Kenneth Spencer Research Library

Each week we’ll be posting a photograph from University Archives that shows a scene from KU’s past. We’ve also scanned more than 34,800 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

We’re enjoying some chilly autumn weather this week on Mount Oread. It might be time to get out your sweaters and coats!

A studio portrait of four members of the KU football team, 1892. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 66/14 1892 Team Prints: Athletic Department: Football (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

Throughout history, people have found innovative ways to record the written word. Civilizations have used clay, stone, papyrus, animal skin – almost anything they could think of to produce records and share their stories. Recently, I was introduced to another innovative writing surface: palm leaves!

Spencer’s Rāmāyaņa palm-leaf manuscript inside its acid-free storage box.
Call Number: MS Q57. Click image to enlarge.

Created in the 17th century, this palm-leaf manuscript (also referred to as a Pothi) contains the first five books of the Rāmāyaņa, an ancient Sanskrit epic about Prince Rama’s quest to rescue his wife, Sita, from Ravana, the 10-headed Rakshasa king of Lanka. While the epic itself dates back to over two millennia ago, the text in Spencer Research Library’s manuscript is a Telugu translation from the 13th century.

Close-up views of Spencer’s Rāmāyaņa palm-leaf manuscript.
Call Number: MS Q57. Click image to enlarge.

Palm-leaf manuscripts were created by drying and curing palm leaves. Holes were then added to the leaves so that a string could pass through, securing the leaves into a book. To create the text, scribes used a stylus to etch the characters before adding a layer of black soot or turmeric to improve the text’s readability. While the use of palm leaves for writing declined in South India as the printing press became more widely used in the 19th century, thousands of palm-leaf manuscripts containing the history, traditions, and knowledge of the region still exist today.

Emily Beran
Public Services

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In honor of the centennial of World War I, this is the second series in which we follow the experiences of one American soldier: twenty-five year old Milo H. Main, whose letters are held in Spencer’s Kansas Collection. On Mondays we’ll post a new entry featuring selected letters from Milo to his family from that following week, one hundred years after he wrote them.

Milo Hugh Main was born in or near Pittsfield, Illinois, on November 21, 1892 to William and Rose Ella Henry Main. The family moved to Argonia, Sumner County, Kansas, in 1901. After his mother died in 1906, Milo remained in Argonia with his father and his two sisters Gladys (b. 1890) and June (b. 1899). His youngest sister Fern (b. 1905) was sent to live with relatives in Illinois.

As Milo reported to the Kansas State Historical Society in 1919, after graduating from high school he worked as a store clerk. He resigned in July 1917 and took a position at Standard Oil Company, possibly co-managing a gas station in Argonia.

Milo entered into military service on September 21, 1917. He served as a wagoner – a person who drives a wagon or transports goods by wagon – in Battery F, 130th Field Artillery. He was stationed at Camp Funston (September-October 1917) and Camp Doniphan (October 1917-May 1918). On May 19, 1918, he boarded the ship Ceramic in New York City and departed for Europe.

In the letters from these two weeks, we catch up with Milo after not hearing from him during the previous month. (He says that “the last letter I wrote you was dated Sept. 28th,” but that letter is not in Spencer Research Library’s collection.) Milo describes being on the “Argonne Front near Verdun” for ten days: “We sure put over some barrage on the night the big drive started. We, the Yanks regained in 27 hours what the French and British had been fighting for for four years.” Back behind the lines, Milo writes that “all are glad to get where they can’t hear the huge cannon and don’t have to wear steel helmets and carry gas masks.”

October, 6th, 1918.
Somewhere in France but, soon Everywhere in Germany.

Dear Father and Sisters:-

This Sunday afternoon I received nine letters from you, dated: Sept. 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 10th, 11th, and two the 9th. Also one from Fern [Milo’s youngest sister, living in Illinois] and Ruth. I certainly appreciate hearing from you so often and keeping me in touch the local news. Sorry tho’, that I don’t write to you oftener. The last letter I wrote you was dated Sept. 28th on the “Front.”

Last night we arrived in a little French village, Hargeville, and started our O.M. in the Mayor’s home. Some place too, it is built like most French buildings, of huge stone with tile roof but, it is about 150 ft. by 150 ft. square complete with home, horse, cow, sheep and poultry apartments under the one roof. And too, a small threshing machine driven by a tread mill.

I was up on the Argonne Front near Verdun ten days. Beleive me we sure put over some barage on the night the big drive started. We, the Yanks regained in 27 hours what the French and British had been fighting for for four years. One of the Enemy’s strong points, a hill, with an arsenal and a city 7. stories deep, we dug out a cut wide enough for 12 railroads and many feet deep. The German’s thought it impossible for it to ever be taken for it was fixed up modern. I visited the under ground city personally and found it equipped with electric lighting systems, water works and railroad leading up from the rear. They left in such haste that their morning meal was left on their tables uneaten and liquor half drank. American can milk and jams were found on their tables like it was later discovered in a German canteen we captured. The only souvenir that I am carrying at present is a blouse button off a Jerry’s [German’s] blouse. He is now located in a permanent rest camp. Many of the boys are loaded to the hubs with German helmets and other articles of the Dutch. After we advanced, the cook and I were ordered to stay behind with our Mess Equipment but, I stole up with in sight of the fleeing enemy more than once.

Glad to tell, all the Argonia bunch in the Artillery came out with out a wound. No wonder tho, for “Jack” Gen. Pershing was in command.

Please send me a copy of the chaplain’s letter, as our 2nd class mail matter has been delayed for many weeks.

Shows, yes, when in or near the larger cities we visit them quite often.

Mighty good to hear of Rollie Holt’s (1) successful operation.

There are some beautiful French women here, more tho in the largest cities but, as to many of the Yanks marrying them, I have my first one to see that ever had a thought about it.

Perfectly alright with me if you give the Pike Bros. all my old clothing.

I will not need my leather vest, heavy underwear, or any candies as Uncle Sam looks after that for us “Overhere” much different than in the States. We will be issued heavy wool under wear in a few days. Had a leather vest, but, let a friend have it, will get another later on, and candies, I have been sick this afternoon from eating so much cholates [chocolates] and smoking Roi-Tans [cigars].

The boys at O.M. to-nite have been singing so, one could hardly think. All are glad to get where they can’t hear the huge cannon and don’t have to wear steel helmets and carry gas masks. Think we will be motorized now, if so, it will be months before we get in the lines again.

Please send my Liberty Bond to the Guthrie Consistory in Care of Frank H. Den, Sec. at Guthrie, Okla.

Ruth sent me some kodak pictures of her and her chums eating water melons, sure made my mouth water (for the melon).

Have talked to all the “Argonia Bunch” since leaving the Front and can vouch for the good health of them all. We will do our ____est to be home soon.

I remain
Your son & brother
Pvt. Milo H. Main.
Bat. F. 130 F. A.
American E. F.

(1) Rollie Hillard Holt was born in Sumner County on May 12, 1901. Most records indicate that he served for roughly seven months in Co. A, 110th Military Police in the Kansas National Guard at Camp Doniphan. He was honorably discharged from the army in December 1917/January 1918 on account of disabilities. Holt was the focus of several stories in local newspapers during the spring and summer of 1918; on September 9, The Wichita Beacon seems to have reported on the operation referenced by Milo.

Rollie Holt, the seventeen-year-old boy who was recently sent by Judge Sargent to the federal penitentiary charged with being criminally insane, has been brought back to Wichita by Sheriff Sarver and was this morning released from custody under bond, pronounced cured, according to his attorney. Holt was arraigned in the District Court six weeks ago for setting fire to several buildings. He entered a plea of guilty in Judge Sargent’s court at his first trial, but the judge refused it, entered him in the case as not guilty, and found him criminally insane. After being in Lansing prison for several days, an operation was performed upon Holt and he is now pronounced cured from his mental disability.

Wed. Oct. 9th ’18.
“Somewhere in France but, soon Everywhere in Berlin.”

Dear Father and Sisters:-

To-day the boys “Overhere” are anxiously awaiting Pres. Wilson’s reply to the Kaiser.

Received four letters from you this A.M., one containing the clipping about Lt. Wooley (1), an officer that F. Bat. boys hated to see leave their organization. The letters I received to-day were dated; two 9/18, 9/19 and 9/20 also six when we were up in the “Lines” or on the “Front” dated Aug. 12th, 16th, 28th, 29th, 30th and 31st.

Wish that you would have explained about the J.W.A. (2) deal.

I received a letter from Raymond Flory (3) yesterday stating that he was in Eng. [England] yet, but expected to cross the Channel soon.

We have sure been having a live time at O.M. here in this French home. Am sitting before a bright fire in big fire place this evening after taking a hot shower-bath and donning a new suit of Uncle Sam’s woolen underwear. Also have been keeping my hide filled with hot-cakes, beef-steaks, French and Swiss cheese, Pumpkin-pie, apples and hazel-nuts galore. Wait until I step out in my new uniform which I am expecting to-morrow. The lady of the house insists that we meet the fair village queens of her city. Sure a whole show to be in a French home. While we were eating breakfast this A.M. the pheasant [peasant?] was threshing with his one-horse threshing machine not 30 ft. from the dining room-door. I started to come in this big-building last night and instead of getting in the living apartment I found my self in the cow dept. All the farming here is done inside. One pheasant was threshing with two big 600 lb. hogs yesterday. (I mentioned in my last letter about their machines being driven by tread mills). This life back of the Lines sure beats being up there where the rats (larger than cats) run relay races with the “Cooties.”

Am enclosing part of a cigarette box which I picked up in the underground city of Jerry’s [Germans] when up there last time on Front.

We, this Regt. were exceptionly fortunate in this last drive we made. Our “Lost in Action” will not exceed Sam Scott’s heirs (4). It will be some months before we go up again. The reason I will tell you when I get home. Want to go and see the Co. L. tomorrow.

Don’t become alarmed about “Old-Mike” if you fail to hear from him for weeks. For the trouble lies between him and the A.E.F. mail service. Am getting fatter than ever since we got back out of the Line.

Did you ever receive the check on J.W. Hall that I cashed for Roy Overhere and mailed home?

The home “Bunch” are all here and feeling fine. Warlow (5) is also guilty of taking a hot shower-bath in P.M. He’s a case.

Thanking you for writing so often, which I can not express myself how I enjoy the letters, I remain

Your Son & bro.,
Pvt. Milo H. Main.
Bat F. 130 F.A. American E.F. (over)

P.S. Thanks for the tooth-picks and gum.

P.S. Am enclosing Christmas card package coupon
Sun. 13th. Are on our way after the retreating Huns [Germans].

(1) The referenced clipping may have appeared in The Wichita Daily Eagle on September 17, 1918: “Lieutenant William Wooley who has been in France since March with members of Battery F, which he joined over a year ago, has returned to the United States where he will assist in organizing batteries at Camp Mead, Maryland.”

(2) Probably J. W. Achelpohl, a storeowner in Argonia who was Milo’s former employer when he worked as a clerk. He has been mentioned in some of Milo’s previous letters.

(3) Possibly Raymond Flory, mentioned in several of Milo’s previous letters. Biographical information about him can be found with Milo’s letter of June 2.

(4) This appears to be Sam C. Scott, one of Milo’s former coworkers; both were clerks at J. W. Achelpohl’s store in Argonia. According to his World War I draft registration card and other documentation, Scott was born in Michigan on May 22, 1881. By 1918 he was married to Ollie May Westrup.

(5) Alvin Lee Warlow served with Milo in Co. F. According to his World War I draft registration card, Warlow was born in Sumner County on December 8, 1893. In 1917, he was farming in Argonia.

Meredith Huff
Public Services

Emma Piazza
Public Services Student Assistant

Each week we’ll be posting a photograph from University Archives that shows a scene from KU’s past. We’ve also scanned more than 34,800 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

One hundred years ago this week – on October 1, 1918 – almost 2,500 young men were inducted into KU’s unit of the Student Army Training Corps (S.A.T.C.).

Members of KU’s S.A.T.C. in formation on campus, 1918.
Spooner Hall is in the background. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 29/0 1918 Prints: Military Service and ROTC (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

According to a “Descriptive Circular” from October 1918, the primary purpose of the S.A.T.C. was to

utilize the executive and teaching personnel and the physical equipment of the educational institutions to assist in the training of our new armies [fighting in World War I]. These facilities will be especially useful for the training of officer-candidates and technical experts of all kinds to meet the needs of the service. This training is being conducted in about 600 colleges, universities, professional, technical and trade schools of the country.

The October 1918 edition of KU’s Graduate Magazine provided these additional details.

A contract to maintain an S. A. T. C. of two thousand members consisting of men over eighteen, who have had a high school education, was made with the University of Kansas by the government. The members are to be given full army uniforms and equipment, are to be lodged and fed in barracks by the government, will have all their university or college tuition paid by the government and will receive thirty dollars a month. Later it was decided to take over the 450 men of the technical training detachment already on the campus, and to organize a naval training camp for two hundred students. Some eighteen hundred men have already registered in the S. A. T. C., so that present indications point to the residence of 2,500 men at the University (16).

At that time, the highest total enrollment on the Lawrence campus had been 2,711 students in Fall 1916.

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

It’s the end of September, which means that it’s Banned Books Week (this year, September 23-29^th), an annual celebration of the freedom to read.  Among the most frequently challenged books in recent years have been ones that include LGBTQ content or themes, such as same-sex relationships or issues surrounding gender identity. (Four of the 2017 and five of the 2016 top ten most challenged books, as compiled by the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom, were challenged in part for LGBTQ subject matter.)  With this in mind, today we feature a typescript from Spencer’s collections for a novel that stands as a landmark in the history of lesbian literature and the history of censorship, Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness (1928).

The Well of Loneliness tells the story of Stephen Gordon as she struggles to find love and acceptance in a society that rejects same-sex desire. Often discussed as the first openly lesbian novel in English, The Well of Loneliness favors the term “invert” over lesbian.  The novel’s author, the British writer Radclyffe Hall, imported this word from late nineteenth and early twentieth century writings of sexologists such as Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis.  Indeed, Havelock Ellis wrote a prefatory comment for Radclyffe Hall’s novel, and Spencer Research Library’s typescript copy appears to have been given by Hall to Ellis.  It includes a manuscript copy of Ellis’s introductory “comment,” and is marked “Special Copy I” in Radclyffe Hall’s hand on the title page.  Photographic portraits of both Hall and Ellis have been added to the typescript, perhaps by some later owner.

Photograph of Radclyffe Hall pasted next to the title page of a typescript of her novel The Well of Loneliness. England, approximately 1928. Call #: MS D45. Click image to enlarge.

Hall intended her novel as both a work of art and a means of gaining sympathy and recognition for same-sex love.  In his introductory comment, Havelock Ellis writes,

So far as I know, it is the first English novel which presents, in a completely faithful and uncompromising form, one particular aspect of sexual life as it exists among us to-day. The relation of certain people—who, while different from their fellow human beings, are sometimes of the highest character and finest aptitudes—to the often hostile society in which they move presents difficult and still unsolved problems.  The poignant situations which thus arise here are set forth so vividly, and yet with such complete absence of offence, that we must place Radclyffe Hall’s book on a high level of distinction.

Havelock Ellis’s prefatory “commentary,” with photograph of Ellis in the first volume of a typescript for Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness. England, approximately 1928. Call #: MS D45. Click image to enlarge.

Ellis’s careful allusion to the “complete absence of offense,” however, did not convince all readers. Though The Well of Loneliness contains no sexually explicit scenes, its subject matter and its insistence on the humanity of its queer characters inspired controversy upon its release in 1928.  James Douglas, the editor of the tabloid newspaper the Sunday Express, published an article in which he famously and bombastically asserted that he “would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of prussic acid” than Radclyffe Hall’s novel. “Poison kills the body but moral poison kills the soul,” Douglas wrote as he called upon the government to take action to suppress the book.  At the urging of England’s Home Secretary, the novel’s publisher, Jonathan Cape, withdrew it from sale.  However, Cape also arranged to have the printing molds sent to the Pegasus Press in Paris, with the plan of importing copies.  When those copies of the novel were brought back into the UK from France, both Cape and the London bookseller involved, Leonard Hill, were charged under the Obscene Publications Act of 1857.  Following a trial, Chief Magistrate Chartres Biron ordered copies of the novel be destroyed, and The Well of Loneliness was not republished in the United Kingdom until 1949.

Across the ocean, the novel fared better. John Sumner of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice lodged a complaint against the American publisher of The Well of Loneliness, Covici-Friede.  But ultimately, attorney Morris L. Ernst succeeded in defending Friede against the charge of possessing and selling an obscene book.  A victory edition of the novel was released in the U. S., and the controversy that had surrounded it fueled its sales.

The corrected typescript at Spencer Research Library gives insight into Radclyffe Hall’s process in writing and revising the novel, and it includes emendations in at least two hands. Though some of the deletions remain difficult to read, others can be seen through the black ink and blue crayon used in the editing process (click on the images below to enlarge them).  For example, in a scene in which Stephen and her mother argue over the disclosure of young Stephen’s love for the married Angela Crossby, we see that Hall has edited down some of Stephen’s more vocal justifications of her love.

Deletions on p. 348 of a typescript for Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness. England, approximately 1928. Call #: MS D45. Click image to enlarge.

The blacked out lines in the passage above read “I loved with my body and mind and spirit” and “My love was not vile, it was the finest thing in me.”   The succeeding lines, which Hall leaves untouched, suggest how the author’s depiction of Stephen’s “inversion” is inflected with elements of what we now call transgender identity.  Stephen explains to her mother, “If I loved her the way a man loves a woman, it’s because I can’t feel that I am a woman. All my life I’ve never felt a woman and you know it —.“

On the following page, Hall also deletes a line in which Stephen invokes God in explaining her love.  “I’m not ashamed of it, there’s no shame in me,” Stephen declares, and then the deleted text continues, “I glory in my love for Angela Crossby.  It was good, it is good, for all true loving must be good if you believe in God’s existence —.“

Additional deletions on p. 349 of the typescript for Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness. England, approximately 1928. Call #: MS D45. Click image to enlarge.

The idea that same-sex love is a part of God’s creation recurs throughout the novel, as does Stephen’s anguish at being persecuted by society for it nevertheless.  Following the tragic deaths of Stephen’s two friends, Barbara and Jamie, Hall writes of Stephen, “She would clench her hands in a kind of fury. How long was this persecution to last? How long would God sit still and endure this insult offered to His creation? How long tolerate the preposterous statement that inversion was not a part of nature? For since it existed what else could it be?  All things that existed were a part of nature!”

How long was this persecution to last? Details from p. 704-705 of a typescript for Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness. England, approximately 1928. Call #: MS D45. Click images to enlarge.

2018 marks ninety years since The Well of Loneliness was first published.  In spite of its suppression for two decades in the UK and the attempt to suppress it in the US, readers and scholars continue to analyze and respond to Radclyffe Hall’s novel. We invite you to delve further into its history by exploring the “special” typescript copy, with emendations, held at the Spencer Research Library. Researchers can then compare this copy to other drafts available in the collection of papers for Hall and her partner Una Troubridge at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas.

Interested in more material related to banned books?  Take a peek at last year’s banned books week post on Spencer Library’s copy of a 1512 edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy that was expurgated at the behest of the Inquisition in Spain.  Curious about more contemporary instances of censorship and challenges to books? Read through the lists of the top 10 most frequently challenged books for each year since 2001.

Elspeth Healey
Special Collections Librarian