Week 3: A Proper Job

This is the fourth in a series of posts about my Humfrey Wanley Fellowship project, in which I am exploring the Bodleian libraries' unofficial research department in the early twentieth century through the letters of the Parker family, found in the Library Records collection. The first post, which explains the scope and background of the project, is here; there are also posts for week 1 and week 2.

'Well,' said Harriet, 'for one thing, writers can't pick and choose until they've made money. If you've made your name for one kind of book and then switch over to another, your sales are apt to go down, and that's the brutal fact.' She paused. 'I know what you're thinking--that anybody with proper sensitive feeling would rather scrub floors for a living. But I should scrub floors very badly, and I write detective stories rather well. I don't see why proper feeling should prevent me from doing my proper job.' ~Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night 

What exactly was George Parker's 'proper job'? On the surface of things, this is easy to answer: he was a senior library assistant (sometimes also described as senior assistant librarian) from 1854 until his death in 1906, an extraordinarily long tenure. But he had another job: from at least at 1896 onward, he somehow managed to fit a full schedule of answering research inquiries around his full-time work. Which did he regard as his proper job? And equally important, how did he do it all?

Part of the answer to this last question was that Parker often wasn't doing the work himself--it might be done by his wife, Angelina, a noted scholar of Oxfordshire dialect; or his daughters Angelina Frances (Annie) and Evaline. The letters they received show that the Parker family worked as a team, passing inquiries among themselves as interest or availability dictated. Additionally, those who wrote to George Parker for help knew that he might ask 'some member of your family' (in the words of a Mr Clark, who wrote on 4 August 1904), to do the copying, transcribing, translation, or reference-checking they required.

Some of these services are still ones libraries provide today: a scan and deliver service is a direct descendant of the work done by professional copyists; and some of the research support we provide is analogous to the reference-checking of the late nineteenth century. There are differences too: few librarians today would provide translation services, and while we would help readers with strategies for proof-reading and checking their references, we would not do it for them.

In the Parker's day, none of the services he and his family provided were an official part of library work, but they still had an acknowledged place within what the library thought its users might need. A fascinating library form from 1901 speaks of the 'private time' of Bodleian staff being used to answer more involved or complicated queries.

Bodleian library, Oxford

20. 4. 1901

The Librarian presents his compliments and has to express his regret that the heavy work of the library does not give its very limited staff time during official hours to comply with requests similar to yours. What you wish can, however, be done in private time at a cost of 2s 6d per hour, and you can limit the time as you like. If you wish it done, the librarian asks you to write to Mr G. Parker at the above address. You need not repeat the inquiry, as your letter will be kept.

Letter from Rev. Canon Houblon, 29 April 1901, Library Records, d. 401. Photo: Hope Williard, Courtesy of Bodleian Libraries.

A few thrifty letter writers reused the Bodleian form in writing to the Parkers about their requirements, which is how these forms made their way into the archives. The transition between 'official hours' and 'private time' seems to have been fairly efficient, judging by the speed with which researchers received replies. One can't help but wonder how this was in practice, and also how someone like George Parker felt about it. Librarians often like to stay with a problem until it is solved--was this an experience Parker shared?

 

On the face of it, the difference between 'private time' and 'official hours' seems pretty clear-cut. As Parker was full-time, his official hours would have presumably been his Monday to Saturday work schedule, and private time would have been any point at which he was of the clock. In practice, was it really so easy to switch between the two? One can imagine Parker at his usual desk, off the clock for the afternoon, preparing to sit down and dig into a nice juicy question, when a reader he helped earlier in the day spots him and hurries over to ask for help...

And what was George Parker doing in his official hours if not assisting readers with remote access to the library and its collections? Fascinatingly, this is a question that can be answered--the Bodleian possesses Parker's staff diaries from 1878-1907, as well as those of other assistants, including Frances Underhill, the first female library assistant. The staff diary was a kind of account book, showing how members of library staff spent their workdays, and each person's diary was inspected annually by library management.

Library Records, f. 21. Photo: Hope Williard, Courtesy of Bodleian Libraries.

As an example, here is what George Parker was up to in early April 1883:

Wednesday, April 4th

Cataloged Books

Checked Invoices.

Looked out books in Catalogue.

Altered headings under Lexicon, 95.

Enter adds. on Acc. Lists, I.

Thursday, April 5th

Catalogued Books.

Searching for a Book.

Revised Slips.

Assisted Readers.

Entered References.

Friday, April 6th

Copied Gal. notes in Greek Canon Ms.

Assisted Readers.

Catalogued Books.

Altered headings under Lexicon, 130.

Saturday, April 7th

Catalogued Foreign Books.

Assisted Readers.

Altered headings under Lexicon, 50.

Entered Adds. on For. Acc. Lists.

 

Updating lists of new accessions, cataloguing, sorted out invoices, helping patrons--many of the tasks Parker lists in his work diary would be familiar to librarians today, even if the emphasis is different. To see how priorities have shifted, let's take a sample page of the diary from August 1880:

Library Records, f. 21. Photo: Hope Williard, Courtesy of Bodleian Libraries.

Tuesday, August 3

Copying the Index to 'Aristophanes' for each copy of the Catalogue. Classified 200 slips.

Wednesday, August 4

Classified 290 slips.

Thursday, August 5

Studying the British Museum Rules of Cataloguing and Arranging titles. Classified 320 slips.

Friday, August 6

Classified 410 slips.

Saturday, August 7

and assisting Dr. Neubauer. Classified 300 slips.

Monday, August 9

and attending to Readers. Classified 380 slips.

Tuesday, August 10

and attending to Readers. Classified 250 slips.

A number of details stand out: the careful attention to the number of slips classified per day as part of a running total of slips classified during the year, and also the contrast between the details of Thursday, 5th August 1880 ('studying the British Museum Rules for Cataloging and Arranging titles') and the afterthought of 'and attending to Readers' on Monday 9 August and Tuesday 10 August. The names of people admitted to the library was recorded elsewhere; so it is perhaps not surprising that Parker's staff diary contains so little detail about who was in the library and what they were doing there. Still, the focus on cataloguing and classification versus reader services suggests the former would be more highly valued when it came time for the diary to be inspected.

Over the next few weeks I look forward to reading more about the history of the Bodleian in order to learn more about what assisting and attending to readers involved, and how this contrasted with the sort of help George Parker and his family were providing in their 'private time'. The difference between private and official hours, on the face of it a simple question, might tell a more complex story whether research work was considered to be a 'proper job' in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Further Reading

Barbara B. Moran, “E. W. B. Nicholson and the ‘Bodleian Library Staff-Kalendar.’” Libraries & the Cultural Record, 45, no. 3 (2010): 297–319. My thanks to Oliver House for recommending this fascinating article.

Week 2: Seldom Perfectly Sober

"Do you find it easy to get drunk on words?"
"So easy that, to tell you the truth, I am seldom perfectly sober."
― Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night

Twin cultures of bookishness and bibulousness might be said to characterise a university town; reading and drinking were the themes of the letters I read in my second week at the Bodleian. 

I wrote in my first post about how much I enjoyed the style of early twentieth century letter-writers. Here is a wonderful example of what I was talking about--the following is a transcript of a letter from Sir Roper Lethbridge (1840-1919), a British civil servant and Conservative MP, to George Parker, Senior Assistant at the Bodleian Libraries, regarding research into the local history of Devon and Cornwall.

May 23, 1900

Dear Sir,

Mr Nicholson of the Bodleian Library has been so good as to give me your address, and to say that you will be able to do some type-writing (or copying) for me from 2 vols. of Mss in the Bodleian. Will you kindly tell me if you can do it for me, and your charge?

I want to get all the answers (not the questions) copied, to some four questions relating apple-orchards and cyder (beginning with High Bickington--I have done the preceding parishes from A), for each of the remaining parishes (they are in alphabetical order). The reference is Ms. Top. Devon b.1, 2. (beginning at Bickington High).

Wanted, the answers in each parish, to the following questions beginning with the parish of High Bickington.

1. What is the quantity of acres under Orchard?
2. What sort of apples are planted or are found to agree best with the soil?
3. What quantity of cyder is generally made yearly?
4. Is it remarkable for its goodness? Is it of the rough or sweet sort?
5. And what is the general value of it per hogshead at the Pounds/month?

I should think that a day or two would be sufficient to take out the replies from the 2 volumes, but if not, I should be glad for you to send on to me each day what you have done, as I am very anxious to at once set to work on the information.

Kindly let me know how soon you can let me have the copy--I enclosed an envelope for favour of reply.

Yours truly,

Roper Lethbridge

[Library Records, d. 400. Courtesy of Bodleian Libraries.]

The combination of polite urgency and precise detail make for a memorable letter. You are perhaps wondering, as I was, how George Parker was supposed to find out the orchard acreage, varieties of apples grown, and quality of cyder in Bickington, High (not to mention the rest of the alphabet)--but thanks to the Reverend Jeremiah Milles (1714-1784), an early pioneer of the research questionnaire, these specific questions could indeed be answered by referring to copies of the information Milles collected in the 1750s. The manuscripts Lethbridge wished Parker to consult can still be found at the same shelfmark he refers to his letter, Mss. Top. Devon b. 1-2.

I'm tempted to request to see it, just so I too might know whether the cyder in High Bickington is remarkable for its goodness.

"Devon Cider 1984" by Rockman of Zymurgy is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Typically, when the Parker family received correspondence that resulted in commissions for research, translation, or transcription, these interactions played out over several weeks or months (Sir Lethbridge's enquiry sparked a flurry of letters which carried on until the information had been copied to his satisfaction, in mid-July 1900). One of the delights watching the conversations play out over time is seeing small personal comments start to slip in--wishes for speedy recovery from illness, congratulations on the birth of a child, messages to pass along to mutual acquaintances, and so on.

One such exchange where we can see a research commission become a social connection was George Parker's efforts to help lawyer and noted social figure Alexander Meyrick Broadley (1847-1916; do read that Wikipedia article if you've never heard of him), track down information about two of his ancestors, William Hayes (1708-1777) and his son Phillip (1738-1793), who successively held the Heather Professorship of Music at Oxford. 

Their music was performed at The Hayes Church Restoration and Grand Concert, which celebrated the restoration of the parish church of St Mary, Bridport, where Broadley's father had been the reverend. George Parker or his family evidently wished to remember the concert, for they made a small scrapbook of newspaper clippings about the event.

Broadley, in turn, seems to have wished to celebrate the occasion with his friends; the last item in Parker's booklet is a menu from the "Diner Hayes" held in the Restaurant Buol, Oxford.

Menu from 13 June 1900. Library Records, d. 400. Photo: Hope Williard, Courtesy of Bodleian Libraries

As someone who loves to cook and eat, I immediately started trying to find out more about the food--the recipes below give a sense of what the dinner may have been like.

• Côtelettes de Saumon en Aspic Bodleian. Just what would an 'Aspic Bodleian' would taste like? Here is a recipe for cotelettes froides de saumon, which includes an aspic element, and would seem to give an approximate idea.
  
• Jambon aux Epinards, Mode Magdalen College. Sauce Mus. Doc. Here is a recipe for jambon aux epinards 
• Salade aux Fruits á la Doctor William Hayes. Bombe Bumpus Glacee. A bombe glacee is, apparently, Queen Elizabeth's favourite desert.

I have not been able to find out anything about the Soupe Phil Chaise Claire but perhaps it is out there somewhere in an Edwardian cookbook...

Restaurant Buol is long gone and its location at 15 Broad Street is currently vacant, but the memory of fine food and drink lived on. The menu was signed by all the guests and the Parkers carefully preserved it among their papers.

Menu from 13 June 1900. Library Records, d. 400. Photo: Hope Williard, Courtesy of Bodleian Libraries

While cold fish in aspic might not be coming back any time soon, one hopes that occasions like the Diner Hayes will be making a comeback.

In the Dark Violin of the Valley

All night a music 

Like a needle sewing body
And soul together, and sewing soul
And sky together and sky and earth
Together and sewing the river to the sea.

 

4 August 2021

In the dark skull of the valley
A lancing, fathoming music
Searching the bones, engraving
On the draughty limits of ghost
In an entanglement of stars.

In the dark belly of the valley
A coming and going music
Cutting the bed-rock deeper

15 August 2021

To earth-nerve, a scalpel of music

The valley dark rapt
Hunched over its river, the night attentive
Bowed over its valley, the river

Crying a violin in a grave

All the dead singing in the river 

 

13 August 2021

The river throbbing, the river the aorta

 

And the hills unconscious with listening.

 

~ Ted Hughes, from River: Poems by Ted Hughes with Photographs by Peter Keen (London, 1983)

Week 1: The Proportions and Relations of Things

“I entirely agree that a historian ought to be precise in detail; but unless you take all the characters and circumstances into account, you are reckoning without the facts. The proportions and relations of things are just as much facts as the things themselves.” --Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

Greetings from Oxford! My task for the first week of my project at the Bodleian has been to get to grips with the proportions and relations of the archival collections I am working with. In order to plan and prioritise my work, I have been testing my research questions to see if the information I want to find is a) present in the letters I am reading and b) takes a reasonable amount of time to collect. The answers to both questions seems to be yes so far! Because the catalogue of the Parker family letters is not very detailed, I have also set myself the task of working out how many letters there are in total. This has been less successful. It takes me a long time to count because I keep getting distracted by the contents of the letters.

The three questions I want to answer are:

1. What were the Parkers' knowledge and skills, and how did they acquire these? 
2. Who was writing to the Parkers, and what does this tell us about the scholarly community in the early twentieth century?
3. How much were they paid for their research work, and what does this tell us about the value and skill level of this labour?
   

So far, the range of research inquiries George, Evaline, and Angelina Parker answered seems to have been nearly limitless--everything from historical information that was pertinent to ongoing legal cases, to people researching their family trees, to academics wanting information about Bodleian materials for publications in progress, and much more. One of my favourite series of letters so far is from a French countess, Helene de Noe, who wrote to George Parker on behalf of a Franciscan priest who was preparing an edition of the works of John Duns Scottus. Not only was she deeply involved in the scholarly work of the project, but her letters contain marvelous little details of her daily life, like the time she scrawled a postscript on the back of a letter to apologise for sending Parker a late payment for his work--she'd forgotten her purse at home and didn't have time to go back and get it before the post office closed. Or the time that she wrote that she'd burned her hand and moved house, which left her scrambling to catch up on correspondence.

The letters I have been reading this week date from between 1890 and 1911, and the writing style is exquisitely formal and polite, which is great fun to read. Exceptional courtesy is especially a hallmark of letters from European researchers who chose to write in English (though the letters in French and German are delightfully courtly too.) One letter that particularly stands out was written by a pastor from Hanover, whose unique solution to his language difficulties was to compose his letter in a hodgepodge of German and English. 

In addition to beauties of language and handwriting, some of the letters are written on extraordinarily lovely stationery. Because it has a Lincoln connection, I wanted to share an especially beautiful example.

Letter from E. Mansel Sympson to Edmund Nicholson, 26 October 1902. Library Records, d. 403. Photo: Hope Williard, courtesy of the Bodleian Libraries 

The stationery is a heavy, textured, cream-coloured paper embossed with the Sympson family crest and the words Deloraine Court. Lincoln. This seems to be a Grade II listed building on James Street, in the Minster area of Lincoln; there are pictures here.

Here is a closer view of the crest:

Laetus sorte mea - 'happy in my lot'. Photo: Hope Williard, courtesy of the Bodleian Libraries

The sender of the letter was Edward Mansel Sympson (1860-1922), a Lincolnshire surgeon and antiquary. Sympson was born in Lincoln and educated at Cambridge. After getting his MD in 1890, he became a surgeon at Lincoln General Dispensary and later Lincoln County hospital. In addition to publishing on the subject of surgical discoveries, he was also a keen archaeologist, and edited the journal Lincolnshire Notes and Queries, as well as publishing books and articles on local history and architecture. His magnum opus, and the subject of this letter, was his book Lincoln: A historical and topographical account of the city, published in 1906. This letter dates from four years before, when he was deep in research. In his letter, addressed to the librarian of the Bodleian, Edward Nicholson, he writes:

October 26, 1902

My dear Sir,

May I first of all congratulate you on the recent Tercentenary of the Library? And secondly may I express my sincere thanks for the great kindness and courtesy shown to me when I was looking over the Lincoln History Ms. last month. It is again about that Ms I am writing to you...

The goes on to request that 'any competent person' made a copy of what he described as 'Lincoln History Ms (Adversaria, or notes for a history of Lincoln)', which is today Ms Gough Linc. 1; a microfilm of the manuscript can be seen in Lincolnshire archives. A member of the Parker family, possible George Parker, noted in pencil at the top of the letter that cost of the copying the full manuscript would be £30, exclusive of paper or postage.

According to the National Archives currency converter, in today's money this would be a whopping £2,357.09, and is the equivalent of three months' wages for a skilled tradesman in 1905.

Why was the copy so expensive? Most of copying of manuscripts seems to have been done by hand due to the limitations of early twentieth century photography. (It's not entirely clear to me when the Bodleian gained a specialist photograph department--particularly between 1900 and 1905, many photography jobs seem to have been passed on to Clarendon Press, whereas copying and transcription were done by the library staff or trusted independent scholars in what are called 'unofficial hours'.) While there are a number of letters which discuss or commission various types of photographic reproduction of manuscripts, most of these are followed by letters complaining that the photograph obscures or cuts off relevant details of the manuscript--and requesting that someone check the real thing in person and supply the missing information. Requests for photographs seem to become more common from around 1909 and later, and the complaints seem to be fewer, probably indicating improvements in photography techniques and technologies.

 

The man himself! Dr E. Mansel Sympson, painted by George Henry Grenville Manton, Usher Gallery

While the language of the letter seems to indicate that Sympson was prepared to pay for the copy whatever it cost, so far I have not found a second letter definitely indicating that the good doctor chose to have the copy made. Perhaps Sympson pursued further Lincolnshire research, in person or remotely, at the Bodleian in the years leading up to the publication of his book. I will be keeping a eye out for his beautiful stationery in the hopes of finding out!

Further Reading

E. Mansel Sympson, Lincoln A historical and topographical account of the city (London: Methuen and Co, 1906). There is a copy of this book on archive.org and in the University of Lincoln library.

"Obituary: E. Mansel Sympson, M.D., Surgeon, Lincoln County Hospital," The British Medical Journal Vol. 1, No. 3186 (Jan. 21, 1922), pp. 125-126.