Curatorial Assistant and Social Media Manager Jake Gentry spotlights personal archives with the multigenerational album of Harriet Thayer and her daughter Henrietta Malvina.
Archival science may not seem like it on the surface at times, but it is incredibly personal. The papers, books, and realia preserved in archives represent or are extensions of people, and the desire to preserve the memories of those people drives many to form their own personal archives. Interestingly, exposure to archives and libraries– as cultural preservation institutions– also can galvanize people to begin collecting and curating records of their lives. A prime example of this can be found at the Lilly Library in the Thiébault Family manuscript collection, with Harriet Thayer’s album. A wonderful example of a grangerized (embellished by insertion of other materials) book– Thayer collected riddles, autograph notes, musical notation, recipes, ephemera, original and found poems, songs, letters, hand-drawn illustrations, newspaper clippings, wedding announcements, and even hair within her album. Serving as a miniature personal archive, Thayer utilized her album not only to preserve her artwork and hobbies but also her family records.
To begin, the album gives the contemporary reader a window into Harriet Thayer’s early life and her family. She was the daughter of an English country gentleman named Edward Loveden, an esquire who possessed a large estate in the English countryside. The first entry of the album is dated March 1815, when Thayer was 24-years-old. Her entries consisted of tipped-in letters, as well as hand-drawn illustrations. Some of the subjects of her early artwork are a dog, a butterfly, flowers, and her beloved pet horse, Lodoiska. Thayer’s love of nature, art, and animals remains a constant in the album, especially butterflies, which appear in numerous entries.
In 1818, Thayer met her future husband, Adolphe Thiébault, in London while he was visiting his mother, Elizabeth “Betzy” Walker. Adolphe’s family had recently been ennobled by Napoleon Bonaparte, with his father, Paul Thiébault, named a Baron de l’Empire after commanding the French military on the Iberian Peninsula from 1807 to 1811. Paul was not Adolphe’s only empirically powerful relative, however. His fraternal grandfather– Dieudonné Thiébault– was intimate friends with Louis XV and served as Keeper of the Archives and Sous-Chef of the Bureau de la Librarie in 1785. Following in his grandfather’s footsteps, Adolphe became an academic instructor and historian– a career that would aid him in eventually compiling his family’s archives.
After her marriage to Adolphe, Harriet Thayer’s album takes on a new role as her personal archive, with the inclusion of materials like correspondence, a portrait of her father after his death, two locks of Adolphe’s childhood hair given to her by his mother, collected songs, and newspaper clippings featuring her and her extended family. Thayer later includes more ephemeral materials as well, such as an illustration drawn by her goddaughter Emily, and a newspaper clipping listing her family members, including her young daughter, Henrietta ‘Malvina’ Thiébault. Malvina appears in both illustration and text from then on, including this silhouette illustration created by Harriet in 1832.
Artwork remains the most prominent entry in Thayer’s album, as she chronicles many of her experiences through them, in like manner of a photo album. For example, Thayer creates a landscape painting to commemorate a trip to Valencia in 1817 and records Malvina riding a horse in 1839 with a sketch. Thayer frequently painted and collected botanical illustrations of various flowers, and at least once, tipped a ring of pressed flowers into the album. One of the most striking leaves of the album is an original poem entitled “Enigma,” in which Thayer framed with an illuminated frame reminiscent of a medieval manuscript. Interspersed among the spiraling, flowering vines are butterflies, birds, fruits, and a snake, which coils itself around a large, inhabited “A” initial (note: inhabited initials are initials that utilize purely decorative figures, human or animal). Thayer dates the poem December 1833, and intriguing– no more entries– before or after this date feature anything similar in style or extravagance.
Passing On the Album
In January 1842, at 51, Thayer transferred her album to Malvina, conveyed by a dedication poem titled “To My Daughter, on making to her a transfer of my album.” From this point on in the album, Malvina continues her family’s archival tendencies and fills the album’s pages with various inserts, letters, and illustrations. Malvina, unlike her mother, preferred to write in French in the album, rather than English, showcasing her Franco-British heritage. Among Malvina’s notable additions to the family album are autograph musical notation of original and collected songs, as well as newspaper clippings. One clipping details her marriage to Valentine Otway Inglefield, an English naval officer, in Paris on June 10, 1852. Another insert is an invitation addressed to a “Madame Otway Inglefield” and “Monsieur le Capitaine de Frégate [Frigate Captain] Otway Inglefield” for an event in Paris in 1854.
Like her mother, Malvina was also an artist and often inserted sketches and illustrations of buildings and architecture. Among her entries are a fortress and stone bridge in Cologne, a mansion in the Canton of the Grisons in Switzerland, the ruins of an ancient Roman aqueduct in Jouy-aux-Arches, France, and an untitled cottage overlooking a bridge. Malvina had an adoration for nature, and she also included illustrations of ducks, trees, and landscapes. Interestingly, at the back of the album is a small insert detailing the answers to the numerous riddles Harriet Thayer scattered throughout her entries. This interesting insert postulates two possible paths of provenance. The first is that Harriet created this insert and placed it in the back of the album herself when that part of the album was still blank, knowing one day someone would read her album and seek the answers to her various riddles. The second is that Malvina went through her mother’s entries and answered each of her mother’s riddles, creating the insert for future readers. Although the truth can probably never be known, either reason as to why there is a riddle-answer insert is a delightful addition to the album.
Harriet Thayer passed away in 1860, and Adolphe compiled all of her papers into a personal archive, as he had done for his parents, siblings, and grandparents. He later used these papers to write a biography of Harriet Thayer. For the remainder of his life, up until he died in 1875, Adolphe collected the papers and materials of his various family members. Thayer’s album, as well as most of the Thiébault Family manuscript collection, likely only exists today because of Adolphe organizing them.
Harriet Thayer’s album provides a unique example of a personal archive, as a mother, father, and daughter became integral facets of its provenance. Harriet Thayer and Malvina contributed and collected items for the album, while Adolphe preserved it, with the rest of Thayer’s papers. Compiled not for scholarly research, but out of familial love, the album is a multigenerational amalgamation of history, keepsakes, records, and memories. Luckily, this personal archive made its way to the Lilly Library, so now anyone who wishes to learn about the private lives of the Thiébault family can do so. I will conclude with one of Harriet Thayer’s riddles. If you want the answer, look for the randomly bolded letters throughout this last paragraph!
Riddle:
They took the unrelenting steel/
And cut me to a slender shred/
Then held me by the quivering heel/
And instant to the torture led.
About the Author
Jake H. Gentry is a 26-year-old gay author, artist, and graduate student. He received his Master of Library Science with a specialization in Rare Books and Manuscripts at Indiana University Bloomington, where he is now also pursuing his MA in Curatorship. He is a curatorial assistant at the Lilly Library. Born and raised in southern Appalachia, he now lives in Bloomington, Indiana, with his partner and his two cats, Poe and Jiji.
References
Biographical Note [of Finding Aid], Thiébault Family mss., Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, https://archives.iu.edu/catalog/InU-Li-VAA2416
Harriet Thayer’s album, Thiébault Family mss., Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, https://archives.iu.edu/catalog/InU-Li-VAA2416aspace_VAA2416-00028
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