Remembrance of things past

Working on a photo project this weekend, the assignment was romantic shots of books. So I dug out what is not the oldest book I own, but the oldest with any personal significance. It’s an edition of “Gulliver’s Travels In Words Of One Syllable,” a promise not entirely kept, mercifully, but which constituted juvenile literature at the time, I’m sure. It was awarded to my great grandmother, Hazel Grace Cath, by her teacher W.G. Hitchcock in 1905 “as a reward for good spelling.” She would have been 10 years old at the time. I don’t know where she went to school, though Green Corners would be a decent guess, unless there was something closer to West Glenville at the time.

I don’t remember when she gave this to me, though I was quite young and have had it as long as I can remember. I also read it hundreds of times, and as a child was always too proud of the fact that I knew there was more to the story than Gulliver among the Lilliputians. The book had illustrations, too, dire, gothic cuts with a level of detail and realism not emulated by children’s illustrations current when I was growing up, which had all gone Bambi on us. The image of the bees taking Gulliver’s cake may be one of the most nightmarish images I had ever seen when I was young.

As for Hazel’s good spelling . . . her sisters always considered her the smartest among them, though I’m not sure that was true. The nicest, for certain. And she did crossword puzzles all her life. Although Alzheimer’s robbed her of any sense of her last 10 years or so, Hazel lived to be 102. The book, now, is even older.