My Autograph Letter Collection

If someone told me today that she was an autograph collector, I would assume she was collecting signatures of famous people, and not letters written by them.

The term, "autograph" has come a long way since Walter R. Benjamin (1854-1943) first published a periodical in 1887 devoted to the collection of autographs:  The Collector: A Monthly Journal Devoted to Autographs.  In the second issue, Benjamin wrote:

There is much confusion about the term "Autograph." An autograph is properly a letter either written or signed by a person. Autograph signatures should be spoken of as "Signatures." If this distinction is clearly understood much misunderstanding will be avoided.

Walter R. Benjamin modified his own interpretation of the term, "Autograph," expanding its meaning in a New York Sun interview in 1911.  This interview was reprinted in the Jan-Mar 1957 issues of The Collector...  by his daughter, Mary  A. Benjamin (The Autograph Lady). Walter R. Benjamin wrote:

 Nowadays, we call  a signature  an "autograph," and  a signed letter either an "Autograph Letter Signed" or an "Autographed Letter Signed." Google "Autograph" and you will get about 48,400,000 hits.  Google "Autograph Letter Signed" and you will get about 381,000 hits.  Google "Autographed Letter Signed" and you will get about 262,000 hits. Both terms can be shortened to A.L.S. or even "ALS," but  Google either of them and you will get about 2,130,000,000 hits, most of which refer to Lou Gehrig's disease.

Walter R. Benjamin preferred "Autograph Letter Signed"  over "Autographed Letter Signed:"

I prefer "Autograph Letter Signed."  All the letters in my autograph letter collection displayed here are either to or from authors and other people whose books I collect. Some but not all of these letters have been displayed on my moislibrary.com website.

 It is only fitting that the first autograph letter I should display is an autograph letter written to Walter R. Benjamin by Harry B. Smith (1860-1936):

It is Benjamin's fourth class of autograph, fully written by Harry B. Smith, renowned librettist, and book collector. It is a contents letter at that, instructing Benjamin to bid on certain items of a Sotheby auction on Smith's behalf.  I should research these items to see if they are included in Smith's A Sentimental Library.  



The first autograph letter  I acquired, almost ten years ago, which was also of the fourth class of autographs, came with an autograph of the first class, a signature. The Cleveland book collector Paul Lemperly (1858-1939) would buy a copy of an author's work and mail the book to the author for his signature.  Lemperly hired E.D. French to engrave an elaborate bookplate to paste in the book for the author to sign.  The bookplate read, " This volume, for insertion in which the author has been pleased to write his name, _________________ is the property of Paul Lemperly."  Lemperly got a bonus when he sent a copy of Ardours and Endurances to its author the English War Poet Robert Nichols; Nichols pasted an autograph letter to the book:

Here is a description of the letter.   I should  note that it was the A. Edward Newton collector David Klappholz who brought this ebay auction to my attention, opening up an interesting offshoot for My Sentimental Library Collection.  Thank you Dave!

The next letter, signed by  the bibliographer and librarian Wilberforce Eames (1855-1937) is of the third class of autograph letter, basically a signed document acknowledging receipt of two books given to the New York Library by Frederick H. Hitchcock (1867-1928), the publisher of both books:

Here's another letter written in the Lenox Library, but this one is more of the fourth class, a full autograph letter written by the bibliographer and librarian S. Austin Allibone (1816-1889).  It is addressed to Thomas D. Suplée, thanking him in an informal and personal way for sending a copy of The Life of Theodorick Bland Pryor, First Mathematical-Fellow of Princeton College:

Since we are on bibliographers, here's a rather strange method of response from the bibliographer Jacob Blanck (1906-1974) to a letter from the Ohio bookseller Paul H. North:

The next autograph letter is of the second class; Christopher Morley (1890-1957) is responding to a request for a photograph:

Christopher Morley is present again in an A.N.S (Autograph Note Signed):

I needed help from Stephen Rothman, editor of The Baker Street Journal, to identify who O.M. was.

Another example of the second class of autograph is Edward Martin's reply to a request for a photograph:

I own a book from the library of Edward Martin (1879-1967). There was a bookplate pasted on the inside cover.  Who is Edward Martin?  In 2004, I wrote an article for the online AB Bookman's Weekly about the bookplate:  The Story of a Bookplate.  I eventually acquired Martin's autobiography, Always Be On Time.

Some of my friends may remember an October 2007 blog post about a letter from George Birkbeck Hill (1835-1903) to a still-unidentified American book collector.  In the top left-hand corner, someone had written the name "Cowan."  I thought it might be Robert Ernest Cowan (1862-1942), and acquired one of his letters from the New York bibliophile David W. Lowden to compare the handwriting:

Cowan it is not –– or at least Cowan was not the one whose marginalia was written in the book.  It is possible, though not likely, that Cowan was the recipient of Hill's letter.

Some recipients are easier to identify.  The T.L.S (Type Letter Signed) to "Mary" from L.P. Curtis was to Mary Hyde (1912-2003) and was inserted in her copy of Curtis's book, Chichester Towers:

 A harder recipient to identify was in the note inserted in the book I found in Umatilla Florida!

One of my oldest letters is an 1848 letter written by the English author Henry Hallam (1777-1859), accepting an invitation to breakfast with a "Lord" whose name I can't decipher:

Another English writer whose autograph letter I have is Edward Arber (1836-1912), best known as the editor of the eight-volume English Garner series:

Shortly after the publication of his book, Obiter Dicta, Augustine Birrell (1850-1933) received a letter from a woman who was going to review his book in an Oxford publication. I have his reply:

"Hither-unpublished Obiter Dicta," was the title of my essay the Caxton Club published in Other People's Books:  Association Copies And the Stories They Tell in March 2011.  My essay was about Birrell's annotated copy of Lord Acton's Lectures on the French Revolution.

Authors are often asked to review works from unpublished authors.  Here is how the American poet Edward A. Guest (1881-1959) handled such a request:

I have a decent collection of books  by and about the English Poet Austin Dobson (1840-1921), and an autograph letter from him concerning an anniversary dinner of the Royal Literary Fund he could not attend:

I also have an autograph letter to Austin Dobson from Hartley Carrick that Carrick inserted in Dobson's copy of The Diary of John Evelyn.  It serves as a presentation note:

Here's a letter to the Leigh Hunt Collector and Torch Press Publisher Luther A. Brewer (1858-1933) from W.L Washburn thanking him for Brewer's review of one of his works:

The author, publisher,  and bibliophile, Henry H. Harper (1871-1953) inserted a T.L.S. inside the copy of Library Essays that he sent to John G. Milburn:

The American author John Preston responded to the American writer Louis Untermeyer (1885-1977), thanking him for his kind words about his book, The Liberals:

Here's a letter from the American writer Brander Matthews(1852-1929) which accompanied his payment of dues to the National Institute of Arts, Sciences & Letters:

The English publisher John Murray IV (1851-1928) bought some woodcuts from the American artist J.J. Lankes (1884-1960), sending payment via registered letter from  Barclays Bank as well as an autograph letter:

The Johnsonian William K. Wimsatt, Jr. (1907-1975) typed an interesting letter to the Johnsonian Alan Hazen (1904-1977) concerning anonymous quotations and quotations attributed to Johnson in Johnson's Dictionary.  Wimsatt wrote out a "P.S." to the T.L.S. and then included a mimeograph sheet of some of the anonymous quotations:

Hazen inserted Wimsatt's letter inside the copy of Wimsatt's book, Philosophic Words:  A Study of Style and Meaning in the Rambler and Dictionary of Samuel Johnson  that Wimsatt had given him.

The most recent autograph letter I acquired was from the Rare Book Room of the Strand Book Store on Broadway in New York on September 12, 2011.  It is a letter from Adrian H. Joline (1850-1912) written to Gen. William S. Stryker congratulating him on his honorary LL.D. degree.  The letter was inserted in a copy of Adrian Joline's Edgehill Essays by a former owner –– not Stryker; he has no connection with the book other than Joline's letter being inserted:

A belated entry –– and only because I just acquired a book by her on Oct. 1st –– is an autograph letter from the American essayist Agnes Repplier (1855-1950).  Agnes Repplier was a bibliophile, and some of her essays are about books.  I've seen a photo of her having tea at A. Edward Newton's library.  In the letter below, she is expecting a certain Mrs. Hopkins from Baltimore for a visit:

I believe this "Mrs. Hopkins" is the author Margaret Sutton Hopkins (1864-1941) who wrote under her maiden name, Margaret Sutton Briscoe.

I keep most of my autograph letters in acid-free page protectors in a three-ring binder. Some of my autograph letters remain in the books they came with.   Inserted in a copy of Carolyn Horton's Cleaning and Preserving Bindings and Related Materials, and serving as a presentation note is an A.L.S from the publisher Herbert Hanna to the bookbinder and book conservator Harold Tribolet (1911-1983):

My friends will recognize this T.L.S. from the bookseller and all-around bibliophile William Targ.  It is inserted in John Richardson Starrs's copy of Targ's The Pauper's Guide to Book Collecting:

Inserted in a copy of All in a Century:  The First 100 Years of Eli Lilly and Company is a T.L.S. to the bibliophile Frederick B. Adams, Jr. (1910-2001) from Eli Lilly (1885-1977).  The Lilly firm made its money in pharmaceuticals, but the Lilly name is known in the book world because of  J.K. Lilly, Jr. (1893-1966) and his Lilly Library at  Indiana University:

Inserted in a copy of The Silent Traveler in New York  is an impressive note to Frederick B. Adams Jr. from the author of the book, Chiang Yee:

Ellen Shaffer thought she recognized the name and writing of a former patron of Glen Dawson's book store in Los Angeles.  She did!  Her letters are inserted in J.C. Dykes's copy of Four Talks for Bibliophiles:

Both autograph letters below serve as "presentation letters" and remain in my copy of Letters of Sir Thomas Bodley to  Thomas James, First Keeper of the Bodleian Library:

The Bodleian Library first opened its doors in 1602.   Sir Thomas Bodley's letters were written from 1599 to 1613.   Strickland Gibson, Sub-Librarian at the Bodleian Library, presented this book of letters to L.F. Powell (1881-1975) "...in appreciation of his valuable services to the Samuel Johnson Exhibition (Bodleian Library) November 1934."


L.F. Powell presented this book to Donald Hyde  (1909-1966) in 1962 "...in appreciation of your magnificent gift to the great library in which as a young man I learned my trade."

What was Donald Hyde's magnificent gift?  Donald Hyde paid for the repair to the ceiling of Duke Humphrey's Library at the Bodleian:

Duke Humphrey's Library at the Bodleian was first completed in 1487 and rededicated in 1602.  Truly a magnificent building and a fitting photo finish to the display of my autograph letter collection!

Grand Moments

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The most sentimental thing in my life right now is being a grandfather – or, as some of my fifteen little ones call me: "Grandpa," "Grumps," "Ga-Ga-Papa," "Papa," and even "Poo-Pa."

When some of my grandchildren come knocking on my door, the first words out of their little mouths, after Grandma lets them in, are "Where's Papa?" And Grandma replies, "In the library, of course."

My grandchildren laugh when I try to read a book to them that is upside down. Their eyes widen and then twinkle when I try to put their socks on their ears or their shoes on their hands. My own eyes widen when I call one of my granddaughters by her mother's name. But then Hannah is the spitting image of her mother when Anita was a child. I no longer call that "a senior moment;" I call that "a grand moment."

I have had three "grand moments" in my library of late as well. I talked to the great-grandson of a bibliophile from New York City whose books I collect. I received a message from the great-grandson of the former owner of a book I bought in Texas in June. And I learned that one of the books in my library belonged to the granddaughter of a poet whose works I collect.


Lew Jaffe, the bookplate maven, put me in touch with the great-grandson of Henry Blackwell, the bibliophile from New York City. When I appeared as a guest blogger on Lew's blog, Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie in July 2010, I displayed the bookplates belonging to Henry Blackwell, as well as two books that Blackwell bound; he was a bookbinder.  So when Henry Blackwell's great-grandson contacted him, Lew knew I would be interested in what the great-grandson had to say. Lew and I talked on the phone, I emailed the great-grandson – whose first name is Charles – and several days later, we had an extended conversation about his great-grandfather's papers.  Charles lives in Jupiter, Florida.  I plan to visit him and view his great-grandfather's papers on my next trip to Fort Lauderdale.

One of the books I bought in Three Dog Books in Wichita Falls, Texas in June was The Legend of the Book, a small book of verse about the early days of the making of books.  It was published by The Bookfellows in Chicago in 1924, of whom its former owner, Frank M. Morris was a member.   In my blog post, "Books From Texas...," I mentioned that I bought this book because of the previous owner's inscription on the front flyleaf:
"Stolen from Frank M. Morris.  Who had it with the compliments of George Steele Seymour.  Chicago Oct. 1924."

A month after posting about the book in this blog, a person from Seattle contacted me and said that this book came from his maternal great-grandfather's bookstore in Chicago. He said he wanted to buy the book from me if I was willing to sell it. I posted a comment to the blog the very next day that I thought the book belonged in his library instead of mine, and provided an email address for him to contact me.  It has been almost a month and I have not heard another word from him. I have deleted his comment and my reply. Either he is not related to Frank M. Morris, or he is not too enthusiastic about owning one of his great-grandfather's books. Hey! I am more than happy to keep Frank M. Morris's book in My Sentimental Library.   In researching Frank M. Morris further, I can say that he was one well-liked Chicago bookseller.

The last "grand moment" in my library concerns a book my friend Asta gave me for my birthday in June 2007. It was a copy of Austin Dobson's The Ballad of Beau Brocade, published in London in 1912 and bound in half leather. On the front flyleaf was the following inscription:

For Doris Martin,
With best wishes
from Jean Austin Dobson
July 1962

I googled Jean Austin Dobson, learned she was a singer, but found nothing that mentioned she was related to Austin Dobson, an English author whose prose and poetry works I collect. I was in Hawaii in 2007, watching some of my grandchildren while their father was over in Iraq. I even created an appropriate blog: The Displaced Book Collector, and wrote about this book and Jean Austin Dobson in my June 30, 2007 post, "Once a Book Collector..."

Fast forward to the first week of this month – August 5th to be exact. I discovered that I had not been notified when someone posted to one of my blogs several months ago. I answered that comment and decided to check my other five blogs for comments I didn't know about. And that is when I found Warwick Harte's comment from Feb. 10, 2011.   I stopped posting to The Displaced Book Collector blog in October 2007, but never deleted it – and never bothered to check for comments until this month!

I have since contacted Warwick Harte and thanked him for his comments.  I also contacted another friend of Jean Austin Dobson's:  Colin Hurrell.  Colin has six blogs and mentions Jean Austin Dobson several times in his Poems and Prose Blog.  Colin visits Jean Austin Dobson several times a year, and they read her grandfather's poetry together.  Grand moments they are!

Blog Posts From Two of My Other Blogs

I'm posting two blog posts this month, and they're from two of my other blogs.

The first post is from my old Biblio Researching blog, and it has to do with researching certain latin classics identified in the Boswell library:  A Statius Check.

The second post is from my newest blog, Biblio-Connecting.  And that is what it is about: Biblio-Connecting!

Enjoy!

Ten Books From Texas and Two Reminiscences

My wife and I have become quite the travelers these past two years.  In April 2010, we went to Hawaii.  In June 2010, we went to New York.  In July 2010, we went to Fort Hood, Texas.  In March 2011, we went to Cincinnati, Ohio. In June 2011, we went back to Texas.  I even got  book time in on some of these trips, which I will include in a future blog post.  

I had thoughts of taking a side trip to Booked Up in Archer City, Larry McMurtry's town of books, when we visited our oldest son Todd last year in Fort Hood Texas; but Archer City looked just a bit too far on the map for this travel-wearied bibliophile.  We made it there this year!

We went to Texas to attend our oldest grandson Justin's High School Graduation Ceremony.  

That's Justin above.  No more pencils!  No more books!

That's me below.  Don't need any pencils.  Just need more books!

It took Linda and I about four hours to drive from Fort Hood to Archer City.  We arrived about 1 PM.  Building No. 1 is where the rare books are in Archer City.  There are also Building Nos. 2, 3, and 4, and an annex, each housing different genres of books.

I browsed some of the hundred-dollar-plus  rare books in Building No. 1. Then I walked across the street to Building No. 3, browsed the 18th and 19th Century Fiction, and then concentrated on the Pamphlets Section:  rows and rows of bibliographies, bookseller catalogues, auction catalogues and fine press pamphlets.   I could have spent a week in that building alone, and will spend a day or two in there on my visit next year. More on that later. When I got done browsing I put one book and one pamphlet aside to buy the following day.

We left Archer City before 5 PM, and got a room  for the night at a La Quinta Hotel in Wichita Falls, about twenty miles to the north.  My twenty-three years in the Air Force, served in my younger days, earned us a military discount!   Linda and I then went to the mall and walked and walked––it's too hot to walk outside in Texas.  According to the reading in my Saturn Vue, the outside temperature in Archer City was 116 degrees.  We ended up at a Books-A-Million bookstore in the mall, because the cheapest fiction book my wife could find in Archer City was twelve dollars.


Our first stop after breakfast the next day was the Mansion II Antique Mall in Wichita Falls.  Besides book time for me, I wanted my wife to get some antique time in as well.  The only drawback to going to Mansion II  was that it didn't open until 10 AM. But the place had 2,500 books!  Surprisingly, I didn't find any books I "had to have."  But the proprietor told me that Three Dog Books & Alley Cat Collective right next door had books about books.  Small world!  On the Booked Up website there is a link to "visit our friends at Three Dog Books."  Come to find out that Julie Ressell, one of the Three Dog Books owners, worked at Booked Up for years.

If I didn't know Three Dog Books was there, I would have walked right past it. On the slate board were two glorious words: old books.  I bought five old books about books there:

The Legend of the Book by Gilbert Harry Doane and Eloise White Street, Chicago: The Bookfellows, 1924.

I bought this book because if its inscription:

Both Frank M. Morris (no relation) and George Steele Seymour were members of The Bookfellows, a society organized to publish books worthy of publishing.  I like the book's colophon:

Colophon Respecting Craftsmanship:
"The Legend of the Book by Eloise White Street and Gilbert Harry Doane is the tenth volume in The Little Bookfellow Series.  Mr. Doane is Bookfellow No. 2438.  It is illustrated by photogravures of a series of mural decorations by John W. Alexander in the Library of Congress entitled, 'The Evolution of the Book.'  Altogether it is a very booklie legend.  Three hundred copies of this first edition have been printed by Luther Albertus Brewer, Bookfellow No. 14, at his Torch Press in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, September, nineteen twenty-four."


William Caxton & His Work:  A Paper Read At a Meeting of the Club of Odd Volumes in Boston, Massachusetts in January 1908, With a Letter From the Author by George Parker Winship, Berkeley: The Book Arts Club, The University of California, 1937.

George Parker Winship talking about William Caxton?  I had to have it!



A Bibliographical Ghost Visits His Old Haunts by Sir Frank Francis, Austin: The Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin, 1972.

Sir Frank Francis (1911-1988) was the librarian of the British Museum  and a lecturer on bibliography.  He was Secretary then President of the Bibliographical Society.  In this talk, Francis ponders new and old techniques in the world of bibliography.


The Alchemy of Books And Other Essays on Books & Writers by Lawrence Clark Powell, Los Angeles:  The Ward Ritchie Press, 1954.

Some of the essay titles made me buy this book:  "Book Hunting in Britain.  In Praise of English Books.  Antiquarian Booksellers in England.  A Bookman's Credo.  On Reading and Collecting.  Librarians as Readers of Books."  And finally, "Books, People and the Earth on Which We Live."



My Study Windows by James Russell Lowell, Boston:  James R. Osgood and Company, 1871.

I have a Shakespeare book in My Sentimental Library from Lowell's library (inscribed by James O. Halliwell-Philipps), a biography of him, and a book which includes a tour of his house.  I thought I should have at least one book written by him in my library, and this one looks interesting.

The antique dealer at Mansion II also recommended that we visit an antique mall in Burkburnett, Texas, right near the Oklahoma border.  Even though we would be going in the opposite direction from Archer City,  I was still willing to go because my wife hadn't found any antiques at Mansion II.  Mistake!  The Burkburnett antique dealer had two strikes against him as soon as we took our first steps through his doors.  First, he was smoking.  And second,  he was listening to Rush Limbaugh!  Florida is a smoke-free state. Too bad Texas isn't.  And Texas was hot enough without listening to hot air... Finding nothing of interest in Burkburnett, we drove south to Archer City.

We arrived in Archer City a little before 1 PM.  Booked Up would be open until 5 PM, leaving me only four hours of book time.  But the only cafe in the town was closing at 2 PM, so we decided to grab a quick bite to eat. Another mistake!  The place was crowded with cowboys.  We ordered our food a little before 1 PM.  We were still waiting for our food at 1:30 P.M.  My wife was fretting because she knew I wanted to get to the books.

Our food finally came (it was good) and I was at the register paying my bill a little before 2 PM.  I was reading a notice near the register about Larry McMurtry's wedding, when the cashier said, "That's Larry over there," and pointed to a couple sitting at a table across from the register.  Larry McMurtry had married Faye Kesey, the widow of his friend Ken Kesey the writer the same day as the Royal Wedding, but was going to have another ceremony in Archer City.  I went over to their table and said to them, "Congratulations on your wedding."  Then I went straight to the books about books in Building No. 4.



This is what Building No. 4 looks like from the outside:

This is what it looks like from the inside:

There were books eight rows high along three walls.   In the middle were five humongous stacks of books eight rows high on both sides:

The bookstack on the left in the image below is where the books about books were, eight rows high, from floor to ceiling.  I saw a lot of my favorite books about books, but I also saw a lot of books about books I had never seen before.

I went to the next row over, retrieved the ladder stand and rolled it to the books about books section.  I was methodical.  I looked at every spine of every book on every row, opening the books I thought interesting.  What I was primarily looking for were association copies for My Sentimental Library, books that because of their association would make their purchase at Booked Up worthwhile.  Even with the twenty-five percent off sale, the books were still pricy.  But then, I was in Larry McMurtry's version of Hay-on-Wye, book heaven.

From a pile of ten would-be purchases in Building No. 4, I whittled it down to three:



1.  Earl Percy Dines Abroad:  A Boswellian Episode by Harold Murdock, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1924.

I bought this book because it was formerly owned by the Johnson/Boswell collector, Arthur G. Rippey, whose bookplate is pasted on the front free endpaper (ffep).  In my library, I already had a bibliography of the Johnson/Boswell books in the Rippey Collection.  I also have his book, The Story of a Library:  Reminiscences of a Latter-Day Book Collector.

I'm still researching the notation written above Rippey's bookplate,  "English-Speaking Union Library 1925," as well as the identity of Alexander Campbell Hill, whose bookplate is pasted on the front pastedown.  I believe this copy of the book went from the English-Speaking Union Library to Hill and then to Rippey.  McMaster University, the alma mater of Rippey's mother, received the lion's share of Rippey's collection.  The remainder was sold at auction, which is probably where McMurtry acquired it.

2.  The Wish; Written by Dr. Walter Pope, Fellow of the Royal Society.  Reprinted From the First Edition, With a Short Life of the Author by Mr. Beverly Chew, Printed by F. Hopkins, on the Marion Press, Jamaica Long Island, 1897.

I grew up in Jamaica right by Idlewild Airport, so this book attracted my interest.  The fact that the Grolier Club member, Beverly Chew, wrote a short life of the author made me want the book even more.  But what really got my attention were the inscriptions.  I love researching and I wanted to find out who Shackleton, J.S.W. and S–– were.

Charles Shackleton was a member of the Rowfant Club in Cleveland.  J.S.W. was John S. Wood, another Rowfant Club Member.  I'm still researching the identity of S––.  He might be George D. Smith, the famous bookseller who had strong ties to the Marion Press.  Or S–– might be a Grolier Club member who was giving visiting Rowfant Club members a biblio tour of New York.  There were 18 Grolier Club members in 1902 whose last name began with S.  George D. Smith was not one of them.  He didn't join the Grolier Club until 1918, two years before his death.  Or, as the renowned bookseller Norman Kane recently noted in an ExLibris-L reply to my query, Hopkins previously ran the fine press division of DeVinne's workshop, so S–– could be any one of a number of book collectors Hopkins knew.

Update May 30, 2018:  After months and months of biblio researching, I discovered who "S" was.  And I wrote about it in my June 1, 2014 Biblio Researching post:  Some Auspicious Biblio-Sleuthing.


3. At the Library Table by Adrian Hoffman Joline, Boston: Richard G. Badger, The Gorham Press, 1910.

I already had two books written by Joline and a third which he contributed to.  So this book made the pile easily.  He is one of the better writers.  I'm still researching its former owner Mr. J. M. Andrews –– or is it Ms. J.M. Andrews?  I will query Lew Jaffe the Bookplatemaven to see if he is familiar with the bookplate. [[Just a quick note.  Lew Jaffe says the bookplate belongs to J M Andreini, an influential bookplate collector in the early 1900s.  Lucian Pissarro was the bookplate artist.]]

Remember earlier that I said I put two books aside in Building No. 3 the day before?  Well I only found one of them:

The New Boswell by R. F. Freeman, London:  John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1923.

Below is the original title overleaf:

Now here is the title page that is a figment of Mr. Freeman's imagination:  In the book, Johnson meets Socrates, Shakespeare,  and Napoleon.  And through Boswell's communications, the author tells us about Johnson's views on a variety of subjects.

The other book I had put aside was a pamphlet with a title something like "When Franklin Met Johnson." A quick glance showed that it contained a scholarly talk about when Benjamin Franklin met Samuel Johnson.  I placed it on the very front of a box of pamphlets.  I couldn't find the box.  I had previously read that Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Johnson both attended a meeting of a London society, possibly the Philosophical Society, but I didn't think anyone knew they "met" much less conversed.  I will look for it again next year.

Next year?  Yes, if not sooner.    My son Todd, an Air Force weatherman, decided to make Texas his home after he retires in two years.  He is currently having a house built in Copperas Cove, a community close to the base.  The house is supposed to be ready in September.  In November he deploys to Afghanistan to provide weather support for the Army.

And my son-in-law just moved to Texas last weekend to work on the oil rigs!  He could no longer support his wife and three children in the construction business in Florida.  The rest of his family will relocate to Texas in the fall.  Since two of our four children, and eight of our fifteen grandchildren will be calling Texas their home, I think we'll be visiting Texas more often.  And I will manage to get to Archer City for a few days!

I bought one more book in Texas, but it wasn't in Booked Up in Archer City or Three Dog Books in Wichita Falls.  It was in a Goodwill store in Copperas Cove.  The book brought back memories:

October 22, 1962:  I was a fifteen-year old newspaper boy for the Long Island Press.  On this Monday night, I was ringing doorbells and knocking on doors, trying to collect money from my customers.  The lights were on in almost all the houses, but no one was answering the doorbells or coming to the doors.  Finally, one customer came to his door and said, "Our country is about to go to war, and here you are trying to collect money for the paper."  Everyone was listening to President Kennedy on the television.  He was telling the American people that Russia had placed nuclear missiles in Cuba.

Thirteen Days:  A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis by Robert F. Kennedy, With a New Forward by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

In his Forward,  Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. recalls what happened at a conference on the Cuban Missile Crisis conducted in Havana in January 1992.  Americans, Russians, and Cubans who were involved in the crisis attended the conference.  Robert McNamara almost fell off his chair when he learned for the first time that Russian soldiers had short-range battlefield nuclear weapons in addition to long-range missiles, and were given the green light to use them during an American invasion if communications were lost with Moscow,  Scary.


Driving on Fort Hood triggered a memory as well:

November 5, 2009:  My daughter-in-law Ana goes to the school on Fort Hood to pick up her children.  She hears shooting.  The school is in lock-down.  No one is coming in or going out of the school.  Ana calls us in Florida.  My wife Linda tells Ana to take cover!  We are watching it all on television.  No one knows how many shooters there are.  Slowly, everyone learns what happened, including my son Todd, who was in Iraq at the time and seemingly "out of harm's way."

And to think that our soldiers aren't even safe on their home base...