This Christmas card was issued in late 1906, after Paul Elder and John Henry Nash had setup an outpost in New York City following the earthquake and fire of April 18th. It was issued with an envelope that doesn’t match the card’s artwork; it may have been a generic Christmas envelope used for all the store’s cards. The poem is by Mary Ogden Vaughan, of whom I know little except that she published other poems in The Overland Monthly. The illumination is by Santa Barbara artist Robert Wilson Hyde.
May you have a warm, healthy and peaceful holiday season.
"A Christmas Message of Peace and Love"Envelope with non-matching artwork
A decade after publishing her popular “101” cookbook series, May Southworth wrote The Great Small Cat And Others (1914), a collection of seven tales for cat lovers. Handsomely bound if unimaginatively typeset, the book is illustrated with eight sepia photographs. From an Arts & Crafts perspective, the book is notable chiefly for the decorations by artist Pedro J. Lemos (1882-1954), who was just becoming well known for his wood-block prints.
I dedicate this post to the memory of Fuller the Cat, who gave us six years of companionship and affection.
Fuller the Cat, 1999 – Dec 10, 2010Cover of “The Great Small Cat”Title page of “The Great Small Cat”Poem from “The Great Small Cat”“The Great Small Cat,” page 8-9“The Great Small Cat,” page 61
In Japanese mythology and folklore, Ebisu (恵比須) is the Japanese god of fishermen, workingmen and good luck, and is one of the Seven Gods of Fortune. Although slightly lame and deaf, he is happy and auspicious. He is often displayed with Daikokuten and Fukurokuju, two more of the Seven Gods of Fortune, in shopkeeper windows.
Paul Elder published this doggerel about Ebisu exactly 100 years ago, as a greeting for the Christmas season of 1910. It is a large format piece—25″ wide—that folds in thirds to a 8.5 x 10″ finished size. Cutouts reveal photographs of the front and back of a pottery Ebisu figure. It’s unclear whether Elder also sold the figurines along with the greeting.
The poet was William O’Connell McGeehan (1879-1933) a sportswriter and editor of the New York Herald Tribune. He wrote primarily about boxing (which he euphemistically called “the manly art of modified murder” or “The Cauliflower Industry”). The Herald Tribune sent McGeehan to Dayton, Tennessee in 1925 to cover the famous John Scopes trial, no doubt sensing a metaphorical boxing match between the attorneys Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan. McGeehan had written Ebisu long before, while he and his wife, journalist and playwright Sophie Treadwell, were still reporters for newspapers in San Francisco.
Title page of “Ebisu”W. O. McGeehan’s poem “Ebisu”Ebisu sculpture, with more poetryBack of Ebisu sculpture, with more poetry
Paul Elder frequently called upon artist Harold Sichel to illustrate ephemera. Elder was quite fond of the genre where an inspirational quote from English literature was centered within a floral or nautical scene. These small Miniature Leaflets, all illustrated by Sichel, were about 4″ x 2-1/2″, and were issued beginning in 1905 until at least 1909. They were probably only sold in sets, complete with their own box. Too small to be proper greeting cards, I imagine they were intended as a card you would attach to a gift-wrapped present.
Miniature Leaflets #4, #3 and #1 (1905)Miniature Leaflets #10 (1908) and #18 (1909)Miniature Leaflets box
Paul Elder published this beautiful booklet during the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. It’s a real gem, with striking full-color drawings by Audley B. Wells and a matching envelope.
Perhaps only after admiring the booklet do we notice the poem it contains, California, by Fred Emerson Brooks (1850-1923). Though Brooks and his poetry have been forgotten, he was very popular a century ago as a writer and speaker. Modesty, it would seem, was not one of Brooks’s character flaws. Billed in a promotional flyer as “The Man Who Never Disappoints, Always Smiling, Always There,” his Chicago publisher gushes:
Fred Emerson Brooks is one of the great men in the lyceum world … Phenomenal health, a clean life and a sunny nature give him a remarkable record. Brooks has a marvelous breadth of thought and expression—there is no passion or feeling he does not portray. He is a gifted orator with a voice ranging from that of thunder to the softness of a summer zephyr.
The flyer also includes endorsements from Presidents McKinley, Roosevelt (“I’ve heard Brooks, and he’s bully!”) and Taft.
California, A PoemCalifornia, page 3California, page 5California, page 7California, page 9California, page 11California, page 13California, page 15matching envelope to "California"
