Armstrong’s Stars: Vachel Lindsay

“Armstrong’s Stars” is a collaboration between the Armstrong Browning Library and Baylor’s Texas Collection. Once a month we feature a story about a celebrity that Dr. A.J. Armstrong brought to Baylor. These stories highlight an interesting part of Baylor’s history and include collection materials housed in both the Armstrong Browning Library and the Texas Collection.

This month’s story was contributed by Baylor graduate (BA ’14) and Sigma Tau Delta member Susie Park.   

Lindsay Here Saturday

March 27, 1919, issue of The Lariat announcing Vachel Lindsay’s upcoming visit to Baylor (Texas Collection)

One of the most memorable scenes from the movie Dead Poets Society captures the musical aesthetics of American poet Vachel Lindsay’s style of singing poetry. The cave scene of the schoolboys chanting Lindsay’s poem “The Congo” begins with one of them rhythmically reciting a few lines and escalates to all of the boys joining in by clapping, hissing, chanting along, hollering, and banging on drums to create a musical performance out of a written work of poetry. As described in the March 27, 1919, issue of Baylor’s student newspaper The Lariat, “[Vachel Lindsay] is a singer in addition to being a poet, and chants many of his verses, often persuading his audience through his magnetic personality to join him” (“Vachel Lindsay Here Saturday” 1).

Vachel Lindsay made several appearances at Baylor University at the invitation of Dr. A.J. Armstrong. His first major public appearance at Baylor was on March 29, 1919. Interestingly, an article from The Lariat, dated March 13, 1919, specifically notes that Lindsay is scheduled to visit on March 28, but a later article from March 27 states that Lindsay will visit on March 29 at 8:15 in the evening at Carroll Chapel (“Vachel Lindsay to Be in Baylor March 28” 1; “Vachel Lindsay Here Saturday” 1).

The April 3, 1919, issue of The Lariat includes details of Lindsay’s March 29 visit to Baylor, listing the poems that he recited as well as the students’ reactions to the poet. Lindsay read some of his poems, like “The Santa Fe Trail” and “The Chinese Nightingale,” and shared a series of interpretations of the works. The Lariat praises the poet’s unique style and his outlook on poetry. When discussing his style of reciting poetry, Lindsay is quoted as saying that the human voice “‘is the perfect instrument of musical expression, and with the twenty-six letters in the alphabet as keys upon which the human voice may play at will, true poetry is capable of being brought to its highest rhythmical perfection’” (“Vachel Lindsay Has Extended Visit to Baylor and Waco” 1).

After his eventful visit to Baylor in 1919, Lindsay announced that he would visit again on March 20, 1920. The Lariat article from February 19, 1920, notes the poet’s future visit to Baylor and that he has come out with a new volume of poems (“Vachel Lindsay to Be Here on March 20” 10).

Diamond Jubille Poets

Poets participating in Baylor’s Diamond Jubilee celebration (Trantham, page 43)

The celebration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of Baylor University, or the Baylor University Diamond Jubilee in June 1920, brought together many celebrities, including Vachel Lindsay. Lindsay was one of the visiting poets who participated in “The Browning Benefit,” or “All Artists’ Benefit.” This program was a presentation event to showcase the “Clasped Hands,” an original bronze casting of the clasped hands of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning that was being added to the Baylor Browning Collection. The other three visiting poets participating in this presentation ceremony included Edwin Markham, Judd Mortimer Lewis, and Harriet Monroe (Trantham 44).

An article in The Lariat, dated May 20, 1920, expresses the excitement surrounding the Diamond Jubilee, listing some of the distinguished guests to be present at the celebration: “Among the celebrated poets and writers who will honor Baylor in June will be William Butler Yeats, Vachel Lindsay, Edwin Markham, Amy Lowell, Dorothy Scarborough, and the poet laureate of Texas, Judd Mortimer Lewis” (“Distinguished Guests to Be Present at Diamond Jubilee” 6).

1922 Round Up

The 1922 issue of Baylor’s yearbook The Round Up highlighting celebrities who had visited Baylor (The Texas Collection)

“The death Saturday of Vachel Lindsay brought to a close a friendship of eighteen years between one of America’s greatest poets and Baylor University” (“Baylor Loses Friend as Lindsay Succumbs” 2). Vachel Lindsay passed away on December 5, 1931. The December 8, 1931 issue of The Lariat mentions the poet’s death, tracing back Lindsay’s close relationship with Dr. Armstrong. Lindsay supposedly planned to visit Baylor University again in the spring of 1932; Sigma Tau Delta wanted to present the poet to the Baylor student body. From his initial participation in Dr. Armstrong’s contemporary poetry class in 1913 to his planned visit in 1932, it is not an overstatement to say that Vachel Lindsay and the Baylor Browning Collection grew together in time.

Works Cited

“Baylor Loses Friend as Lindsay Succumbs.” The Daily Lariat 8 December 1931: 2. Web. 19 Feb. 2015.

“Distinguished Guests to Be Present at Diamond Jubilee.” The Lariat 20 May 1920: 6. Web. 18 Feb. 2015.

The Round-Up 1922. [Waco, Tex.: Baylor University, 1922]. Web. 19 Feb. 2015.

Trantham, Henry. The Diamond Jubilee, 1845-1920: A Record of the 75th Anniversary of the Founding of Baylor University. Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 1921. Web. 19 Feb. 2015.

“Vachel Lindsay Has Extended Visit to Baylor and Waco.” The Lariat 3 April 1919: 1. Web. 18 Feb. 2015.

“Vachel Lindsay Here Saturday.” The Lariat 27 March 1919: 1. Web. 18 Feb. 2015.

“Vachel Lindsay to Be Here on March 20.” The Lariat 19 February 1920: 10. Web. 18 Feb. 2015.

“Vachel Lindsay to Be in Baylor March 28.” The Lariat 13 March 1919: 1. Web. 18 Feb. 2015.

Reflections from a Visiting Scholar: Designing Dr. Armstrong’s Cabinet of Curiosities

By Derham Groves, Ph.D., University of Melbourne, Australia

Dr. Derham Groves at the ABL

Dr. Derham Groves at the ABL

While browsing through a copy of the Times Literary Supplement in the staff club at Melbourne University, where I teach architecture, I came across a call for applications for visiting scholars to the Armstrong Browning Library (ABL) at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

The ABL houses the world’s largest collection of materials relating to the lives and work of the married Victorian-era poets, Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. This collection was assembled over many years by Dr. Andrew Joseph Armstrong, the much-admired and respected Head of the English Department at Baylor between 1912 and 1952. It includes a number of intriguing so-called ‘relics,’ such as a plaster of Paris rosette from the ceiling of the church where Robert Browning was christened, a window latch from Browning’s study, and a dried rose from Browning’s mother’s garden that he sent to Elizabeth Barrett during their courtship. A number of these relics have a tenuous—if not even a dubious—connection to the Brownings, nevertheless, they have a mysterious fascination that is difficult to explain.

Fig. 1: A window latch from Robert Browning’s study, on display in the Hankamer Treasure Room at the ABL.

Fig. 1: A window latch from Robert Browning’s study, on display in the Hankamer Treasure Room at the ABL.

Dr. Armstrong’s Browning collection was first housed in an alcove in the Carroll Library at Baylor. When it outgrew that, it was housed in a room in the same building. When it outgrew that, it was housed in the Armstrong Browning Library. Dr. Armstrong was also the driving force behind the design and construction of this very handsome building. His lofty ambition was to create one of the most beautiful buildings in America—if not the world—especially for his Browning collection.

Libraries and museums specially designed for particular collections have interested me ever since 1981, when—for my final-year undergraduate architectural design project at Deakin University in Geelong, Victoria, Australia—I designed a building to house the world’s largest Sherlock Holmes collection at the University of Minnesota. This project first alerted me to the fascinating process of matching a ‘container’ to its ‘contents,’ as it were, not only in a pragmatic sense, but also in a symbolic sense.

Fig. 2: The Sherlock Holmes Centre (1981) designed by Derham Groves.

Fig. 2: The Sherlock Holmes Centre (1981) designed by Derham Groves.

I am also very interested in cabinets of curiosities. Traditionally, they consisted of an eclectic assemblage of things, which often included sham objects that were presented as genuine. They were collected for their entertainment value by one person, who would proudly display them in an elaborate cabinet. Larger collections were housed in entire rooms or whole buildings, but the name, “cabinet of curiosities,” stuck. Significantly, the origins of today’s museums date back to the cabinets of curiosities of the 1600s.

In recent years there has been a lot of interest in the narrative possibilities of cabinets of curiosities, especially from architects, artists, curators, and writers. The reconstruction of Strecker’s Cabinet of Curiosities in the Mayborn Museum, which is also at Baylor University, the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, California, and the Museum of Innocence in Istanbul, Turkey, are examples of the current interest in cabinets of curiosities.

Fig. 3: The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, California.

Fig. 3: The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, California.

Fig. 4: Stecker’s Cabinet of Curiosities in the Mayborn Museum at Baylor University.

Fig. 4: Stecker’s Cabinet of Curiosities in the Mayborn Museum at Baylor University.

Clearly, buildings specially designed for particular collections and cabinets of curiosities have plenty in common. Indeed, in my view, the Armstrong Browning Library has enough similarities to a cabinet of curiosities to be regarded as almost one. Like a number of cabinets of curiosities, the ABL:

1) Began as one person’s hobby/plaything/obsession.

2) Contains a number of real curiosities.

3) Developed into a major library-museum.

4) Occupies an elaborate, purpose-designed building/container.

In my visiting scholar application, I proposed researching the design of the Armstrong Browning Library from the point of view of a contemporary cabinet of curiosities. I also wanted to reflect on the best strategy for designing a contemporary cabinet of curiosities: the German modernist architect, Mies van der Rohe’s “less is more” or the American postmodernist architect, Robert Venturi’s “less is a bore”?

While boning up on the poets, I was intrigued to learn that Robert Browning had penned the phrase, “less is more,” decades before van der Rohe had used it to encapsulate his architectural design philosophy.

Fig. 5: A Browning cabinet of curiosities by Derham Groves.

Fig. 5: A Browning cabinet of curiosities by Derham Groves.

Fortune smiled on me and I spent December 2014 and the first part of January 2015 at the ABL. In preparation for my visit, I asked the architecture students who took my Popular Architecture and Design course in 2014 at the University of Melbourne to each design a reliquary for one of the Browning relics on the Armstrong Browning Library website. Traditionally, a reliquary was an ornate, purpose-designed container/display cabinet for a bone or other sacred relic that had belonged to a saint. In other words, it was a cabinet for only one curiosity.

Following is a small sample of the reliquaries designed by the architecture students. In my opinion, the best ones managed to put the relics they were designed for into context. For example, Sophie Barodel designed a reliquary shaped like a train carriage to contain Jean Sherwood’s travelling tea set, which Robert Browning used once while travelling by train from Venice to Florence; Brendan Chen designed a reliquary in the form of a model of the Palazzo Dorio, the house of the Brownings’ son, Pen, to contain its front door knocker; and Eric Nakajima designed a reliquary made from fountain pens to contain Robert Browning’s inkwell. Interestingly, most of the students’ reliquaries followed the postmodernist idiom, “less is a bore.”

Fig. 6: A reliquary for a rose sent by Robert to Elizabeth, designed by Adrian Bonaventura.

Fig. 7: A reliquary for Jean Sherwood’s travelling tea set, designed by Sophie Barodel.

Fig. 7: A reliquary for Jean Sherwood’s travelling tea set, designed by Sophie Barodel.

Fig. 8: A reliquary for some Laurel leaves from Robert Browning’s coffin, designed by Samuel Brak.

Fig. 8: A reliquary for some Laurel leaves from Robert Browning’s coffin, designed by Samuel Brak.

Fig. 9: A reliquary for the front door knocker of Palazzo Dorio, designed by Brendan Chen.

Fig. 9: A reliquary for the front door knocker of Palazzo Dorio, designed by Brendan Chen.

Fig. 10: A reliquary for Robert Browning’s snuffbox, designed by Diana Yong.

Fig. 10: A reliquary for Robert Browning’s snuffbox, designed by Diana Yong.

Fig. 11: A reliquary for Robert Browning’s inkwell, designed by Eric Nakajima.

Fig. 11: A reliquary for Robert Browning’s inkwell, designed by Eric Nakajima.

Most of my time at the Armstrong Browning Library was spent reading the fascinating correspondence between Dr. Armstrong and the two architects who together, but working independently, designed the building: Hedrick C. Wyatt of Fort Worth, Texas, and Otto R. Eggers of New York, who had previously designed the Pantheon-inspired, Thomas Jefferson Memorial (1939) in Washington, DC.

I am currently writing all of this up. I plan to finish my essay, entitled “Designing Dr. Armstrong’s cabinet of curiosities,” by the end of the year. (I have another ABL-related student project in mind for semester two, which I’d like to include as part of this.) I will discuss how Dr. Armstrong briefed Wyatt and Eggers about the design of the Armstrong Browning Library, and how they in turn responded to his instructions. Suffice it to say for now that, from an architect’s point of view, Dr. Armstrong was the client from Hell!

My sincere thanks go to the staff of the Armstrong Browning Library who looked after me so well while I was there, especially Rita Patteson, Cyndie Burgess, Christi Klempnauer, and Melvin Schuetz.

To learn more about the Armstrong Browning Library’s Visiting Scholars Program, visit our website.