 "Photo: Jeffrey McWhorter")
Editor's Note: This is the final part of a series on the various resources available to students at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center. This article highlights a variety of the center's unique items.
The Harry Ransom Center is full of mysterious curiosities unknown to the University population, and it is from these that the center's curators and directors select their beloved treasures to highlight.
The following pieces are random and obscure items that are unique and provide flare to the center's 36 million manuscript pages, more than 1 million rare books and 5 million photographs.
Victorian Blood Book
Scrapbooks in the 19th century did not involve haphazardly glued family photos with ticket stubs and funny quotes like they do today. However, scrapbooking was a popular practice during the 19th century, said Molly Schwartzburg, the center's curator of British and American literature.
The Victorian Blood Book, unique in its design and imagery, is a scrapbook that was given as a gift from a father to his daughter during the Victorian period, she said.
"I've never seen anything like this before," Schwartzburg said. "There are a lot of wonderful creative scrapbooks from the 19th century, but this particular compilation of visuals and texts is very personal to the person who made it. When you see anything unique that you've never seen before, it changes how you see everything else."
The book derives its name from Biblical imagery of "bleeding" crosses and other religious symbols depicted in the book. Students and scholars often request it because of its bizarre and disturbing content, she said.
Author's Door
In an obscure hallway in the Ransom Center, a plain wooden door contains the signatures of about 130 famous authors who have visited the center since the early 1970s, including Tennessee Williams, Robert De Niro, Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein and Norman Mailer.
"We frequently have VIP authors in the building," said Associate Director Richard Oram. "Someone might have seen this blank wood door and wanted to get signatures."
Oram said he does not know of any other library that has anything like the author's door, which always intrigues people and makes the authors feel special.
"A long time ago a couple of custodians signed the door, but they were not authorized," he said. "There is no strict criteria, but basically people who are major authors or artists."
Leicester Hemingway Manuscripts
According to the Ransom Center's Web site, "Leicester Hemingway is known to history for principally three things: for being the younger brother of the famous novelist Ernest Hemingway, to whom he bore a striking physical resemblance; for publishing a well-received biography of his brother a mere eight months after Ernest died; and for 'founding' his own island nation, the Republic of New Atlantis."
Artifacts from Hemingway's island nation including a small blue and gold flag, official stamps and the island's currency of "scruples", are unique to the center, Schwartzburg said.
There was an odd trend of people creating micro-nations in the 1960s, she said. Hemingway unsuccessfully tried to get the U.S. to diplomatically recognize New Atlantis.
Frida Kahlo Collection
A Frida Kahlo self portrait and still life, owned by the Ransom Center, have travelled the world and thus have not been accessible to University patrons recently.
The 1940 self portrait, the most recognized Kahlo piece the center owns, depicts the artist with a thorn necklace, dead hummingbird around her neck and a monkey and black cat sitting on her shoulders, said Peter Mears, associate curator of the art collection. The painting's symbology is suspected to represent Kahlo's relationships with her husband Diego Rivera and lover Nicholas Murray, he said.
Mears said it is important to loan art and share it with the world, but that the center has to be selective with loaners and mindful of letting art "rest" after travelling. People miss the self portrait and the center receives inquiry calls about it, so the painting should arrive back to the center in the next year or year and a half, he said.
The center also owns a Kahlo sketch of her and Rivera, which is supposed to be exhibited within the next year, Mears said.
Queen Elizabeth I Letters
Seven letters signed by Queen Elizabeth I that date back to 1573 are among the center's 36 million manuscript pages.
"When you work somewhere like this, you're not easily stunned," said Schwartzburg. "But when I saw those, I just got the shivers. There is something incredible about being in the presence of Queen Elizabeth I."
Four of the letters concern duc d'Alencon asking for the queen's hand in marriage, she said. Though the queen was never married, the letters show the diplomatic effort that went into negotiating a marriage.
The marriage letters, written by the queen's counselors but signed with her large signature, were acquired in 1986 as part of the Pforzheimer manuscript collection, Schwartzburg said.
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