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Annotations in the Beinecke Library copy of The Book of Jade

Gavin Callaghan

Front inner cover:

Top left: Barnitz newspaper obituary clipping from Lutheran newspaper, dated "October 1901" in cursive
[Since the obituary from the Harvard Archives (found also at the end of the Beinecke BOJ) says that it is a composite from "Des Moines, Iowa, Dailies, and Lutheran Church papers", and since the clipping describes Samuel B. Barnitz as "our beloved Western Secretary of Home Missions", it follows that this clipping is from one of the Lutheran papers consulted in creating the other composite]

Upper right: Three letters, "Kso", in cursive, underlined; a library mark?

Center: A book plate (symbol of Yale University?), showing a shield with Hebrew letters in the center; below it the inscription LUX ET VERITAS ("Light and Truth"); Beneath this, text:

               "YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
                                        Gift of
               RICHARD S. WORMSER [typed]
                    In Memory of [typed]
               M. RAY SANBORN [typed]"

Below this, written:

"A L S removed Nov '17" [printed]

"Death must have waited till he wrote his little book. Poor fellow!" [cursive]

Front endpaper:

Bottom of page, cursive:

"* My suggestion. H. V. S." [This seems to mean that any lines of text in the book with an asterix next to them were supplied by H.V.S., writing in collaboration with Barnitz.]

Frontspiece:

photograph of David Park Barnitz

Copyright page:

"47 - Richard S. Wormser. In Memory of M. Ray Sanborn" [Cursive, running vertically along spine.]

Page 28:

"I gaze through sad*-shap'd eyelids languorous" [text with asterix added
on line 7 of poem "Harvard: On His Twenty-First Year"]

Bottom of page:

"* An Arabic letter ه"

Between pages 52 and 53:

A three-page letter from Barnitz to his publisher, in cursive:

"Sir―
     I have the impression of having seen somewhere a
metrical translation of Les Trophees of Heredia, with the
name of your firm on the title page. Kindly let me know if
this is so, and if so whether the book is yet to be had.
I have received the twelve copies of my book and I have to say
that I am very much pleased with the care you have given to [end page one]

its printing, and with the result. The result is entirely
admirable, the square form, the title-page, and the cover
are particularly novel and happy.
     I shall be glad to hear from you whenever desirable of
the impression made by the book; but I do not care to
subscribe to a clipping agency, as I shall see all the
magazines, and I do not want to see the newspapers.
It is not necessary to remind you that I [end page three]

wish my anonymity strictly preserved for the present.
Very truly yours,
Park Barnitz

To Doxey's
New York" [end page two]

Page 56:

Bottom of page:

"Lines 2, 3, 5, 9 by H.V. S. with
Barnitz's approval"

[Evidently H. V. S. wrote the lines of the poem "Remember" in tandem with Barnitz. H. V. S.'s lines are therefore:

"Remember, ye whom the skies delight (Barnitz)
     Whose faces flame with the falling sun, (H.V.S.)
That after sunset cometh the night (H.V.S.)
That sorrow followeth all delight (Barnitz)
     When love, and lover, and lov'd are one. (H.V.S.)

O ye whose days are as sand that run, (Barnitz)
     One house there is unknown of delight, (Barnitz)
One garden is there belov'd of none, (Barnitz)
One place there is unseen of the sun, (H.V.S.)
     Remember, ye whom the skies delight. (Barnitz)"]

Page 65:

Large "√" check-mark beside the poem title "Nocturne"

Page 123:

"*" [asterix on Line 15 of poem "Song of India"]

"*"[asterix on Line 19 of poem "Song of India"]

Bottom of page:

"*
     Barnitz insisted upon the
     comma being left out
                    H.V.S."

Rear endpapers:

"At my suggestion but only after some argument, the following verses, entitled 'Danse Macabre', were omitted from the collection. The book was originally called The Book of Gold; then The Divan of Park Barnitz; finally The Book of Jade. Mr. Barnitz died suddenly a few weeks after the appearance of his book.
                    H.V.S."

Galley proofs, pasted into the endpapers:

I saw a line of corpses old,
Dead with diseases manifold,
Solemnly dancing'neath the moon.

Their perish'd limbs moved to the tune
Of some worm-orchestra unheard--
A sight enormously absurd.

First in the valse, with fishy eye
Tripped something dead of leprosy,
All silvery like a virgin's breast.

A buried glutton danced with zest,
All greenish and all dropsical,
Like a deform'd and vital ball.

The third was very beautiful,
Of charming small-pox sorelets full;
A small-pox ending, corpse, was thine.

There danced one in that naked line
Whose corpse was rotten with much love;
I wish the white worms joy thereof.

A suicidal corpse came next,
Who wish'd to illstrate the text:
--better to be chewed than to chew;

So he became a worm-ragout
And cholera-corpses weirdly black
Carrying their dead flesh like a sack,

Vals'd gracefull beneath the sun.
Blue fever, and Consumption,
And hollow-pated lunacy.

Bowed, in that dance with courtesy
Cover'd with sores from foot to head,
Like flowers in a flower-bed,

Strange plagues all beautifully green
Went pirouetting through the scene;
And shrunken corpses dead of Age.-

These things went dancing o'er the stage.
Smelling of graves and worm-tooth scars,--
Death's musty-meated Avatars."

Bottom of galleys:

"Danse Macabre" [cursive, in ink, beneath the above text]

Somewhere in back of book:

David Park Barnitz funeral card and Obituary