“Pearls of Thought”

The front cover of the black leather album has a gold embossed title, “Pearls of Thought.” and diagonally across the lower right corner, also gold embossed, is my grandfather’s name: “Harry.”  Inside on the first page is written “For Thought and Remembrance” and, after a few blank pages, “Compiled and arranged By Helen For Harry.  1895-‘96”

“Music” by Thomas Carlyle

There follow, in this 7 x 8½ inch notebook, 124 lined pages, each with a  meticulously copied poem in my seventeen-year-old grandmother’s handwriting.  The poems are organized by subject matter and there is an Index in the back – Admonition, Ambition, Consolation…Knowledge, Life, Love… Truths, Woman, Youth, Miscellaneous.  Twenty-one categories in all, with poems taken from all the Masters and even from Anonymous, him/herself.

Helen Richardson on her Eighteenth Birthday, 1896

The book was lovingly compiled by Helen Richardson during the two years before she married Harry Espy in 1897.  I think theirs was a short engagement due to her mother’s poor health and I can only think that Helen must have been certain that this was the man for her soon after they met in 1894.  Following the Index is one more poem written September 4, 1898, probably by my grandmother, herself.  It begins:

Things Left Undone

It isn’t the thing you do, dear,
It’s the thing you leave undone
Which gives you a bit of heartache
At the setting of the sun.
The tender word forgotten,
The letter you did not write,
The flower you might have sent dear,
Are your haunting ghosts tonight.

Trousseau Scraps

Tucked among the book’s pages is a tiny, puffy envelope labeled “Scraps of gowns in Trousseau – 1897.”  In it are bits of silk and chiffon, lace and brocade, carefully pinned in groups to show which materials went together.

Altogether, the book and its contents are a treasure beyond compare.  Bless you, Granny, for keeping them through the years.