Paul Elder & Company

The most complex of Paul Elder’s ephemeral output were his many calendars. The Impressions Calendars was Elder’s longest-running and most successful calendar series. It debuted in 1902 and lasted at least through 1918. Printed in multiple colors on heavy card stock in order to hold up to constant handling, they were threaded with a sturdy cord for hanging on a wall.

The design was a familiar one: a tall portrait format, with artwork above and the calendar below. Originally there were twelve leaves, one per month, with the January leaf on top. By 1911, the format had changed to 54 leaves, one per week plus a title page on top and a colophon page at the bottom. The page-per-week calendars were sold in a matching box, which rarely survives. In 1918, the format changed again to two weeks per page, no doubt due to the skyrocketing price of paper, which was in turn one of the many side effects of World War I.

The New York Times was complimentary about the 1911 calendar:

The Impressions Calendar, (San Francisco: Paul Elder & Co., 50 cents, postage 10 cents) deserves the palm among American calendars for artistic beauty and distinctive quality. It has a page for each week of the year, with an impressionistic design, different for every page, as a background or margin for the quotation. These designs are in soft, pleasing colors and present the greatest variety of ideas and themes, from bits of conventionalized flower decorations to glimpses of landscapes. They are by Harold Sichel, Spencer Wright, and Charles Frank Ingerson. The quotations, which, with the illustrations, fill three-quarters of each page, are in prose and verse from famous authors, and have been selected with an eye both for literary grace and heartening message.¹New York Times, 3 December 1911, p804

The move from 12 to 54 pages, of course, meant 42 additional pages of artwork. Artwork for the Impression Calendars went hand-in-hand with artwork for the Impression Leaflet series. Most of the images appeared in both, though it’s not clear whether a given image appeared first as an Impression Leaflet and was subsequently used in an Impressions Calendar, or vice versa. Artwork may well have flowed in both directions.

As the calendar series matured, the subtlety and quality of the artwork also matured. Early calendar art often featured typeset text, enclosed in a simple frame, with an illuminated capital as the chief artist element. By the mid-1910s, almost every page was hand-lettered, with a text box surrounded by sophisticated artwork.

There was considerable repetition of the artwork from one year to the next, though to mitigate this a given image would often be printed in a different palette. However, over time, new images gradually replaced older ones. Whereas the 1912 calendar reused 51 of the 52 weekly pages in the 1911 calendar, the 1917 calendar only retained 17 of the 1911 images. Sometimes, artwork would be reused, but with new text in the center box.

The quotations were almost certainly compiled by Paul Elder himself. The Impressions Calendars series reinforces your editor’s long-held conviction that Robert Louis Stevenson was Elder’s favorite author. For example, five of the twelve quotations in 1906 are Stevenson’s, as are eleven of the 54 in 1911 and 1912—no one else comes close. Other 19th-century authors who appear frequently include Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, and Edward Rowland Sill (professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley from 1874 to 1882). A survey of five calendars yields a total of 65 different authors and poets.

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  New York Times, 3 December 1911, p804

Fred Warner Carpenter had an eventful life: secretary to a President, diplomat to Morocco and Siam (now Thailand). Between 1911 and 1914, he composed a number of poems about those places and his experiences there. In November 1914, Paul Elder published Carpenter’s collected poems as Verses from Many Seas. The poems are pleasant if simplistic, with few risks taken, and return often to the same poetic meters.

Frederick Warner Carpenter was born on 12 December 1873 in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, the son of Ira M. Carpenter, a farmer, and Eva Augusta Wright. The family moved to California when Fred was twelve, and he spent his teenage years on a ranch near San Luis Obispo. After attending public schools and a local academy, returned to the University of Minnesota to study law, and was admitted to the bar in Minnesota and California in 1898.¹New York Times, 6 March 1909, p1 He worked as a stenographer to Charles S. Wheeler at Bishop & Wheeler in San Francisco, before resigning to take the job that would launch his career: stenographer to federal judge William Howard Taft as he headed to the Philippine Islands as chairman of a commission to organize a civilian government. When Taft was installed as Philippines governor in 1901, Carpenter became his private secretary. Carpenter remained Taft’s secretary as he was appointed Secretary of War in 1904, then elected President of the United States in 1908.²Marquis’s Who Was Who in America, Volume V, 1969-1973, p117

On Taft’s first day as President, 6 March 1909, the New York Times described Carpenter as Taft’s “veritable shadow.” His long association with Taft came to an abrupt end on 27 May 1910, when Carpenter resigned his post in order to become Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Morocco. Officially, a White House statement said that “the appointment of Carpenter to Morocco was made on his own application to be relieved of the duties of secretary to the president, which had been so heavy upon him as to threaten his health. The president thought that as Morocco has a delightful climate the change of duty which this would afford was wise and consented to Carpenter’s resignation of this present position.” Behind the scenes, as reported by the Call, Taft was likely embarrassed by a statement Carpenter issued about embattled Interior Secretary Ballinger, as well as the transmission of a list of congressmen that had met with Taft during his trip to the South. Essentially, Carpenter was being “kicked upstairs.”³San Francisco Call, 28 May 1910, p1

Carpenter was officially received by a representative of the Sultan two months later, on 27 July. In September 1912, he left Morocco to become Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Siam, which he held until November 1913.⁴https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/carpenter-fred-warner, accessed 28 Jan 2026 By 1917, he is working at the Mission Savings Bank at 16th and Valencia in San Francisco, perhaps as their attorney. By 1930, he appears to have retired.

Carpenter never married and had no children. He died on 27 August 1957 at his home in San Anselmo in Marin County, and is buried at the Kelseyville Cemetery in Kelseyville, Lake County, California.

In the printed checklists and indexes, Carpenter’s name is mistakenly given as Fred Carpenter Warner.

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  New York Times, 6 March 1909, p1
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  Marquis’s Who Was Who in America, Volume V, 1969-1973, p117
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  San Francisco Call, 28 May 1910, p1
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  https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/carpenter-fred-warner, accessed 28 Jan 2026

Spots, or Two Hundred and Two Cleansers (1906) is an obvious sequel to May Southworth’s 101 Epicurean Thrills series, with the same format and internal design as the cookbooks throughout. However, this book was not compiled by Southworth, but instead by Clarice T. Courvoisier. In 1906, Clarice was thirty-four years old and newly married. It’s unknown how she was commissioned to write the book, but a reasonable guess is that Southworth and Courvoisier knew each other socially.

The book includes cures for all the stains you would expect: soot, grass, wine, blood, etc. However, Courvoisier assumes your cleaning closet contains many items no longer kept there today, including turpentine, gasoline, kerosene, benzine, muriatic acid, sulphuric acid, oxalic acid, hypochloride of lime, sal-volatile (ammonium carbonate in alcohol), powdered pipe-clay, and powdered whiting (chalk dust). She also assumes you’ll be needing to clean your stuffed animals (“brush the specimen with a clothes-brush, then warm some bran, stirring it to prevent burning, and rub it into the fur three or four times, then brush it all out”), ostrich plumes (“they may be held over fumes of sulphur, which will clean and curl them. It must be done out of doors”), and violins (“wash with soap and water, or dip a piece of soft silk in paraffin oil and rub. Cleanse the interior with dry rice).”

Perhaps unnecessarily for a book about cleansers—“a handy volume for the housewife,” says the 1911 Impressions Annual catalog—Spots was still given the usual Paul Elder treatment, with at least two bindings and at least three different cover states (see photos). The “Housewife Edition” was issued in paper wraps with a matching envelope, while the “Tomoye Edition” was bound in hand-finished, flexible suede calf for $2. (Who buys a book about cleaning products in hand-finished, flexible suede?) The smart money is on Spencer Wright as the cover design artist, given that he designed the covers for 101 Epicurean Thrills, but I have no confirmation of this.

Clarice Towne was born on 17 November 1872 in Petaluma, California, the sixth of seven children of Smith Darius Towne, a druggist, and Amanda Henrietta Munday. Both her parents came to Petaluma from Missouri in the 1850s and were reckoned two of the city’s pioneers. Clarice’s obituary notes that she was educated in Petaluma and “was one the of the members of the social set.”

Clarice married art dealer Ephraim Benoit Courvoisier in San Francisco on 3 September 1905. It was her first marriage, but his third; their daughter Alice was born in 1908. The marriage ended in divorce, and Clarice later remarried a man named Courtney. (Ephraim Courvoisier would go on to marry twice more, for a total of five wives.) Clarice died on 5 November 1930 in Los Angeles, and is buried in the Towne family plot in Petaluma.

It is 1912, and a lonely woman in Vermont illustrates children’s books to take her mind off a stifling marriage. Three years later, she is an impoverished single mother, working as a mucker alongside grimy men in a lonely gold mine in the Sierra foothills. Three years after that, she is a nationally-known columnist and the highest-paid woman in the Hearst newspapers.

Who was this remarkable woman? The life story of journalist, artist, and memoirist Elsie Robinson is finally being told in full, thanks to the marvelous 2022 biography Listen, World!, by Julia Scheeres and Allison Gilbert. Our spotlight book today, one of Elder’s best children’s stories, has a small part in that tale.

Behind the Garden Wall is a delightful children’s book, with verses by Robert Wallace and illustrations by Elsie Robinson. Her artwork is replete with all manners of animals: geese, crows, rabbits, mice, guitar-playing frogs, dancing beetles, even mosquitos. Printed in three colors, it would still be a perfect book, 110 years after publication, to read to a young child.

Elsinore Justinia Robinson was born in 1883 in Benicia, California. Thirty years before, Benicia had briefly been the California state capitol—the old capitol building still stands—but by 1883 it had become a ‘frontier town’ with saloons and bordellos. When Elsie was nineteen, she met a visiting easterner named Christie Burnham Crowell, ten years her senior.¹This and other biographical details are from Listen World!, by Julia Scheeres and Allison Gilbert, Seal Press, 2022

Elsie was eager to escape into the wider world, and Christie was on the rebound from the death of his first wife from an abdominal tumor at the age of 24. Their long courtship was spent convincing Christie’s parents to agree to the marriage: the devout Crowells thought her a sloppy, emotional teenager, completely unable to run a New England household. The Crowells finally agreed on the condition that Elsie spend a year at a nearby boarding school, where she would learn manners, household management, and the Bible. Elsie and Christie were married in his home town in Brattleboro, Vermont, and she gave birth to their son George in 1904. But George’s birth did not improve their marriage. When George developed asthma, Elsie pleaded to move to a warmer client for his health, but Christie refused. Elsie now realized that she was trapped: Christie would always be loyal to his parents first.

Elsie proceeded to put all her emotional energy into raising George, who was often home sick from school. She kept many children’s magazines at his bedside, including a brand-new title that would become his favorite: John Martin’s Letters. It was published by none other than Morgan Shepard, now living back in his home town of New York City after his years with Paul Elder in San Francisco. Elsie also began writing her own stories for George, and illustrated them with children and animals. She screwed up the courage to write to Shepard, asking whether her stories might be good enough to publish. She was astonished when Shepard replied, saying that yes, he’d very much like to publish her story, and more like it. Elsie began to write regularly for John Martin’s Letters in 1911 under the pseudonym “Comfy Lady.”

In 1912, Elsie was contacted by Robert Wallace, an inmate at the Brattleboro Retreat, a former insane asylum. He was trying to cure his alcoholism, in part by writing children’s stories, and he was looking for an illustrator. Elsie visited him at the Retreat, and they began working on a book together, which would become Behind the Garden Wall.

Elsie and Robert realized that they attracted to each other. They were also both married to people who paid little attention to them. As the book neared completion, they devised an escape plan. Robert wanted to get out of the asylum, and Elsie could file a petition to be a guardian. Elsie wanted to return to California, both for her son’s health and for her own sanity. Robert casually proposed a trip to California over a chess game with Christie, Elsie and George coming along to visit her family in Benicia. Christie agreed, oblivious of their scheme. Within a few weeks, Elsie, George, and Robert were on a train to California, never to return. Eventually, it became clear to Christie that Robert and Elsie were living together, and he initiated divorce proceedings. But for more on Elsie’s life story, you’ll need to read Listen, World!

It’s unknown why Paul Elder ended up publishing Behind the Garden Wall, but the most likely scenario is that Morgan Shepard referred Elsie to Elder, knowing that Elder had the means to properly publish and market the book. Once in California, Elsie and Robert wrote another children’s book, Within the Deep Dark Woods, published later in 1913, but by Blair-Murdock, not Paul Elder. Perhaps Morgan Shepard referred Elsie to both publishers and they agreed to do one book with each?

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  This and other biographical details are from Listen World!, by Julia Scheeres and Allison Gilbert, Seal Press, 2022