Marks in books | Cotsen Children’s Library

A dad made this manuscript for his little son in 1921 and Ian Dooley wrote it up shortly after it was received. It’s a delight, whether you like trains, working class heroes who triumph over their superiors, or appreciate the talent of anonymous author/illustrators. I’m reposting it, with a few changes, hoping that one of Cecil’s descendants will come across it and solve the mystery of its origins!

Front cover. The Romance of Rumples Rig Railwayman Manuscript. [Wargrave, 1921]. (Cotsen)

Acquired nearly ten years ago (item no. 6814899), this manuscript picture book was made as a Christmas gift by “Daddie” for his little son Cecil in 1921. It’s a funny story, involving chance encounters, romance, and upward mobility illustrated with 21 humorous hand-colored illustrations by the author. If you look closely, you can see that the author first wrote in pencil and then retraced it in black ink.

With the scene set, let’s let the story speak for itself:

title-page

There’s one other interesting feature of the manuscript, its bookplate:

Pasted onto the inside front cover, the bookplate answers some questions about the history of this piece and raises a few more. I was able to establish that the acronym “G.W.R.” stands for “Great Western Railway” and that “Wargrave” refers to a village in Berkshire county, southeast England. The now defunct G.W.R. (founded 1833, nationalized at the end of 1947) opened a railway station in the small town of Wargrave in 1900. The platform still stands, but the station building was demolished in 1988.

At some point between 1921 and 1947, Cecil, or someone he knew, seems to have given the manuscript over to the station, although it’s hard to imagine that the station had a library. Who had the label printed up and put in the manuscript?

So why would Wargrave train station have this item?

The story was actually set in the station. If you look closely at the second page (the first illustration after the title-page), you can just make out “GWR” written at the top of one of the papers on Rumples’ office wall. I think it’s safe to assume that the author’s knowledge of the GWR, and the railroad goods office in particular, probably suggests that Rumples might be semi-autobiographical. This might explain why it was donated to the station.

I am guessing that the author probably worked in the goods office at Wargrave station, where he could not help fantasizing about kicking his boss in the bum, getting a boat and a bike, and providing a better home for his children. He put them into his little gift to his son Cecil during the Christmas of 1921. What would he have thought to learn that his present 93 years late traveled over the pond and has become part of the collection of manuscripts in the collection of the Cotsen Children’s Library?

Fancy chocolates, a dozen red roses, and cards expressing seasonal sentiments are the perfect traditional gifts for Valentine’s Day, having replaced the true lover’s knots of ribbon that used to be exchanged decades and decades ago.

Books have been promoted as more useful than sweets and frippery long before Sir Henry Cole put the first commercial printed valentine on the market. Pioneering children’s book publisher John Newbery tried to reform the observance of Valentine’s Day in the 1760s by urging the purchase of two: The Valentine’s Gift, which recommended that valentines should monitor each other’s behavior for a year by taking notes in the moral ledger conveniently provided in The Important Pocket-Book. Stories in The Valentine’s Gift showed children and adults just how this could be done to reform the proud, the lazy, and habitual liars. Copies of both Newbery books are very rare, but it’s unclear if the small number of surviving copies reflect sales less robust than the publisher anticipated or the rate at which they were discarded after being filled up.Long before the donor Mr. Cotsen acquired editions of Newbery’s Valentine’s Gift and Important Pocket-Book, he gave his wife JoAnn a Valentine’s present of children’s books in 1968. JoAnn recorded that title and title were his’ gift to her on the occasion on copies of the blue family bookplate pasted into each book. The couple had been collecting children’s books for several years and his selection reflects two of their long-standing interests.The rhymes with the sweet illustrations by Ruth Hamlin in Baby’s Plays and Journeys (Garden City: Doubleday, Page, & Co, 1923; Cotsen 15334) probably caught Mr. Cotsen’s eye. It is one of several volumes compiled by Kate Douglas Wiggin, the author of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, and Nora Archibald Smith for the family library. The “journeys” in the title refer to toys or constructions made for riding off in the imagination.The other book Mr. Cotsen gave his wife was a nineteenth-century primer of graded reading lessons, John Epy Lovell’s Young Pupil’s Second Book (New Haven: S. Babcock, 1841; Cotsen 11057). While nowhere as whimsical as Baby’s Plays and Journeys, the sturdy black and white cuts illustrating a good number of the selections are more than competent. The ones of the sagacious elephant and ferocious tiger are especially appealing.For real book collectors like the Cotsens, these two little books are true love’s tokens…