In 1915, the poet Snow Langley was 36 years old and unmarried: a “spinster” in the thankfully now-obsolete parlance. Spinning wool was typically the job of unmarried women, and spinster was used in legal documents as early as the 1600s to denote an unmarried woman who was likely to stay that way. One might think, then, that a book entitled Sonnets of Spinsterhood would be full of bitterness about years of loneliness. However, a better indication of what lies ahead is in the subtitle: A Spinster’s Book of Dreams: Delicate Traceries of Dim Desires. Langley writes in her introduction:
These Sonnets need, perhaps, a word of explanation. In a recent reading of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese, the conviction was borne in upon me that the sentiment of love is worthy of expression, whether or not it outwardly finds an object; “for the romantic passion” as a dream, an ideal or a memory is a source of inspiration in every human life. I have endeavored to make the sequence of sonnets show the ideal progress from the personal to the racial, from the love which seeks individual expression to the love for humanity.
Title page of “Sonnets of Spinsterhood”
The book is bound in lavender paper, highlighting the personal, feminine nature of the content. The beautiful decorations are by Audley B. Wells, whom Elder used in a number of his publications.
Nannie Snow Longley was born in Ohio in 1879. Her family moved to California some time after, and she graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1896, where she gave the valedictory address, a historical narrative entitled “The Ballad of Lady Mary.” She left the ranks of spinsterhood at the age of 49 when she married Grant S. Housh in 1928; they had no children. For many years she was an English teacher at Los Angeles High School, where one of her students was the future science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury; he credited her with instilling in him a love of poetry. She died in 1963 and is buried in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles.
Introductory “Proem”The first sonnet.Page 14-15 of “Sonnets of Spinsterhood”The last two sonnets.
Dust jacket of “Art of the Exposition.” Eugen Neuhaus’s name is spelled with pseudo-Latinate Vs instead of Us.
Eugen Neuhaus called his book The Art of the Exposition, but it might more accurately be titled The Art Critic Goes to the Fair. Neuhaus walks through the whole complex, giving us his impressions.
The following pages have grown out of many talks given during the year by Mr. Neuhaus to his students at the University of California. Presented to the public in the form of a series of evening lectures at the University, and repeated before many other organizations through California, his interpretation of the Art of the Exposition roused a demand for its repetition so widespread as only to be met by the aid of the printing press.
Frontispiece and title page of “Art of the Exposition”
The book’s main sections are: Architecture, Sculpture, Color Scheme and the Landscape Gardening, Mural Decorations, and Illumination (i.e. lighting). While electricity was no longer a novelty, the PPIE’s buildings were elegantly lit at night with a huge number of electric lights:
The first half hour after the close of day, as enjoyed around the lagoon, with the Fine Arts Building in the background, reflected in the waters, will linger forever in the minds of all who are privileged to see it. Such blues I have seen only in pictures by Maxfield Parrish. Combined with the rich gold of the colonnade, they are almost supernatural. The whole effect, as relfected in the placid surface o the lagoon, occasionally broken here and there by a slowly moving waterfowl … is inspiring, and must awaken an aesthetic response in the soul of the most ordinary mortal.
Cover of “Art of the Exposition” (paper on boards)
Neuhaus saves his greatest disdain for the midway, or as it was called at the PPIE, “The Zone”:
[The Zone] is invaluable, however, as an object lesson in showing the fatal results of the utter disregard of all those fundamental laws of balance, harmony, and unity so uniformly and persistently applied through the seriously designed main body of the Exposition. There is no harmony whatever in the Zone anywhere, either in the form, style, or color, unless it be the harmony of ugliness which is carried through this riotous mêlée of flimsiness and sham.
Cover of “Art of the Exposition” (leather on boards)
Karl Eugen Neuhaus was born in Barmen (now Wuppertal), Germany on 18 September 1879. He studied at the Royal Art School in Kassel and the Berlin Royal Institute for Applied Arts, and came to San Francisco in 1904, where he setup a studio across the corridor from William Keith. After being burned out by the earthquake and fire in 1906, he lived in Monterey and helped found the Del Monte Art Gallery.
In 1908, Neuhaus became head of the Art department at University of California, Berkeley, a post he would hold for over forty years. At the PPIE he was Chairman of the Western Advisory Committee and was a member of the San Francisco Jury of the Department of Fine Arts; he exhibited six entries. He was a popular public speaker and wrote many books on art history. Neuhaus died in Berkeley, California on 29 October 1963.
This book, one of eleven published in 1915 by Elder on the PPIE, was very popular and went into a fourth printing (very unusual for an Elder). It was published in several bindings: beige paper on boards, buckram on boards, and leather on boards (see photos).
Cover of the Victor special issue, with a medallion of the Victor Palace at center
In addition, there was a special issue of Art of the Exposition from the Victor Talking Machine Company (famous for the dog Nipper and the slogan “His Master’s Voice”), consisting of a modified cover and a sixteen-page insert opposite page 1. The insert commemorates a meeting of the National Association of Talking Machine Jobbers and guests of the Victor Talking Machine Company, held on Saturday 24 July 1915 at the Victor Temple at the PPIE, then the next day at Muir Woods on Mt Tamalpais.
First page of the 16-page insert in the Victor special issue.
The Life of a Successful Banker (1905) is humorous short story, purporting to describe a young man’s journey from humble beginnings in North Carolina to become a “great financier” at the First Rational Bank in San Francisco. The author fancifully claims to have gone from the dry-goods business to the “wet-goods” business (alcohol) to the back door of a San Francisco bank on a dark and stormy night (the safe was already empty). My favorite bit is the author’s own proposed epitaph:
Hic jacet Sam, who we deplore / Thou art not dead, just gone before / Take not more than thy share of glory / For we come next — Memento Mori
The title page notes the author as “His Boswell,” a reference to James Boswell’s famous biography of Samuel Johnson. However, the author, as well as title character, is Samuel Green Murphy (1837-1926), the very successful President of the First National Bank at the corner of Bush & Sansome. He was born in North Carolina and served in the Confederate Army before coming to California.
Title page and frontispiece of “Life of a Successful Banker”
The Life of a Successful Banker is perhaps the most memorable of all the vanity publications published by Elder at the Tomoye Press. Only fifty-five copies of this little book were produced, surely for private circulation amongst Murphy’s friends. At barely 700 words, the text would fill only two typed pages, but with a pleasing design on small paper and interspersed with amusing drawings by Spencer Wright, the work becomes a 32-page booklet. And what the book lacks in substance, it makes up for in intrigue of the Rich and Famous.
Several notable things happened to Samuel Murphy in 1905, the year this booklet was published. The first was a reconciliation with his daughter Adelaide (1882–ca. 1955), who had in July 1902 married against his wishes. Though her fiancé was rich—indeed, John Cabell Breckinridge (1879–1914) was the grandson of John Cabell Breckinridge (US vice-president under Millard Fillmore) and son of John W. Breckinridge, the first President of Wells Fargo Bank—Samuel Murphy was vehemently opposed to Adelaide’s elopement and disowned her. The whole affair was front-page fodder for the local newspapers. “I had a daughter once,” he was quoted as saying. “If she is married, she is dead.”
Page 1 of “Life of a Successful Banker”
Nor did the notoriety end there. Eight months later, while the newlyweds were in Paris, John fell from a second-story balcony of the Hotel d’Albe on the Champs Elysées. He was lucky to escape with only bruises, but that was just the beginning. Three months later, in May 1903, both Adelaide and John’s mother were petitioning the French courts for legal control of John (I suppose today we would say “medical power of attorney”) due to his incompetency. The courts upheld Adelaide’s claim, and John was placed in a sanitarium. The San Francisco newspapers duly reported on all the twists and turns of the Murphy clan. What they did not report during all the hubbub, but which would surely be reported today, was that Adelaide was six months pregnant with their son John Cabell Breckinridge, Jr., who was born on Aug 5th.
In December 1905, Samuel Murphy received word that Adelaide herself was gravely ill. He decided then to lay aside his grievances and travel to France. “We had a misunderstanding once, but that is all over now,” he told the San Francisco Call. “I shall go to her if she needs me.” Happily, Adelaide recovered from her illness.
The Murphy Windmill: (left) shortly after construction in 1908, (center) derelict in 1999, (right) restored in 2012. Photo at right by Allie Caulfield.
The other notable event in Samuel Murphy’s life in 1905 was his donation of $20,000 (more than $500,000 in today’s money) for the construction of a windmill in Golden Gate Park.
The creation of Golden Gate Park in the 1870s and 1880s from a long stretch of sand dunes was a tremendous feat of landscape design, but the new plantings required a great deal of water. In 1902, the San Francisco Park Commission authorized the construction of two windmills to pump groundwater for park irrigation, to avoid purchasing water at exorbitant costs from the Spring Valley Water Company. The windmills would be built on the western edge of the park, just off Ocean Beach, in order to take advantage of the winds that blow almost every afternoon. The Dutch Windmill was completed in 1903 and pumped 30,000 gallons per hour. The Murphy Windmill was completed in 1908 and pumped an additional 40,000 gallons per hour.
Pages 6-7 of “Life of a Successful Banker”
The Murphy Windmill had an additional fifteen minutes of fame when it appeared in the 1915 Charlie Chaplin movie A Jitney Elopement. (You can watch the movie here; the windmill appears at 21:08.) Not long afterwards, electric pumps (which could pump when it wasn’t windy) made the windmills obsolete. They fell into disrepair, and probably spent more decades without their massive spars and sails than with them (this is how I remember the windmills; see the middle photograph above). Restoration work on the Murphy Windmill began in 2002 and was completed in 2012, and today the blades can often been seen turning in the wind.
How did the Murphy family turn out in the end? I’m glad you asked:
After the events of 1905, Samuel G. Murphy seems to disappear from the historical record. He died in Helena, Montana in 1926 at the age of 89.
Adelaide Murphy Breckinridge apparently spent the rest of her life abroad. She lived at least until 1955, when she is known to have sued her son John Brekinridge Jr. for support. It’s unknown how she ended up in financial straits, given that both her father and husband were very wealthy men.
John C. Breckinridge Sr. continued to show signs of mental illness, and was committed to an asylum in France. His marriage to Adelaide was annulled in 1914, and apparently John died soon afterwards.
John C. “Bunny” Breckinridge, Jr. (1903-1996), Adelaide and John Sr.’s son, had a remarkably colorful life. Educated at Eton and Oxford in England, he lived for many years in Paris before coming to the United States. He was openly gay in a time when it was rare to do so, and often performed onstage as a drag queen. He is known among film buffs for his one and only movie role, that of “The Ruler” in the 1959 cult favorite Plan 9 From Outer Space. (I am not making this up.) Shortly thereafter, he spent a year in prison on sex offences, but enjoyed a revival in popularity during the 1960s, in part for his knowledge of gay history.
Pages 28-29 of “Life of a Successful Banker”Pages 30-31 of “Life of a Successful Banker”
Cover of the 1911 edition of “Abelard and Heloise”
The story of Abelard and Heloise is too well known to need repetition here, for these two rank with the few great historic lovers of the world, as well they may. The love of Heloise was sublime in its intensity, romantic in its constancy, appealing in its pathos, and tragic in its suffering.
When I first picked up Abelard and Heloise, I had never heard their names before. But one hundred years ago, so Ella Costillo Bennett informs me, I would have known all about them. (I hope this reflects the great differences in literary curriculum between then and now, as opposed to my ignorance of a story that everyone knows!) Bennett has taken some of their love letters and rewritten them as poems.
Title page of the 1911 edition of “Abelard and Heloise”
Pierre Abélard (1079–1142) was a medieval French scholastic philosopher, theologian, composer and preeminent logician. Héloïse d’Argenteuil (1090?–1164) was a French writer, scholar, and later a nun and abbess. Their story is certainly a captivating one: two brilliant scholars who meet, fall in love, are separated, but continue to meet in secret. She becomes pregnant and bears a son, they are married but then separated again when Héloïse is sent to a convent. (I am leaving out many details.) They begin a long correspondance, which has become the thing of legend.
Abelard’s and Heloise’s tomb at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
Even their mortal remains have become legendary. Their bodies were moved several times over the intervening centuries, most recently to Père Lachaise Cemetery in 1817 by Josephine Bonaparte. At the time, Père Lachaise was outside the dense urban area of Paris, and the reburial is thought to have considerably increased the cemetery’s popularity. It has since become tradition for lovers, or lonely singles, to leave letters at their tomb in hopes of finding true love.
Paul Elder published Abelard and Heloise in a limited edition of 500 copies in 1907, accompanied by illustrations by Will Jenkins. He published a trade edition in 1911.
Page 14-15 of “Abelard and Heloise”
Ella Costillo Bennett (1865-1932) was a San Francisco socialite and a minor player in the local literary scene. She was a feature writer for a number of newspapers, including The Wasp and The Pacific Coast Weekly (for which she wrote “Knocks from the Iconoclast”), and an associate editor for Mythland, a children’s magazine.
Much of what is known about Ella Bennett comes from a 138-page scrapbook (now at the University of Colorado at Boulder), created by her daughter Mary L. Bennett. In addition to manuscript letters, typescripts of original poetry, and published articles written by Ella, the scrapbook contains materials relating to the women’s suffrage movement and anti-war petitions. Also figuring prominently is Ella’s son Ray Raphael Bennett (1895-1957), a television and film actor.
In February 1912, the Manchu Dynasty, rulers of imperial China since 1644, collapsed and was replaced by the fledgling Republic of China. Watching with great interest from Chicago was Lyon Sharman, an American woman who grew up in Hangzhou, 100 miles southwest of Shanghai. In her dedication to Bamboo, Tales of the Orient-Born, which Paul Elder published in 1914, Lyon clearly approves of the change in government:
If one might presume to dedicate so slight a book to a great country, this would be dedicated to China—the land of the author’s earliest recollection and of abiding sentiment, a nation whose present renaissance commands the admiration and solicitude of one who was born to lover her.
Title page of “Bamboo”
The stories in Bamboo are intended for young readers. The characters reflect Sharman’s own experience: Chinese growing up in China, Americans growing up in China, “American” teenagers newly returned to the States who feel like foreigners. The first story, “A Little Daughter of the Gospel,” is clearly autobiographical.
Lyon Sharman (14 Sep 1872–21 Jul 1957) was born Abbie Mary Lyon in Hangzhou, China, the daughter of American missionaries. While a teenager the family returned to the United States, where she attended high school and earned a BA from the University of Wooster in Ohio. She attended the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, intending to join her father as a missionary, but met and married Henry Burton Sharman (1865-1953). While working towards her Ph.D. in literature from the University of Chicago, Abbie wrote book reviews for the Chicago Evening Post under the byline “Lyon Sharman.” She later branched out into fiction, poetry, biography and drama. Abbie and Henry spent three years in China while he taught at Peking University; she continued to write. They retired to southern California in the early 1930s and lived there for the rest of their lives.
