Caroliniana Society Annual Gifts Report - April 2011 University Libraries--University of South Carolina
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University of South Carolina Scholar Commons University South Caroliniana Society - Annual South Caroliniana Library Report of Gifts 4-2011 Caroliniana Society Annual Gifts Report - April 2011 University Libraries--University of South Carolina Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/scs_anpgm Part of the Library and Information Science Commons Recommended Citation University of South Carolina, "University of South Carolina Libraries - Caroliniana Society Annual Gifts Report, April 2011". http://scholarcommons.sc.edu/scs_anpgm/1/ This Newsletter is brought to you by the South Caroliniana Library at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in University South Caroliniana Society - Annual Report of Gifts yb an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 2011 Program of the Seventy-Fifth Annual Meeting of the UNIVERSITY SOUTH CAROLINIANA SOCIETY Saturday, 16 April 2011 Keynote Address by Harold Holzer Chairman, The Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation Senior Vice President for External Affairs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art PRESIDENTS THE UNIVERSITY SOUTH CAROLINIANA SOCIETY 1937–1943 .............................................................................M.L. Bonham 1944–1953 ................................................................... J. Heyward Gibbes 1954 ................................................................................ Samuel L. Prince 1954–1960 ........................................................ Caroline McKissick Belser 1960–1963 ................................................................. James H. Hammond 1963–1966 ................................................................. Robert H. Wienefeld 1966–1969 ....................................................................... Edwin H. Cooper 1969–1972 ..................................................................... Claude H. Neuffer 1972–1974 ..................................................................... Henry Savage, Jr. 1974–1978 ........................................................... William D. Workman, Jr. 1978–1981 .........................................................................Daniel W. Hollis 1981–1984 .......................................................................... Mary H. Taylor 1984–1987 .........................................................................Walter B. Edgar 1987–1990 ......................................................................... Flynn T. Harrell 1990–1993 ................................................................. Walton J. McLeod III 1993–1996 ............................................................................Jane C. Davis 1996–1999 .......................................................................... Harvey S. Teal 1999–2000 ................................................................ Harry M. Lightsey, Jr. 2001 .............................................................................. Ronald E. Bridwell 2002–2005 ........................................................................ John B. McLeod 2005–2008 ............................................................................. Steve Griffith 2008– ......................................................................... Robert K. Ackerman 74th ANNUAL MEETING ADDRESS BY DR. JOHN M. MCCARDELL, JR. 24 April 2010 I begin this talk today with a disclaimer—or perhaps several. The first is that this is very much a work in progress. And, related, this is the first time I have spoken on this topic. That is why I welcome the invitation to be with you today, while begging your indulgence for my early findings and, in spots, circumstantial evidence. This is actually a talk that weaves together several stories. The first is my own. Back in the mid-1990s, I found myself in the South Caroliniana Library, at long last having been granted access to a collection that for a very long time had been off limits. I have told the curious story of W.P. Trent‘s 1892 biography of William Gilmore Simms elsewhere. It is enough to say that its findings were so controversial and, to some members of the Simms family, offensive, that all the Simms papers in the large and rich Charles Carroll Simms Collection were given to the South Caroliniana Library with the stipulation that they be made available only to an ―official‖ biographer and such others as may demonstrate a need, and a scholarly purpose, for access. Not until 1992, with the publication of John C. Guilds‘s Simms: A Literary Life, was the prohibition lifted. I had what I thought was a very simple and straightforward project, which could easily be completed during the four months of leave I had at my disposal. My plan was to bring out a new edition of a ―novelette‖ (as Simms called it), with annotations and a scholarly introduction, bringing to modern readers a work generally deemed by critics to be one of the author‘s best. Having studied Simms intermittently over the preceding twenty years, over and over again I had had to wrestle, as all Simms scholars must, with the issue of his literary reputation, his ―standing‖ if you will. For too many people (but not enough, given the subject), for far too long, this has been a 2 kind of academic parlor game. As good as Cooper? Better than Irving? Not as good as Bryant? Distinctly inferior to Hawthorne and Melville? The Old South‘s leading man of letters? Wrote too much too quickly? Limited by the constraints of Southern society and institutions? Welcomed and respected in Charleston? Perhaps the most...imaginative?...of these exercises occurs in the final chapter of the most recent, official, biography of Simms, in which Simms‘s ghost appears before the author and asks, ―Why have I been forgotten?‖ This particular treatment, and this particular approach, may explain why. I sought no interview with ghosts. But I did seek to place before the public one of Simms‘s works for which critics, then and now, have had a uniformly high regard. The work in question is ―Castle Dismal,‖ first published in installments in Magnolia in 1842 and then published as a small book—a six-chapter ―novelette‖—in 1844. Edgar Allan Poe deemed it among the best ghost stories he had ever read. A contemporary critic, Evert A. Duyckinck, a close friend of Simms, thought it one of his best works. Trent praised ―the descriptions of the old homestead from which it took its name.‖ The Guilds biography pronounces the story ―excellent‖ and continues, ―in establishing atmosphere, tone, and mood, it is superb....‖ The work was also one of Simms‘s favorites. As we shall see, he sought at various times to reissue it. And yet, for some reason, it has never been republished. How curious. Repeatedly cited as an excellent example of Simms‘s skills as a story-teller, almost always offered by name to support Simms‘s claims to a higher literary status than he has generally occupied—yet never republished, even though many of his stories, most of them inferior to ―Castle Dismal,‖ have been reissued, sometimes multiple times. So, I thought, I shall fill this longstanding vacancy and bring to readers, for the first time since 1844, a work consistently judged to be among the author‘s best. 3 Had the task proved to be so simple, said volume would long since have appeared, and the deficiency remedied. But alas, there is still no book. For this, scholarly procrastination is far less to blame than the holdings of the South Caroliniana Library. For as I began research on this seemingly simple project, I made an exciting—a startling— discovery, which not only explained to me why ―Castle Dismal‖ has never been republished but also revealed incredibly insightful and intimate glimpses into the author‘s inner and personal life. Among the materials in the Charles Carroll Simms Collection is a file labelled ―Drama.‖ That might be enough to scare off any researcher. Simms was at best a third-rate dramatist. Who cares how many versions of terrible plays he composed? But I felt duty-bound to explore even this apparent literary dry well. And thus the discovery. In that file is a manuscript fragment, evidently misplaced. The fragment is an unfinished draft of a short story by Simms, in his own hand, that was never published. The title of this story is ―Rawlins‘ Rookery.‖ Now ―Rawlins‘ Rookery‖ offers little to support the case of those devoted to the cause of enhancing Simms‘s literary reputation. Still, it is a remarkable document. It tells a story about the writing and publication of ―Castle Dismal.‖ This portion of the story may well have been intended by Simms to serve as what he elsewhere referred to a ―humorous‖ introduction to a new edition of ―Castle Dismal.‖ Internal evidence in the manuscript further suggests that this portion was composed sometime between 1842 and 1845. But ―Rawlins‘ Rookery‖ tells another story as well. Its latter portion includes a long interview with a close friend of the author of ―Castle Dismal.‖ The interview takes place between the writer of the story, ―Rawlins‘ Rookery,‖ (Simms), and a confidante of the author of ―Castle Dismal,‖ (also Simms), who in ―Rawlins‖ goes by the pseudonym of ―G. B. Singleton.‖ Thus, in an extraordinarily revealing dialogue, Simms creates 4 a situation in which he is asking his interviewee about—himself! —and about himself in absentia, for ―Singleton‖ has mysteriously and suddenly disappeared and left no trace. (Singleton, by the way, was a pseudonym frequently used by Simms. It was as well his mother‘s maiden