Autograph Books are Just Like Social Media
I received it on my seventh birthday from my parents, a small package wrapped in tissue paper. I turned it over in my hands, then lifted the tape from one end. Out fell a small book with a fake leather cover and one word, “Autographs”, in gold lettering. I flipped the pages. They were all blank, each one a different pastel colour – pink, yellow, green – repeat.
On the first page, my mother had printed, “Dear Friends, please write in my book.” I must have looked puzzled.
She smiled. “Take it to school and ask your friends to write their name on a page,” she explained, “Autograph means a person’s name in their own handwriting. Maybe they’ll know a little poem. They can pick the colour of page they like best.” To get me started, she had printed on the second page “My Grade One Schoolmates”.
At seven years of age, I had never heard the word ‘autograph’ and never seen anyone passing around an autograph book in the schoolyard for friends to sign. Later in life I learned of the practice of collecting celebrity autographs in an autograph book designated especially for that purpose. Celebrity autographs on souvenirs such as baseballs, books, restaurant napkins or pictures of the person became popular. Back in 1959 though, my young self wondered if my friends had heard of this practice and how they would react.
On the very next school day, I quietly slid the book in my coat pocket and walked down our lane to meet the bus. I remember sending the book off on a journey through my classroom during school hours, beginning at the front of one row of desks. I must have asked the teacher for permission to do this during some free time. I watched it make its way down each row all on its own while I pretended to colour and not care at all about it. It returned to me with everyone’s names, all laid out across two pages in the typical topsy-turvy printing of grade one students – all achieved like magic and everyone seemed to think it was the most natural thing to do.
I was very shy back then and this success encouraged me. Bolstered by this first success, I ventured outside at recess, book and pencil in hand, looking for a someone else to ask. I spied a girl who sometimes said hi to me.
“Will you write in my autograph book?” I asked shyly.
To my complete surprise, she snatched the book out of my hand, flipped through the pages until she settled on one and wrote a whole poem! Then she thrust it back in my hand and ran off. I stood frozen on the spot, watching her disappear in the throng of kids and then looked down at the page. She had written it and I had only just learned to read printing. It took two years before I could decipher it.
A dot of powder
A dot of paint
Makes Sheri Hathaway
Just what she ain’t.
With my heart almost banging out of my chest at this unusual success but not able to read the verse, I felt suspicious of what it said. I put the book back in my pocket and went off to play. It took a whole year before I had the courage to take it anywhere again and then I only asked my friends – people I trusted who still printed.
I went to the show tomorrow
I got a front seat at the back
I fell from my chair to the ceiling
And broke a front bone in my back.
Our house often received visits from my parent’s friends or relatives who stayed for a day or two and my mother sometimes coaxed me to ask the women for an entry, still very unsure about this whole thing and so shy I’m not sure they heard my voice. Only the book and pen in my hand made my intention clear.
“Will you please write in my autograph book?”
Their entries were more demanding of mature thought than my young friend’s playful contributions. I often didn’t unravel their meaning until adulthood dawned.
To thine own self be true.
Then it must follow as the day the night,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Love,
Aunt Varina
Some matched the writer so well that even today they seem to echo with the person’s voice:
One ship goes east,
One ship goes west.
With every wind that blows
It’s the set of the sail
And not the gale
That decides where the good ship goes.
Helen Rea
Some were very good advice, even though my young mind didn’t grasp it at the time:
Choose not your friends
From outward show
For feathers float
While pearls lie low.
Aunt Janet
In grade two, my autograph book accompanied me to school again on the first day but after that I put it away for a long time. When I started going to summer camp, I tucked it into my suitcase every year and occasionally had the courage to ask someone for an entry.
If I were a bunny
And had a tail of fluff,
I’d hop upon your dresses
And be your powder puff.
Truly yours,
Sandra
Looking at it now I see there’s even a few entries from friends I made at CGIT rallies so although I don’t remember it, I must have asked one or two from those gatherings, organized for high school girls.
You asked me to write something out of my head,
But since there’s nothing there,
I’ll sign my name instead!
Love, Your CGIT Rally friend,
Geraldine
Like all fashionable trends, autograph books fell out of style. My book went into my box of treasures along with souvenirs and other memorabilia of childhood.
Today when I look again at my book and read those names and funny little poems, I think of the people who wrote them, wonder where they are and what they’re doing now. It’s been a long time since the day they wrote in my book. Some poems indicate something about the person’s personality, like this fun-loving little gem:
God made apples,
God made trees,
God made Sheri,
For boys to squeeze.
Some indicate the person’s desire to be remembered:
When you grow up and learn to cut hedges,
Remember the (boy, girl) who wrote ’round the edges.
(Written around the edge of the page.)
Back in those days, I thought autograph books were a new fad, created only in my lifetime. I was surprised to learn they had been in use for centuries before I got mine. Beginning in the German and Dutch speaking countries of Europe, university students began asking friends to sign their Bibles on graduation day in the 16th and 17th centuries. The practice caught on and progressed from signatures to short poems and small drawings of significance. Seeing a niche, some enterprising publishers began producing small decorated books with blank pages called Album Amicorum, or “Book of Friends”. The idea blossomed.
The custom was brought to North America with immigrants and their popularity has undulated across history like the ocean waves they rode on. After my mother passed away, I found two autograph books among her things. In one she has written inside the front cover “Louise McLean, Saskatoon Normal School, Room C, 1934 – 35. One poem must have been composed by the writer:
I have spent some wonderful hours,
In this little city so fair.
In Normal I knew many hours
Of joy, and also of care.
But I found you, a friend altogether,
Wondrous beyond compare.
Here’s another:
Make new friends, but keep the old.
The latter are silver, the first are gold.
The second little book must be from her teaching days as she has glued in photos of students and had them sign their name beside each. She also has class pictures.
My mother took her autograph collecting much more seriously than I did as almost every page is filled in both her books. I even found an entry from my dad and since it’s dated 1941, I know they weren’t married yet when he wrote it. It reflects his humble attitude and sense of humour:
Of our family tree,
I represent the sap.
Harold
In the 50s and 60s, the collecting of celebrities’ autographs on souvenirs ballooned. Fans harangued their idols for signatures on clothes, photos, balls or ball caps. Collectors were aptly named “autograph hounds”.
I see a resemblance between autograph books and our social media of today. On Facebook and Instagram, we still like to connect with friends and collect them on our “Friends” page just as friends’ autographs were collected on pages in autograph books. Today, we still like to share funny little poems, nuggets of wisdom or cute pictures, among our friends.
If I were a cabbage
I’d cut myself in two.
My leaves I’d give to someone else,
My heart I’d give to you.
Autograph books have gone the way of hoop skirts and plastic head bands but our human need and enjoyment of connecting with friends and sharing little bits of word play will always endure.
See you in the ocean.
See you in the sea.
See you in the bathtub.
Oops! Pardon me!
Today, decorative autograph books can still be purchased as a sentimental gift (from Amazon, of course.) Made by Disney Company, themed books for children are available. Just Google ‘autograph book’ to discover a variety. Who knows? With our present trend towards nostalgia, they may yet enjoy another surge in popularity.
By hook or by crook
I’ll be last in this book.
Yours till France takes Greece to fry Turkey.
Sheri
Sheri Hathaway.
SHERI HATHAWAY is a freelance writer living in Saskatoon. She has been published in several Saskatchewan newspapers and currently is working on a book about her parents’ farming life in Alberta. When not spending time with family or writing she loves to paint with watercolour, garden, knit and read. Her online home is sherihathaway.com or on Facebook, Author Sheri Hathaway.
This is our last blog post of 2020! We’ll return January 13th, 2021 with more great ‘people stories’!
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Bibliography
Petty, Antje, MKI Assistant Director. n.d. “Dies schrieb Dir zur Erinnerung. . .” From Album Amicorum to Autograph Book. Accessed November 29, 2019.
Soukhanov, Anne H. 1999. Encarta World English Dictionary. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press.