Writing Resistance and the Question of

Gender: Charlotte Delbo, Noor Inayat

Khan, and Germaine Tillion Lara R.
Curtis
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://textbookfull.com/product/writing-resistance-and-the-question-of-gender-charlott
e-delbo-noor-inayat-khan-and-germaine-tillion-lara-r-curtis/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Biota Grow 2C gather 2C cook Loucas

https://textbookfull.com/product/biota-grow-2c-gather-2c-cook-
loucas/

Farm Worker Futurism Speculative Technologies of

Resistance Curtis Marez

https://textbookfull.com/product/farm-worker-futurism-
speculative-technologies-of-resistance-curtis-marez/

Friction Stir Welding : Dissimilar Aluminium Alloys

First Edition Noor Zaman Khan

https://textbookfull.com/product/friction-stir-welding-
dissimilar-aluminium-alloys-first-edition-noor-zaman-khan/

Coulson and Richardson’s Chemical Engineering, Fourth

Edition: Volume 3A: Chemical and Biochemical Reactors
and Reaction Engineering R. Ravi

https://textbookfull.com/product/coulson-and-richardsons-
chemical-engineering-fourth-edition-volume-3a-chemical-and-
biochemical-reactors-and-reaction-engineering-r-ravi/
Financing for Gender Equality: Realising Women’s Rights
through Gender Responsive Budgeting 1st Edition Zohra
Khan

https://textbookfull.com/product/financing-for-gender-equality-
realising-womens-rights-through-gender-responsive-budgeting-1st-
edition-zohra-khan/

Bodies in Resistance: Gender and Sexual Politics in the

Age of Neoliberalism 1st Edition Wendy Harcourt (Eds.)

https://textbookfull.com/product/bodies-in-resistance-gender-and-
sexual-politics-in-the-age-of-neoliberalism-1st-edition-wendy-
harcourt-eds/

Writing Feminist Lives: The Biographical Battles over

Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem, and
Simone de Beauvoir 1st Edition Malin Lidström Brock

https://textbookfull.com/product/writing-feminist-lives-the-
biographical-battles-over-betty-friedan-germaine-greer-gloria-
steinem-and-simone-de-beauvoir-1st-edition-malin-lidstrom-brock/

The Change Women Ageing and the Menopause Revised and

Updated Edition Germaine Greer

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-change-women-ageing-and-the-
menopause-revised-and-updated-edition-germaine-greer/

Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of Charlotte M

Yonge Charlotte M Yonge

https://textbookfull.com/product/index-of-the-project-gutenberg-
works-of-charlotte-m-yonge-charlotte-m-yonge/
Writing Resistance
and the Question
of Gender
Charlotte Delbo, Noor Inayat
Khan, and Germaine Tillion

Lara R. Curtis
Writing Resistance and the Question of Gender
 Lara R. Curtis

Writing Resistance
and the Question
of Gender
Charlotte Delbo, Noor Inayat Khan,
and Germaine Tillion
Lara R. Curtis
Five Colleges Incorporated
Amherst, MA, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-31241-1 ISBN 978-3-030-31242-8 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31242-8

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2019
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction
on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and
information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication.
Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied,
with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have
been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published
maps and institutional affiliations.

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To the memory of Arnold Friedmann
(1925–2017)
Survivor and co-teacher
Generous, Caring, Exemplary
 Acknowledgements

This study began during my doctoral and postdoctoral work in

Comparative Literature and French and Francophone Studies at the
University of Massachusetts Amherst, and originates from my Ph.D. dis-
sertation, Writing Resistance and the Question of Gender: Charlotte Delbo,
Noor Inayat Khan, and Germaine Tillion, which I have substantially
revised and updated for this book. I thank the members of my com-
mittee for reading successive drafts of my dissertation in its early stages
and for offering me many useful comments and feedback: Professors
Catherine Portuges (chair), Anne Ciecko, William Moebius, and James
Young. I have had an extraordinary opportunity to study and analyze the
kinds of fascinating relationships between history and world literatures
that have occupied me in this research into the careers and writings of
three remarkable women.
In this book I analyze in depth the prewar and wartime lives of
Charlotte Delbo, Noor Inayat Khan, and Germaine Tillion, with par-
ticular attention to ways in which their personal experiences conditioned
their unwavering political commitments. I show how, in terms of both
style and substance, the works each of them produced grew from their
respective engagements in what I identify as “writing resistance.” Each
writer bequeathed to posterity a unique, memorable, and historically sig-
nificant profile in courage in her role as a résistante, while also reflecting
her experiences and her values in original, significant writings.
My initial work in Holocaust Studies began at the University of
Massachusetts Amherst approximately thirteen years ago when I had the

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

privilege of overseeing a curriculum project on Holocaust education for

university and high school students. This project subsequently led to my
role as co-founder of the University of Massachusetts Amherst Institute
for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies. During my decade-long
service as administrative director of the Institute, I supervised its day-
to-day operations and initiated numerous programs and projects, often
in collaboration with university faculty and visiting scholars. I wish to
express my appreciation to the Institute’s interdisciplinary Academic
Advisory committee members who contributed to the long-term success
of the Institute during those years, among them Jay Berkovitz, Barton
Byg, Justin Cammy, Elizabeth Chilton, Carolyn Collette, Christopher
Couch, Andrew Donson, Harley Erdman, Olga Gershenson, David
Glassberg, Jim Hicks, Moira Inghilleri, Robert Maloy, Donald Maddox,
Marla Miller, Jon Berndt Olson, Max Page, Catherine Portuges, Karen
Remmler, Rachel Rubinstein, Susan Shapiro, Jonathan Skolnik, and
Ervin Staub.
Long before the Institute officially opened and subsequently during
its early years, I had the privilege of working with Founding Director
James Young on myriad fronts, the goal always being to engage a com-
munity in support of our interdisciplinary work. As his former student
and colleague, I owe a special debt of gratitude to him for his invaluable
input and advice on many aspects of my career. I am convinced that it is
the founders themselves who can best appreciate the fruits of their labor
and what it means to be devoted fully to the founding and success of a
major university institute for research and teaching.
As for my teaching at the Institute, one of my fondest of memories
is watching yellow school buses filled to capacity with students arriving
on-site eager to learn about World War II and the Holocaust. I offered
students and teachers workshops on Holocaust-themed literature and
film and discussed with them the information and the many poignant
photos displayed in the Institute’s permanent exhibition, “A Reason to
Remember: Roth, Germany 1933–1942.” On many of those occasions
I had the good fortune to work with my then colleague, the late Arnold
Friedmann, a former UMass Dean and distinguished professor of Design
who frequently shared with students his recollections of Nuremberg,
Germany during the 1930s, when the ominous rise of the Nazi regime
finally compelled him and his family to flee from their home. Arnold was
a gifted communicator who easily established a warm rapport with stu-
dents from diverse backgrounds and all levels of education. As one of the
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix

dwindling number of Holocaust survivors, he shared in detail his vivid

memories of the Holocaust with students and teachers eager to learn
about his personal experiences during that dark era.
I am thankful for the contributions of many friends and colleagues in
support of my academic trajectory leading me toward publication of this
book. From French and Francophone Studies it was Professor Dianne
Sears whose superb teaching of French language and literature inspired
me to further my own studies in these areas. Teaching French Film
with Professors Philippe Baillargeon, Donald Maddox, and Catherine
Portuges nurtured the development of my scholarly work and peda-
gogical approaches to Film Studies. I am deeply grateful to Donald
Maddox, whose brilliant ideas and specialized courses on the literature
and film of France during World War II illustrated fascinating ways in
which one can understand film, literature, and history. I am eternally
grateful to Professor Catherine Portuges, who has been an academic
mentor and friend every step of the way, a constant source of strength,
inspiration, and encouragement. I am delighted to be able to continue
discussing future scholarly projects with her. My sincere gratitude also
goes to Sandra Lillydahl for our many conversations about the life and
achievements of Noor Inayat Khan, and for her kind permission to con-
sult a prepublication copy of works by Noor that she edited. I also wish
to thank David Harper, Noor’s nephew, for kindly exchanging much
valuable correspondence with me regarding Noor and her family, and
for generously sharing copies of many of her unpublished writings with
me. My thanks also go to Henriette (Yetti) Blanc Van Gool, who gener-
ously shared with me her memories of the prewar period in France when
as a child she studied Sufism and literary works with Noor. I am most
grateful to Margaret Collins Weitz for thoughtfully sending me copies
of unpublished wartime testimonies of Germaine Tillion that are on my
agenda for a future project. I also wish to thank the Executive Editor
of The Massachusetts Review Jim Hicks for sharing with me Charlotte
Delbo’s text “February,” translated in English by Cynthia Haft and first
published in 2019. That the previously unpublished writings of Delbo
continue to appear indicates that the study of women and the Holocaust
is critical and timely, and that it requires the continuing attention of
scholars and students.
After I had initiated my research on Noor, I was pleased when
Shrabani Basu, who authored an important biography of Noor,
kindly invited me to London in 2012 to attend the unveiling of a
x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

commemorative bust of Noor in Gordon Square. On that occasion I also

had the pleasure of meeting Anne, the Princess Royal of England, who
presided the ceremony.
I am very appreciative of the Five college Associates Program for sup-
porting my travel expenses to academic conferences so that I could pres-
ent papers on my research as this book began to develop. I am fortunate
to have been able to consult UMass Copyright and Information Policy
Librarian Laura Quilter, whose input on the publishing process was
very useful, and Heather Dubnick, whose skills and expertise were very
helpful during the manuscript preparation process. I also wish to thank
Palgrave Macmillan Senior Editor Phil Getz and Assistant Editor Amy
Invernizzi for working so diligently with me to bring this book to pub-
lication and for responding promptly to all of my queries along the way.
Finally, I am indebted to my family for being so selflessly patient with
me while I was devoting a great deal of time to this study. My relatives
Sarah Curtis Richmond and Holly Moren Cilley read through the man-
uscript and, as strong proponents of illuminating stories about extraor-
dinary women, offered penetrating insights into how the lives and works
of Charlotte Delbo, Noor Inayat Khan, and Germaine Tillion can in
many ways pertain to women’s experiences today. Last but not least, I
express my deepest and most heartfelt gratitude to my husband Dean
and daughters Julia and Lianne, whose love and support are my guiding
light, past, present, and future.
 Contents

1 Introduction: Writing Resistance and the Question

of Gender—Charlotte Delbo, Noor Inayat Khan,
and Germaine Tillion 1
References 19

2 Charlotte Delbo: Writing the Afterlife 23

Writings Informed by Past Experience 23
Inscribing the Afterlife 31
Configurations of Death, Feminine Links 33
Maternal Figures, Transforming Women 36
A Spectral Presence and Afterlives of the Deceased 40
Idealizing the Post-internment Future 44
Effigies of Men in Literature 45
Echoes of Fears and Anxieties 47
Encountering Death in Spectres, mes compagnons 52
Conclusion 54
References 55

3 Noor Inayat Khan: Conceptualizing Resistance

During World War II 59
A Literary Figure Emerges from the Prewar and Wartime Years 59
Creating Images of Resistance in Literature 63
Adapting and Blending Traditions of Sufism During Wartime
Europe 65

xi
xii CONTENTS

Decoding Jātaka Tales in the Context of the Resistance 67

New Resistance Narratives, Legends of War and Renewal 70
Nostalgia and Gendered Performativity 72
Princesses of the East: Empowerment, Exile, and Isolation 76
Powerful Feminine Voices and the End of an Era 79
The Sound of Sufism: Aède of the Ocean and Land:
A Play in Seven Acts 81
Personal Accounts: Letters from Noor to Azeem 86
Conclusion 91
References 92

4 Germaine Tillion: Observations of Algeria and

Ravensbrück 95
Rising to Prominence in the Twenty-First Century 95
Representations of Algeria and Ravensbrück 97
Creative Adaptation of Ethnological Methodologies 101
A Little Night Music: The Ethnographer as Impresario 103
A Tripartite Dynamic of Decline 106
Verfügbaren Are Born at Ravensbrück 112
Uses of Humor at Ravensbrück 117
Hierarchical Structures and a “New Zoological Species” 123
Death at Ravensbrück and in Algeria 124
A Post-internment Publication and Revisiting Algeria 127
Conclusion 128
References 129

5 Conclusion: Women’s Reflections on Wartime Experiences 133

Three Factors That Made a Field Late in Flourishing 136
Seminal Scholarship 140
Prospects for the Future 144
Charlotte, Noor, and Germaine: Three Women of Engagement 147
References 151

Index 153
 List of Figures

Fig. 5.1 Charlotte Delbo. Charlotte, the political activist and now
first-hand witness, huddled among more than hundreds of
shivering women, mostly communists, many from the working
class, in a convoy bound for Auschwitz, or elsewhere, gazing at
a stark heap of abject and emaciated corpses (Photo Courtesy of
Claudine Riera Collet, Universal Legatee of Charlotte Delbo,
and l’Institut de la Résistance de Bergame [Italy]) 148
Fig. 5.2 Noor Inayat Khan. Noor, the moralist, rewriting Asian and
European folkloric and mythic tales to reflect allegorically
unsettling political landscapes and her clandestine career in
espionage (Photo Courtesy of the Soefi Museum) 149
Fig. 5.3 Germaine Tillion. Germaine, the intellectual, scrutinizing
Ravensbrück analytically, and often sardonically, through
the lens of the ethnologist (Photo Courtesy of Association
Germaine Tillion) 150

xiii
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Writing Resistance

and the Question of Gender—Charlotte
Delbo, Noor Inayat Khan, and Germaine
Tillion

Charlotte Delbo, Noor Inayat Khan, and Germaine Tillion were born
within a few years of one another, on or near the threshold of World War
I.1 Although their family backgrounds, social milieux, and cultural experi-
ences were strikingly diverse, all three of them grew up during a succession
of major upheavals that weighed heavily upon the lives of all Europeans.
While the widespread carnage of the Great War no doubt loomed in the
background of their earliest experiences, their formative years coincided
with the painful reconstruction that unfolded so precariously throughout
Europe during the war’s prolonged and troubled aftermath. They all wit-
nessed the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich, the Spanish Civil War, the inef-
fectual pacifism of a short-lived socialist regime in France, and the alarming
harbingers of yet another world conflagration. Each came to maturity hav-
ing been within the intellectual and cultural milieus of Paris or its suburbs
prior to World War II. At the outset of the war, moreover, each woman
committed herself to active participation in one or more of the major initia-
tives of widespread resistance that proliferated on many fronts as the scope
of the conflict was expanding apace.

1 Charlotte Delbo (1913–1985), Noor Inayat Khan (1914–1944), and Germaine Tillion
(1907–2008).

© The Author(s) 2019 1

L. R. Curtis, Writing Resistance and the Question of Gender,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31242-8_1
2 L. R. CURTIS

In this study I examine in depth the unique thematic dimensions and

stylistic tendencies of each writer, comparing the textuality, temporality,
and subjectivity of her major works, giving due attention not only to such
“writerly” criteria as characters, situations, idioms, and imagery, but also to
the role of gendered subjectivity and other features that distinguish her as a
woman writing. Furthermore, one of my principal objectives is to consider
how each writer’s prewar and wartime experiences helped her shape the
nature and substance of her works in keeping with a profound, long-term
commitment to what I have chosen to call “writing resistance.” That goal
entailed the production of writings “against the grain,” so as to construct
and maintain profoundly oppositional positions with regard to the “offi-
cial” discourses of propaganda, defeatism, capitulation, and collaboration.
Although their respective efforts to accomplish that objective are remark-
ably diverse, in general all three frequently reflect two major tendencies.
On the one hand they offer vivid and often shocking accounts of misfor-
tunes and tragedies of wartime based on their own eyewitness experiences.
On the other hand, they create prismatic, frequently bizarre, or distorted
reflections of myriad catastrophes by couching them in poetic registers that
serve to defamiliarize their ultimately numbing redundance. In doing so,
they paradoxically heighten their moral import and impact on the reader.
Since the end of World War II, many autobiographical testimonies and
historical studies have documented the significant contributions of hun-
dreds of courageous women who responded to the political crises of those
dark years. While many of those accounts focus primarily or even exclu-
sively on their public images and their notable, even heroic deeds, in this
book I also devote considerable attention to these three writers’ subjec-
tive, and often quite intimate experiences as well as their reflections on
the interface between their respective social roles as résistantes and their
private lives. This broadened perspective affords important insights into
the importance of their close personal contacts with intellectuals, political
and moral leaders, and companions whose commitments to specific values
and ideals inspired or influenced them to assume crucial roles in defending
humanity against the atrocities of war. With these criteria in mind, I devote
a separate chapter to each author.
Charlotte Delbo was a pioneer among French women who wrote about
internment during the Holocaust. As a wartime political prisoner, she spent
nearly three years in French prisons and at Auschwitz and Ravensbrück
concentration camps. Her writings are unquestionably influenced by these
experiences. She transformed them according to her own distinctive style
 1 INTRODUCTION: WRITING RESISTANCE AND THE QUESTION … 3

of poetry and prose which thereby offers fresh perspectives for the literary
historian with regard to feminine writing and trauma in France following
the Second World War.
Delbo was of Italian origin on both the maternal and paternal sides of her
family. She was born to Charles Delbo, who was from the French depart-
ment of Sarthe, and to her mother Ermini (née Morero) who immigrated to
France at eighteen years of age from Torre Pellice, in the Piemonte region
of northern Italy. Her parents married in 1911 and moved to Vigneux-
sur-Seine with their four children: Charlotte (b.1913), Odette (b.1918),
André (b.1922), and Daniel (b.1926).
Delbo’s works began to receive attention in the academic circles of
higher education most notably in the United States in the 1970s. During
that time Rosette Lamont, a specialist in French theater and professor of
French Studies and Comparative Literature at Queens College of the Uni-
versity of New York, met Delbo while she was in France and established a
rapport with her. Lamont was the first scholar to translate Delbo’s writings
into English and was also likely the first professor to add Delbo’s name to
a syllabus that contained a list of French women writers of the twentieth
century. Also during the 1970s, renowned scholar of Holocaust studies
and English Lawrence L. Langer, of Simmons College, was instrumental
in recognizing the importance of Delbo’s contributions to the canon of
Holocaust literature and how they related to the extermination of the Jews
of Europe. He claimed that Delbo’s literary representations of Auschwitz
are the most important that he had encountered. In his 1978 publication
entitled The Age of Atrocity: Death in Modern Literature he discusses the
writings of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Albert Camus, Thomas Mann, and
Delbo, even though he acknowledges that at that time few scholars were
as yet aware of who she was.2 Like Lamont, Langer incorporated Delbo’s
works into his courses in an effort to give them a prominent place in the
emerging field of Holocaust studies. In 1980 Lamont arranged for Delbo
to participate in academic conferences in the United States and funding
for this was supported by the Ministère des Affaires étrangères [Ministry of
Foreign Affairs]. Langer was also involved with this initiative and invited

2 See Lawrence L. Langer, interview by Joanne Weiner Rudof, June 22, 2016, Fortunoff
Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library, Holocaust testimony HVT-
4489. See also Langer, The Age of Atrocity: Death in Modern Literature (Boston: Beacon Press,
1978).
4 L. R. CURTIS

Delbo to participate in his seminar on Holocaust Studies.3 Thus, not until

decades following the end of World War II and during the final years of
Delbo’s life did her works begin to receive significant attention, and far
beyond her native France.
Delbo’s political and intellectual pursuits first came to prominence in
1934, in the articles and journals she published in the Cahiers de la Jeunesse,
a communist journal of the arts. It was during the 1930s that she joined
the Parti communiste français (PCF) and studied Marxist theory between
1930 and 1934 during evening classes sponsored by an association of stu-
dents of the Left led by noted philosopher, sociologist, and her lifelong
friend, Henri Lefebvre.4 He unquestionably influenced Delbo’s intellec-
tual interests both before and after the war and was a key male figure in her
life, and to whom she referred as her “complice intellectuel” [intellectual
partner in crime].5 During the 1960s the two reunited and collaborated
on a more formal basis, while Lefebvre was working at the Centre National
de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) prior to his appointment as professor
of sociology at the Université de Paris X Nanterre from 1961 to 1965.
After having had a postwar position as stenographer and interpreter for the
United Nations in Geneva, Delbo left there in order to work with Lefebvre,
for whom she assisted and for whom she organized many seminars at the
CNRS.6
A second significant influence on her life and literature was Louis Jouvet,
a celebrated actor and, beginning in 1934, director of the Théâtre de l’A-
thenée in Paris. Their professional relationship began around 1941 when
she interviewed him for an article in the Les Cahiers de la Jeunesse. She
so impressed him that he immediately appointed her as his secretary; she

3 Ghislaine Dunant, Charlotte Delbo, La vie Retrouvée (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 2017),
391–394. In 1971 Lamont discussed Delbo’s works for the first time during a conference
at her university. Cynthia J. Haft, Lamont’s graduate student, whose Ph.D. thesis was on
Nazi concentration camps and French literature, was a close acquaintance of Delbo. Haft
translated into English Delbo’s “A Scene Played on the Stage of Memory,” The Massachusetts
Review 59, no. 1 (2018): 11–28, and more recently “February,” The Massachusetts Review
60, no. 1 (2019): 17–27.
4 Dunant, Charlotte Delbo, La vie Retrouvée, 22–23.
5 Ibid., 248. See also Violaine Gelly and Paul Gradvohl, Charlotte Delbo (Paris: Fayard,
2013). Henri Lefebvre received his doctoral degree in philosophy from the Sorbonne and
joined the Parti communiste français in 1920.
6 Ibid., 212.
 1 INTRODUCTION: WRITING RESISTANCE AND THE QUESTION … 5

served in that capacity during his troupe’s tour of South America.7 After
spending five months in Argentina, she returned to France in September
of 1941 to support Resistance-related activities. Jouvet was so opposed to
her leaving the troupe to join resistance efforts in France that he hid her
passport and told her that no boats were departing for France.8 Despite
their disagreement on that occasion, the two remained devoted friends and
corresponded until his death in 1951. Jouvet had a critical impact on Del-
bo’s literary inclinations and interest in theater. In fact, at Ravensbrück
she traded a ration of bread with another prisoner in return for a fascicule
of the seventeenth-century playwright Molière’s Misanthrope; she memo-
rized the play and wore it hidden under her prison uniform throughout her
internment.9 During this time she also organized “cours de théâtre” and
“après-midis artistiques” [theater courses and artistic afternoons] for her
fellow inmates in order to involve them in performances of plays on classical
themes and in poetry readings. Later on Delbo wrote that the après-midis
artistiques had been inspired by her work with Jouvet, and her passion for
the theater in fact brought her back to work with him in 1947.10
The third influential male figure was Georges Dudach, whom she had
met after having attended one of Lefebvre’s evening classes for students
like herself who were involved with Left-wing politics.11 They married in
1936 and together became actively involved with resistance activities as
well as with projects for the Cahiers. While Dudach conducted clandestine
activities on foot throughout Paris, Delbo transcribed messages transmitted
via Radio Londres and Radio Moscou. On March 22, 1942 the French
police arrested them for their involvement with Les Cahiers de la Jeunesse.12
Shortly thereafter Dudach was executed by a firing squad alongside a group

7 The Athénée troupe performed several plays on classical themes by Jean Giraudoux, includ-
ing Ondine, Electre, and La guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu.
8 Precisely why Delbo left South America is unclear. See Gelly and Gradvohl, Charlotte
Delbo, 67–69.
9 Dunant, Charlotte Delbo, La vie Retrouvée, 364–370.
10 Gelly and Gradvohl, Charlotte Delbo, 106.
11 Dunant, Charlotte Delbo, La vie Retrouvée, 22–23.
12 They were arrested at their apartment on rue de la Faisanderie in Paris. Among the resis-
tance literature confiscated was the first number of La pensée and issues of Lettres Françaises.
There was also a report on the execution of fifty hostages held in the Camp d’internement de
Châteaubriant, twenty-seven of whom were communist militants. The victims were executed
in retaliation for the October 1941 murder of German officer Hotz.
6 L. R. CURTIS

of male communists and Jews, and Delbo was imprisoned at the Fort de
Romainville, a Nazi internment and transit camp outside Paris, and then
in the Santé prison in Paris. At the end of 1942 she was deported in a
convoy of two hundred thirty women to Auschwitz-Birkenau prison camp
in occupied Poland for twelve months before being sent to Ravensbrück
Concentration Camp in northern Germany for sixteen months before she
was finally liberated.13
A perhaps lesser-known man in her life was Serge Samaraine, a descen-
dant of Russian aristocracy from a family who had immigrated from Russia
to France. Proficient in spoken and written French and Russian, his aca-
demic background was also in philosophy, and he became head of the
interpreters’ division at the United Nations in 1946. She began a relation-
ship with him in 1950 when she went to Russia herself “pour retrouver
l’idéal soviétique” [to rediscover Soviet ideals]. He taught her Russian and
wanted to marry and have a family with her; she did not consent, however,
claiming that her memories of the suffering of Jewish children in the con-
centration camps prevented her from having children of her own, and they
parted company soon thereafter.14 Samaraine perhaps turned his attention
back to Soviet ideology in ways that may have resonated with Delbo’s pre-
war conversations about Marxism with Henri Lefebvre, and the two may
have, in this respect, shared common interests.
Many aspects of Delbo’s prewar intellectual and political engagements
positioned her as a résistante and likely contributed to shaping her views
and her desire to “resist” oppression, especially at the outset of World War
II. Her works frequently depict carceral environments and women who
were traumatized within them. Delbo’s writings are personal historical tes-
timonies that frequently and skillfully commingle with her prose and poetic
discourses. At the same time, it is not uncommon for Delbo’s characters to
have ambiguous or “non-specific” identities and for her to portray them as
having characteristics of both fictional and nonfictional figures. My study
on Delbo explores ways in which she localizes her characters throughout
her narratives and illustrates modes and forms of writing from traumatic
memory. Unlike earlier studies, mine aims to bring together a variety of

13 “Convoi du 24 janvier 1943” is also referred to as “Convoi des 31000” because “31”
was inscribed on the prisoners’ arms. Of the two hundred and thirty women deported to
Auschwitz, only seventy survived.
14 Gelly and Gradvohl, Charlotte Delbo, 235.
 1 INTRODUCTION: WRITING RESISTANCE AND THE QUESTION … 7

her works in relation to her experiences and also examine significant paral-
lels among a variety of her texts, some of which thus far have not received
adequate attention from scholars and students.
In 1943 at the age of twenty-nine, Noor Inayat Khan was among the
first female wireless operators to be infiltrated into enemy-occupied France
as an agent in the French section of the newly established Special Oper-
ations Executive (SOE), a resistance organization established by Winston
Churchill and his administration for the purpose of sabotaging Nazi oppres-
sion.15 The SOE comprised members of the British and French Resistance,
and Noor served actively and fearlessly as a secret agent for the organiza-
tion until the Gestapo arrested her in September 1944. She was tortured
and shortly thereafter murdered at Dachau.16 France recognized her heroic
achievement posthumously, awarding her the Croix de Guerre with a gold
star, the highest award accorded to a civilian. In Great Britain she was one
of only three women who posthumously received the George Cross for
heroic deeds.17 Although Noor is well known for her courage and achieve-
ments as a secret agent, her fiction, essays, and correspondence have not
been analyzed in depth, nor have they been considered in relation to her
important role in the Resistance. Indeed, some of her fiction remained
unpublished until recently, and I am fortunate to be one of the first schol-
ars to write about a collection of her unpublished writings, including her
personal correspondence.18
Noor was the eldest of four siblings in an ethnically diverse family that
traveled extensively and sojourned in several countries. She was born in
Moscow in 1914 to Ora Ray Baker (Ameena Begum), an American woman
from Wenatchee, Washington, and Hazrat Inayat Khan, an esteemed mys-
tic, teacher, and musician from India who established the Sufi movement

15 For more on the SOE, see Beryl E. Escott, The Heroines of SOE: F Section: Britain’s Secret
Women in France (New York: The History Press, 2010).
16 Claire Ray Harper and David Ray Harper, We Rubies Four: The Memoires of Claire Ray
Harper (New Lebanon, NY: Omega Publications, 2011), 168–180.
17 Ibid., 180–182.
18 David Harper, Noor’s nephew, who holds her unpublished correspondence with her
Turkish Jewish fiancé, Azeem (Ely) Goldenberg, has granted me permission to examine
unpublished letters written by her as well as the Inayat Khan family photos. Noor and Golden-
berg were involved in a relationship between 1934 and 1940 and were engaged to be married.
Their correspondence reveals her emotional ties with him and also sheds light on her personal
sentiments with regard to many issues.
8 L. R. CURTIS

in the West.19 His philosophical doctrines continue to circulate among his

disciples.20 In 1914, following the birth of Noor, the Inayat Khan family
moved to London for a few years, then in the early 1920s to Suresnes, in
the western suburbs of Paris, where they lived in the home that Hazrat (and
others) referred to as “Fazal Manzil,” meaning “the House of blessing.”
That residence also served as a well-known educational center of Sufism,
where Hazrat led discussions with his mureeds (disciples). Like her father,
Noor regularly taught lessons in Sufism, the main focus of her attention
being the education of young children.
During the 1930s Noor was shaped by her education, which included
music, writing and rewriting fiction as well as rewriting works from various
literary traditions, and child psychology. She played the harp and the piano
and even composed several pieces. In 1931, she and her three siblings were
enrolled at the École Normale de Musique de Paris where she studied
with noted composer Nadia Boulanger. This focus on music was likely
attributable to the influence of Hazrat, who before his demise in 1927 had
associated his musical fervor with the spiritual essence of Sufism.21 Noor
evokes her own interest in music in an essay which also pays tribute to
famous opera divas active from the Victorian Era and the Belle Époque to
her own lifetime. I will return to this essay in relation to my notion of
writing resistance in conjunction with gender.
In 1931 Noor earned a maîtrise (master’s degree) in Child Psychology
at the Sorbonne, and in 1937 she was enrolled at the École des Langues
Orientales, in the University of Paris, for a two-year program of study.22

19 For more information on the origins of Sufism in the West, see http://tinyurl.com/,
https://inayatiorder-org-our-n (accessed on June 27, 2019).
20 Ora Ray Baker (1892–1949) was originally from Wenatchee, Washington, though for
many years she lived in Manhattan, New York, and in Leonia, New Jersey, with her half brother
Pierre Bernard, a pioneer of American yoga and founder in 1905 of the Tankrit Order of
America, and in 1910 of the Sanskrit College of New York. In 1913 she met Hazrat Inayat
Khan (1882–1927). He traveled throughout the world teaching Sufism, and his establishment
of the movement’s infrastructure led to the founding of the Sufi Headquarters in Geneva;
members of the movement now celebrate the anniversaries of his birth and death, and many
adherents also commemorate the day he left his native India on a pilgrimage to the West. He
and Baker were married in London in 1913, and she adopted the name “Ameena Begum.”
For more on their lives, see Harper and Harper, We Rubies Four, 25–39.
21 On music and the Inayat Khan Family, see Harper and Harper, We Rubies Four, 103–108.
22 Jean Overton Fuller, Noor-un-nisa Inayat Khan: Madeleine (Rotterdam, Netherlands:
East-West Publications: 1971), 68.
 1 INTRODUCTION: WRITING RESISTANCE AND THE QUESTION … 9

In 1938 she began writing children’s stories for the Figaro, some of which
were broadcast by RadioDiffusion France. The Jātaka Tales (1939), her
first book and the only one published during her lifetime, contains stories
I shall discuss, notably “The Fairy and the Hare,” “The Monkey Bridge,”
and “The Tortoise and the Geese.”
During the 1930s Noor was romantically involved with Azeem Gold-
enberg, a Jewish pianist. They had met at the École Normale de Musique
and were engaged to be married, but the relationship ended abruptly at the
outset of the war. Surprisingly, the significance of their relationship and its
influence on Noor’s life and writings has not been discussed, and several
questions remain unanswered about the young Jewish man and the Sufi
woman who, during the tumultuous prewar years, had planned to spend
their lives together.23 Biographer Jean Overton Fuller explains that their
relationship was “never recognized by her family, who considered the match
unsuitable, even though it continued in a non-official form for about six
years.”24 According to biographer Shrabani Basu, however, Vilayat, Noor’s
brother, told her in an interview that Goldenberg was “initiated into the
Sufi fold” and spent a great deal of time at Fazal Manzil, even though he
was not accepted by the Inayat Khan family, who believed that his overbear-
ing behavior caused Noor emotional distress.25 According to Claire Ray
Harper, Noor’s sister, the relationship lasted for six years and came to an
end due to the war, although she does not reference the family’s objections.
Although the circumstances of their relationship are obscure, there is little
doubt that during the 1930s it was a devoted one. Several unpublished
letters from this period to which I have had access reveal Noor as a serene
woman who shared many of her personal thoughts with Goldenberg while
also idealizing Sufism and the philosophical teachings of her late father.
The final chapter of Noor’s life began in 1939, when from her living
room she heard a cannon firing at the gates of Paris. Shortly thereafter,

23 In addition to obtaining from David Harper some of Noor’s correspondence with Gold-
enberg, courtesy of the Personal Archives of David Harper, I have also corresponded with
Henriette (Yetty) Blanc Van Gool, a friend of the Inayat Khan family during the 1930s who
also maintained contact with Goldenberg for several decades, until his death in the late 1980s.
24 Fuller, Noor-un-nisa Inayat Khan, Introduction.
25 Basu refers to Goldenberg as “a Rumanian Jew” from a “working class background,”
who lived with his mother in Paris and struggled to pay his tuition at the École Normale
de Musique. Shrabani Basu, Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan (New Lebanon, NY:
Omega Publications, 2007), 23–24. Claire Ray Harper refers to him as “Goldenberg, a Turk-
ish Jew,” We Rubies Four, 118.
10 L. R. CURTIS

she and Vilayat committed themselves to joining the war effort in some
worthwhile capacity. Although they were both pacifists, they could readily
foresee the futility of such a position. When Vilayat hypothetically evoked
the horrifying image of a Nazi aiming a machine gun at a hundred hostages,
they decided that they might actually have a chance to kill that Nazi captor
and save a hundred innocent people.26
At the outset of warfare Noor and Vilayat fled to England, where they
believed they would find shelter from the ominous threat of Nazism, which
by then had taken control of many areas of France. The flight from Suresnes
was an ordeal of several days during which they left behind their belongings
and risked their lives as bombs fell throughout France. In an essay/fictional
narrative Noor describes the traumatic experience of fleeing during the
Occupation in reference to the plight of Poland and France at that time.27
I shall discuss the autobiographical details that distinguish this essay from
her earlier stories of Sufism and Indian sacrificial traditions.
After Noor and her family arrived in England, she and her sister were
trained as Red Cross nurses. Prior to being recruited by the SOE to be
trained as a wireless operator, Noor joined the First Aid and Nursing Yeo-
manry (FANY) and then the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). As
an enlistee of the SOE in 1943, she received extensive wireless and Morse
code training and began dangerous undercover work for the French and
British Resistance.28
Several books and articles refer to Noor as a “spy” for the Resistance and
as one of only thirty-nine women among four hundred forty-one men who
were thus engaged.29 Discussing gender and performativity in the SOE,

26 “Healing Dachau,” Heart and Wings, Summer and Fall, 1996, sec. 7. Pir Vilayat Khan
recalled his memories of Noor on June 30, 1996, during a “universal” worship ceremony in
her honor at the Dachau concentration camp.
27 Entitled “Escape from Saint Nazaire (1940),” this essay could be compared to Irène
Némirovsky’s Suite Française in the way that both authors describe the trauma of exile, even
though the latter’s account is contained in a much longer manuscript.
28 When Noor joined resistance movements she assumed several new identities. In FANY
she became Nora Baker to conceal her Indian heritage. The SOE identified her as Jeanne
Marie Renier, born in Blois, whose father was a philosophy professor and her mother a citizen
of both France and the United States. Her radio code name was “Madeleine” when she was
communicating with SOE headquarters. See Harper and Harper, We Rubies Four, 157–162.
29 Among the key figures who recruited and trained Noor were Selwyn Jepson
(1899–1989), a recruitment officer for the French section of SOE; Maurice Buckmaster
(1902–1992), a leader of the SOE French Section; cryptographer Leo Marks (1920–2001);
 1 INTRODUCTION: WRITING RESISTANCE AND THE QUESTION … 11

Juliette Pattison writes that this agency typically modified women’s con-
ventional wartime roles.30 One of Noor’s trainers in the SOE observed:
“She is also very feminine, very eager to please, very ready to adapt herself
to the mood of the company or the tone of the conversation, interested in
personalities, capable of strong attachments, kind-hearted, emotional and
imaginative. She is very fond of her family. The motive for her accepting
the present task is, apparently, idealism… it is the emotional side of her
character, coupled with a vivid imagination, which will most test her stead-
fastness of purpose in the later stages of her training.”31 Significantly, this
report evokes aspects of Noor’s life that I, too, perceive in her work, espe-
cially the ways in which her writings on Sufism serve as a bridge that leads
her to write narratives of resistance that directly reflect wartime resistance
activities. I shall examine ways in which the feminine-gendered behaviors
evoked explicitly and implicitly in some of her texts relate to the question
of performance. Judith Butler’s influential work on gender and performa-
tivity is a useful theoretical framework for this discussion. In her analysis
of gender as a social construct Butler postulates that performative capac-
ity derives from social behaviors and interactions. She rejects the notion
of innate gender identities, maintaining instead that they emerge as con-
structs from performances that in effect conceal their constituent elements.
According to this view, gender is an enactment that masks the mechanisms
of its own performance and erases the means by which it is produced.32 I
examine interactions of gender and performativity in Noor’s writings from
this perspective as well.
Finally, my study on Noor diverges from several others that depict her as
a “heroic” wartime figure of Sufi extraction. I focus instead on her status as a
prolific writer whose works capture her own lived experiences. These expe-
riences in part resonate with ways in which her depictions of female heroic
figures shield their nations and people from malevolence. As a résistante,

and Vera Atkins (1908–2000), assistant to Buckmaster. The two women with whom she
worked closely during her training were Cecily Lefort (1900–1945) and Yolande Beekman
(1911–1944).
30 Juliette Pattinson, “‘Playing the Daft Lassie with Them’: Gender, Captivity, and the
Special Operations Executive During the Second World War,” European Review of History
13, no. 2 (2006): 271–292.
31 This SOE report of April 1943 is cited in Harper and Harper, We Rubies Four, 58.
32 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Rout-
ledge,1999).
12 L. R. CURTIS

she adopts a similar role, which becomes her own performative gesture of
agency. I examine previously neglected personal letters, fictional narratives,
and poems that offer acute insights into her subjective states that set the
stage for her writing resistance. As a historical figure and a legend in our
time, Noor continues to be a subject of great interest and inspiration for
diverse audiences. This study illustrates her authentic characteristics and
personal attributes, which unquestionably transcend her iconic image as a
wartime hero and spy princess.
Germaine Tillion is known both for her work as an ethnologist and
also her for participation in the French Resistance during World War II.
She was arrested in 1942 and then deported to Ravensbrück where dur-
ing her internment she steadfastly devoted herself to careful observation of
the operations and living conditions in the camp. After she was liberated
in April 1945, she wrote her own vivid memoirs of her three-year incar-
ceration in Ravensbrück.33 Her quasi-ethnographic documentations of the
torture that female prisoners endured are among the most significant first-
hand accounts that describe in detail the painful and often tragic circum-
stances of women’s daily lives at Ravensbrück, as well as the mechanisms
and systems of the camp’s operations. My study addresses and examines
these writings and is perhaps the first of its kind that concentrates on the
parallels between the writings of Tillion as an ethnographer and as a sur-
vivor of the Holocaust. I also analyze, among various passages from of her
writings, a brilliant musical drama that she secretly composed during her
imprisonment entitled Le Verfügbar aux enfers: Une opérette à Ravensbrück
(The Campworker Goes to Hell: An Operetta at Ravensbrück).34
Tillion was born in south-central France and raised in a Catholic family.
Her father, Jacques Denis-Lucien, worked for the popular series of French
travel guides, “Les Guides Bleus,” and was keenly interested in archaeology
and photography, and her mother, Emilie Cussac, was a writer and art
critic. Tillion recalls that her mother’s interest in architecture eventually
awakened her own passion for the study of human history and cultural
traditions. During her formative years Tillion spent much of her time with

33 Germaine Tillion, Ravensbrück (Paris, France: Editions de la Baconnière, 1946), Ravens-

brück (Paris, France: Éditions Famot, 1976), and Ravensbrück (Paris: Seuil, 1988). She revised
them twice over a period of forty-two years.
34 Germaine Tillion, Une opérette à Ravensbrück: Le Verfügbar aux enfers (Paris: Martinière,
2005).
 1 INTRODUCTION: WRITING RESISTANCE AND THE QUESTION … 13

her younger sister Françoise, especially at the family’s second home in Saint-
Maur-des Fossés, southeast of Paris.
Tillion’s determination to protect her native France stemmed from early
childhood as she became aware of the dangers of oppression and the vul-
nerability of its victims. Her empathy toward humanity throughout her
lifetime may have been influenced by her vivid recollection of the declara-
tion of war on August 1, 1914, when at the age of seven, sitting under a
tree, she heard church bells ringing and saw passers-by weeping. Realizing
that war had been declared, she plunged into a sort of “meditation” which
she describes at some length:

Cette même année, très jeune pensionnaire esseulée d’un grand lycée, je fus
abondamment nourrie d’homélies sur les dangers qui menaçaient Dieu et la
Patrie. Inquiète pour eux, je me rassurais au sujet du Bon Dieu en me disant:
“Puisqu’il est tout-puissant il va s’en tirer, mais notre pauvre patrie elle n’a
que nous…” Non sans suspicion j’écoutais encore des histoires sur l’ogre et
le loup mais je ne mettais plus en doute l’existence de deux monstres sans
visage: l’Allemand et la Mort. La nuit je rêvais de m’engager comme chien
de guerre.35

[That same year, as a lonely young boarder at a large high school, I was
exposed to a wealth of homilies on dangers that threatened God and Country.
Anxious about both, I reassured myself about God by telling myself: “Since
he is the Almighty he will overcome this, but our poor country has only
us…” Not without misgivings I continued to listen to stories of the ogre and
the wolf, but I no longer doubted the existence of two faceless monsters:
Germany and Death. At night I dreamed of enlisting as a dog of war.]

She recalls that, following this “meditation,” she heard several historical
accounts of German annexations of French regions in 1871, which may
have influenced how she eventually formulated her views on resistance dur-
ing World War II.
Prior to the outbreak of that conflict, Tillion spent six years conduct-
ing research as an ethnologist in the Aurès mountains of Algeria, compiling
notes for the preparation of her doctoral dissertation. She developed a keen

35 From Tillion’s accounts of her personal experiences in Fragments de Vie, ed. Tzvetan
Todorov (Paris: Seuil, 2009), 350–351. My translation. Tzvetan Todorov (1939–2017), an
eminent historian and prolific literary scholar, did extensive research on Tillion’s life and
writings.
14 L. R. CURTIS

interest in the material culture of the native population in this region and
extensively documented the inhabitants’ daily lives. She was trained as an
ethnologist by the anthropologist Marcel Mauss,36 the nephew of emi-
nent sociologist Émile Durkheim, who was well known for his studies of
religion as a social phenomenon and as the leader of the French school
of sociology.37 Mauss was perhaps the most eminent and highly influen-
tial French anthropologist of the first half of the twentieth century. He was
instrumental in developing the discipline of ethnology and, in collaboration
with Paul Rivet who founded the Musée de l’Homme, conducted the first
formal seminar on the subject at the Sorbonne in 1925. Unlike anthropolo-
gists, ethnologists historicize cultures rather than studying them primarily
in terms of human evolution and racial classifications, hence the French
designation of ethnography under the rubric of “anthropologie sociale.”38
For Mauss, fieldwork as a means of interactive assessment of “new” cultures
was a central component of ethnographic training. Mauss is renowned for
his Essai sur le don (1925), on notions of exchange and reciprocity. That his
seminal theoretical essay is founded on the study of intersubjective human
encounters as a means of understanding ethnicities and how they are cultur-
ally historicized.39 On occasion Tillion and Mauss collaborated: One of the
conclusions they drew from their respective fields is that religious forces can

36 He was a captain during the First World War and considered an ardent patriot.
37 Durkheim (1858–1917) taught theology and considered religion one of the “major
regulating origins of society.”
38 Alice L. Conklin, The Museum of Man: Race, Anthropology, and Empire in France,
1850–1950 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013), 2–5, 252. See also Marcel Fournier,
Marcel Mauss (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 233–234. Fournier
addresses the problems of defining anthropology. The discipline was vaguely defined until
the late nineteenth century when it finally began to proliferate in the curriculum and gener-
ated a profusion of publications and the creation of societies and museums. Although in its
broadest sense anthropology encompassed ethnology and ethnography, in France the three
terms referred to distinct disciplines, each with its own specific theoretical and institutional
field. While anthropology is the comparative study of beliefs and institutions, understood as
the foundation of social structures, ethnography entails the description of ethnic groups, and
ethnology studies their linguistic, economic, and social unity as well as their evolution.
39 Essai sur le don: Form et raison de l’échange dans les sociétés archaïques. (L’année Soci-
ologique, seconde série, 1923–1924); The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic
Societies, trans. W.D. Halls (New York: Norton, 190). Mauss was also a historian of religion
interested specifically in the historic origins of prayer. He established the Ernest Renan Society
for the study of the history of religion. Fournier, Marcel Mauss, 218.
 1 INTRODUCTION: WRITING RESISTANCE AND THE QUESTION … 15

only derive from collective forces.40 Tillion participated in Mauss’s semi-

nars at the École des Hautes Études, and he directed her doctoral thesis
on the Chaoui people of Algeria.41 She explicitly identifies herself as his
disciple of Mauss—“c’est lui qui m’a faite ethnologue” [He is the one who
made me an ethnologist].42 Mauss recommended that she devote her doc-
toral research to the Berbers in the Aurès, where between 1934 and 1940
she and her colleague Thérèse Rivière traveled there together to conduct
field studies.43 It was in large part the fieldwork under Mauss’s direction
that eventually influenced her three extensive studies of Ravensbrück, all
of which are highly significant documented, first-hand accounts of occur-
rences within the camp.
After completing her fieldwork in Algeria in 1940, Tillion returned to
Paris and became a “résistante de la première heure,” among the first to join
the French resistance. When on June 17, 1940 Maréchal Pétain announced
that France had just signed an armistice with Germany, she felt utter dis-
gust and disbelief: “Ce fut pour moi un choc si violent que j’ai dû sortir
de la pièce pour vomir…” [For me, that was such a violent shock that I
had to leave the room to vomit].44 She immediately joined the Groupe
du Musée de l’Homme, a resistance network comprised of intellectuals
and academics.45 Her duties included collecting information to transmit
to London; helping prisoners escape to the Free Zone; assisting English

40 Fournier, Marcel Mauss, 161.

41 The draft of which went missing permanently while she was at Ravensbrück. In 1932 she
earned a degree from the Institut d’Ethnologie.
42 Tillion, Combats, 63. Louis Massignon (1883–1962), a Catholic scholar of Islam, was
also one of her mentors. He encouraged her to return to the Aurès in 1954. At that time, she
was involved with the Algerian War of Independence.
43 Thérèse Rivière, who was affiliated with the Institut d’Ethnologie de Paris, traveled
with Tillion to the Aurès in December of 1934. The two took photographs and collected
items to bring back to the Musée de l’Homme for an exhibition. Rivière filmed some of her
work on-site in the Aurès in 1934–1936. See https://bit.ly/2uoNfVD (accessed on June
20, 2019). L’Aurès, Ministère de la Culture, Les archives du film du Centre national de la
cinématographie, in collaboration with Cinémathèque française, 1946.
44 Tillion, La traversée du mal (Paris: Arléa, 2015), 43.
45 A resistance group comprised of intellectuals and led by Anatole Lewitsky. See Martin
Blumenson, Le Réseau du musée de l’homme: Les débuts de la résistance en France (Paris:
Éditions du seuil, 1979).
16 L. R. CURTIS

parachutists in procuring false papers; and welcoming emissaries from Lon-

don to assist résistants in the battle of the Free French Forces.46
Along with her mother, Tillion was arrested for her involvement in resis-
tance activities, incarcerated in the Santé and Fresnes prisons, then deported
to Ravensbrück in 1943. She was a so-called “Nacht und Nebel” [Night
and Fog] prisoner, meaning that she was designated to disappear without
a trace.47 In the following personal statement, she recounts how her field-
work in the Aurès helped her prepare for her imprisonment at Ravensbrück:

Mon expérience de 1934 à 1940, en Algérie dans l’Aurès, m’avait déjà appris
à vivre dans un milieu qui m’était complètement étranger, à regarder tous
les problèmes politiques comme des objets. Lorsque je me suis retrouvée
en 1940, en France, et ensuite à Ravensbrück, j’ai gardé cette façon de voir
chaque chose, même la pire, comme un objet à analyser, ce qui oblige à aller
chercher lesinformations là où elles sont.48

[My experience from 1934 through 1940 in the Aurès region of Algeria
had already taught me to live in a totally unfamiliar environment and to
perceive political problems as objects. When I found myself back in France
in 1940, and then at Ravensbrück, I maintained that same perception of
everything, even the worst things, as objects to analyze, which obliges us to
seek information wherever it may be.]

Tzvetan Todorov notes that this passage further clarifies Tillion’s charac-
teristic alliance of knowledge and action and is indicative of how her work
as an ethnologist actually protected her from the hardships she endured
at Ravensbrück.49 Yet surviving Ravensbrück by no means led her back to
life as it had been prior to the war: “Je suis arrivée à Paris en juillet 45’.
Ma mère, elle avait été assassinée, ma grande-mère était morte quatre mois
plus tôt, et ma maison était en ruines.”50 [I arrived in Paris in July of 45’.
My mother had been murdered, my grandmother had died four months

46 Tillion, Fragments, Introduction. Tillion was arrested on August 13, 1942.

47 Emilie Tillion, her mother, was deported to Ravensbrück in February of 1944 and died
there. Emilie was in solidarity with her daughter with regard to resistance activities, and the
two women often held meetings about them in their home.
48 Tillion, Fragments, 12.
49 Ibid.
50 See the film Germaine Tillion par elle-même, “Association Germaine Tillion,” 2016,
https://bit.ly/2Jx525K (accessed on June 21, 2019).
 1 INTRODUCTION: WRITING RESISTANCE AND THE QUESTION … 17

earlier, and my home was in ruins.] Tillion nonetheless tended to confront

misfortunes, rather stoically, and she emphasized on this and various other
occasions that one’s indignation energizes the battle for justice.
Todorov revisits the relationship between scientific observations and
lived experiences in relation to the human condition by comparing the
approaches to ethnographic practices and methodologies with those of
Claude Lévi-Strauss. Whereas Lévi-Strauss maintained the “objectivity of
the scholar” and withheld his moral judgments regarding issues and sit-
uations, Tillion often struggled to neutralize her views; perhaps having
been active in the Resistance, then deported and interned, increased her
tendency to allow such harsh experiences to alter her perceptions and rel-
ativize her objectivity. Between 1940 and 1946, for example, she received
no new information on the Chaouis of the Aurès, yet she explains that her
internment at Ravensbrück altered the perceptions of the people of the
Aurès that she had had prior to the war; she no longer understood them
the same way.51
Following her imprisonment at Ravensbrück, Tillion joined the CICRC
(Commission Internationale Contre le Régime Concentrationnaire) and
was the only French representative invited to attend the 1947 trials of war
crimes committed at Ravensbrück.52 She returned to Algeria in 1954 to
assess the political situation at the outset of the Algerian War and to establish
innovative educational and occupational programs. She also returned to the
Aurès for the first time in fourteen years. When she witnessed the torture
being committed in the prison camps in Algeria during the Algerian War
of Independence (1954–1962) she felt an obligation to those who were
suffering and maintained that her role as an ethnologist was similar to that
of being a lawyer: that Algeria was her “client,” for whom she insisted
that the French powers were obligated to do something about the misery

51 See Todorov, “Two Approaches to the Humanities: Claude Lévi-Strauss and Germaine
Tillion,” Sign System Studies 45, no. 3/4 (2017): 302–316.
52 The CICRC was an international organization of non-Communist political depor-
tees to Nazi concentration camps, launched by writer and political activist David Rousset
(1912–1997). Following her internment, Tillion was involved with the Association Nationale
des Anciennes Déportées and Internées de la Résistance (ADIR), in which she served as vice
president. In 1962 she returned to her cherished career in ethnology, while for her wartime
efforts she received the Croix de Guerre, the Médaille de la Résistance and the Grand Croix de
la Légion d’Honneur, as well as several other recognitions, the highest being her ceremonial
entombment in the Panthéon in Paris in May 2015.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
desired to have me meet. His own contribution to the work was an
introduction, upon which he was then engaged, and which, he said, was to be
his swan song, the final message from his soul to the world.
“This, I suppose, is to be in Italian?” I inquired.
He looked at me reproachfully. “No, my son,” he answered, with deep
impressiveness; “I am writing my introduction in Latin, which, though called a
dead language, will be living long after the present living languages are dead.”
Ceriani placed at my disposal the humanistic volumes in the Ambrosiana,
and introduced me to his assistant, whose co-operation was of the utmost
value in my work. I was particularly struck by the personality of this younger
priest. He was in close touch with affairs outside the Church, and asked
searching questions regarding conditions in America. He spoke several
languages with the same facility with which he spoke his own Italian. His
knowledge of books and of bookmaking, past and present, surprised me. All in
all, I found him one of the most charming men I have ever met. His name was
Achille Ratti, and when he became Bishop of Milan in 1921, and was elevated
to the College of Cardinals two months later, I realized how far that wonderful
personality was taking him. One could scarcely have foreseen, however, that in
less than a year from this time he would become Pope Pius XI.
When, after my drawings were completed, I returned to America, I took
up the matter of the type design with Charles Eliot Norton, my old art
professor at Harvard, then emeritus. Professor Norton was genuinely interested
in the whole undertaking, and as the proofs of the various punches later came
into my hands he became more and more enthusiastic.
I had arranged to use this type in a series of volumes to be published in
London by John Murray, and in America by Little, Brown and Company. An
important question arose as to what should be the first title, and after careful
consideration I decided that as Petrarch was the father of humanism his Trionfi
would obviously be an ideal selection. The volume was to be printed in
English rather than in the original Italian, and I settled upon Henry Boyd’s
translation as the most distinguished.
Upon investigation it developed that the original edition of this book was
long out of print and copies were exceedingly rare. The only one I could locate
was in the Petrarch collection of the late Willard Fiske. I entered into
correspondence with him, and he invited me to be his guest at his villa in
Florence. With the type completed, and with proofs in my possession, I
undertook my second humanistic Odyssey, making Florence my first objective.
Professor Fiske welcomed me cordially, and in him I found a most
sympathetic personality, eager to contribute in every way to the success of the
undertaking. He placed the volume of Boyd’s translation in my hands, and
asked that I take it with me for use until my edition was completed.
“This book is unique, and so precious that you certainly could not permit
it to go out of your possession,” I protested.
His answer was characteristic. “Your love of books,” he said, “is such that
this volume is as safe in your hands as it is in mine. Take it from me, and
return it when it has served its purpose.”
Then came the matter of illustrations. In London I had a conference with
Sir Sidney Colvin, then Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum.
Colvin had been made familiar with the undertaking by John Murray, who had
shown him and Alfred W. Pollard some of the earliest proofs of the punches
that I had sent to England. After a careful examination of these, both men
suggested to Mr. Murray that his American friend was playing a joke upon
him, declaring that the proofs were hand-lettered and not taken from metal
originals!
“There is a fate about this,” Colvin said, after I had explained my mission.
“We have here in the Museum six original drawings of Petrarch’s Triumphs,
attributed by some to Fra Filippo Lippi and certainly belonging to his school,
which have never been reproduced. They are exactly the right size for the
format which you have determined upon, and if you can have the reproductions
made here at the Museum the drawings are at your disposal.”
I made arrangements with Emery Walker, the designer of the Doves type
and justly famous as an engraver, to etch these plates on steel, and the
reproductions of the originals were extraordinarily exact. Those Walker made
for the parchment edition looked as if drawn on ivory.
Parchment was required for the specially illuminated copies which were to
form a feature of the edition, and before leaving America I had been told that
the Roman grade was the best. I naturally assumed that I should find this in
Rome, but my research developed the fact that Roman parchment is prepared
in Florence. Following this lead, I examined the skins sold by Florentine
dealers, but Doctor Biagi assured me that the best grade was not Roman but
Florentine, and that Florentine parchment is produced in Issoudun, France. It
seemed a far cry to seek out Italian skins in France, but to Issoudun I went. In
the meantime I learned that there was a still better grade prepared in
Brentford, England—this, in fact, being where William Morris procured the
parchment for his Kelmscott publications.
At Brentford I secured my skins; and here I learned something that
interested me exceedingly. Owing to the oil which remains in the parchment
after it has been prepared for use, the difficulty in printing is almost as great as
if on glass. To obviate this, the concern at Brentford, in preparing parchment
for the Kelmscott volumes, filled in the pores of the skins with chalk,
producing an artificial surface. The process of time must operate adversely
upon this extraneous substance, and the question naturally arises as to whether
eventually, in the Kelmscott parchment volumes, the chalk surface will flake
off in spots, producing blemishes which can never be repaired.
For my own purposes I purchased the skins without the artificial surface,
and overcame the difficulty in printing by a treatment of the ink which, after
much experiment, enabled me to secure as fine results upon the parchment as
if printing upon handmade paper.
The volumes were to be printed in the two humanistic colors, black and
blue. In the original manuscript volumes this blue is a most unusual shade, the
hand letterer having prepared his own ink by grinding lapis lazuli, in which
there is no red. By artificial light the lines written in blue can scarcely be
distinguished from the black. To reproduce the same effect in the printed
volume I secured in Florence a limited quantity of lapis lazuli, and by special
arrangement with the Italian Government had it crushed into powder at the
Royal mint. This powder I took home to America, and arranged with a leading
manufacturer to produce what I believe to be the first printing ink mixed
exactly as the scribes of the fifteenth century used to prepare their pigments.
The months required to produce the Triumphs represented a period
alternating in anxiety and satisfaction. The greatest difficulty came in pressing
upon the typesetter the fact that the various characters of these letters could
not be used with mathematical precision, but that the change should come
only when he felt his hand would naturally alter the design if he were writing
the line instead of setting the type. The experiments required to perfect an ink
that should successfully print on the oily parchment were not completed
without disappointments and misgivings; the scrupulous care required in
reading proofs and perfecting the spacing, was laborious and monotonous; the
scrutinizing of the sheets as they came from the press was made happier when
the success of the lapis lazuli ink was assured.
 A Page from an Autograph Letter from Charles Eliot Norton

The rewards came when Professor Norton gave the volume his
unqualified approval—“so interesting and original in its typography and in its
illustrations, so admirable in its presswork, its paper, its binding, and its minor
accessories, … a noble and exemplary work of the printers’ art”; when George
W. Jones, England’s artist-printer, pronounced the Humanistic type “the most
beautiful face in the world,” and promised to use it in what he hopes to be his
masterpiece, an edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets; when the jury appointed by
the Italian Government to select “the most beautiful and most appropriate
type face to perpetuate the divine Dante” chose the Humanistic type, and
placed the important commission of producing the definitive edition of the
great poet, to commemorate his sexcentenary, in the hands of that splendid
printer, Bertieri, at Milan. Such rewards are not compliments, but justification.
Such beauty as the Humanistic type possesses lies in the artistic ability and the
marvelous skill in execution of the scribes. My part was simply seizing the
development of a period apparently overlooked, and undertaking the laborious
task of translating a beautiful thing from one medium to another.
 PETRARCH’S TRIUMPHS
Illuminated Page (10 × 6 inches)
Set in Humanistic Type designed by the Author

The Quest of the Perfect Book must necessarily lead the seeker into far
varying roads, the greatest rewards being found in straying from the main
street into the fascinating bypaths. My quest has resulted in giving me greater
appreciation of the accomplishments of those who successfully withstood
opposition and persecution in order to make the printed book a living vehicle
to convey the gems of thought from great minds to the masses, never forgetful
of the value of beauty in its outward aspect. I believe it possible today to
perpetuate the basic principles of the early artist master-printers by applying
beauty to low-cost books as well as to limited editions de luxe. The story of the
printed book itself is greater than that contained between the covers of any
single volume, for without it the history of the world would show the masses
still plodding on, swathed in theological and encyclopædic bonds, while the
few would still be jealously hoarding their limited knowledge
CHAPTER II

The Kingdom of Books

 II
THE KINGDOM OF BOOKS

A paraphrase of, “Would that mine adversary had written a book,” might
well be, “Would that mine enemy had printed a book”; for the building of
books has always yielded smaller financial returns for the given amount of
labor and ability than is offered in any other line of intelligent human effort.
“Are all the workmen in your establishment blank fools?” an irate
publisher demanded of a printer after a particularly aggravating error.
“If they were not,” was the patient rejoinder, “they would not be engaged
in making books!”
There is an intangible lure that keeps all those associated with the book
under subjection. There is a mysterious fascination in being a party to the
perpetuation of a human thought that yields something in addition to
pecuniary returns. To the author, the inestimable gratification of conveying a
message to the world makes him forget the tedious hours of application
required before that message can be adequately expressed. To the publisher,
the satisfaction of offering the opportunity for occasional genius to come into
its own more than balances the frequent disappointments. To the book
architect, the privilege of supplying the vehicle for thought, and of creating the
physical form of its expression, yields returns not altogether measurable in
coin of the realm.

In 1891, during my apprenticeship at the old University Press, in

Cambridge, Massachusetts, John Wilson, its famous head, permitted me to sit
in at a conference with Eugene Field and his friend and admirer, Francis
Wilson, the actor, booklover, and collector. The subject under discussion was
the manufacture of a volume of Field’s poems, then called A New Book of
Verses, which later became famous under the title of Second Book of Verse.
Field’s personal appearance made a deep impression that first time I saw
him. I was then an undergraduate at Harvard, and this was a live author at
close range! He entered the office with a peculiar, ambling walk; his clothes
were ill-fitting, accentuating his long legs and arms; his hands were delicate,
with tapering fingers, like a woman’s; his face was pallid; his eyes blue, with a
curiously child-like expression. I remember my feeling of respect, tinged
somewhat with awe, as I saw the pages of manuscript spread out upon the
table, and listened eagerly to the three-cornered conversation.

Autograph Page of Eugene Field Manuscript

From Second Book of Verse, New York, 1892
 In considering the manufacture of his book, Eugene Field had clearly
defined ideas of the typographical effect he wished to gain; John Wilson
possessed the technical knowledge that enabled him to translate those ideas
into terms of type. The examination of the various faces of type, the
consideration of the proportions of the page, the selection of the paper, the
plan for the design of the cover and the binding,—all came into the
discussion.
As I listened, I was conscious of receiving new impressions which gave me
a fuller but still incomplete understanding. Until that moment I had found
little of interest in the adventure of making books. Now came a realization that
the building of a book, like the designing of a house, offered opportunity for
creative work. This possibility removed the disturbing doubts, and I undertook
to discover for myself how that creative element could be crystallized.
Years later came an unexpected echo to the Field episode. After the
publication of the Second Book of Verse, the manuscript was returned to Field,
who had it bound in half leather and placed it in his library. Upon his death
many of his books went by bequest to his life-long friend, Horace Fletcher, the
genial philosopher and famous apostle of dietetics. When Fletcher died, he
bequeathed Field’s personal volumes to me. By this curious chain of
circumstances, thirty-three years after I had seen the manuscript spread out
upon the table at the University Press, it came into my possession, bearing the
identical memoranda of instruction made upon it by John Wilson, whose large,
flowing hand contrasted sharply with the small, copper-plate characters of the
author’s handwriting.
 Autograph Verse in Eugene Field’s Own Copy of Trumpet and Drum

The present generation of booklovers would think themselves transported

back ages rather than decades were they to glance into a great book-printing
office of thirty-five years ago. The old University Press at that time
acknowledged competition only from the Riverside and the De Vinne Presses,
and conditions that obtained there were typical of the times. The business
office was called the “counting-room”; the bookkeeper and the head-clerk
were perched up on stools at high, sloping desks, and wore long, linen dusters
and black skull caps. John Wilson sat at a low table desk, and his partner, who
was the financial executive, was the proud possessor of the only roll-top desk
in the establishment. Near him, perhaps because of its value as a novelty and
thus entitled to the same super-care as the cash, was installed the telephone.
Most of the letters were written by Mr. Wilson in his own hand. One of my
first responsibilities was to copy these letters on the wetted tissue pages of the
copy-book with the turn-screw press.
 JOHN WILSON IN 1891
Master-Printer

There was no particular system in effect, and scientific management was

unknown. Mr. Wilson used to make out his orders on fragments of paper,—
whatever came to hand. When the telephone was first installed he refused to
use it, as he considered this method of conducting business as “sloppy” and
even discourteous. To employ a stenographer would have been an evidence of
a lazy disposition, and a dictated letter was an offence against dignity and
decorum.
 A week’s work at that time consisted of fifty-nine hours instead of the
present forty-eight. Hand composition and electrotyping were figured together
as one process and charged at from 80 cents to $1 per thousand ems. Changes
required in the type by authors cost 50 cents an hour. An author could afford
in those days to rewrite his book after it was in type, but today, with alterations
costing five times as much, it is a different proposition!
The wages were as ridiculously low as the prices charged to customers.
The girls in the composing room made from $9 to $12 a week, and those
receiving the maximum considered themselves potential Hetty Greens. Today,
receiving $40 to $45 a week, they find difficulty in making both ends meet.
The make-up man, with the “fat” he received in addition to his wage of $16,
actually earned about $20 a week, as against $50 to $60 a week now. The
foreman of the composing room, with more than two hundred employees
under him, received a weekly return of $23, as against $75 to $100 now.
Typesetting, thirty-five years ago, was almost entirely by hand, as this was
before the day of the linotype and the monotype. Thorne typesetting
machines, which then seemed marvels of mechanical ingenuity, failed to prove
economical because they required two operatives and so easily got out of
order. The composing room itself was laid out with its main avenues and side
streets like a well-ordered town, divisions being marked by the frames bearing
the cases of type in various faces and sizes. The correcting stones ran down
the center.
The foreman of the composing room was the king of his domain and a
power unto himself. Each side street was an “alley,” in which from four to
eight typesetters worked, back to back. These were sometimes boys or men,
but usually girls or women. The “crew” in each alley was in charge of an
experienced typesetter. It was he who received from the foreman the
manuscript to be put into type; who distributed the copy, a few pages at a time
to each of his subordinates; who supervised the work, and arranged for the
galleys to be collated in their proper order for proofing; and who was generally
responsible for the product of his alley. As was characteristic of the times in
well-conducted industrial plants, the workers in this department, as in the
others, were simply a large family presided over by the foreman, who
interpreted the instructions from the management; and by the heads of the
crews, who carried out the detailed instructions of the foreman.
There was a pride in workmanship that is mostly lacking in manufacturing
plants today, due largely to the introduction of labor-saving machinery, and
again to the introduction of efficiency methods. Both were inevitable, but the
price paid for the gain in production was high. I am old-fashioned enough to
hope that modern ideas of efficiency will never be applied in the printing
industry to the extent of robbing the workman of his individuality. Books are
such personal things! I am in full sympathy with that efficiency which cuts out
duplication of effort. I believe in studying methods of performing each
operation to discover which one is the most economical in time and effort. I
realize that in great manufacturing plants, where machines have replaced so
largely the work of the human hand, it is obviously necessary for workmen to
spend their days manufacturing only a part of the complete article; but when
the organization of any business goes so far as to substitute numbers for
names I feel that something has been destroyed, and that in taking away his
individuality from the workman the work suffers the same loss.
I have even asked myself whether the greatest underlying cause of strikes
and labor disturbances during the past ten years has not been the unrest that
has come to the workman because he can no longer take actual pride in the
product of his hand. Years ago, after the death of one of my oldest employees,
I called upon his widow, and in the simple “parlor” of the house where he had
lived, prominently placed on a marble-top table as the chief ornament in the
room, lay a copy of Wentworth’s “Geometry.” When I picked it up the widow
said proudly, “Jim set every page of that book with his own hands.” It was a
priceless heirloom in which the workman’s family took continued and
justifiable pride.
The old University Press family was not only happy but loyal. When the
business found itself in financial difficulties, owing to outside speculations by
Mr. Wilson’s partner, the workmen brought their bankbooks, with deposits
amounting to over twenty thousand dollars, and laid them on Mr. Wilson’s
desk, asking him to use these funds in whatever way he chose. The sum
involved was infinitesimal compared to the necessities, but the proffer was a
human gesture not calculable in financial digits.

Proofreading was an art in the eighteen-nineties instead of an annoying

necessity, as it now seems to be considered. The chief readers were highly
educated men and women, some having been clergymen or schoolteachers.
One proofreader at the University Press at that time could read fourteen
languages, and all the readers were competent to discuss with the authors
points that came up in the proof. The proof was read, not only to discover
typographical errors, but also to query dates, quotations, and even statements
of fact. Well-known authors were constantly running in and out of the Press,
frequently going directly to the proofreaders, and sometimes even to the
compositors themselves, without coming in touch with the counting-room.
Mr. Wilson looked upon the authors and publishers as members of his big
family, and “No Admittance” signs were conspicuous by their absence.
The modern practice of proofreading cannot produce as perfect volumes
as resulted from the deliberate, painstaking, and time-consuming consideration
which the old-time proofreaders gave to every book passing through their
hands. Today the proof is read once, and then revised and sent out to the
author. When made up into page form and sent to foundry it is again revised,
but not re-read. No proof used to go out from a first-class printing office
without a first and a second reading by copy. It was then read a third time by a
careful foundry reader before being made into plates. Unfortunately, with
labor at its present cost, no publisher could produce a volume at a price that
the public would pay, if the old-time care were devoted to its manufacture.

Time was when a reputation for careful proofreading was an asset to a

Press. One day the office boy came to my private office and said that there was
a man downstairs who insisted upon seeing me personally, but who declined to
give his name. From the expression on the boy’s face I concluded that the
visitor must be a somewhat unique character, and I was not disappointed.
As he came into my office he had every aspect of having stepped off the
vaudeville stage. He had on the loose garments of a farmer, with the broad hat
that is donned only on state occasions. He wore leather boots over which were
rubbers, and carried a huge, green umbrella.
He nodded pleasantly as he came in, and sat down with great deliberation.
Before making any remarks he laid his umbrella on the floor and placed his hat
carefully over it, then he somewhat painfully removed his rubbers. This done,
he turned to me with a broad smile of greeting, and said, “I don’t know as you
know who I am.”
 When I confirmed him in his suspicions, he remarked, “Well, I am Jasper
P. Smith, and I come from Randolph, New Hampshire.”
(The names and places mentioned are, for obvious reasons, not correct.)
I returned his smile of greeting and asked what I could do for him.
“Well,” he said, “my home town of Randolph, New Hampshire, has
decided to get out a town history, and I want to have you do the printin’ of it.
The selectmen thought it could be printed at ——, but I says to them, ‘If it’s
worth doin’ at all it’s worth doin’ right, and I want the book to be made at the
University Press in Cambridge.’”
I thanked Mr. Smith for his confidence, and expressed my satisfaction that
our reputation had reached Randolph, New Hampshire.
“Well,” he said, chuckling to himself, “you see, it was this way. You made
the history of Rumford, and I was the feller who wrote the genealogies. That’s
what I am, a genealogy feller. Nobody in New Hampshire can write a town
history without comin’ to me for genealogies.”
After pausing for a moment he continued, “It was your proofreadin’ that
caught me. On that Rumford book your proofreader was a smart one, she was,
but I got back at her in good style.”
His memory seemed to cause him considerable amusement, and I waited
expectantly.
“It was in one of the genealogies,” he went on finally. “I gave the date of
the marriage as so and so, and the date of the birth of the first child as two
months later. Did she let that go by? I should say not. She drew a line right out
into the margin and made a darned big question mark. But I got back at her! I
just left that question mark where it was, and wrote underneath, ‘Morally
incorrect, historically correct!’”

When the first Adams flat-bed press was installed at the University Press,
President Felton of Harvard College insisted that no book of his should ever
be printed upon this modern monstrosity. Here was history repeating itself, for
booklovers of the fifteenth century in Italy for a long time refused to admit
that a printed volume had its place in a gentleman’s library. In the eighteen-
nineties one whole department at the University Press consisted of these flat-
bed presses, which today can scarcely be found outside of museums. If a
modern publisher were to stray into the old loft where the wetted sheets from
these presses were hung over wooden rafters to dry, he would rub his eyes and
wonder in what age he was living. The paper had been passed through tubs of
water, perhaps half a quire at a time, and partially dried before being run
through the press. The old Adams presses made an impression that could have
been read by the blind, and all this embossing, together with the wrinkling of
the sheet from the moisture, had to be taken out under hydraulic pressure.
Today wetted sheets and the use of hydraulic presses for bookwork are
practically obsolete. The cylinder presses, that run twice as fast, produce work
of equal quality at lower cost.

In those days the relations between publishers and their printers were
much more intimate. Scales of prices were established from time to time, but a
publisher usually sent all his work to the same printer. It was also far more
customary for a publisher to send an author to the printer to discuss questions
of typography with the actual maker of the book, or to argue some technical
or structural point in his manuscript with the head proofreader. The
headreader in a large printing establishment at that time was a distinct
personality, quite competent to meet authors upon their own ground.

One of my earliest and pleasantest responsibilities was to act as Mr.

Wilson’s representative in his business relations with Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy,
which required frequent trips to “Pleasant View” at Concord, New
Hampshire. Mrs. Eddy always felt under deep obligation to Mr. Wilson for his
interest in the manuscript of Science and Health when she first took it to him
with a view to publication, and any message from him always received
immediate and friendly consideration.
In the past there have been suggestions made that the Rev. James Henry
Wiggin, a retired Unitarian clergyman and long a proofreader at the University
Press, rewrote Science and Health. Mr. Wiggin was still proofreader when I
entered the Press, and he always manifested great pride in having been
associated with Mrs. Eddy in the revision of this famous book. I often heard
the matter referred to, both by him and by John Wilson, but there never was
the slightest intimation that Mr. Wiggin’s services passed beyond those of an
experienced editor. I have no doubt that many of his suggestions, in his
editorial capacity, were of value and possibly accepted by the author,—in fact,
unless they had been, he would not have exercised his proper function; but
had he contributed to the new edition what some have claimed, he would
certainly have given intimation of it in his conversations with me.
The characteristic about Mrs. Eddy that impressed me the first time I met
her was her motherliness. She gave every one the impression of deepest
interest and concern in what he said, and was sympathetic in everything that
touched on his personal affairs. When I told her of John Wilson’s financial
calamity, she seemed to regard it as a misfortune of her own. Before I left her
that day she drew a check for a substantial sum and offered it to me.
“Please hand that to my old friend,” she said, “and tell him to be of good
cheer. What he has given of himself to others all these years will now return to
him a thousand-fold.”
At first one might have been deceived by her quiet manner into thinking
that she was easily influenced. There was no suggestion to which she did not
hold herself open. If she approved, she accepted it promptly; if it did not
appeal, she dismissed it with a graciousness that left no mark; but it was always
settled once and for all. There was no wavering and no uncertainty.
After Mrs. Eddy moved from Concord to Boston, her affairs were
administered by her Trustees, so I saw her less frequently. To many her name
suggests a great religious movement, but when I think of her I seem to see
acres of green grass, a placid little lake, a silver strip of river, and a boundary
line of hills; and within the unpretentious house a slight, unassuming woman,
—very real, very human, very appealing, supremely content in the self-
knowledge that, no matter what others might think, she was delivering her
message to the world.

By this time, I had discovered what was the matter with American
bookmaking. It was a contracting business, and books were conceived and
made by the combined efforts of the publisher, the manufacturing man, the