Presidential Letters & Thoreau’s “Walden”: Special Collections reveals its most valuable items

At Middlebury College, we are constantly aware of value: the value of an education (whether in thousands of dollars or in worthwhile experiences), the value of a course and curriculum, the value of friendship.

Endowments, ranking and affiliated pride construct value placed on the College, but it also possesses extremely fascinating and valuable items. What are these items worth? How much does a first-edition copy of “Walden” go for? These questions are difficult if not impossible to answer, and highlight the history and expansion of a remarkable collection of rare materials that the College has acquired.

“Special Collections is a recent phenomenon in that, through most of the 19th century, there was so much focus on classical education at the College,” explained Andy Wentink, curator of Special Collections and Archives. “The focus was, though admirable, to train educated Christian men, and that was it, but not in terms of special research collections.”

As the policies of the library began to expand, and alumni began to donate rare materials, the fuzzy idea of Special Collections began to develop. A first edition of the Diderot Encyclopédie, with gilt-edged binding and delicate fleur de lis patterns, was given anonymously in the mid-19th century, cataloguing the height of Enlightenment thinking. Around the same time, Noah Webster also left the College a collection of books.

The 20th century brought a heightened awareness of specialized material, and in 1923 Julian W. Abernethy left the College his library of 19th-century American literature.

Wyman Parker ’36, whom Wentink fondly calls the “father of Special Collections,” returned to Middlebury as a librarian, with the goal of building a repository of representative books.

Special Collections has grown immensely since the introduction of the Abernethy Room, and dealings with the Friends of the Library as well as the establishment of a Rare Books Fund have helped the collection expand significantly — and of course, an abundance of alumni and patron gifts have elevated the collection.

Currently comprised of five rich collections, Special Collections includes the Julian W. Abernethy Collection of American Literature; the Helen Hartness Flanders Ballad Collection; the College Archives, Rare Books and Manuscripts and the Vermont Collection. Wentink estimates that Special Collections now houses over 700 broadsides and over 60,000 rare books, as well as an array of other specialized material: dead theses, audio files, alumni scrapbooks and so on.

“We are format-blind,” he said. “If it has value, we collect it.”

One of the most affordable sources that Wentink uses in collecting is eBay.

Eight years ago, Wentink was perusing the site, looking for items relating to the College itself or the town of Middlebury, when he stumbled upon six letters to a minister from Brattleboro with many references to Middlebury. He e-mailed the seller asking about the provenance, condition and content of the collection and was surprised by the response — the seller possessed more than 300 of these letters, and was a former trustee of the College.

The seller agreed to sell the letters to Special Collections for one dollar apiece. When Wentink obtained the letters, he noticed that many of the letters were written in the same beautiful, prominent script and eventually discovered that these were from Benjamin Labaree, the fourth president of the College.

In letters dated from the 1860s, Wentink read an exchange between the minister and Labaree, who was writing to urge the minister to encourage the Congregationalist ministers of Vermont to fight a change that was brewing: the possible merger of Middlebury College and University of Vermont (UVM).

“Nowhere do you see this possibility [of a merger with UVM] expressed,” said Wentink. “Some of the most knowledgeable College historians had no idea.”

“I bought these letters for 300 dollars, but for the Middlebury history the detail is priceless. The question I ask is, ‘How important is the material to the intellectual life of the College and to the cataloguing of our history as a College?’ I would have purchased those letters for thousands of dollars, had I had the funding.”

Wentink is an adamant pursuer of items that will benefit the academic and educational life of the College, but his decisions depend on curricular versus monetary value.

“I found myself looking for the first-edition copy of “This Side of Paradise” [in the Abernethy Collection], only to realize that it was not there,” said Wentink. “I found out that the selling price was $15,000! Part of my job is to say, ‘Am I going to throw away $15,000 for “This Side of Paradise” or use the funds to find many other valuable items to add to our collection and benefit the College?”

It is the curricular value — that is, how much students can learn from and explore the material of Special Collections that mean the most to the curators and staff members.

Sometimes keeping curricular materials can be challenging, and Special Collections employs an in-house curator, Ginny Faust.

Wentink gave the example of “The History of the Indian Mutiny:” the binding was breaking, pages were falling out, and the remarkable piece was unable to be used by students.

“I believe in the ‘Use it or lose it’ philosophy. Why have these extraordinary materials if they can’t be used?” said Wentink.

Now “The History” is a beautiful, sturdy book, which Faust scanned, mended and replicated so it can be used again.

“I call her the miracle worker,” said Wentink. “I say, ‘You made it a book again!’”

Resources, research and revitalization all go into the building and preservation of Special Collections. The staff members of Special Collections, as well as members of the College community who utilize and appreciate the collections, agree with the sentiment that the long-term value of the Collection is priceless and could never be marked by a solely monetary estimate.

“Walden”: Thoreau’s personal first edition with holographic notes

Clifton Johnson, in an introduction to Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden,” wrote that “few spots are more satisfying to the literary pilgrim” than Walden Pond. Special Collections is lucky to own a first edition copy of the great Transcendentalist work with holographic notes decorating the margins.

Acquired in 1940 by Viola White, who was the Abernethy curator for more than 20 years, “Walden” was purchased in the hopes of building the Abernethy collection in the spirit of its donor, who cherished American literature — especially Transcendentalism.

White purchased it for $1,000, but its current insured value, according to Wentink, is “way more than that.”

“I love the thrill of the search in working with primary materials,” said Deb Evans, visiting assistant professor of American Studies, who takes her 19th century American literature classes to Special Collections to view “Walden” and other materials.

“I’m always thrilled to see how readily students respond to holding these texts in hand,” said Evans.

“To be able to see a sample of Emily Dickinson’s handwriting, for example, helps understand the energetic quality of her writing — how she uses that ubiquitous dash — in a unique way. Or to be able to look at every edition of Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass,” and notice the size of the first volume he self-published — its a notably large book — and be able to see, side by side, the images of Whitman himself that preface these editions, gives you a sense of how the poet wants to project his own image over the years.

There’s no replacing the experience of seeing this first hand.

“The Historie of Foure-footed Beastes”

In 2004, Wentink held a panel of four different faculty members from varying departments to discuss the significance of Special Collections.

Each professor was allowed to choose one book that Special Collections would then track down and purchase. Timothy Billings, professor of English and American Literatures, chose Edward Topsell’s “The Historie of Foure-footed Beastes” (1607) and “The Historie of Serpents” (1608), which were bound together in the 17th century.

“[‘The Historie of Foure-footed Beastes’] is a big beautiful folio edition with impressive woodcuts of all the creatures described therein, ranging from the house cat, the salamander and the rhinoceros, to the gorgon, the basilisk and the chimera,” described Billings.

Inspired by the primary source compendium of Renaissance-age knowledge on beasts both fictional and real, Billings centered a Winter Term course called “Renaissance Zoology” on Topsell’s work.

“What’s wonderful about this work is that even the sections about real creatures often contain fantastical traditional ideas mixed in with reliable information from direct observation, such as that the chameleon eats only air, or that our own beloved panther has a sweet breath that it uses to attract its prey but a visage so fierce that it must keep its head turned away in order not to scare it off until the last minute when it snaps its head around for the kill,” said Billings.

During the duration of the course, students had to work with the original work and compose an essay on one beast they were drawn to in “Foure-footed Beastes.” They were given the option to use EEBO (an electronic version of first-edition books), but all 15 students chose to work directly with the original.

“Once we get them here, students are transformed,” said Wentink. “They become invested.”

Billings, who tries to utilize Special Collections materials whenever possible, agreed.

“There is nothing more exciting when studying 16th- and 17th century England than having the chance to touch a rare book like that, to turn the pages, and to read for oneself what it contains — indeed, to hold in one’s hand the very object that someone 400 years ago once held who was also eagerly reading to learn about such creatures,” he said.

Eric Tunis Antique Map Collection

When an alumnus of the College from the late 1960s was looking for a place periodically to display his collection of maps, he first contacted the Monterey Institute. His contact at the Institute passed on his interest to Middlebury College, and Special Collections eagerly accepted the gift.

The still-in-progress collection of maps — over 48 in total — includes maps from the 15th-century that depict the Middle East and Asia.

“The value of the entire collection [which the College receives in yearly installments] on the market would be phenomenal,” explained Wentink. “[The alumnus] had been building it up for about 40 years.”

“The Tunis collection, as well as maps from other collections, such as the Omar Pound collection, can be valuable resources that help us understand how the world was seen in the past,” said Ian Barrow, associate professor of history.

What gives the collection even more meaning is that Eric Tunis, while a student at the College, was so inspired by one of his professors of geology, Rowland Ilick, that he made this great contribution in his memory.

“[Ilick] had invested in his studies and his students and passed this great passion on to Tunis,” said Wentink.

“This is a great example of ‘What goes around, comes around.’”

The excitement can be contagious and inspiring, for students past and future.

Handling the maps from the Tunis collection is an easy way to be excited about history; the maps display copperplate engraving and hand-coloring of the territorial borders. Some have titles and place names inscribed in Latin and Dutch, with bright colors lining the borders and territories that beckon the viewer to fall into a historical perspective that is often lost in looking at glossy print-offs of modern maps.

“There is no quicker way to get excited about history than to hold a 17th-century map in your hand,” said Barrow.

(George) Catlan’s North American Hunting Scenes and Amusements of the Rocky Mountains and Prairies of America (Portfolio)

When this collection was purchased in 1934, Special Collections bought it for $157.50.

Wentink, who was unable to reveal what it would be worth on the market today, only said, “Believe me. You couldn’t even look at it for that amount of money today.” (After some online browsing, specifically at the William Reese Company, I noted that one edition of this portfolio sells for over 160,000).

George Catlan’s North American Indian Portfolios are a product of his years of painting, living and traveling with Native Americans in the Great Plains region. In a preface to the material, Catlan wrote, “The history and customs of such a people, preserved by pictorial illustrations, are themes worthy of the lifetime of one man, and nothing short of the loss of my life shall prevent me from visiting their country and becoming their historian.”

From 1832 to 1837, Catlan sketched tribes, and eventually painted over 600 portraits of Native Americans, capturing their dress, culture and lifestyle with great detail.

Special Collections owns a portfolio from 1834, which includes 25 over-sized hand-colored lithographs capturing both the lifestyle of the Plains Native Americans and the passion of an eager historian.

The rich colors of the excellently-preserved drawings, the straight-grained morocco cloth and title label, with elaborate borders and precise detail, make the collection of plates come alive even 176 years after the drawings were completed.

Wentink values the collection at much more than that original $157.50; culturally and historically, the drawings are invaluable.

“The way these materials were first seen by the public in our collection — that connection with the primary source is completely unique,” said Wentink.

Hemingway Gift (2007)

In 2007, Anne Hemingway Feuer and Hilary Hemingway Freundlich, two nieces of Ernest Hemingway, were on the lookout for a repository to house their family archive, which was the product of a project undertaken by Ernest Hemingway’s younger brother Leicester in the process of writing “My Brother Ernest Hemingway” (1962).

However, the nieces had not been having much luck finding a repository that would keep the entire collection together, which they had wanted to do out of respect for their family.

“They were afraid of continuing to hold it in their home in Florida because they thought that the big one was coming and would wash it all away,” laughed Wentink.

Hemingway Freundlich had actually married a Middlebury alumnus, who contacted John Elder, professor of Environmental Studies and English and American Literature. Elder passed on Wentink’s contact information, and sure enough, he received an e-mail.

“I saw that I had received an e-mail from Hilary Hemingway, and I thought, ‘Oh, yeah right,’” said Wentink. “I thought it was spam!”

Wentink was glad that he opened the e-mail and when he responded eagerly to her request for a repository, he said the collection “would be the single greatest acquisition for the Abernethy Collection of American Literature since the purchase of ‘Walden’” in 1940.

“She sent me an e-mail back that read: ‘Who said anything about buying it?’” said Wentink. “It was a donation!”

The collection itself includes original letters, diaries, notes, stories and drawings of Hemingway’s family, including over 700 family photographs. Items of particular interest, as described on the Special Collections website, include: diaries of grandfather Anson Hemingway dating from the 1850s; family Civil War letters; courtship letters of Hemingway’s parents, Clarence and Grace Hall Hemingway, prior to and after their marriage; and revealing letters to Grace from Ernest’s four wives, (Elizabeth) Hadley Richardson (1921-1928), Pauline Pfeiffer (1928-1940), Martha Gellhorn (1940-1945) and Mary Welsh (1945-1961).

One noteworthy item is the 15-page carbon copy typescript of the original first two chapters of “The Sun Also Rises,” which were excised before publication at the recommendation of Hemingway’s good friend F.

Scott Fitzgerald. The only other known copy of these two chapters (with slight variances), which do not appear in the novel as we know it, is in the John F. Kennedy Library.

However, in sifting through photographs of Hemingway with his siblings and parents, it becomes obvious that this collection is more than a literary one.

“It goes beyond capturing and cataloging the literary history,” said Wentink. “It tells the story of a Midwestern family out of which the artist emerged.”