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Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
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1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Rare Books
Beatrice Witherspoon
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Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Image not available
Manuscripts
This collection contains the papers of Beatrice Spring Borchardt, chiefly relating to her research into her family's history, which included members of the Spring, MacKaye, Johns, and Peet families. Manuscript materials include unpublished drafts of biographical works by Borchardt about the family including writer Cloudesley Johns and his friendship with author Jack London; drafts of an autobiography by her grandmother Rebecca Buffum Spring; Borchardt's own unpublished biography of Spring entitled "Lady of Utopia"; a childhood journal (14 pages) of Arthur Loring MacKaye, dated from 1872 to 1885; a typescript copy of a poem, "Moods of Madness: Words," by Francis S. Saltus; and some miscellaneous pieces by Johns and his mother, Jeanie Spring MacKaye Peet, Rebecca Spring, and others. Correspondence chiefly consists of letters dating from the late 1940s to the 1950s between Borchardt and cousins about family history and some earlier letters of Johns, Herbert Peet, Arthur Loring MacKaye, Benton MacKaye, as well as family friend Florence Moore Kreider. There are also some letters between Johns and Charmian London, chiefly dating from the mid 1930s to the 1940s, as well as some correspondence of Jeanie Spring MacKaye Peet and Rebecca Spring dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There are some printed items about family members as well as twelve photographs, including an 1897 card photograph of the Spring home at 504 North Soto Street in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles; a cyanotype photograph of Rebecca Spring with two women; studio portraits of Spring family members and one of Cloudesley Johns in 1900; and a snapshot of a Forest Theatre Production in Carmel, California (approximately 1915?). The earliest dated item is a copy in the handwriting of Rebecca Spring of a letter from Margaret Fuller, dated April 10, 1846. There is also a single letter from Charlotte Perkins Gilman to Jeanie Spring MacKaye Peet and a letter from Charles Warren Stoddard to Arthur Loring MacKaye, dated December 6, 1896.
mssHM 46715-46978
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Rare Books
"Beatrice Wood's Life has been extraordinary in every way, from earliest childhood, when her dominating Victorian mother realized she "wasn't like the rest of them," to her productive life at ninety-five in California's Ojai Valley. Rebellious, radical and romantic, Beatrice Wood was determined to be an artist. She fled to Paris for several bohemian seasons as a painter and actress, then returned to New York where she fell into the loving clutches of two Frenchmen: Henri-Pierre Roche, the author of Jules and Jim, and Marcel Duchamp, the iconoclastic Dadaist. Her promising youth was followed by a disastrous marriage, financial woes and a debilitating physical affliction; but in 1933, at the age of forty, she discovered the passion that would change her life: pottery. Now one of America's acclaimed ceramicists, Beatrice Wood shares the intriguing details of her unconventional life in I Shock Myself. With candor and insight, she recollects nearly ten decades of world shaking events, heart breaking romances, and artistic achievement."--Publisher description.
637069
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Manuscripts
The Mary Beatrice Fox papers consist of maps, land papers, diaries, correspondence, and documents related to the Fox family and the greater Pasadena, California area from 1789 to 1961. Of note in the collection are the diaries of Mary Beatrice Fox, from 1889 to 1909, and those of her mother, Sarah Mary Baker Fox, from 1889 to 1899. These diaries illustrate life in the Los Angeles and Pasadena areas during this period. The collection also contains two letters from Julia Morgan, which were written from Paris, 1896 and 1898, and one 1862 letter from C. Meinerth to Charles James Fox regarding photography.
mssFox
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Rare Books
118775
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Rare Books
240435:005