William Inglis Morse

 

Adelaide Cole Chase (1868-1944)

Boston Athenaeum

William Inglis Morse

With my Harvard roommates, I moved immediately after graduation to St. Croix Cove, Nova Scotia where I began my 40 year love affair with the province.  Nearby was the village of Paradise.  I did not suspect that the big brick place on Brattle Street directly opposite the President of Harvard’s house (at the time it was the Dean of the Faculty’s house) had been owned by a farm boy from Paradise, Nova Scotia.

Here are some highlights from Morse’s short biography on the Dalhousie Library website:

"A library, if properly selected and studied, is one's best monument."

~ William Inglis Morse

William Inglis Morse (1874-1952), author, historian, minister, and philanthropist, was introduced to the pleasures of reading by his mother. Many pleasant evenings were spent by the farmhouse fireside in Paradise, Nova Scotia, listening to his mother read from the Bible, British literature and history, and popular American fiction. His early adventures in reading instilled in him an interest and respect for all aspects of the book that would remain with him throughout his entire life.

After a year of teaching in a rural school near his home in the Annapolis Valley, Morse decided to further his own education. The eighteen year old spent a preparation year at Horton Academy and then entered Acadia University in Wolfville. Upon completion of his BA in 1897, he enrolled in the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Three years later he graduated with a Bachelor of Divinity. His first position was as chaplain and English master at Westminster School in Simsbury, Connecticut. Ordained into the ministry of the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1901, he served as assistant minister at St. John's Church, Stamford, Connecticut for two years before being appointed rector at Church of the Incarnation, Lynn, Massachusetts.

For the next twenty-five years, William Morse served the congregation of Lynn. Throughout his years in the ministry, Morse pursued his literary and scholarly interests. In 1908 his first book was published, Acadian Lays and Other Verse. As his interest in Acadia expanded, Morse began to research the early decades of Acadian settlement in Nova Scotia. His research took him abroad to England and France. Research trips in 1921, 1923, 1924, 1926, 1927, 1931, and 1935 provided him with invaluable information and the opportunity to actually start collecting in his areas of interest. Morse published a number of entertaining travelogues chronicling his travel adventures. More importantly for future historians, he also edited and published the contents of the significant Acadian documents he had acquired. Gravestones of Acadie (1929), The Land of the New Adventure (1932), Acadiensia Nova (2 volumes, 1935) and Pierre du Gua, Sieur de Monts (1939) were all major contributions to the study of Acadian history.

Parallel to his literary and scholarly activities were Morse's activities as a collector and philanthropist, activities that were shared and supported by his wife Susan (Ensign). He took great pleasure in the hunt and also believed strongly that books should be "handed on as a heritage of the ages." Between 1926 and 1931 he collected and donated a major scholar's library, including some outstanding Canadiana, to his alma mater, Acadia University. From 1933 to 1942, he performed a similar act of generosity for Dalhousie University. In 1943, Morse was appointed Honorary Curator of Canadian Literature and History at Harvard, where he proceeded to build up yet another major library. Yale and the University of King's College were also recipients of significant individual items and/or collections related to their institution's research strengths.

In recognition of his scholarly and philanthropic work, William Morse was awarded honorary degrees from Acadia University (1926), Dalhousie University (1936) and the University of King's College (1947). Today, researchers in many disciplines throughout Nova Scotia and New England are indebted to the collector who gave away his collections.

In case you are wondering how the rector of the Episcopal parish in Lynn came into his philanthropic avocation, you need to know that the Ensigns of Simsbury were the major employer in the town.  They monopolized the safety fuse industry.  During the Civil War, Ensign-Bickford shipped 200 miles of fuse a week.  Ensign-Bickford is still in business

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Willim Inglis Morse married Susan Alice Ensign June 15, 1904.

While he was rector of the church in Lynn, WIM published a newsletter called The  Chronicle.  There are around 250 issues; all seem to be hardbound, just a few pages.  I bought one at Schooner Books last summer, and it’s a mixture of commentary and news (mostly about the author).

One of my classmates, Sally Bond, is the daughter of William Bond, late University Librarian who wrote the following charming reminiscence of WIM.  Sally does not remember Morse.

Among Harvard's Libraries 
Dr. Morse at Houghton Library 
William H. Bond

I first became aware of Dr. William Inglis Morse early in 1946, shortly after I took the post of assistant to William A. Jackson, first librarian of the Houghton Library. I wanted the job for the experience (which was magnificent), not the salary (which was meager). As assistant, I checked bibliographies and dealers' catalogs, looked up references, collated books and compared copies, accessioned all newly acquired printed books and manuscripts (there was no manuscript department in those days), showed visitors around when I began to know enough to do so credibly, answered queries in person and by mail (again when I knew enough), and ran errands generally. It was the best education for the world of rare books that one could possibly imagine. In those days just after World War II a constant parade of eminent dealers and collectors traversed the ground-floor corridor of Houghton, with Jackson's office at one end of the axis and Philip Hofer's at the other. Dealers usually brought suitcases packed with books which had to be examined and checked against the Union Catalogue, often over the lunch hour. Jackson and the dealer would go off to a meal at the Faculty Club in the expectation of finding the field work done when they returned, leaving the assistant to try to ignore his hunger pangs among the catalogue cards and bibliographies. But the learning process was well worth any contingent discomfort. 
The Houghton staff was very small— there was lots of empty office space and plenty of room to spread things out—and areas that today are formal rooms or are stuffed with computer cubicles were rough and unfinished, used for the storage of all kinds of objects including an overflow of furniture from the Fogg Museum's Grenville Winthrop bequest, as well as the chair the president sits in at Commencement every year. Everyone was full of enthusiasm and worked at all hours, often nights and weekends, pitching in with a will when a colleague seemed likely to be overwhelmed by an unusual amount of work. If some benefactor gave or bequeathed a large collection, half the staff would go out to wrap and pack the books to be sure it was done properly; on one occasion during the war, we were told, Jackson himself had driven a truckload from Long Island to Cambridge; on another, when William King Richardson's magnificent library came in, only those needed to keep the Reading Room up and running remained at their regular posts. Everyone else unpacked, dusted, polished, and set the Richardson books on their appointed shelves. 
Collectors and dealers familiar with Houghton would come to the back door, beside the bridge to Widener, and ring the doorbell to be admitted, thus avoiding lugging heavy suitcases all the way from the front entrance on the floor above. One of the assistant's duties, when he wasn't trotting about in the Union Catalog or Widener Stack or the lower depths of Houghton, was to answer the doorbell, and so I came to meet Dr. Morse. At irregular intervals, but usually several times a month, an imposing chauffeur-driven car would penetrate the Harvard Yard through the gate back of Widener and draw up to our back door. Out would step a benign, grand-fatherly man with twinkling eyes. This was Dr. Morse. I did not at first know much about him, but Bill Cottrell, who preceded me as Assistant to the Librarian and was now happily engaged in editing the newly established Harvard Library Bulletin, filled me in from time to time. I learned that Dr. Morse and his limousine got past the somewhat crabbed guardian of the gate by lavishing on him excellent Havana cigars—genuine H. Upmanns—of which Dr. Morse had been caught with a large supply when his doctor unexpectedly forbade him to smoke any longer. He invariably had something, books or manuscripts, to give to Jackson for the library, and chocolates or more cigars to hand round to the staff. He loved to give presents, especially near Christmas, when he would march up to the Reading Room with supplies for all. On such occasions he tended to favor candied kumquats and a purplish hard candy that my colleague Bob Metzdorf unkindly dubbed "ether candy." ("Ether" you liked it or you didn't). 
Dr. Morse was a Canadian, born in 1874 in the Annapolis Valley in the heart of Nova Scotia.1 He came from a book-loving family and was an omnivorous reader to the end of his days. As an undergraduate at Acadia College in Wolfville, he had begun to preach at a Baptist church, and he followed his call to the ministry by studying at the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, graduating in 1900 and becoming confirmed and ordained in the Episcopal Church. His first post was as chaplain and English instructor at the Westminster School in Simsbury, Connecticut, and in Simsbury he met his future wife, Susan Alice Ensign, daughter of that city's leading family. There were married in 1904 in Stamford, Connecticut, where he was then assistant at St. John's Church. The next year their daughter Susan Toy Morse (Mrs. Frederick Hilles) was born. One might say that books and libraries were in their blood; years later Mrs. Hilles was the donor of the Hilles Library and served on the Visiting Committee of the Harvard University Library. 
In 1905 Dr. Morse was called to be rector of the Church of the Incarnation in Lynn, Massachusetts, a cure that he retained until he retired in 1930, much loved by his parishioners, to whom he was a sort of universal uncle. Mrs. Morse liked to remember how he would pile the back of the pulpit with little gifts for the children of the parish on special occasions, Christmas in particular. He always took special delight in giving presents. 
In 1928, anticipating his approaching retirement, the Morses bought the big, 
comfortable house at 17 Fresh Pond Parkway in Cambridge, on the corner of Brattle Street, that had once belonged to President Charles William Eliot. The grounds are protected by Jeffersonian curved brick walls; inside the house there are commodious rooms, in particular a splendid library with lots of shelf space, speedily filled by the Morses' books. This house was their home base, but in the summer they would go back to Nova Scotia to the little town of Paradise, where Dr. Morse took great pride in his gardens. In colder weather they might spend a month or so at the Mountain Lake Club in Florida, but Dr. Morse always felt more at home in Cambridge or Nova Scotia. 
Dr. Morse was a great friend and benefactor of libraries, especially (but by no means confined to) those of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia and Harvard University. To both he had made notable gifts, especially in the field of Canadian history and literature, including important early books and manuscripts, and in each library the Morses established funds for the continued growth of the collections. The large section in Widener devoted to the Can[ada] classification is rich in Morse gifts, in which Dr. Morse was much encouraged by his fellow Canadian, Bob Haynes, for many years chief reference librarian in the College Library. Rare books and manuscripts were directed to Houghton. 
Susan Hilles Bush has detailed the extraordinary extent of his collecting and benefactions, and more is recorded in W. A. Jackson's annual reports of the acquisitions of the Houghton Library for the years 1941 to 1953 (the year after Dr. Morse's death), which usually contained a section devoted to Canadiana. Still more can be found in Dr. Morse's own engagingly eccentric publications. He began publishing The Chronicle in 1906 as his parish newsletter in Lynn, but it soon took on a decidedly personal tinge as he began to lard it with jokes, odd observations, notes on journeys made to Europe and the Middle East, and photographs of people, places, and objects that caught his fancy. By the time he brought it to a close in 1950 it had run to 

more than 250 issues, the latest ones hardbound and limited in number, produced at his expense by the Crimson Printing Company. In 1944 he began another hardbound series, The Bulletin of the Canadian Collection at Harvard University, which ran to six volumes by 1949 and was printed (also at his expense) by the Harvard University Printing Office. 
The latter issues of the Chronicle frequently contained inventories of Canadiana given to Harvard and sometimes texts as well; the Bulletin was wholly made up of such things. This is where I became further involved with Dr. Morse, for he was anxious to find someone to provide material for his publications. For his sake (and Bill Jackson's) I struggled with French notarial handwriting of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and translated the documents involved, and I transcribed and edited correspondence of Thomas Chandler Haliburton, Bliss Carman, and other Canadian worthies. Dr. Morse also drew on the labors of Arthur Rau in London and Dr. Gustave Lanctot in Canada, both of whom were sources of some of the books and papers he collected, but they were far away and I was on tap right in Cambridge. 
So I came to know Dr. Morse, and later Mrs. Morse, quite well. My wife and I were living with our two small daughters in a flat in East Arlington, and the Morses invited us all to Sunday dinner—a gala event for us. After dinner Mrs. Morse charmed the little girls by giving them rides on the Inclinator in the staircase, while Dr. Morse and I retired to his library. Would I do him a great favor? He needed a new ribbon in his mammoth L. C. Smith typewriter, and found that his arthritic fingers refused to thread it through its complicated track. I did the job; but no one could install a ribbon in those machines unscathed. When he saw my inky fingers, Dr. Morse opened a door to reveal a small washstand. "Hold out your hands," he said, and poured most of a large bottle of eau de cologne over them, removing the ink but leaving powerful odors behind. When it was time to leave, amid profuse thanks on both sides, Mrs. Morse led my wife to a large table covered with new books and insisted that she should take home a selection of them. She was a confirmed patron of the Personal Book Shop, the literary depot for many Cambridge ladies, and all the latest titles were arrayed. 
Meanwhile Dr. Morse pulled open a drawer to reveal that it was full of new briar pipes and was equally insistent that I pick a few out. Giving pleasure—and presents—to others was deeply ingrained in their character. 
Once when I had produced a fairly lengthy contribution for the Bulletin of the Canadian Collection I was escorting Dr. Morse out the back door of the library, and as he left he turned to shake me by the hand. He was twinkling as usual and I sensed that it was not an ordinary handshake; indeed, I could feel that a tiny square object was involved. "Tell It not in Gath!" he said as he climbed into his limousine. After I locked the door, I looked at what had passed from hand to hand. It was a brand new one hundred dollar bill, folded as small as possible. That amounted to at least a week's salary before taxes, and it bought the coal for the hand-fired furnace of our Arlington flat that winter. I was, and remain, profoundly grateful. And I think that it is high time to tell it in Gath. 

I am indebted for biographical details to the much more extensive memoir by his granddaughter, Susan Hilles Bush, "William Inglis Morse, a Book Collector Extraordinaire," in "The Book Disease": Atlantic Provinces 
Book Collectors, ed. Eric L. Swanick, Dalhousie University School of Library and Information Services, Occasional Papers Series (Halifax, N.S., 1996), 33-70. 

William H. Bond is Librarian emeritus of the Houghton Library.