MIL unearthed some memorabilia today. Her wedding album; FIL’s brother’s wedding album; FIL’s track/tennis scrapbook…and her mother’s autograph album.
The cover is wine-red velvet. The title page has an exquisite pen-and-ink drawing of a house on a hill. It was apparently a gift for Christmas 1885.
I’ve heard about these things, but I’ve never seen one IRL. I had to explain to Mr. Rilch that this wasn’t autographs from celebrities; it’s what people did in the days before yearbooks. They also had some serious penmanship.
Grandma inscribed the first page herself. (Underlining hers.)
Coy and succinct:
Three lines under each individual word. Must have been an affectation:
“Verdant”? Yes, I know what it means, but I’m just imagining one of my HS classmates using the word in a yearbook inscription.
I know this was a standard one:
So was this:
Now this one has what looks to be a sticker in one corner. A book with a bunch of flowers on top of it. The spine says “From a faithful friend.” But…the concept of stickers goes back to 1886?
That’s all for now. Mr. Rilch is watching the football, and I’d rather go over these with him. More later.
This practice is detailed in one of the later Little House on the Prairie books, which, I suppose, were set around the same time. One message was, as I recall, “In memory’s golden casket, drop one pearl for me.” There were also longer ones, full-page poems. I remember thinking the idea was so cool that I signed this way in several friends’ fourth-grade yearbooks. People thought I was mildly insane.
In my mother’s autograph book her grandmother has written: Don’t let us think our little jobs
Are hardly ever seen
Remember every blade of grass
Helps make the meadow green.
High school yearbooks seem to have come into vogue in the late 1890s. I own a 1922 edition from Los Angeles HS; you can look at even older ones, from the turn of the last century, here. What immediately strikes the reader is that there is much more text, as opposed to merely having pictures of teams and clubs. The language is elevated and precise, and better composed than much of what we hear in the public realm today. They would never have confused “reticent” and “reluctant”. There are fraternities and sororities, which would be banned by 1935 (in CA). Most of all, you get the impression that these kids took HS very seriously, and considered themselves fortunate to be able to finish the course.
Also piquing my interest are the boy who gives “vivisection” as his hobby, the buggy ads, the Tom Sawyer-esque photo of the black and white children together, and the “this space for sale” cartoon.
According to this site, your confusion is understandable:
Of course, the postage stamp has been around since 1840, and revenue stamps debuted long before that. What you have is apparently either a moisture-affixed sticker or a self-adhesive that was added to the album a half-century after the book’s purchase.
Zahava: Yes, that’s exactly what I thought of when I saw this! The book was Little Town on the Prairie. And yes, it was set in the 1880s.
cazzle: What a lovely thought!
Larry: Well, I think they meant “verdant” in the sense of “lacking experience or sophistication; naive”. You’re right, though: I sure wouldn’t want to have a verdant smile in the literal sense!
Spectre and Sternvogel: Thanks for the info!
Flutterby: When did your mom go to school? Offhand, I’d say those mottoes sound like they’re from the 1950s, but I could be wrong.
Stickers, or more properly, non-self-adhesive scraps, were HUGE in Victorian times…I’ve seen some incredible albums of these things: flowers, soldiers, animals, Biblical characters, ships, ethnic types…all in brilliant (heh–“verdant”) colours. Even die-cut, multilayer ones with lace–full Victorian goop! Children would keep huge albums of these things. I suppose that all the different subjects available were considered “improving,” and “educational.”
These really boomed after the development of analine dyes, and the Germans became the world masters of lithographic printing, a place they held until WWI. http://www.victorianscraps.co.uk/fairies.htm
I found her photo! According to the date on the back, she would have been 17 or 18. And she looks very much like Laura Ingalls: same hair and style of dress.
At least, to me, she does. Which leads me to ponder how time can alter perception. I posted here once about a yearbook photo from the early '70s that I’d seen. To me, all the girls were wearing “the same dress”, because they were all A-line with short skirts. But if asked, they probably would have said, “No: mine’s pink striped and hers is blue paisley. I’m the only one here with long sleeves, and she’s the only one with double-knit.” Similarly, if Sydney and Laura had met in 1885, they probably wouldn’t have seen a particle of resemblance between them. But, unaccustomed as I am to high-button collars and teenage girls wearing their hair up, to me they look alike.
Still, sometimes there are patterns of similarity that people are aware of even at the time. Like the grey flannel suits for businessmen in the '50s, and the floppy-bow-tie-wearing-the-Reeboks-and-carrying-the-pumps for corporate women in the '80s. And when I was in middle school in 1983, one of the teachers told us, “Back in the early '70s, all the girls had long straight hair. All of them; if it wasn’t naturally straight, they ironed it. At graduation one year, I was just a few rows from the front, with the students on the stage, and I literally could not tell one girl from another. At least you girls look different enough from each other that I can tell you apart from a distance.”
I can just see it, though: The year is 2030, and some guy who was 17 in 1999 is showing a video of himself and his friends to his kids. “Dad, which one is you?..Well, you all look alike! You all had your pants down to here, and you all wore your caps backwards!..Oh, the tattoos; that’s how you told the difference!”
I wonder if that person got “verdant” mixed up with “ardent.” Here’s a rather lengthy one written by my great-great grandmother around 1861. I have a photocopy of the original and her handwriting is so beautiful.
Lines for an Album. A Wish.
If ever guardian angels keep
Their watch on dear ones here below
May purest ones protection give
To thee when life’s rude blasts do blow.
If ere a pathway all through life
Was strewn with fair and fragrant flowers
May thine be decked with sweetest ones
That ever bloomed in Love’s own bowers.
If ere the partial hand of Fate
Dealt gently with the pure and fair
Oh may it ever hide from thee
The dreary shades of pain and care.
But should life’s bright Aurora take
Away the careless mirth of youth
May higher joys beam on the mind
That come from purest worth and truth.
May all the royal virtues join
And crown thy womanhood sublime
Then will thou wear the diadem
That cannot be impaired by time.
Dear Friend, accept this simple wish
Artless, heartfelt and free
So that perchance in after years
You’ll welcome thoughts of me
