?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
(MASSACHUSETTS.) Scrapbook kept by a Hasty Pudding Club member in the Harvard Class of 1863. Approximately 180 items (18 manuscripts, 117 pieces of printed ephemera, 45 clippings) mounted on or laid into 64 scrapbook leaves. 4to, ½ calf, worn with failed tape repair, needs binding; minor wear to contents. Cambridge, MA, 1859-1908
This scrapbook was compiled by John Murray Brown, a member of Harvard's Class of 1863. Most of it covers his four years at Harvard, with some alumni material mixed in. Highlights include Brown's certificates of admission and matriculation signed by Harvard president James Walker, 1859 and 1860; annotated crew program for the Worcester City Regatta, 25 July 1860; a printed October 1863 dinner club list including classmate Francis Lee Higginson of 54th Massachusetts Infantry fame; an annual class rank list showing future philosopher John Fiske near the top of the sophomore class; a gilt-bordered menu for the sophomore dinner, 3 January 1861; and a broadside titled "Students of Harvard College Who Have Died in the Country's Service from the Beginning of the Rebellion to July 15, 1863." A few items relate to alumni activities through 1908, including a printed invitation to see President Theodore Roosevelt present the Alpha Delta Phi Club medal to Edward Everett Hale, 1902.
Also included is copious ephemera from Harvard's storied Hasty Pudding Club: elaborate menu of club suppers from 10 January 1862 and 2 January 1863; a songsheet "Ode" to the "Old H.P.C.," undated; a songsheet titled "H.P..C. Supper Ode," 2 January 1863; Brown's admission notice into the Institute of 1770 (later absorbed into the Hasty Pudding Club), 1860; a letter from U.A. Prentiss of the admission committee requesting that Brown "write an acrostic on the following words: Hasty Pudding Club"; a playbill from the club's performances dated 27 December 1861, 16 May 1862, 13 June 1862, 21 November 1862, 19 December 1862, 15 May 1863, 12 June 1863; and Brown's elaborate manuscript notice as the club's librarian.
A letter from President Cornelius Conway Felton to Brown's guardian Ebenezer Hobbs, 27 November 1860, raises some issues: "Your ward, J.M. Brown, sophomore has had some part in the excitements and disorderly acts which have disturbed the peace of the college the last week. . . . Unless he can return after the recess prepared to render a cheerful obedience to the authorities of the University, it will be wise to take up his connections now when he can obtain an honorable dismission." The response on verso explains: "I am quite sure that it was not his intention to engage in hazing freshmen. . . . He seemed to lose his good sense and become for the time being a John Brown of raid memory."
John Murray Brown (1842-1908) was the son of the late James Brown (1800-1855), founding partner of the venerable Little, Brown & Co. publishing house. After graduation, the son joined the firm and became its head in 1884.
