey of all the Baskerville im-prints on the market and, undaunted bythe magnitude of the undertaking(probably also unaware of it), he sys-tematically collected past and currentantiquarian booksellers’ and auctioncatalogs. Soon this accumulation ofcatalogs acquired a life of its own andgrew into a collection of catalogs quiteindependent of its Baskerville connec-tion. It is now so large that it consti-tutes a superb resource for research inthe history of the book trade from the17th century onward, particularly inAmerica.

The study of early book trade cata-logs almost inevitably led to collectingbooks in the history of bibliography —the history of the reference works whichillustrate the ever-changing, ever-pain-

ful, never fully adequate processes hu-man beings devise to stay abreast ofpublished knowledge. In turn, the his-tory of bibliography is closely tied tothe history of bibliophily, as it is re-corded in the catalogs of collectors’ li-braries.

Such catalogs are notoriously rare(they were generally published in smalleditions), yet an astonishing numberline the Barlow shelves. Years of researchled him to publish, in 1986, a revisededition of Archer Taylor’s Book Cata-logues and Their Uses, a pioneering refer-ence work dear to all specialists, firstpublished in 1957.

Barlow has lectured widely and withverve, and several of his lectures onbook collecting and bibliography areavailable in published form. His style isdistinguished by a refreshing absence ofthe pretentiousness so often associatedwith things antiquarian and his wide-ranging scholarship is expressed in clearand witty prose. (Humor is a rare com-modity in the world of bibliography,where things tend to be on the grimside.)

“I have always been interested inwriting, not reading, mind you, justwriting. In fact, my guiding principlehas been that reading is destructive ofone’s personal style of writing,” Barlowsaid (tongue in cheek?) in 1984.

This love manifested itself early,when he published his first newspaperat age 11. The press run was a singlehand-written copy. Then came a mim-eograph machine and newspapers for alarger audience. With the acquisition ofa five-by-eight Kelsey printing press atage 16, Barlow the printer and owner ofNova Press was born.

There are other Bill Barlows as well:the world-class water skier recently in-ducted into the American Water SkiHall of Fame; the collector of stampsand post office seals and president ofthe East Bay Stamp Collectors Club;William Barlow, left, was interviewed by Bancroft Friend and Council member Bernard Rosenthal.

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My “career” at the Bancroft had itsbeginning with lunch in former

University Librarian Peter Lyman’s of-fice on Feb. 21, 1997. Halfway throughmy sandwich, Peter informed me that“the entertainment” would arrive at1 p.m. I didn’t have a clue what he wastalking about.

At 1 sharp, Tony Bliss, Curator ofRare Books, arrived pushing a librarycart with an assortment of very interest-ing-looking volumes plus a mysteriouscarton. After a quick run-through ofsome of the papyrus collection, old shiplogs, and other historic memorabilia, wegot down to the “really good stuff ”— abox of the M.M. O’Shaughnessy pa-pers. (O’Shaughnessy was the San Fran-cisco city engineer in the early 1900’swho supervised construction of theO’Shaughnessy dam at Hetch Hetchy.)

The three of us rummaged throughthe contents — photographs, musty oldletters, official-looking documents —not unlike a bunch of kids at Christ-mas. I was hooked. I mentioned thatthis was really neat stuff and that if theyneeded some relatively unskilled laborto sort through it, I would be willing tohelp out. (All of this was a bit of a set-up, as Peter Lyman was well aware ofmy passionate interest in Californiawater issues.)

A few weeks later I received a callfrom Charles Faulhaber saying he hadsomething that might be of interest andcould we get together?

On the agreed date I walked into hisoffice and was met by Tony Bliss,Bonnie Hardwick (Curator of theBancroft Collection), and MaryMorganti (Supervising Archivist). Iknew I was in over my head.

Charles acknowledged my interest inO’Shaughnessy and went on to explainthat they had a more pressing problemat hand. The Bancroft had received thecorporate archives of the Spring Valley

Water Company in 1950 and there wasconsiderable interest in making thesepapers more accessible. Would I be in-terested?

I had never heard of the Spring Val-ley Water Company. I indicated that Iwas six months into retirement andreally wasn’t looking for a job, but Iwould be willing to come in and workon the collection a couple of days aweek. I had a new “career.”

Next came my introduction to “Level3,” deep in the bowels of Bancroft. Go-ing through two locked doors remindedme of a minimum security prison. Mywork area was all laid out with the first20 of 95 cartons and 50 volumes (soonto be 80) of material to be processed. Acouple of special touches wereO’Shaughnessy’s suitcase, which he usedwhile visiting Hetch Hetchy, and amodel of a Pelton water wheel.

Now I had to learn a bit of raremanuscript processing etiquette. Pensare verboten. Post-its and scotch tapeare under lock and key. Don’t eventhink about a cup of coffee or a quicksnack at your desk! I was hopeful ofbeing permitted my own scissors.

Then I learned the first law of cata-loging — you must be very cautiousabout reading the material, or you willnever finish. I had to constantly remindmyself that I was not doing research.My mission was to put the material inorder so that someone else would beable to use it in a more productive way.

How to start? I decided that the bestway to get a handle on things was toreview the minutes of the Board of Di-rectors meetings. No simple task — 29volumes, each 16 by 12 inches and 6inches thick, bound in beautiful redleather and weighing 10 pounds. Thisexercise took several weeks and resultedin 110 pages of handwritten notes. Anice chronology of events, but devoid ofany color or real insight.

Next I started through the corporatesecretary’s files, some 20 cartons datingback to 1910. Going through them,folder by folder, page by page, I gained avivid picture of the ebb and flow ofSpring Valley. I got an insider’s view ofthe battle over Hetch Hetchy, the even-tual sale of the company to the City ofSan Francisco, as well as the easementfor Phoebe Hearst’s septic tank. Theuser’s guide to these files runs some 30pages. (In the process of putting the filesin order, I accumulated a cubic foot ofrusty paper clips which will become asculpture when I finish. I was gratefulthat my tetanus shot was current.)

The best was yet to come. The presi-dent of the company from 1908 to1923 was William B. Bourn, also presi-dent of the Empire Mines (largest of theCalifornia gold mines), president of thePacific Union Club, and a trustee ofStanford University. He conceived andbuilt Filoli as his personal residence.

Two cartons of Bourn’s personal cor-respondence were a treasure. He was avery colorful individual with a strongopinion on just about everything. Hewas a prolific letter-writer and had amarvelous sense of humor. He could beharsh, he could be kind. On many occa-sions I forgot my mission, reading andrereading his letters. I feel I know theman. I would like to have had him as afriend. Tragically, Bourn suffered a

Plumbing the Depths of theSpring Valley Water Company —by George Miller

George Miller

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Bibliophile continued from page 10

the supporter of the arts, currentlychairman of the board of directors ofthe Oakland Ballet; the gourmet chef(the only person I have ever known tobake a perfect brioche).

Barlow’s involvement with TheBancroft Library began over 40 yearsago when, as a senior at Berkeley, heoften visited the Rare Book Room,which was then quite separate from theBancroft Collection and had its ownlibrarian, Kenneth Carpenter.

Carpenter asked this eager student toput together a Baskerville exhibition fordisplay in Doe Library. When the won-derful collection donated to the Univer-sity by James K. Moffitt began arrivingin 1956, Barlow was on hand to helpwith shelving and distribution.

When James D. Hart became direc-tor of a newly reorganized and vastlyexpanded Bancroft Library in 1969,Barlow became treasurer of The Friendsof The Bancroft Library and, with theexception of a few intervals required bythe by-laws, he has held that post eversince.

Barlow’s involvement with the Uni-versity takes many forms. One is profes-sional advice in financial matters, suchas his recent finding that, contrary tocommonly held opinion, the InternalRevenue Service does not prohibit insti-tutions from paying for the appraisal ofgifts they receive — a finding whichmade possible several donations fromowners unwilling to bear the expense ofan appraisal.

Equally significant are the contribu-tions of Bill Barlow the teacher, whoplaces his collections at the disposal ofstudents and researchers. The staff ofthe Mark Twain Project, for instance,has been able to trace hundreds of pre-viously unknown Mark Twain letters bysystematically looking through Barlow’s30,000-plus catalogs— a staggeringundertaking! The Mark Twain editorshave also made much use of a some-what mysterious contraption called theHinman Collator, which ferrets outsubtle typographical variants to distin-

guish between different issues of a text.Barlow is the proud owner of the proto-type of this machine, which he got fromthe Folger Shakespeare Library inWashington and now keeps in his livingroom. It has been used for over a quar-ter of a century by students and re-searchers in analytical bibliography andtextual editing.

Bill Barlow, an inveterate joiner,freely shares his time and knowledgewith the numerous organizations towhich he belongs. He is the treasurer ofpractically every book-related organiza-tion in our part of the world, includingthe Book Club of California (of whichhe is president emeritus). He accepted apost on the Council of the GrolierClub, even though this meant half adozen trips to New York every year. Ashonorary consultant to the AmericanAntiquarian Society, he has developedmethods for using 19th-century busi-ness records as tools for bibliographicalresearch. For several years he has taughtat Terry Belanger’s Rare Book School atthe University of Virginia.

It was no surprise when the Univer-sity of San Francisco awarded him theSir Thomas More Medal for Book Col-lecting in 1989. The highest accoladecame in1992, when he was electedPresident of the Bibliographical Societyof America. There could be no bettermeasure of the esteem in which he isheld.

We needn’t be jealous or worried,though. Barlow’s primary loyalty isfirmly anchored here in California. Af-ter all, his ancestors came west on acovered wagon and there’s a BarlowTrail near Mt. Hood in Oregon toprove it.

“Barney” Rosenthal is an antiquarian book-seller in Berkeley. He serves on the Council of

The Friends of The Bancroft Library.

stroke or a nervous breakdown in 1921.He was chairman of the Spring ValleyWater Company Board of Directorsuntil 1930, but never attended anothermeeting.

It was painful trying to decipherBourn’s handwritten notes from Filoliover the next couple of years. He diedin 1936. I’ll always wonder what hecould have accomplished had he re-mained healthy those last 15 years.

I am nearing the end of the SpringValley Saga. I’ve opened the last of thecartons and sorted out the volumes —no big surprises. By the time this ispublished I will have taken a few weeksoff and started my next project —O’Shaughnessy’s papers — all 110 car-tons!

So what do I take away from thisexperience? Well, I certainly learned alot about Spring Valley and the earlyhistory of San Francisco. I think I havea pretty good understanding of how theHetch Hetchy project came about. Ifeel as though I’ve met many of earlySan Francisco’s more colorful charac-ters, including members of today’sprominent Bay Area families. But mostimportantly I gained a much betterinsight into Bancroft Library and someof its fascinating collections. The ap-peal is not just to scholars — there’s lotsof really neat stuff that would have greatinterest for your average folk.

And finally, my thanks to MaryMorganti. It took a lot of courage towelcome a total neophyte to Tier 3—even one with an MBA. Without herpatience, tutoring, and encouragement,I would never have made it.

George Miller received his MBA from theHaas School of Business in 1961. His 35-year

career in the mutual fund industry ended in1996 when he retired as president of the

Income Fund of America. He is a supporter ofthe University Libraries, the Cal Band, and

sponsors the Miller Scholar Program. Hispassions include water reform in California,

small claims court reform, and a micro-creditloan program in Vietnam.

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A growing sense that Berkeley couldcompete with the best of the nation’s

universities developed in the 1950’s, bothin academics and sports.

The embodiment of national expertisein sports came in the form of Pete Newell,the basketball coach chosen to replaceNibs Price, who retired in 1954 after a30-year career at Cal.

It was assumed that one of Price’s assis-tants or former players would be asked tocoach. Even Newell expected Berkeley topick a Cal guy because “they always had.”But athletic director Brutus Hamiltoninstead turned to the young MichiganState University coach who was building anational reputation for innovative basket-ball strategies.

At first Cal alumni were not pleasedwith this new outsider coach, especiallywhen he went 1–11 his first year. Andsome were troubled when he recruitedthree black players to his first Cal team in1954-55 — among the first black playersin any sport to play for Cal.

But great success followed that firstseason. Newell is remembered most oftenas the first and last basketball coach totake the Bears to the NCAA champion-ship, winning in 1959 and coming insecond in 1960.

Many remember the towel that Newell

chewed during tense games. As Newellsays in his oral history: “You don’t realizeunless you’ve coached the dark thoughtsyou can have. There’s such a contradictionin coaching, where you have to speakpositively of how you’re going to win thegame, and yet in the recesses of your mindyou know how many mistakes you’re ca-pable of.”

In 1960 Newell took over as Cal’s ath-letic director, retiring in 1968.

Today Newell is a national basketballlegend. Inducted into the Basketball Hallof Fame in 1978, he was cited for his con-tributions to the game as coach at theUniversity of San Francisco (he took USFto the National Invitational Tournamentchampionship in 1949), Michigan State,and California; as U.S. Olympic coach(his team won a gold medal in Rome in1960); and as NBA executive and interna-tional ambassador.

In his own playing days, Newell starredin both basketball and baseball at LoyolaUniversity in Los Angeles. He signed acontract with the Brooklyn Dodgers in1939, but an injury prevented him fromplaying more than one season in the mi-nors.

Today, at 82, Newell still teaches at thePete Newell Big Man Camp on the out-skirts of Honolulu, which he founded

over 20 years ago to train top-flight profes-sional and collegiate players. Its honor rollincludes Shaquille O’Neal, Shawn Kemp,Hakeem Olajuwon, Bill Walton, ScottiePippen, James Worthy, Ralph Sampson,Bernard King, Vlade Divac, Purvis Short,Otis Thorpe, and Brad Daugherty.

ROHO principal editor Ann Lagetaped 22 hours of interviews with Newellat his home in Palos Verdes, as well as in-terviews with NCAA championship teammembers at their 35th reunion in Carmelin 1994. (Newell and the team reuniteevery five years.)

Through the oral history, you can seehow Newell developed into an innovativebasketball strategist and a teacher/mentorto generations of coaches and players. Hediscusses his exposure during World War IIarmy years to midwestern and easterncoaching legends, the achievements andcontroversies of his term as athletic directorat Cal during a time of student unrest andracial tensions, and recalls his work withNBA teams and contributions to basket-ball in Japan.

An expert on the press defense, Newelldeveloped strategies that are still used to-day in NBA play. He emphasizes footwork:“You shoot the ball with your hands, butthe quality of your shot depends on yourfeet,” he says in his oral history.

As Kiki Vandeweghe from UCLA andthe NBA explains, Newell’s camps taughthim that “there’s always a weakness in thedefense, and he teaches you how to takeadvantage of it.”

Newell’s oral history was bound andpresented to him at the Pete Newell Chal-lenge in December 1997— an annualcollege basketball tournament in Pete’shonor at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.

In a half-time ceremony during the Cal-Brigham Young game (see photo), Lagejoined representatives of Pete’s college andNBA career at center court to pay tributeto this widely admired basketball legend.Lage thanked Newell for recording forBancroft this “treasured resource for thestudy of University history, basketball his-tory, and sport and society.”

Camilla Smith serves on the Publications Com-mittee of The Friends of The Bancroft Library.

Basketball? At Bancroft?The Oral History of Pete Newell —by Camilla Smith

Regional Oral History Office editor Ann Lage presents Pete Newell with a bound copy of his oral history.

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UC History Journal Debuts

Marking the anniversary of the ’06 earth-quake, a new campus publication made itsdebut April 18 at Cal Day: Chronicle of theUniversity of California - A Journal of Uni-versity History.

Appropriately, the first issue’s theme is“Alarums and Diversions: Disasters at Cal.”It includes an article on South Hall andseismic safety in 1870 by Stephen Tobriner,professor of architectural history; eyewit-ness reports of the ’06 earthquake by thedean of women and the 1923 fire by phys-ics professor Raymond Birge; and articleson Jack London’s and George Stewart’schoice of the campus as a setting for sciencefiction.

The debut of this semi-annual journalalso marks the centennial and carries on thetraditions of The University of CaliforniaChronicle, published from 1898 to 1933,which included articles on faculty researchand campus events, original writing, andplenty of photos and illustrations.

The new Chronicle, born in a TownsendCenter for the Humanities working group— “The Life and Times of UC Berkeley”— was the brainchild of Carroll Brentano,coordinator of the university history projectat the Center for Studies in Higher Educa-tion. She was joined by others devoted to

preserving and passing on Cal’s history,including university archivist emeritusJim Kantor, current archivist Bill Rob-erts, and Germaine LaBerge and AnnLage from Bancroft’s Regional Oral His-tory Office.

The first issue of the reborn Chronicleruns an impressive 136 pages withplenty of illustrations. ChancellorBerdahl picked one up at Cal Day,promising to use it in his UC historyfreshman seminar fall semester.

Says managing editor Brentano: “Weactually wanted a UC history museum,but we couldn’t get the space or themoney. Meanwhile, we have this publi-cation to promote research in universityhistory and encourage preservation ofthe university’s past.”

Even though the first issue coversonly Berkeley, “we want to cover theentire UC system,” says Brentano.“We’re looking for writers on othercampuses.”

The theme of the second issue, dueout this fall, will probably be women.

The Chronicle of the University ofCalifornia was published with the sup-port of The Bancroft Library, theTownsend Center, the Center for Studiesin Higher Education, and the GraduateAssembly. Copies are $12 each or $24for a subscription.

For more information, contactCarroll Brentano at 643-9210 or e-mailcbrentan@socrates.berkeley.edu

On Cal Day, which also saw the 51st an-nual meeting of the Friends of TheBancroft Library, Jean Stone, widow ofauthor Irving Stone, ’23, LLD ’68, wasawarded Bancroft’s highest honor: theHubert Howe Bancroft Award.

Jean Stone collaborated with her hus-band as researcher and editor on 18 semi-nal biographical novels, which repeatedlybrought the Stones to Bancroft. IrvingStone dedicated every one of his books toJean Stone, and in 1982 she was honoredby P.E.N. with the Maxwell PerkinsAward for editing.

A devoted Cal alumnus, Irving Stoneedited There Was Light (1970), a collectionof essays about Berkeley by notablealumni, including one of his own. It wasrepublished in 1996, updated and editedby Jean Stone.

In 1996 Jean Stone funded creation ofthe Jean and Irving Stone Seminar Roomin Bancroft — a marvelous and nowheavily-booked study space.

There students are in the presence ofThe Stone Wall — Jean Stone’s collectionof the many editions and translations ofIrving Stone’s work from all over theworld, complemented by part of his re-markable research library. Jean Stone hasalso established an endowment atBancroft to support the collecting of biog-raphy and history.

News Briefs

The Agriculture Building burning on April 16, 1897, from Chronicle of the University of California,Spring 1998.

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Jean Stone Honored atAnnual Meeting

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Thanks to the generosity of Kenneth Hillof San Diego and Albert Shumate of SanFrancisco, starting this fall Bancroft willoffer an annual prize for the best bookcollection by an undergraduate.

Both Hill and Shumate are long-timemembers of the Friends of The BancroftLibrary and consummate collectors. Hillhas built four world-class collections infields ranging from Pacific voyages to me-teorology. Shumate, who still lives in theSan Francisco house in which he was bornin 1905, has one of the finest private col-lections of Californiana in the world.

The Hill-Shumate prize will beawarded to a Cal undergraduate whosecollection (of books and other printedmaterials, ephemera, manuscripts, etc.)best exemplifies the breadth of vision,ingenuity, and contribution to intellectualand cultural history that characterize thecollections of Hill and Shumate.

For Sale: Two New Bancroft PublicationsNew Prize forUndergraduate BookCollecting

Desiderata

Samuel H. Auerbach, pioneermerchant, 1890s.

The Bancroft would be particularly pleased to re-ceive gifts of the books listed below for our MFK(Mary Frances Kennedy) Fisher collection. If youcan help, please contact Bonnie Bearden, (510)642-8171, email: bbearden@library.berkeley.edu

Berne, Victoria. Touch and Go. New York: Harper,1939. Collaborative pseudonym of MFK Fisherand her husband, Dillwyn Parrish.The art of eating: the collected gastronomical works ofM.F.K. Fisher.Cleveland: World, 1954.The boss dog: a story. Berkeley: North Point Press,1991.Consider the oyster. New York: Duell, Sloan andPearce, 1941.A considerable town. New York: Knopf, 1978.The cooking of provincial France. New York: Time-Life Books, 1968.Here let us feast, a book of bouquets. New York: Vi-king, 1946.How to cook a wolf. New York: Duell, Sloan andPearce, 1942.Long ago in France: the years in Dijon. New York:Prentice Hall Press, 1991.Not now but now. New York: Viking Press, 1947.Serve it forth. New York: World Book Co, 1937.Serve it forth. San Francisco: North Point Press,1989, c1937.Sister age. New York: Knopf, 1983.Conversations with M.F.K. Fisher. Jackson: Univer-sity Press of Mississippi, 1992.Ferrary, Jeannette. Between friends: M.F.K. Fisherand me. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1991.

Bancroft’s second publication of1998 is Utah Pioneer Merchant:

The Memoirs of Samuel H. Auerbach(1847-1920).

Supported by a generous grant fromthe Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation ofHartford, Conn., the publication wascompiled and edited by Judith Robinsonfrom five separate manuscript sources inthe papers of Eveline and SamuelAuerbach in The Bancroft Library. Thememoirs detail a fascinating and full life:Auerbach’s youth in Prussia, his emigra-tion to America in 1862 when he was just15, his journey from New York to SanFrancisco and the Gold Country and hisearly business experience there, and hispartnership with an older brother in SaltLake City, where they built up a prosper-ous department store.

Auerbach’s keen recollection of businessdetails, social life and customs, and plea-sure in family and travels are comple-mented by an excellent sense of humor.

His friendship with Brigham Youngbenefited Salt Lake City and theAuerbachs in numerous ways. Auerbachrecords that his family’s contribution of

The Bancroft Library has publishedtwo new volumes in its occasional

series of scholarly works based onprimary resources in its collections.

The first is The Gold and Silver ofSpanish America by professor emeritusof history Engel Sluiter, who focusedhis 60-year career on Dutch-Iberian ri-valry in the late 16th and early 17th cen-turies. (See the Fall 1997 Bancroftiana,p. 5.)

After he retired in 1973, Sluiter turnedhis attention to analyzing the records ofgold and silver mining in the Americasused to sustain the Spanish Empire. Herepeatedly returned to archives in Seville,Spain to gather information to balancethe record in New World archives, therebydetermining how much the Americanmines produced, tax revenues gathered forthe Spanish Empire, gold and silver actu-

ally received in Spain, and ultimately theexpense of defending the SpanishEmpire. Sluiter has distilled hisresearch into some 50 tables ofdata, presented with brief essays

on the nature and analysis of thestatistical record.

In 1997 Sluiter donated his massivefiles to The Bancroft Library, where theycomplement the strongest collections ofarchival resources in the U.S. on the ex-pansion of the Spanish Empire.

Bancroft is proud of its long associationwith and support of Sluiter’s work anddelighted to be the publisher of his monu-mental accomplishment.

The Gold and Silver of Spanish Americais available at $50, post-paid. Checksshould be made payable to The BancroftLibrary.

medicine to thesick promptedYoung to giveorders that theAuerbachs bepermitted to re-deem Mormontithing script atface value — theonly non-Mor-mon firm “towhom this un-usual privilegewas ever granted.”

Utah PioneerMerchant, de-signed by Berkeley printer Peter Koch, isan excellent companion to Frontier Remi-niscences of Eveline Brooks Auerbach, pub-lished by the Friends of The BancroftLibrary in 1994 and still available for $20.

Utah Pioneer Merchant is 232 pages, sixby nine inches, bound in printed wrap-pers, and illustrated with six portraits. It isavailable from The Bancroft Library at$25, post-paid. Checks should be madepayable to The Bancroft Library.

N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E F R I E N D S O F T H E B A N C R O F T L I B R A RY

P A G E 1 6 / F A L L 1 9 9 8

BANCROFTIANAU N I V E R S I T Y O F C A L I F O R N I A

B E R K E L E Y , C A L I F O R N I A 9 4 7 2 0 - 6 0 0 0

Fall Calendar

T H E X F R I E N D S X O F X T H E X B A N C R O F T X L I B R A R Y

EXHIBITS

SEPTEMBER 25 – DECEMBER 11Mark Twain at Large: His Travels Here and AbroadA restless and inveterate traveler and travel writer,Mark Twain spent much of his life on the road, bothin this country and abroad. From the wealth of pri-mary materials in the Mark Twain Papers, we havedrawn together an enlightening selection of photo-graphs, manuscripts, letters, notebooks and other ar-tifacts documenting his travels and the compositionsand revision of his many travel books.

OPENINGLecture: Robert H. Hirst, Mark Twain Project

Friday, September 25, 3:30PM

Maude Fife Room, Wheeler HallReception: Friday, September 25, 4:30PM

Heller Gallery, Bancroft Library

SINNERS & PILGRIMS

Page 1

Alfred W. BaxterCarlos BeaJohn BriscoePeggy CahillKimo CampbellGifford CombsHenry DakinRita FinkAnn Flinn, ChairVictoria FongRoger HahnPeter E. HanffE. Dixon Heise

Wade HughanMaxine Hong KingstonLawrence KramerGary KurutzAllan Littman, Vice-chairIan MackinlayBernard RosenthalCamilla SmithJulia SommerStephen VincentThomas E. WoodhouseCharles B. Faulhaber, Secretary

The Council of the Friendsof The Bancroft Library

1998–1999

NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION

U.S. POSTAGE

PAIDBERKELEY, CALIFORNIA

PERMIT NO. 411

ROUNDTABLES

Editor Julia SommerProduction Catherine Dinnean

Printer Apollo Printing Company

OVID’S METAMORPHOSES

Page 3

RUBE GOLDBERG,AN AMERICAN GENIUS

Page 8

BANCROFTIANANumber 113

An open, informal discussion group featuringpresentations by Bancroft staff and scholars. Allsessions are held at the Faculty Club at noon.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15Werner Goldsmith, Professor of MechanicalEngineeringMechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley: the First125 Years

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15Victor Fischer, Mark Twain ProjectNever so wonderful a book written by man

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19Philip L. Fradkin, Rhetoric DepartmentEarthquakes and Earth Science as Measured onthe Seismograph of Environmental History

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 17Readings from The Bancroft Library selectedespecially for the holiday season from favoritetexts in our collections.

s

I N T H I S I S S U E

SYMPOSIUM

NEW FACULTY LECTURE

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 269:30AM – 12 noon, Wheeler AuditoriumStudent Activism in the '60s: Recycling Our Past,Creating Our FutureThe Class of 1968 presents former student leadersfrom the 1960’s and academic and administrativerepresentatives from the era will discuss the emer-gence of student activism and student rights on theBerkeley campus in the late 1960s. The BancroftLibrary will stage a mini-exhibition from its SocialProtest Collection.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 4PM

Maude Fife Room, Wheeler HallJosé Rabasa, Spanish DepartmentFranciscans and Dominicans Under the Gaze of aTlacuilo: Plural-World Dwelling in an Indian Picto-rial Codex