Tag Archives: Manuscripts made for children

Made for a Child: The Romance of Rumples Rig the Railway Man

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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

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:

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title-page

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35-3637-38There’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?

Banned Book Week 2019: The Story of Ferdinand

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Ferdinand sits on a bee

Ferdinand reacts to sitting on a bee. Leaf, Munro. Die Geschichte vom Ferdinand, 1938. Here we see Ferdinand’s reaction to being stung by a bee, which causes the men from Madrid to think he’s especially fierce.

By Alexis Antracoli, Interim Assistant University Librarian for Special Collections

When I was a little girl, around 4 or 5 years old, my favorite book was Munro Leaf’s The Story of Ferdinand. I would request it most nights as my bedtime story, and have memorized most of the book. I knew exactly when to exclaim “But not Ferdinand!” As I grew out of bedtime stories and children’s books, Leaf’s The Story of Ferdinand, continued to hold a special place in my heart because I associated it with warm memories of bedtime stories with my dad and because I cherished what I saw as it’s central message: Be yourself, even when it’s hard. 

“But not Ferdinand”  Leaf, Munro, Die Geschichte Vom Ferdinand, 1938. My favorite line from the book here in German.  Ferdinand was not like the other bulls.

For those who aren’t familiar with the story, Ferdinand is a peaceful bull who doesn’t like fighting with the other bulls his age. When a group of men come to select the fiercest young bull for a bullfight in Madrid, Ferdinand sits on a bee, and his reaction is so intense that the matadors think he is the fiercest bull. However, when he arrives at the bullfight, no one is able provoke him and when he sees all the flowers in the ladies’ hair, he just sits and smells. Ferdinand is sent home to sit under his favorite cork tree and smell the flowers.

The Men from Madrid.  Leaf, Munro, Die Geschichte Vom Ferdinand, 1938. A color version of the book’s depiction of the men from Madrid who came to find the fiercest bull for the bullfight.

What I didn’t know about The Story of Ferdinand until a couple of weeks ago was that Ferdinand was once a banned book. Published in 1936, Ferdinand, gained both acclaim and condemnation from prominent world leaders. The Roosevelts loved it, but Hitler considered it “degenerate democratic propaganda.” While it reached number one on the best-seller list in the United States within a year of its publication and inspired a Disney short film, critics of the book called it subversive and viewed it as propaganda. Fascists in both Spain and Germany interpreted the book as pro-pacifist critique of fascism leading to it’s bans in both countries. In Nazi Germany, Hitler demanded the book be burned, but when World War II ended, 30,000 copies of the printed book were distributed throughout the Germany.

The Cotsen Children’s Library holds six copies of The Story of Ferdinand, two in English, two in German, one in Latin, and one in Polish. The earliest copy is a 1937 English edition; but perhaps the most fascinating copy is a German manuscript version probably created in 1938 to subvert the Nazi ban, Die Geschichte vom Ferdinand. This copy is spiral-bound, hand-colored, and hand-written. The illustrations copy those from the original, but add color throughout.  

Ferdinand smells the flowers. Leaf, Munro, Die Geschichte Vom Ferdinand, 1938. When Ferdinand gets to the arena in Spain, he’s back to his old self and sits down to smell the flowers in the ladies’ hair.

While it’s impossible to know exactly who created and read this particular version, it’s a potent reminder of the power of Leaf’s story, of its meaning in multiple contexts, and of  the way the materials we have here in special collections have the power to connect us across time to people not so different from us. In this case, what for me was a story that reminded me of the courage it took to be myself when being myself meant being different, may have been a story of the value of peace during a time of impending war, resistance to Nazi ideology, or simply an entertaining story beloved by a child.  Perhaps the creator and readers of this book valued it for very different reasons that I did, but, for a brief moment, I felt connected to others who loved the very same book I did in very different circumstances.