Welcome to Clare's Scrapbook

Clarice Edna Crooks was born in Nova Scotia, Canada in 1902. She grew up in the small fishing village of Seal Harbour in Guysborough County. When she finished school she moved to Halifax to work and from there to Boston, Massachusetts to nursing school. There she met and married George Norman Downing.

Like many teenage girls of her day Clare kept a scrapbook of newspaper items that caught her interest. Most clippings were poems, stories, or moralizing advice. The book itself was an old cloth-bound farming/home economics textbook. She glued a colored waterside picture on the front to hide the original title (which seems to have been "The Family Health Guide").

Clare began keeping the scrapbook in her teens. The clippings lack information identifying the date or the name of the newspaper, so it's difficult to establish a timeline. But some of the items provide enough context to show she kept adding to the book into her twenties at nursing school. She never filled the book completely, and seems to have stopped adding to it when she and George married. Clare kept the book throughout her life. Her husband George also treasured it; on the inside front cover he mounted a laminated clipping of her obituary.

Clare's scrapbook has deteriorated to the point that it is difficult to handle without damaging it. There is no way to save the yellowed clippings from eventually disintegrating, but we can preserve a record of what it contained. This blog offers a transcription of the scrapbook's contents. Each item she pasted in is posted here, more or less in the order Clare added them. The explanatory footnotes are my own. There is also a search function for terms included anywhere in the blog.

Most of us who are Clare's descendants have no memory of her at all, and for those who do the memories are dimmed by time. My hope in creating this blog is that we can better understand this wonderful woman and perhaps find insights for our own lives in the things she held dear.

-TD

New Dreams for Old

Is there no voice in the world to come crying,

“New dreams for old!  New for old!”

Many have long in my heart been dying,

Faded, weary, and cold.

All of them, all, would I give for a new one.

Is there no seeker of dreams that were?

Nor would I ask if the new were a true one;

Only for new dreams!  New for old!

For I am here, half-way of my journey,

Here with the old!  All so old!

And the best heart with death is at tourney

If naught new it is told.

Will there no voice, then, come, or a vision,

Come with the beauty that ever blows

Out of the lands that are called Elysian?

I must have new dreams!  New for old!

Cale Young Rice[1] in “The Century”[2]

__________________________________________________

[1] Cale Young Rice was an American poet and dramatist. He was born in 1872 in Dixon, Kentucky, where his birthplace is designated by Kentucky State Historical Marker 1508. Rice was the son of Laban Marchbanks Rice, a Confederate veteran and tobacco merchant, and his wife Martha Lacy. He was a younger brother of Laban Lacy Rice, a noted educator, who later collected and published Rice’s works in a single volume. Rice grew up in Evansville, Indiana and Louisville, Kentucky. He was educated at Cumberland University and at Harvard (A.B., 1895; A.M., 1896). In a 1906 New York Times review of Plays and Lyrics: The Collected Poems of Cale Young Rice, Jessie B. Rittenhouse opined that Rice’s dramatic works outshone his poetry “though occasional lyrics…evidenced a delicate touch.”

Rice married the popular author Alice Hegan (see footnote 187); they worked together on several books. They had no children. In 1942 Alice died. The following year, overwhelmed with sorrow at her loss, Rice took his own life at his home in Louisville.  (Source: Wikipedia)

[2] The Century Magazine began publication in 1881, as a successor to Scribner’s Monthly Magazine.  It ceased publication in 1930.  The image adjacent is of the cover of the August 1903 issue.

There’s a Land, a Dear Land

This magnificent song has long been popular in England.  It was sung by Adelina Patti[1], and Madame Albani, and later by Melba and other famous singers.

There’s a land, a dear land, where the rights of the free,

Though firm as the earth are wide as the sea;

Where the primroses bloom, and the nightingales sing,

And the honest poor man is as good as a king.

Show’ry, flow’ry!  Cheerful, tearful!

England, wave-guarded, and green, to the shore!

West land!  Best land!  Thy land; My land!

Glory be with her and peace evermore.

There’s a land, a dear land, where our vigor of soul

Is fed by the tempests that blow from the pole;

Where the people love peace, but at sound of the drum,

A myriad of soldiers and heroes become.

Sea-land!  Free-land!  Fairest!  Rarest!

Home of the brave men and the maids they adore.

Fearless!  Peerless!  Thy land! My land!

Glory be with her and peace evermore.

- Charles Mackay[2]

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[1] Adelina Juana Maria Patti was born to a Sicilian father and Italian mother in 1843 in Madrid. She was the fourth of six children and the family was relatively poor. Her parents were both involved in opera and they moved to New York in 1847, where there were better employment opportunities for a show business family. She made her first appearance on the stage at the age of seven. In 1859, at the age of sixteen, she made her operatic debut as Donizetti’s Lucia and her vocal range, bell-like clarity and professionalism won her critical acclaim. She was soon being offered leading soprano roles. The large Italian community in American cities helped to elevate her to star status in just a few short years.         

In 1861, at the age of eighteen, Adelina was invited to Covent Garden in London to take the soprano role of Amina in Bellini’s La Sonnambula. She bought a house in Clapham, South of London. In 1862 she sang Home Sweet Home at the White House for Abraham and Mary Lincoln who were in mourning for their son Willie, who had recently died. The Lincolns were moved to tears and requested an encore. The song became associated with her and she performed it many times by popular request.

She toured as far as Leningrad and Buenos Aires but continued to make Europe her base, marrying the Marquis de Caux, Equerry to Napoleon the third of France in 1868. In the same year she sang at Rossini’s funeral in Paris. Ten years later she bought Craig-y-Nos, a large early Victorian house and surrounding park beside the river Tawe near Abercrave in South Wales. There she took up residence, not with her husband, but with the tenor Ernesto Nicolini with whom she had been touring. In 1886 she obtained her divorce and married Ernesto. By the 1890s Adelina Patti was one of the most famous women in the world and certainly one of the highest paid. She was one of the first “international superstars.” (Source: opera-singer.co.uk)       

[2] Charles Mackay, the son of a navy lieutenant, was born in Scotland in 1814. His mother died when he was young and so he was brought up by foster parents. At the age of sixteen he was employed as the private secretary to William Cockerill, an ironmaster based in Belgium. In his spare-time he wrote articles for the local newspaper.

Mackay returned to Britain in 1832 and for the next three years contributed to several newspapers. In 1835 he obtained his first permanent post in journalism when he was appointed as an assistant to George Hogarth, the sub-editor of the Morning Chronicle. Other journalists working for the newspaper at the time included Charles Dickens and William Hazlitt. Mackay eventually was promoted to the post of assistant editor.

In 1844 Mackay left the Morning Chronicle and became editor of the Glasgow Argus. While in Scotland he also contributed articles and poetry to the Daily News, a newspaper established by Charles Dickens in 1846. After four years in Glasgow, Mackay returned to London and joined the staff of the London Illustrated News, the successful journal owned by Herbert Ingram.

In 1849 Henry Mayhew suggested to John Douglas Cook, the editor of the Morning Chronicle, that the newspaper should carry out an investigation into the condition of the labouring classes in England and Wales. Cook agreed and recruited Mackay, Angus Reach and Shirley Brooks to help Mayhew collect the material. Mackay was given the task of surveying the situation in Liverpool and Birmingham.

Mackay’s poetry was not collected together until the title Voices from the Crowd. Some of his poems were set to music by his friend Henry Russell. These were very successful and one songsheet, The Good Time Coming, sold over 400,000 copies. Mackay published his two volume autobiography, Forty Years Recollections and Through the Long Day two years before his death in 1889.  (Source: Spartacus Educational - spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk)

Love at Home

This old song was written by John Hugh McNaughton,[1] author of “The Faded Coat of Blue” and other popular songs.

There is beauty all around, when there’s love at home,

There is joy in every sound, when there’s love at home,

Peace and plenty here abide, smiling sweet on every side,

Time doth softly, sweetly glide, when there’s love at home.

Love at home, love at home,

Time doth softly, sweetly glide, when there’s love at home

In the cottage there is joy, when there’s love at home,

Hate and envy ne’er annoy, when there’s love at home,

Roses bloom beneath our feet, all the earth’s a garden sweet,

Making life a bliss complete, when there’s love at home.

Love at home, etc.

Kindly heaven smiles above, when there’s love at home,

All the world is filled with love, when there’s love at home,

Sweeter sings the brooklet by, brighter beams the azure sky,

Oh, there’s one who smiles on high, when there’s love at home

Love at home, etc.

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[1] John McNaughton was born in 1829 and died in 1901.  The following information is from folk musician Allen Hopkins who lives near McNaughton’s birthplace: (Source: seiyaku.com)

[McNaughton] lived in Caledonia, New York, about 30 miles southwest of Rochester. John was known as 'The Poet McNaughton' for composing many songs popular at the time, though few have survived to be sung today. Other than 'Love At Home,' perhaps his most famous was 'The Faded Coat of Blue,' about Union soldiers taken prisoner during the American Civil War. There is a monument to John Hugh McNaughton just outside Caledonia, on the site of the farm where he lived. 

A Clean Face

These amusing verses were requested by a reader. They are kindly supplied by a correspondent from an old picture book which has come down through the generations.

Oh, why must my face be washed so clean,

And scrubbed and drenched for Sunday,

When you very well know, as you’ve always seen,

‘Twill be dirty again on Monday.

My hair is stiff with the lathery soap

That behind my ears is dripping

And my smarting eyes I’m afraid to ope,

And my lips the suds are sipping.

They’re down my throat, and up my nose,

And to choke me you seem to be trying;

That I’ll shut my mouth you needn’t suppose,

For how can I keep from crying?

And you rub as hard as ever you can,

And your hands are hard to my sorrow;

No one shall wash me when I’m a man,

And I wish I were one tomorrow.

E. Leslie

The Father

Ever his eyes are fixed on a glorious sight,

A boy is leading, calls his men to come on;

Light as a deer he leaps, slender and bright,

Up the hill, irresistible—it is won.

Ever he sees the boy against the sky,

A slender Victory, light on his golden head

Hardly the down on his lip, he hath leaped so high

His name is writ among the undying Dead.

Captain at two-and-twenty!  Much was to come.

Great things yet to be done, heights to be scaled.

Love and comradeship, all fruition of bloom

He has attained to the highest, not he who failed.

The mother weeps her boy, who comes not again,

The father sees him splendid and laughing still,

Leaping like a young deer, calling men.

The glory dazzles!  The boy is keeping the hill!

- Katharine Tynan[1]

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[1] Katharine Tynan was an Irish-born writer, known mainly for her novels and poetry. She was born in 1861 into a large farming family in Clondalkin, County Dublin, and educated at a convent school in Drogheda. Her poems were first published in 1878. She went on to play a major part in Dublin literary circles. For a while, Tynan was a close associate of William Butler Yeats (who may have proposed marriage and been rejected, around 1885), and later a correspondent of Francis Ledwidge.

In 1898, Tynan married writer and barrister Henry Albert Hinkson and moved to England. They had three children; one, Pamela Hinkson, would become a writer in her own right. In 1914, the family moved to Claremorris, County Mayo, in Ireland, where her husband had been made a magistrate. He died in 1919. Tynan is said to have written over 100 novels; there were some unsurprising comments about a lack of self-criticism in her output. Her Collected Poems appeared in 1930; she also wrote five autobiographical volumes. Tynan died in Wimbledon, London, in 1931 at the age of 70.  (Source: Wikipedia)

The Looker Ahead

(By J. G. Holland)[1]

The wheels of progress do not stop.  The world advances toward and into a better life, and will advance, until, leaving the hard, clumsy and jarring pavements of the marts of selfishness behind, it will strike off joyously into the broad avenue of the millennium.  No man can be a true worker for human good who does not believe that the cobblestone pavement has an end.  He believes that the time is coming when what he is doing, and has done, will be accepted at its true value.  He may be laughed at now; he may be scoffed at and scorned; his motives may be maligned; he may be hammered by opposition and barked by popular clamor; but he knows that sometime in the future it will be his turn to laugh, and he is confident that he will laugh last and best.

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[1] Josiah Gilbert Holland was born in 1819. His family was of the oldest Puritan stock.  During a considerable part of his childhood the family, pursued by misfortune, led a sort of roving life, as the unprosperous father was able to find work. The promising son, Josiah, had little chance for learning, getting but a few months in the public schools in winter. At length, while the family lived at Northampton, Massachusetts, Josiah entered high school, where he pursued his studies with great eagerness and ability. Later, he taught penmanship from town to town, and used to recite his own poems to his intimate friends. He tried daguerreotypy and district school teaching.

Finding it impossible to obtain a classical education, Holland decided to study medicine. In 1844 he was graduated at the Berkshire Medical College with honor. In 1845 Doctor Holland formed a partnership with his classmate, Doctor Bailey, and commenced his medical practice at Springfield, Massachusetts. In the same year he married Miss Elizabeth Chapin, of Springfield. His married life was one of unusual happiness.

After some time in medical practice, Holland decided he did not like it. Attracted to journalism, he started the Bay State Weekly Courier at Springfield, but it survived only for six months. He relocated to Richmond, Virginia, where he taught. In 1849 he returned to Springfield, Massachusetts, where he became assistant editor of the Republican. With tireless energy and research, he gathered local and general matter for his paper. His work made a difference, and he began to succeed as a journalist.  His writing ranged from poems and proverbs to advice and history. His Life of Abraham Lincoln, written the year Lincoln was assassinated, was sold by subscription and was immensely popular. He began authoring novels as well.  The climax of his fame and popular success as an author of books was attained in 1868, when Katrina appeared. In addition to his other literary labors he was one of the most popular of American lecturers.

In 1868 Josiah went to Europe, where he remained two years. While there, he proposed to his friend Roswell Smith the founding of Scribner’s Monthly, which became one of the most important magazines of its day. All this success allowed him a comfortable lifestyle; he had his home in New York and a beautiful country place in the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence, and was able to pass the closing hours of his life in thorough enjoyment of the world. He died in 1881. (Source: 2020site.org)