Each item I look at brings up memories from the past 15 years, the Alcohol Library, and conferences where we presented the treasures of the Alcohol Archive Collection. I’ll try to decide on one favorite item each month, allowing the image or document to guide my pen (or, better to say, keyboard), to tell its story.
It’s prudent to start with an item related to E. M. Jellinek, who laid down the foundation of the collection by starting to collect, organize, index, and share alcohol literature with the help of a Carnegie grant in 1939. These pages tell that story, from the journal to CAAAL and the McCarthy Collection.
The item I chose is a scan of a page from one of the books (its title is not important) that our library received from the National Council on Alcoholism (NCA) donated to their library by E. M. Jellinek himself.
The page features Jellinek’s infamous bookplate, designed by Vera Efron, the talented bibliographer at Yale CAS, an artist who sketched portraits of Jellinek and Mark Keller. The illustrious monkey, contemplating over poor Yorick’s skull, was stuck on the left side, turning its rear end to the rubberstamped NCA attribution as well as Jellinek’s signature.
It’s well-known that Jellinek’s preferred name, other than the Bunky nickname, used only initials: E. M., which translates to a very international Elvin Morton, not telling too much about its owner or where he came from. Elvin might be a cross between the English “Alvin” and Hungarian “Ervin.” Morton, which would be “Márton” in Hungarian, reads non-denominational.
The calligraphy shows harmony, with its tricky loop and longish tail at the beginning and end, respectively. The capital m is actually a cursive lowercase one, and looks rather Hungarian to this Hungarian. Compared to some of his signatures earlier or later in time, the style doesn’t seem to be changing over time.
The memory it triggered is related to a similar signature: a reprint of an article, Lay Supplement No. 1, written by E. M. Jellinek dedicated to Bunky: ”To Bunky, in deep admiration: E. M. Jellinek.” Hope it will turn up soon!
Back in the day, it also led us to seriously consider that A. N. Hartmann, the author of Banana growth and fruiting: A popular summary is Jellinek indeed, mentioned as Nikita Hartman by his daughter. Ruth Surry wrote a brief bio sketch, commissioned by the Smithers Foundation, based on her own recollections and her mother’s stories. Thelma Pierce (Jellinek’s wife #2, if we do count Hedwig, the wife in Hungary) and Ruth both recall a “Banana book” Bunky wrote before becoming an alcohol researcher, a book with green cover, as they claimed.
What a story indeed! It’s only part of the mysteries and speculations about Jellinek going on in the Alcohol Library, which resulted in our Wikipedia-worthy series (scroll down to almost the end).
Thelma Pierce’s letters to Mark Keller shed some light on the mysteries of Jellinek’s life. I can only hope that there are still a few more hidden treasures in the Alcohol Archives.