{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/z31ng4hm4z/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Wynne, Marjorie G., 2007 November 12"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/013/original/yale-blue.png?1678220072","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Preferred Citation"]},"value":{"en":["Wynne, Marjorie G., 2007 November 12. Oral Histories Documenting Yale University Women (RU 1051). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.\n\n https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/12/resources/2559."]}},{"label":{"en":["Source Metadata URI"]},"value":{"en":["https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/12/archival_objects/801949"]}},{"label":{"en":["Publisher"]},"value":{"en":["Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library."]}},{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["Access to the materials is partially restricted. See Collection Contents for details.\n\nOriginal computer files may not be accessed due to their fragility. Researchers must consult access copies."]}},{"label":{"en":["Identifier"]},"value":{"en":["mssa.ru.1051 (EAD ID)","RU 1051 (Call Number)","ru_1051_2012-a-057_wynne_marjorie_g_audiorecording.mp3 (Digital Object ID)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2007 November 12 (Creation)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["The materials are open for research. (Accessrestrict)","Marjorie G. Wynne was born March 7, 1917, in Petersburg, Virginia.  Her father died in the influenza pandemic of 1918, which obliged her mother to seek work as a secretary and eventually to open a nursery school and kindergarten.  Despite the financial struggle, acerbated by the Great Depression, it was always assumed that Wynne would go to college.  She graduated from Duke University in 1938 but, for financial reasons, did not consider graduate school. Instead, she worked for two years in the Duke Library to save enough money to go to library school, which she attended at the University at California, Berkeley, graduating with a Certificate in Librarianship in 1941.  Remaining for a Master’s degree was a financial impossibility.  Instead, she worked briefly at the Pennsylvania Military College in Chester, Pennsylvania, before joining the staff of the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University in 1942, initially as Serial Cataloguer and then Assistant in the Rare Book Room. From 1947 to 1963 she was Librarian of the Rare Book Room.  With the opening of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in 1963, she was appointed as the Edwin J. Beinecke Research Librarian, a position she held until her retirement in 1987.  In 1968 she became one of the first non-faculty women to be elected a fellow of Timothy Dwight College. \n\nWynne has written many articles on bibliography, including a contribution to Rare Book Collections: Some Theoretical and Practical Suggestions for Use by Librarians and Students (American Library Association, 1965) and a guide to the J.M. Barrie collection in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.  She curated several exhibitions at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and her published exhibition catalogs include James Joyce, 1882-1942 (1982) and F.T. Marinetti and Futurism (1983).\n\nAfter retiring, Wynne remained active in her discipline and is a member of the Grolier Club, the Association Internationale de Bibliophilie, and Yale’s Elizabethan Club.  She was one of the first women to be admitted to the Grolier Club in 1976 when it was opened to women for the first time.  She has served as Secretary of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences and as President of the New Haven branch of the English-Speaking Union.  Her portrait, commissioned by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and painted by Irene Hecht, was unveiled in 2006.  In the same year, she established the Marjorie G. Wynne fellowship in British Literature, which provides funds for visiting scholars at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.\n\nMarjorie G. Wynne, who spent 45 years as a rare book librarian at Yale University, died on Sunday evening, April 5, 2009, in her home at Whitney Center in Hamden, Conn. She was 92 years old. (Bioghist)","Marjorie G. Wynne discusses her southern upbringing during the Great Depression and how this affected her subsequent life decisions.  She recalls briefly her undergraduate education at Duke University and speaks extensively about her professional training and social life at the University of California, Berkeley, Library School and the support and encouragement she received from people like Edith Coulter and Richard Archer.  The bulk of her interview is concerned with her long career at Yale University.  She recalls her first impressions of the Sterling Memorial Library and why she chose Yale over a better paid position at Brown University.  She reflects at length on her work as Librarian of the Rare Book Room.  She recalls the library as one of the few places at Yale where women were highly visible, and discusses both the opportunities and limitations that women of her generation encountered there.  She talks about several of the senior women, including Emily Hall and Grace Fuller, and their roles in the day-to-day operation of the library.  She provides many personal anecdotes about University Librarians, James Tinkham Babb and Bernhard Knollenberg, and Chauncey Brewster Tinker, Librarian of the Rare Books Room.  She also discusses relationships between library staff and faculty and her own involvement with the Yale Dramatic Association and Timothy Dwight College.   Wynne recalls the building of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and the circumstances surrounding her appointment as the Edwin J. Beinecke Research Librarian.   She talks about her encounters with Edwin Beinecke and her enduring friendship with Donald Gallup, the book collector and bibliographer.  Her interview ends with discussion of her major retirement project (which was the refurbishment of the Elizabethan Club in 1996), her continuing involvement in rare book librarianship, and the painting of her portrait for the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in 2006. (Scope and Content Note)","https://preservica.library.yale.edu/explorer/explorer.html#prop:4\u0026amp;b278ea6e-b5c7-47ba-b425-8e92041ae117 (Other Finding Aid Note)","This material was originally acquired in 2009 as a direct network transfer from Yale shared network attached storage and artificial logical AD1 forensic images were created. AD1 images were extracted in May 2020 and resulting files processed. Audio files which had been originally recorded in short sequential tracks, were merged together into a single processed master wav file with fre:ac software. (Processinfo)"]}}],"summary":{"en":["The materials are open for research.","Marjorie G. Wynne was born March 7, 1917, in Petersburg, Virginia.  Her father died in the influenza pandemic of 1918, which obliged her mother to seek work as a secretary and eventually to open a nursery school and kindergarten.  Despite the financial struggle, acerbated by the Great Depression, it was always assumed that Wynne would go to college.  She graduated from Duke University in 1938 but, for financial reasons, did not consider graduate school. Instead, she worked for two years in the Duke Library to save enough money to go to library school, which she attended at the University at California, Berkeley, graduating with a Certificate in Librarianship in 1941.  Remaining for a Master’s degree was a financial impossibility.  Instead, she worked briefly at the Pennsylvania Military College in Chester, Pennsylvania, before joining the staff of the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University in 1942, initially as Serial Cataloguer and then Assistant in the Rare Book Room. From 1947 to 1963 she was Librarian of the Rare Book Room.  With the opening of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in 1963, she was appointed as the Edwin J. Beinecke Research Librarian, a position she held until her retirement in 1987.  In 1968 she became one of the first non-faculty women to be elected a fellow of Timothy Dwight College. \n\nWynne has written many articles on bibliography, including a contribution to \u003ctitle render=\"italic\"\u003eRare Book Collections: Some Theoretical and Practical Suggestions for Use by Librarians and Students\u003c/title\u003e (American Library Association, 1965) and a guide to the J.M. Barrie collection in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.  She curated several exhibitions at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and her published exhibition catalogs include \u003ctitle render=\"italic\"\u003eJames Joyce, 1882-1942\u003c/title\u003e (1982) and \u003ctitle render=\"italic\"\u003eF.T. Marinetti and Futurism\u003c/title\u003e (1983).\n\nAfter retiring, Wynne remained active in her discipline and is a member of the Grolier Club, the Association Internationale de Bibliophilie, and Yale’s Elizabethan Club.  She was one of the first women to be admitted to the Grolier Club in 1976 when it was opened to women for the first time.  She has served as Secretary of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences and as President of the New Haven branch of the English-Speaking Union.  Her portrait, commissioned by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and painted by Irene Hecht, was unveiled in 2006.  In the same year, she established the Marjorie G. Wynne fellowship in British Literature, which provides funds for visiting scholars at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.\n\nMarjorie G. Wynne, who spent 45 years as a rare book librarian at Yale University, died on Sunday evening, April 5, 2009, in her home at Whitney Center in Hamden, Conn. She was 92 years old.","Marjorie G. Wynne discusses her southern upbringing during the Great Depression and how this affected her subsequent life decisions.  She recalls briefly her undergraduate education at Duke University and speaks extensively about her professional training and social life at the University of California, Berkeley, Library School and the support and encouragement she received from people like Edith Coulter and Richard Archer.  The bulk of her interview is concerned with her long career at Yale University.  She recalls her first impressions of the Sterling Memorial Library and why she chose Yale over a better paid position at Brown University.  She reflects at length on her work as Librarian of the Rare Book Room.  She recalls the library as one of the few places at Yale where women were highly visible, and discusses both the opportunities and limitations that women of her generation encountered there.  She talks about several of the senior women, including Emily Hall and Grace Fuller, and their roles in the day-to-day operation of the library.  She provides many personal anecdotes about University Librarians, James Tinkham Babb and Bernhard Knollenberg, and Chauncey Brewster Tinker, Librarian of the Rare Books Room.  She also discusses relationships between library staff and faculty and her own involvement with the Yale Dramatic Association and Timothy Dwight College.   Wynne recalls the building of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and the circumstances surrounding her appointment as the Edwin J. Beinecke Research Librarian.   She talks about her encounters with Edwin Beinecke and her enduring friendship with Donald Gallup, the book collector and bibliographer.  Her interview ends with discussion of her major retirement project (which was the refurbishment of the Elizabethan Club in 1996), her continuing involvement in rare book librarianship, and the painting of her portrait for the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in 2006.","https://preservica.library.yale.edu/explorer/explorer.html#prop:4\u0026b278ea6e-b5c7-47ba-b425-8e92041ae117","This material was originally acquired in 2009 as a direct network transfer from Yale shared network attached storage and artificial logical AD1 forensic images were created. AD1 images were extracted in May 2020 and resulting files processed. Audio files which had been originally recorded in short sequential tracks, were merged together into a single processed master wav file with fre:ac software."]},"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["Access to the materials is partially restricted. See Collection Contents for details.\n\nOriginal computer files may not be accessed due to their fragility. Researchers must consult access copies."]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Manuscripts and Archives Yale University Library"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Manuscripts and Archives Yale University Library"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/013/original/yale-blue.png?1678220072","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/public/images/audio-default.png","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - open-uri20210827-32762-1dblszh.mpga"]},"duration":10045.416,"width":640,"height":40,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/public/images/audio-default.png","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-yalemssa.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/122/277/original/open-uri20210827-32762-1dblszh.mpga?1630069919","type":"Audio","format":"audio/mpeg","duration":10045.416,"width":640,"height":40},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["ru_1051_2012-a-057_wynne_marjorie_g_edited_transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Wynne 111207\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: There we go.  I think we're recording.  Um it's uh Monday the 12th of November, 2007 and I'm at the home of Marjorie G. Wynne.  Uh who uh was um the librarian uh in the Beinecke Library for a very many years.  And uh we're um going to do this interview for the women's oral history project.  And I'm very, very pleased to, Marjorie, that you've consented to uh give me an interview.  I hope you enjoy the whole process.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: It's not a question.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.  It's a statement and a question together.  Let me um now you tell me if uh you're having difficulties understanding what I say I -- because I've got an Irish accent.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Yes, you do.  You've dropped your voice.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.  I've-- I've got an Irish voice, and it's difficult--\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Uh well, you could begin by saying that-- being specific--\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.  \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: -- by saying that I was the Edwin J. Beinecke Research Librarian in the Beinecke Rare Book And Manuscript Library from 1963 until my retirement in 1987.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Forty years?  No.  No.  Twenty-- twenty-five years almost?  Yes.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Mmm-hmm.  \r\n\nINTERVIEWER: But your-- your um association with Yale goes back very many more years before that.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: It-- it does.  It started in September, 1942 when I came uh to be um an-- well, I'm not sure what I was called then.  I was hired by Ms. Grace [Fua] who was head of the serial department and a lovely person, who I enjoyed working with immensely.  I was not sure that I enjoyed working with serials, but there I was. I-- in a position that I took just to be in the Yale University library.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So we're going to have to cover upwards of forty years or more.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Forty.  Forty-five years.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.  \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Mmm-hmm.  \r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Well, we've got a lot of material then to get through.  Uh I'd like to start not with Yale, because after all you were in your twenties before you came to Yale.  I think there was a lot that you'd experienced, and seen, and studied uh before you actually came to Yale as a-- as a-- as a junior member of the Sterling Library.  Um I'd like you-- if you would be so kind to say something about your own background uh and whether you grew up um in a family that there was an expectation that women would have a career?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, I was uh born in Petersburg, Virginia in 1917.  And my father died in the influenza epidemic of 1918.  And uh my mother was one of five daughters.  And my-- none of them had gone to college uh until the last one, Mary Brown Allgood uh had a very good career in um home economics.  And ended teaching up at Appalachian State College, I think it was then called.  Um with a year-- visiting year at University at Helsinki and she was the first one of our family on my mother's side to uh go to college.  It was assumed that I would go although it was a struggle for my mother to ensure that I was able to go.  \r\n\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=0.0,304.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MARJORIE WYNNE: My mother after my father's death, we moved back to my grandparents' house, and my mother in the next few years prepared herself to open a nursery school and kindergarten.  She prepared by going on during two summers to take classes at the University of Chicago, and the second summer at Columbia University.  In between, she was doing secretarial work.  And then when I was about six years old, she opened her school.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Why did she decide that uh opening a school was-- was a-- was--?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: She was very-- she was very interested in children.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.  \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: And it was the thing that attracted her more than anything else.  And it was certainly what she could uh could do uh more successfully than anything else with her preparation.  So this school in-- that would have been in the '20s, early '20s.  And in a small southern town in Virginia, a nursery and kindergarten were not the usual thing.  It was a struggle in a way to persuade people uh that it-- it was useful to send children to early schools.  It was not until the second World War, around 1940 or so, that mother's school really flourished because the Fort [Leigh], which was on the outskirts of Petersburg was rebuilt, reactivated, and at the beginning of the second World War.  And it was staffed by uh Officers and others who came from many different parts of the country.  Many of them were-- have children who were already been in kindergartens and so uh mother found that her school was growing enormously.  And then that was also at that time when one of the men who at Wichita, who had come to um-- he-- he was a-- a contractor of some kind who my mother met.  And they fell in love, and she got married again.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Really?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: And--.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: By this time you'd have left for college?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Oh, yes.  I'd gone-- I was-- uh yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.  \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: I left in 19-- I graduated from high school in the Petersburg High School in 1934.  And went that fall to Duke University where I stayed until I graduated in 1938.  I--\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Let me-- let me talk-- I-- I don't want us to get ahead of ourselves because it's really important.  And I'm fascinated by the way that how you might have discovered that you were obviously a-- a very bright, young woman at-- at high school.  Uh that you clearly grew up in difficult circumstances during the Depression, uh added to the fact that your mother was a widow.  That there must have been quite a lot of pressures on you one way and another, uh which might not have necessarily have been conducive to pursuing an academic life.  I just wondered, looking back on your teenage years, how much encouragement you got to pursue academic excellence?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Oh, I got in-- well, um.\r\n\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=304.0,600.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MARJORIE WYNNE: It just turned out that I-- although I had friends my age, and I had a very nice group of friends living in my neighborhood near a park in Petersburg.  And-- and I enjoyed playing tennis, and going on picnics, and uh that sort of thing with them.  The thing I liked best was to spend time in the small, Petersburg Public Library reading books, bringing books home, reading them all the time.  And I had uh very good teachers in high school.  Especially my English teacher um whose name was [Pinkney Powers].  A marvelous person who encouraged me in every way and but of course I was already headed for college because my mother uh realized that I wanted to go and should go.  And so uh the means were found.  My father was a mason and I think that there was a small fund for the children of deceased masons.  And um at my father's death, he was-- although he was twenty-five when he died, there was uh a bit of money, which was used to uh uh send me to college.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: So it was uh-- it was not easy, uh but it was-- it was done um carefully, and properly, and there was just no question that I wouldn't go to college.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Your mother sounds a very determined woman.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: She certainly-- she certainly was.  She had many adverses uh in her life, but there was um she-- she was very well known, and well liked in Petersburg because so many of the children of uh people who were um in important positions in Petersburg came to her school.  So she was-- she was known, and loved, and-- and uh got all the help and cooperation that could be given to her. \r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.  What was it like growing up as a young woman in southern society at that time?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Um, well, the thing that bothered me most was the situation with the-- with segregation.  I never got used to it.  Um and it-- because it was what determined me not to live in the south.  I know my mother would have loved it if I had stayed and taken on the school when she had decided to give it up.  But in the first place, I had no talent for working with-- or skill for working with children.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: (laughter) \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: And I could never live in the south.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Hmm that's really interesting.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: So--.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: I-- as soon as I graduated-- actually, I had stayed at Duke for two years after I graduated in order to work in the library and to save a little bit of money to go to library school.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So when did you decide you wanted to go to library school rather than pursuing um graduate work?\r\n\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=600.0,904.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MARJORIE WYNNE: Well, I would love to have uh gone to graduate school um and had-- got a Ph.D.  But it was no question my mother had uh made many sacrifices to send me for four years.  And there was just not-- it was just not possible for me not to begin earning my own living.  So I earned a bit of money working in the biology library at Yale, I mean I'm sorry, at Duke.  (laughter) \r\n\nINTERVIEWER: (laughter)  You're getting ahead of yourself there.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Yeah, right.  And uh--.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Was this as an undergraduate or-- or--?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Oh, it was gra-- I-- I-- I was-- had graduated.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.  Did you work at all as an undergraduate?  Did you have to pay any of your way through college?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Uh well, I did.  But it was not in the library.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: All right.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: I worked in the dining room.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: But the thing was that I met.  I was always in the library, and Duke had a marvelous undergraduate-- uh a library on the women's, so-called, women's campus.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Oh, so it was--\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: The east campus.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- segregated by gender as well as by race?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, there was the-- the west campus.  Men lived on the west campus, women lived on the east campus.  The east-- but, of course, women eventually did use books in the west campus library.  And-- but I tended to gravitate to librarians.  And the librarians-- the women in the East Campus all knew me, and I-- there was a marvelous room in that library that was-- which was filled with very special uh books, fine-printing um all of the lots of the arts, literature, and the arts.  The books and I would go and sit there uh and think that this would be the place, just the thing I would like to do when I grew up.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: (laughter) \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: I also knew the librarians at-- in the main-- in-- in the main University library on the West Campus.  And that was John [Lund] uh for example, who was a graduate of the University of California, at Berkeley library school.  And-- and when he-- and-- and I talked about going to library school.  He was determined that I was going to go to the library school at Berkeley.  Well, I hadn't-- I began to think that it would be a very nice thing to do.  There were not too many library schools at that time.  And uh um there was Columbia, and Wisconsin, Illinois.  But the one at Berkeley had great certain charm for me, that it was as far away as home that I could get.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: (laughter) \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Not that I wanted to leave my mother, uh but that I wanted to see another part of the country.  And so the at first this-- uh Berkeley was reluctant to accept me because it really serviced-- served the people out west of the Rockies.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: On the west coast.  And it was very diligent in getting jobs for them afterwards.  Um they were not interested in an unknown Easterner coming out who uh would expect them to-- to place her uh somewhere on the west coast.  Well, when I could tell them that I had no intention, at least I thought, of staying on the west coast they were more relaxed about that.  And with Mr. Lund's help, I'm sure, recommendation, they did accept me.\r\n\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=904.0,1205.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MARJORIE WYNNE: And it was a great um experience.  \r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Tell me about going to Berkeley.  Um--.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, my first (inaudible)  we had to get there, and it was a long way away.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.  \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: And-- but my mother, ever skillful at arranging things, had at that time a one of the early Station Wagons, which she used to um go and take her students, pick them up in the morning, some of them, and take them home in the afternoon.  Arranged with a couple of her friends, ladies her age, to take a month's trip uh and they'd help pay for the gasoline, and made it all possible.  So we all went, about four of us, four or five of us, may-- I think maybe five, and started out driving from Petersburg to Berkeley.  Um and it was fascinating all the way.  We went the Southern way, we stopped at motels, and uh we went through Arizona, it was terribly hot, and we should have perhaps taken a northern route in the end of summer.  But there we were.  And we came into California in the southern part.  I'm sorry I can't quite remember the place, and then drove up the coast, to Berkeley.  And since Berkeley had few dormitories for graduate students, um many people lived in homes that had been turned into boarding houses around the campus.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: I found a very, very nice home um operated by a Mrs. Cook, herself a widow.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: (coughs)\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: And so I had a nice room to myself, room and bath on the third floor next to a-- not a student, but a woman, a secretary at the university whose name was [Nekta Davidian].  She was my first introduction to an Armenian, and the wide Armenian on the west coast.  And we became devoted uh to each other.  And I very much enjoyed my time with Mrs. Cook, and Nekta, and several other um older people who were living and-- and boarding in that home on Benvenue Avenue. \r\n\nINTERVIEWER: It must have been-- it must have felt very exotic.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Uh very exotic.  And not the least bit the state-- the flowers that we saw.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: (coughs)\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: I came from a place where you had-- you saw a Geranium in a pot, perhaps on the windowsill.  Um in Berkeley, when I was to meet for the first time a friend of a friend in Virginia, I spoke to Ms. McMillan, the friend I was going to meet, and we agreed to meet in the Emporium, which was a large, lovely uh department store in San Francisco.  I asked how I would recognize her, and she said I will be carrying a flower.  So I go over, I go into the department store, the ground floor.  I walk down the center aisle, until I see an attractive, gray hated woman approaching me, waving the largest Geranium that I have ever seen on a stalk about almost over a foot-- almost a foot and a half to two feet.\r\n\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=1205.0,1515.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"INTERVIEWER: (laughter) \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: And so we met.  That was the way all of the flowers, they were lovely of course, they were love-- lovely, lush.  They grew so in beautifully out there.  Quite different from the ones I had.  So there I am, in um in Berkeley.  And the library school teachers-- the library school was coming to a close.  That is it had been started, and I cannot remember the dates of its origin uh by a man, and of course I'm-- I was thinking of man names, of his name, for the first time and a long time now, and it will come back to me.  But the two women, Ms. [Sicila], and Ms. Edith Colta, uh and the man was-- well, we'll have to put that in later.  They had originated the school many years ago, and were still teaching.  And would not um not too long after I left, they would retire.  The--\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: What about the students?  Were they all women or what sort of--?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Oh, they were not.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Were they not?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: No.  Um at all.  Let me just say that I had uh finished working two years at Duke, and went out there for the-- for the year beginning 1940.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.  \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: So that I graduated in 1941.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: And, um, I'm sorry that I couldn’t have stayed two years, and received a Masters degree.  But they had a certificate, as it was called, certificate in librarianship I believe.  I haven't look at my degree, at my piece of paper, piece of velum, in a long time.  But uh, you do get a certificate after one year, but a-- an-- a Masters in library service so, what it--.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Was this uh-- was this fu-- purely a financial decision on your part?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Oh, fine, purely.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: I really had to um begin earning a living, no question about it.  Um so you asked about um--.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Men-- how many--?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: They were women, but there were quite a few men.  And it was there that I met a man who was-- who became a lifelong friend, and his wife equally.  They had no children.  This was Margot and Richard Archer.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: And we kept up and saw each other um for until Richard died and Margot died.  And they are a lovely friend, friends of mine.  And Richard had a distinguished career at the Clark Library in Los Angeles, also at Chicago, and eventually at the um [Taypin] Library at Williams College, which was that being closer to New Haven after I got to New Haven, and we were able to see each other um more often.  One of the nice things that uh the library school did was to have a group called The Book Arts Club.  And people who were, indeed, more interested in the book arts than, perhaps, in cataloging, uh joined the club.  And it seemed um special, not sponsor, but person interested in it was Samuel [Farqua].\r\n\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=1515.0,1808.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MARJORIE WYNNE: Then the director of the University of California Press.  We had meetings and outings, and talks.  And we also uh were to uh print a book each year.  And Richard was president, I was secretary, several other-- there were several other people, and we worked very hard to produce a book.  It was-- we decided to collect some of the most articles by famous librarians, and to reprint them in a uh-- a book-- can-- do we ever cut this off?  (laughter) \r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.  Of course, we can stop here, yes.  OK.  We're recording again, not that you found the book.  \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: It was a collection of articles as-- by uh for example, Randolph Adams, T.M. [Clelind], Edwin Grabhorn, Lawrence Roth, and uh with an interjection by James D. Hart who of course was head of Bancroft Library for many years.  It's called About Books: A Gathering of Essays.  And for various reas--\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: What a lovely front display on it.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Yes.  And the um-- the whole point of this was that these were articles that looked, we thought, should be easily available, and uh printed in one between two covers, and so we did it.  And it was a great experience.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So-- so you were training to be a librarian, but clearly you were very passionate about the aesthetic, physical object of the book.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, the people around me were uh the uh Richard Archer and um the Mr. Farqua.  And when school was over, and I was about to be thrown out into the world, um with nowhere to go, because I had um written to about a half dozen of places on the east coast that I would consider uh working in.  And had received uh letters saying there were no positions. \r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Was Yale included in that list?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Of course.  Uh Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Brown.  Um I forget what else.  But uh Mr. Farqua said, well, uh now why don't you stay on for the summer here, and catalogue the Fine Press books that-- in the library of the University of California Press.  And so I did.  And um I was seeing and handling beautifully produced books, and pamphlets.  And getting acquainted with the press itself, and how it produced books.  And so that, of course, had to come to an end.  And one of the librarians um whose-- who-- who wrote an article that we included in the books, uh about uh-- and this-- did I ever read the full title of the--?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I think you read most of them, yes.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: About Books: A Gathering of Essays.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.  Yes.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: OK.  One of them was Randolph G. Adams.  \r\n\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=1808.0,2102.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MARJORIE WYNNE: And um-- we must turn this off a minute-- minute.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: OK.  Fine.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Yeah.  And um--.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Just a moment.  Make sure we're recording again.  So how'd you-- how'd your-- um--?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, now I'm-- I-- it wasn't-- it wasn't uh Mr. Adams who had a-- a job opening.  It was Charles Shaw, who worked at um Swarthmore, was teaching a course at Ann Arbor, Michigan.  That's end of that-- end of that summer.  And he was-- since he was there, and I was coming home by train from Berkeley to Petersburg, Virginia, he suggested that I stop in Ann Arbor where he would be glad to interview me for a job in the reference department at Swarthmore.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: All of this I did.  And I met Mr. Adams and then I met Mr. Shaw, and I liked them both very much.  And Mr. Shaw went home, and decided to give the job to a man.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Did he actually say that to you or write that to you?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Um, yes.  And that's not the first and only time that that would be said to-- to me or to women.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Oh, was that the first time it had ever really hit you that--\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Oh, well--.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- maybe there was a different-- a different course for men and a di-- from that of women?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Yes, but I proBabbly knew that all-- already.  I can't say.  But anyway, so I went home to my mother, and uh and obviously I had no money.  And it was a real, real question of what I was going to do.  And about that time, I got a letter from a head of a small military college called Pennsylvania Military College in Chester, Pennsylvania.  And the reason I got that letter was because Mr. Shaw at least remembered me, and remembered that I needed a job.  And the-- and-- and learnt that Colonel [Hyatt] at P.M.C. needed a librarian.  So uh the letter came and what could I do but accept it?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Site unseen?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: P.M.C.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah, you saw-- you-- you accepted the job site unseen?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Oh, I did.  \r\n\nINTERVIEWER: That's-- that's a measure of how concerned you were.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, I-- I-- at that point, I really had no alternative.  I think there were one or two um thoughts at home with my mother about a teaching position in some local school.  But it was not uh what I wanted, of course.  And so at least Chester, Pennsylvania was the on-- was on the way to upper New England and--.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I'm-- I'm interested, not just because of the financial reason that you clearly needed to have an income.  I-- I-- I'm just wondering that maybe other women of your generation might have assumed that marriage was going to take care of the money problem?  Was that ever an assumption on your part that marriage would come along, and maybe in due course children, and so career would have maybe assumed a different position in your life?\r\n\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=2102.0,2407.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MARJORIE WYNNE: Oh, yes.  When I was young, and people would say, \"Now Marjorie, when are you going to be when you grow up?\" at age six, or seven, or eight.  Oh, I'm going to get married.  Of course, every um woman wants that.  But when it doesn't happen, there is no point in not carrying on and doing something interesting.  And of course, what happened is that as a fascinating career opened up, thoughts of marriage diminished.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: (laughter) \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: I mean there is nothing more excited than what I was doing.  And I en-- enjoyed it so much.  Anyway, that was a long way to go before I ever got doing that.  And here I am, at Pennsylvania Military College.  It was-- well, I-- I really hadn't thought about talking about P.M.C.  So it--\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So what was it like?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, it was a very small place.  And I don't know how many students they had, cadets they had.  All-- they all lived in the same building, uh had their classes, um and had a very small library of no consequence.  And there I was.  The nice thing about living in Chester, about that year, in fact I don't think I could call it even a year was that it was a lovely home and garden a few blocks from the campus.  And a widow, Mrs. Harvey, who knew Colonel Hyatt and-- and a lot of other people in Chester, let it be known to Mr.-- to Colonel Hyatt that uh she would be glad to welcome into her home a um new and attached faculty member uh if that seemed agreeable.  And it seemed very agreeable to me.  She was very kind, she had a grand piano, which I was very happy to practice on.  And um she gave me uh breakfast every morning, and the college gave me dinner every night.  And uh well, I cannot say what I did for lunch, but I must have survived some-- somewhere.  Uh but, and through Mrs. Harvey I met, socially, some of the people in town.  And-- and a couple of young people my age that lived across the street.  And I met them and their families.  So it really had a-- a-- a-- a rather pleasant social life.  But I-- and I did like the people who were teaching at P.M.C.  Some were Officers, some were civilians.  Uh they were amusing, and um and very nice to me.  But the-- the library was uh in, was nothing.  It-- really, you could call a library a few books.  And when I asked the Colonel the first time I saw him uh about a budget for the library, he said, \"Well, I think I could manage $100.\"\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: (laughter) \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: And so I took the $100 and went into some second-- second hand bookshops in Philadelphia, and bought some books back, and uh wrote to my friends at Berkeley who sent me some publications of the press.\r\n\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=2407.0,2704.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MARJORIE WYNNE: Um and the-- it-- faculty members thought it was great.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.  \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: But there was no way that I could stay at P.M.C.  And that-- so, this is the uh winter um of 1940--.  It's the--.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Winter of '41, wouldn't it be?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, it was in '41, right.  Get me-- begin-- going-- going to spring, and I was writing my letters, same letter, to Yale, Harvard, Brown, and so forth and so on.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Had Pearl Harbor actually happened by this time?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Came the seventh of December, 1941.  Pearl Harbor and of course things changed radically.  Uh the-- the-- I had replies from Yale and Brown.  It-- it is true that Yale's offer-- Yale's uh offer of an interview was in the serial department, which I think I could say was the last department I would ever expect to work-- work in.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: (laughter) Was it-- was the-- was the outbreak of war actually making possible that there were m-- those positions were going to be open simply because men were going to be off?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Oh, of course.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  So in a way, the war was your opportunity?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, I hate to put it that way, but I guess it was.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.  \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: I went uh and so I got an o-- offer for an interview at Brown and Yale.  And in the spring or summer, I went up to Yale and I can remember staying at the Taft Hotel over on College Street, and walking over to the Yale Library and gotten through those massive doors, meeting uh Ms. Fuller who took me to lunch at the Faculty Club.  Which we did have at that time, we no longer have one.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Was it open to women, the Faculty Club at that time?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, it was open to uh faculty and staff, yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Right.  Yes.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Of course.  And she took me there for lunch, and we had a lovely talk, and we came back, and we looked at things.  And again, I went um oh-- I can't remember how long I stayed.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: What was your first impression of Sterling?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Oh, it was magnificent.  I had never seen anything quite like it.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: It wasn't very old at that time, was it?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: It was twelve years old.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Right?  \r\nF1:Mmm-hmm.  \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Actually, it was eleven years old when I first was uh walked in as just up for an interview.  Um I then-- I was um I was-- I would have gladly stopped and not gone to Brown that weekend, the same--\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: -- I was also having an interview, which had been arranged for my convenience to get away from-- to do it in a one weekend.  And so I did, but of course I did.  And I'm sorry to say that I cannot remember anything about the Brown interview.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: (laughter) \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Not a thing.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And it wasn't for serials?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: No, it was for reference.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Was it?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: It was.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: It was, certainly.  I wouldn't have thought at that time that of all the things, departments, I would have been in-- I would have worked in, it would be reference more than cataloguing or serials.  At any rate, I came back to P.M.C. and received offers from both.  And one offer I think it was $1400 a year from Yale, and $1600 a year from Brown.\r\n\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=2704.0,3002.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MARJORIE WYNNE: There was no question in my mind as to which one I would accept.  And so I agreed to come-- to come to Yale in uh the uh late summer of or early autumn of 1942.  And-- and um I was, in a way, very sorry to leave Mr. Harvey and my nice, beautiful home, and grand piano, and friends.  And I can remember dressing um to go and tears rolling down my face.  And Mrs. Harvey saying, \"I don't think you're-- I don't think you should go.  You're crying.  Why don't you stay here.  Stay here.\"  \r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Oh.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: But I couldn't stay here.  So off I went.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You followed your heart.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, I had to.  I (inaudible) with my head any more than my heart.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: (laughter) \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: And so I think, and I cannot prove this, that it was the twenty-second of September that I walked through the doors again, and uh joined the serial department.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: How was it-- what was it like to be a s-- be a young, and I think attractive, single woman in an all-male institution like Yale.  How did you begin to develop a life for yourself at work and-- and outside work?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, a lot of-- a lot of the people in the Sterling Library were women, of course.  There were the head librarians, and there was the head librarian, and heads of departments.  Um, of-- of course one of the important things was to find a place for me to stay.  And I s-- remember that I stayed the first two weeks at the uh YWCA while I looked around.  And then the library, I'm sure it was the library, um someone in-- in the library told me uh that I could ab-- about a place on-- on the other side, the north side of the library on Mansfield Street.  I cannot remember the number.  It was a tall house, tall, slim house on the corner of Mansfield and the other street I can't remember at the moment.  And I was-- it was-- uh um occupied by all females, of course.  A graduate student, maybe two graduate students, and a student, first year student in the law school, and then myself.  We all had-- we had uh private rooms, and a community kitchen, and dining room, and living room on the first floor.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.  \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: But that was very nice, and I very much enjoyed the women that I met, especially one named Gertrude [Laten] who had been graduate-- graduated from Bryn Mawr as I remember.  And um most attractive, and intelligent um, interesting woman.  And she got her degree and she worked with-- I know that she worked with [Myas McDougal], he was-- and-- and I think they e-- even co-authored a book.  I mean she certainly worked with him on a book that was published.  But um Gertrude died uh early, and uh she was-- was a friend-- a great friend.  So I met her al-- also, I was staying there for about a year.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.  \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Because I wanted an apartment of my own, and I found a very small apartment, very close to the library on Park Street.  It was, I'm sorry to say, in the basement of a three story apartment building uh that was then privately owned, now owned by Yale where lots of students live.\r\n\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=3002.0,3316.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MARJORIE WYNNE: But it was-- I was very-- I decorated it um and I must say I lived there for many years, and had some marvelous t--times entertaining in a one-room apartment.  But making me--meals for friends.  One thing that was very nice for me was that soon uh, well as soon as I got to Yale, I wanted to enter graduate school just taking one course a-- a year.  Which was a term, which was uh then allowed.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.  \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: And I was able to do that sl-- but not the first year.  I had to work a whole year before I-- they would let me-- give me time off to take-- to go to a class during the day.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.  \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: And I did that from 1944 to '48 when I did get a Masters degree in-- in--\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: What-- what was your subject?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: -- in English.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: In English.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: I took four marvelous uh courses with um Dean [Devane], Gordon [Height], Alec Witherspoon, and oh dear, I've-- somehow I forget the fourth one, but the-- you see, I would meet a lot of students.  There were men and women students in-- in those classes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.  \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: And so that I became friends with them, and in the uh after '45, there were s-- quite a few men coming back to Yale to complete the uh degrees that they haven't gotten.  So--.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Tell me about the women in the library.  I-- I-- I think in one of our other conversations you said that that there was a quarter who ran the library.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well-- well, I thought--\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And yet none of them were the librarian.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: No.  But-- but then the librarian, you know, um through out a history (laughter) that's re-- that's a strange generalization to make, but often the librarian was not the person who ran the librarian or, if he was, uh he wasn't the one who knew most about it.  Uh you have, a-- people who are technology experts, or they are subject experts, or they-- you have a faculty member we-- even the Beinecke Library had uh faculty member take over at one time.  And so-- and of course, Mr. Babb-- Mr. [Nolinberg], Bernard Nolinberg, was the librarian when I-- who hired me in 1942.  And he was a-- a-- a charming, courtly man who was a lawyer.  And uh but his-- one of his main interests was American history.  And he wrote books about American history.  He had been a lawyer in Washington D.C. when the war broke out.  And a Mr. uh [Wilmoth Lewis], who was then I think senior member of the corporation, um urged him to come to New Haven and repl-- and take the position j-- just relinquished by Andrew [Cio], a stop who had been a wonderful librarian at Yale for oh, ten or fifteen years.\r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=3316.0,3620.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MARJORIE WYNNE: Well, Mr. Nolinberg did come back, and stayed.  I think he came, I would say, proBabbly came around 1938.  Uh and only a week later, I'm not sure of that, but by the early '40s he was being lured back to Washington, and at the time in-- in the war effort.  And so he went, leaving in charge as an acting librarian, James T. Babb.  Who was had shown a great deal of interest in the library.  He was himself a collector.  And then when Mr. Nolinberg did go back to Washington, and librarianship was vacant, and Mr. Babb was made the librarian.  Now just turn that off for a minute.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.  \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Um--.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: We've just come back for a short break.  Uh we've been talking about uh the-- the male, head chief librarians at Sterling.  Uh people like Mr. Nolinberg.  I just wondered since you had mentioned uh at one of-- in one of our other conversation that there was this quartet of women who actually did the day-to-day running of the library um uh under this kind of titular male head who was not a trained librarian.  Did you ever get a sense from those senior women when you were a young woman coming into the library that-- um that they ever resented the fact that the top position proBabbly was beyond them because they didn't have that academic connection with the university itself?  I'd be really interested to know what you recall, if anything.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, you know, it's very hard to say what a-- people rethink these things.  I can remember coming into Sterling, and the room that I would have spent more time in on my private time than any other room uh was a reading room, a li-- uh just-- a room that was fiction, and uh art, and so forth.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Was this the Ellen B. Room?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: This was [Linoa] and Brothers in Unity it was called.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.  \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: And that Brothers was a literary society, and uh-- I mean, Linoa was a literary society, and Brothers in Unity was another.  And when the library was growing in the nineteenth century, they decided they didn't need to have these separate libraries.  They melded them into-- in-- they were given to the university library.  And certainly in um 1930, when Sterling opened, a large, and luxurious room facing the courtyard, opening out on the courtyard, was called Linoa and Brothers in Unity.  And of course, it was LNB, and no women were allowed in, although the librarian was a woman.  But you could take books out of it, and but you could not go in and pick-- sit down, and read, and so on.  Well, it's very hard for me to remember.  I felt it was proBabbly, uh, more amusing than anything else.  I do have to say that uh it didn't bother me, it doesn't bother me, that there are men's-- there is of course a famous men's book club, women are not allowed to members of.  \r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=3620.0,3908.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MARJORIE WYNNE: But I-- I have never felt that it's my right to belong to everything or anything.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.  \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: And it doesn't disturb me other people may bother-- be bothered about it, but uh I am not.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.  \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: And um I was delighted when the [Grolia] Club in 1976, after almost 100 years, decided to admit women.  And then I was one of the first to be admitted, and I have enjoyed it immensely in years since in 1976.  But I have not been pounding on any doors to open for me.  It just um-- so I'm sorry I cannot say what those ladies, uh what they might have resented.  The fact is, that they were doing what they wanted to do.  I cannot imagine of them wanting to give up the interesting parts of their work to uh try to run a library.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.  \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Ms. Hall, Emily Hardy Hall, was the librarian of the rare book room.  Now of course, you have to remember that these women, at that time, were totally um unfit to run the library.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: By what way?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, she-- uh they may have had uh um a little uh college education.  But uh I don't think any of them had Ph.D.s.  They were not, um I-- I-- I-- I-- I-- they were not equipped to do th-- to do it.  They had no experience, they had-- well, I don't know what that previous experience was, but there was Ms. Hall who had worked in the Yale Library when it was uh in Dwight Hall.  I'm sorry I don't know when she first came to work, but she uh her education would have been by experience, and by working with Mr. [Tinka], and so when the Sterling was built, it was logical that she uh would be asked to be the librarian.  Ms. Ann Pratt, head of the reference department, was a superb reference librarian.  Uh but when you're good at certain jobs, it doesn't mean you could be the top.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.  \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: In-- in a business-- like running a big library.  And you can imagine how big it was compared to what the library had been in 1940-- in 1930 compared to what libraries had, at Yale, had been up until that time massive.  Ms. Monrad, Ms. Emma Monrad, uh head of the cataloguing department, equally superior in her work.  And these people could write interesting uh articles about their-- their work.  For example, when Mr. Cio retired in 1938 a volume uh was published in his honor.  And the-- the members of heads of the department and other members in the library wrote uh articles in that.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: And they could do this and review what they their-- their work, their experience at Yale.  But um it-- I-- they couldn't reas-- I don't see how they could have resented anything when they would have known their limitations.\r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=3908.0,4202.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MARJORIE WYNNE: And of course I could never resent anything.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Do you think--.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: I know my limitations in every direction.  It's only a very small part of Yale, both in the rare book room and a part in the Beinecke Library that I might have known that have then other people at that time, simply because I worked with them so long.  But that-- well, I've gotten off the point.  (laughter) \r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You um-- you started working in serials, which as you said was not your first love.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: In the what?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh, when you came to Sterling you started to work as serials.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Oh, serials.  Serials.  Right.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And you said that was not your first love.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: It was-- was-- was not, but it--.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: But how did you get from serials to the rare book room?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: To the rare book room.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I think that's important.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: I know. (laughter)  Well, as things happen, lots of things happen by little things.  And in the first place, I think that Ms. Pratt, I think that at least two or three of those ladies uh would have heard about me before I came because of my friendship with the librarian, the-- uh the faculty at the library school.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: People like Edith Colter?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Ms. Colter.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Right.  And Ms.-- Ms. Sicila, and the director, whose name I will have to look up, it still escapes me.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: (laughter) \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: So I didn't come as a total stranger.  And when I come, and in 1942 um there were not many people I would-- I think I could say this truthfully, um who had been to library school.  And not that that is a good or a bad thing, but you come in and you're somebody new, and you've come from a distant place, and you've been uh at school out there.  Um, well you-- you're noticed, and-- and it's a small group.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: In a positive way?  Noticed in a positive way?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, I hope so.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: (laughter) \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: (laughter) Yes.  And so I met these people.  I would have met them just as people coming in today will be, but now of course staff is so huge that uh-- but they will be introduced to everybody.  And um so--.  But um what was I saying?  Oh, in a serial department, there is a-- there-- you re-- you realize that libraries in 1942, certainly the methods of keeping track of things, the-- there's little resemblance to what is going on now.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I can believe.  There was no barcode, was there?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Uh there was no barcode.  There was no um um there were typewriters and typists, and they typed cards.  And then um in the serial department, of course what you had to do was enter the various parts as they came in, and entered them in a way that it would be um useful to somebody in the future.  So one of the things that we had to take care of in the serial department were the proclamations.  And I don't know whether you know that most states have Governors, and most states write proclamations for special occasions.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: And have been printed.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I didn't know that, no.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, this had been going on for a long time, and one of them um-- Connecticut seemed to have a great, a great many proclamations.  And I'm talking now for some in the eighteenth century, as well as in nineteen and the twentieth, which is where I was in the twentieth century.\r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=4202.0,4504.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"INTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.  \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Uh these would be proclamations by uh every year, let's say, Governor um would write a lovely proclamation about Thanksgiving and would be his way of-- and if he was uh skillful, it would be very nice.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.  \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: But not many people saw these.  Occasionally it would be printed in the newspaper, uh then some states-- now Connecticut has Arbor Day, for-- forget some of the others.  Arbor Day, [Perlaski] Day, he was a uh Polish friend of the colonies or the um-- I'm sorry, I-- I shouldn't say colonies because I've really forgotten exactly what period he was.  Uh we can fill that in later.  So there were proclamations coming frequently.  They were a proclamation because it's a broad side.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: It's very hard to cope with what you do with it.  Do you fold it?  Of course you don't.  Roll it up?  No.  You lay it down somewhere uh flat.  And so where do you have a cabinet big enough that you can put proclamations in and keep them safely because they are not bounds of what-- well, it's in the rare book room.  So the proclamation would come into the serial department, and it was my task to enter it on a card.  And because the proclamations in the twentieth century were coming, the ones that came to me regularly, uh were-- they were issued in various um stages of elegance.  Some had a gold seal, and a blue ribbon on them.  Some had uh just a gold seal.  Some had nothing except a signature of the Governor.  Well, somehow the library wanted to keep them all separate.  Not somehow, but of course they did.  And so it was necessary when you were entering a Thanksgiving proclamation to indicate whether it had a gold seal, a blue ribbon, or nothing.  Uh and I found that the way of entering those was, I thought, rather confusing.  So I set about the simplest thing that a person could do would be to make a space to enter all that have the blue ribbon in the bank, and the gold seal, or just the gold seal, or absolutely nothing.  And that involved nothing more than making two or three columns on a call-- a catalogue call card and checking them out, checking them in.  It couldn't have been simpler.  Um but it did involve my going into the rare book room because I had to deliver as the-- after the proclamations were delivered to me to enter, I then hand-- took them, by hand in to Ms. Hall and gave them to her to put in the cabinet.  And so Ms. Hall at least knew me.  And then the time came when I had made the simple revision of the catalogue card that I had to go to Ms. Hall and ask if I could remove the cards from the cat-- catalogue in the rare book room in order to redo them, because-- yes, of course I can.  So it was never said, but I'm firmly convinced that the simplest step in entering proclamations is what brought me to Ms. Hall's attention.\r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=4504.0,4814.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"INTERVIEWER: (laughter) That's wonderful.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: (laughter) And whether that has anything to do with the fact that months later one morning.  Let's see, this is-- would be in nine-- 1943, and I would say some time in the summer or fall of '43 I would have had a telephone call at 8:31 in the morning would I-- from Ms. Hall, would I please come into the rare book room a moment.  (coughs)  Excuse me.  (coughs)  So I did.  And there, I was asked if I would like to come and work in the rare book room.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Just like that?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Just like that.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: My goodness.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: So um I've forgot what I sa-- I don't remember what I said that moment, but I do know that I-- I was given uh either a few hours or a few days to think about this.  And then I went about talking to my friends uh to people I would-- Ms. Pratt for example, I would have gone to her and said something because I did have in mind uh if nowhere else um the idea that I someday might be asked to join the reference--\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: -- might apply for a job in the reference department.  Well, it was in-- interesting, the a-- answers that I got.  I mean the comments, not-- not necessarily answers, just the comments that I got.  And they were not much encouragement.  The idea was that it was um the-- the rare book room would uh would have been a kind of dead end.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Right.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: And nobody um a-- and I might-- I undoubtedly would have enjoyed it, but then what?  So and indeed, that was quite legitimate comment.  I mean what uh might I have done if I hadn't gone in to the rare book room um might have gone into reference, um who knows.  Anyway, I did say because that is what I wanted to do more than anything else, and so I did.  And um the staff was then Mr. [Tinka], uh Ms. Hall, and uh a clerical assistant, and me and uh and an assistant.  Who I (inaudible) .\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And of course, Mr. Tinka, that was Chauncy Tinka, the English do--\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Right.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh, I say English doniment, uh English faculty.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Faculty.  \r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Right.  Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: And of course he-- Mr. Tinka who had been working-- who had graduated from Yale in nineteen-- in 1896.  Here is my piece about Mr. Tinka in the-- a collection of the [Growia] Club biographies.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Oh.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: But um I'm just referring to (inaudible).\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So he must have been coming towards the end of his academic career?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: That's right.  Because he had uh graduated in 1899 from Yale College.  And earned a Ph.D. in 1902, he taught for a year at Bryn Mawr, was invited back to Yale, and never left.  Uh he--.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And he was a collector wasn't he as well?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Oh, he was a great collector.  He used-- and he used his material of course in teaching his courses.  And nothing was more dazzling for his graduate students than to be handed a cluster of letters by-- oh, Matthew Arnold, and told edit these or find out what you can about these and so forth and so on.\r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=4814.0,5121.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MARJORIE WYNNE: But of course, it's a marvelous way to teach.  So he had had a brilliant career and-- uh here.  And he retired I think about in 1945 from actual teaching.  But anyway, before we-- when the library was being-- the-- the Sterling Library was being considered, um a large area was given over to rare books and manuscripts.  And Mr. Tinka was named the first keeper, and the first and only keeper of rare books.  That, of course, as you know is a British title, and-- and never adapted very widely in this country.  But it was given to him and it died with him.  Uh anyway, he would have uh certainly welcomed Ms. Hall as a colleague to help him in the formidable task of going through the stacks of the three libraries.  There-- there-- there were eventually three together there.  Um Dwight Hall, Linsley, and Chittington um side by side.  And they remained the home of the library until Sterling was uh proposed and built, opened in 1930.  Anyway, they had to go through the stacks, and look for, and remove the books that really needed special attention and security.  And that is what-- and those were the books that were brought to Sterling and put on the shelves of the rare book room.  And Ms. Hall would have been a great help to him in doing this.  He, of course, did not participate in the running of the room.  He had a small office and a desk with uh a capacious drawer.  And by the time I arrived, his task was largely making decisions about what was going to be bought.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: And he had already established, extraordinarily, good relationships with many booksellers in this country and abroad.  And they would come to him or send things to him, and they would bring things which they knew he might-- would be interested in.  And things that he really wanted.  And if he didn't have the money, that is the library didn't have the money, he would put books in the bottom drawer, and then he would sit at his desk, and write a short note to one of his students, someone that he had influence why-- a great deal as an undergraduate who was coming along as a famous collector.  And Mr. Tinka would give him the opportunity of supplying money for the purchase of this book in the bottom of-- in-- in the drawer at his desk.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: (laughter) \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: And most of the time it really did work and yup.  That was before the rare book roo-- room had as many funds as it later on had.\r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=5121.0,5408.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MARJORIE WYNNE: So--.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You-- you described once, to me, that uh uh that the rare books room had s-- had special books and it was a special place.  What did you mean by that?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Which room?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: The rare book room.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: At-- at--?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes, the rare book room was a special place.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Uh a special place.  It-- it-- at-- at Sterling, you mean?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  Mmm-hmm.  \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, it was of course very special.  It-- it-- it started out by being-- by being special in one very visible way.  It was more beautifully decorated um and that's a totally of a different subject to go into decoration of the-- although the library is, itself, has wonderful decorations all over it.  But the Beine-- but the rare book room was even more beautiful than uh painted ceilings and uh a great deal of the book cases, glass book cases, were lettered with various seams.  Everything was very elegant uh in there.  And of course, it had special books, it has the books that need to be protected, uh um that have-- are used under special conditions, and this is true of all special conditions.  So that is what made it very special.  And of course the people who came, and the thing that uh Ms. Hall and-- and-- and I always tried to do was to retain the idea that there were certain special parts, features of the rare book room.  But that it was, essentially, a place where you could come and look at the books.  Which uh was not universal uh-- a universal philosophy at times in this country I'm sorry to say.  But I'm glad that we always did that.  And then of course, just really one of the things that made my life so special here because the people who came in to use the books, first they were faculty, and visiting faculty.  And they would-- I would meet them.  I would sometimes--  I would see them day, after day, after day, visitors staying here for a short time.  I took them out to lunch, out to dinner, we talked.  I learned more about some of the things I'm letting them look at, giving them to look at, then I knew could -- then I knew before, because they're, we're talking about things.  I'm learning from them as much as they learned from me.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So that must have, working in the Rare Book Room in the way that you and Ms. Hall did must have given you the opportunity to move around Yale society --\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: That's right.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- in a way that maybe other librarians did not have.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Exactly.  Exactly.  The faculty knew me -- and of course they knew Mr. Tinker -- and also the graduate students, I would help them sometimes after, tell them a little bit about bibliography and things.  But it's true, the faculty and the ones in English, the ones that I would see, they were not, we had a great, a grand, and glorious group at that time, and a lot of them were not much older than I was.  And --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Do you think it helped too that you had, you were working towards an M.A. in English?  Do you think that helped as well?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Not a bit.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Not a bit?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Nobody had no influence on me.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: All right.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: But the, and I had many, many nice social activities with the faculty.  And, for example, right after the end of the war, there was a man named Beecher Hogan (sp?), who, \r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=5408.0,5700.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"he was not a -- he was an associate, research associate, and was not, he was considered a faculty member but not in the track like a (inaudible).  \r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: And he and his wife, both very young, and handsome, charming people.  They had no children.  They had, you know Yale was famous, in a way, for receiving children of Oxford and Cambridge faculty members during the war.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: It's funny somebody mentioned that to me at lunchtime, because a book apparently has been written about it.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Is there really?  I'd like to see it.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.  I'd like to see it too, because I have a friend who I think was one of the kids who came here.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Right.  And the -- anyway, Beecher Hogan was also a musician, but he was working on his own project, which necessitated, he's using some 17, 18th century newspapers.  And of course these are large, and unwieldy, and so on.  So we kept these and he would come in every day and use it.  So Beecher and I got, and his wife, got acquainted.  And Beecher was a fellow of Jonathan Edwards College, which is a very musical college.  Anyway, he was going to put on, Yale was going to put -- revive the Dramat (sp?).  Have you heard about -- the Dramat is an undergraduate --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: The article?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: -- drama, actually, not a class, but organization.  And they were going to put on a revival of \"For God, For Country, and For Yale\".  And these were done in the most adventurous way, you know.  And so Beecher needed some typing done.  He needed some typing of the various parts of this play.  And of course, here I am in the Rare Book Room, sometimes typing away, and he said, so he says, Marjorie, how would you like to type a few pages for the Dramat?  So I say, of course I will be happy.  So I do.  And then pretty soon, Marjorie, how would you like to paint initial scenery for the Dramat?  And then I drew that, and then, oh, and how about sewing a few costumes?  So I get involved, you know, I meet some undergraduates and, I mean, I see more of Beecher and his wife, whose name I want to say, Sicily (sp?), but it isn't Sicily.  Anyway --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You'll know, the name it'll come to us.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Right.  And so I do that, and they invite me out to Sunday at their home in Woodbridge (sp?) and (inaudible).  And so it does, it just seemed logical that I would meet a lot of people in this way, and I did as though I were (inaudible) -- in fact all, I would say, no, I have to make a couple of exceptions, almost all of my best, closest, and lasting friends have been met through libraries.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Really?  Yeah.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Mm hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And, but not necessarily other librarians, mostly faculty, you would say?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, just a mixture.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mm hmm, right.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: And of course, a very good friend, whom I haven't mentioned, don't remember mentioning yet, but I have written a piece about him, which you must read, and that was Don Gallup (sp?).\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes, I actually wanted to ask you about Donald at another time.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) you must read this.  This was written at the end of his life.  And he died, last just before a great Edward Leah (sp?) Exhibition was put up in the Center for British Art Collection that he gave, just a few weeks before it happened, he died.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: What a shame.\r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=5700.0,6000.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MARJORIE WYNNE: Anyway, Donald was abroad -- was in the Army when I came.  But I say he, I kept hearing about this person who seemed like a paradigm of everything.  He was an undergraduate who could catalogue, when you're a graduate student, catalogue collections, and he can do this and that.  He was building his own collection with Ezra Pound (sp?) and T.S. Elliot.  And everybody talked about him.  And finally he came back from the wars in 1947, and I met him, and we became friends because we worked with the same kind of material, he's American Literature, mine's English -- he was the curator of the American Literature Collection.  We went to lectures together, we used to go to almost all of the good things that opened at the Shubert (sp?) Theater -- you know, that was a marvelous theater, but it was a tryout town, and we did things.  We would be invited to the same faculty things, so we were -- and it was so sad and sorrowful for me after he died, because he remembered so much of what I had been born in, and he too, but and it just all seemed, it all went away.  You know, I lost it when he was dying.  I could call him up and ask him, you know, what about this?  What happened when this --?  It was, he was my memory.  And it's, I miss him terribly of course.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: It's hard to lose friends.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Mm hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: One of the, interesting just listening to you talk about the very deep and lasting friendships that you made amongst faculty.  I've talked to women of your generation who were here maybe as some sort of adjunct or lecturer in various departments, and the message that I'm getting from them of this period in the '40s and the '50s, indeed into the '60s, saying that actually as a single woman here at Yale it was often very, very difficult to make friends.  Now, you don't seem to have had that problem?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: No, I didn't.  I had --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And I wonder if it was because you weren't faculty?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: I don't know.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: That, you know, that, I know the word that's been used to me really quite a number of times is that I was lonely here, and yet you don't seem to have had that experience.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Mm mm.  Well, I had a very demanding job.  It was not easy, because I was so ignorant when I came, and ignorant when I left, but I did learn a lot.  I was working with Ms. Hall and Mr. Tinker, and others, but --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Do you --\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: -- I, it's different when you have an 8:30 to 5:00 job, I think.  The faculty may, you know, you have to structure your, if they structured their life and, I don't know how it could have been different, but --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Actually, I'm just making it as an observation, not as a judgment or anything else.  It's just I'm just struck by that.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Right.  Well, as I say, most of my time was devoted to the library, totally devoted.  And, but, so I didn't have a lot of time, I didn't have any time, didn't have time to get lonely, so it wasn't.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And you certainly made a lot of friends --\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Right.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- through the library.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: And I made friends in the city too.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes, yes.  Yes, I can see that your position might well have been different from some of the younger women faculty, who proBabbly felt that and knew that they were unlikely to get tenure here, and certainly I think amongst senior faculty, there was often the feeling that,\r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=6000.0,6300.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"why should we spend too much time with young faculty, because they're not going to stay because they won't get tenured -- male and female both, I'm not saying this was a particularly female thing.  That both the young men and women, there's such a gulf between junior faculty and senior faculty that it often made it very difficult for junior faculty, and doubly difficult for young women on faculty.  But you were able to kind of, because of your position in a different department altogether you were able, but yet you had this daily contact with faculty, with a lot of interests in common.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Right.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So, I'd never looked at it that way, that actually maybe you were at an advantage, socially as well as, you know, having your profession.  So that, that I've just --\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, of course, I was very useful to the faculty, --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: -- as I was to the grad -- to student.  And --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Do you, do you think that the, did you ever get the sense that you were being actively mentored at any time by people like, say, Mr. Tinker?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, that's hard to say.  I didn't, of course I didn't see a lot of Mr. Tinker, because he only came in to the Rare Book Room a, briefly to look at the mail, if there was any special mail for him he had, and maybe to think of -- but it was a very, it was a much slower, calmer operation then than it is now.  And --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah, I can't imagine there's the same emphasis on performance targets. (laughter)  But yet, I know you said you didn't make --\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: But he would, he would, he was very, very nice to me in every way from the very beginning.  And he took me to -- you know that he was, I'm not sure what they call it now, but in, after he retired, he was very ac -- he was a member of the, I'm looking this up now, the American Academy of Arts and Letters.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: He was the chancellor from 1949 to 1951, and sometime in that time, in that period, he took me, he wanted me to come to the meeting, annual meeting in New York, with him and his sister, who lived in New York.  And so I went down, had a marvelous time.  We had lunch (inaudible) his sister's apartment on 5th Avenue.  And then I got out and I hardly know where I am surrounded by all of these, the people at the Academy.  But it was lovely.  He really, now, I don't know whether he does this because he thinks that I need it, or that I should have not more knowledge about these things, but whatever it is and was, he was very special.  It was very special, his way of wanting me to go along, and there are many instances of this that I could give, but I think that one is proBabbly enough.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Tell me about the time that he asked you to be in the procession after, just after the war.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Oh yes (laughter).  Well that was a lovely occasion.  It was in October of 1946.  Yale did such a wonderful thing, it had a two day celebration of what it called the Return of the Library to Peacetime Use, actually not just the library but of the Special Collections to Peacetime Use, \r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=6300.0,6600.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"implying -- well, no, it doesn't, use, is the word, implying that the material had been tucked away somewhere during the war, which in fact it had not been, although the Guttenberg Bible had been put in the vault, in the Rare Book Room vault.  But so far as I know, nothing had been taken out, as things were, of course, from other libraries, I think, for example, the Pierbook Morgan (sp?) Library.  Anyway, --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And of course the London Libraries.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Yeah, sure.  Those were need, that was almost necessary.  Anyway, there was a great gathering of librarians, curators of museums and art galleries.  And Yale, and Mr. William Ivans (sp?), the Director of the -- I should, have to fill that in -- was giving a lecture, but the most important thing was that they were giving honorary degrees to the then stars of those categories.  And there was going to be a procession, and there were certainly parties.  There were parties in the Rare Book Room, of course I would be, as the librarian in the Rare Book Room, I would be in the Rare Book Room with the reception and so forth, but it is true that Mr. Tinker and I had a real battle over his idea that I should walk in the academic procession.  And that meant that I would be a one, where as most of the women, older and more prominent than I in the Sterling Library, would not.  And it seemed to me impossible for me to put myself in that position.  And it was also impossible for me to make Mr. Tinker understand what I thought the situation was.  I hadn't, I had no advanced degree, there was no reason for me to be doing this, except that Mr. Tinker liked to have me doing things that he thought I would enjoy, or that were nice.  Anyway, we did, I went out in that, but -- and I, to this day, I don't know that this was every brought to the attention of anybody to adjudicate (laughter), but I still think I was, I did the right thing.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So he obviously took a special interest in you.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, he did.  I, he did.  And one reason I kept, I felt was because I was a Southerner.  The first assistant that I was able to hire, assistant in the Rare Book Room, was another Southerner, from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a man, young man, William S. Powel (sp?).  He was -- he came up, he'd graduated from the Chapel Hill Library School.  He came up here, and he was a marvelous helper.  And Mr. Tinker liked him immensely, and he Mr. Tinker.  But Will Powel was, he was so much a North Carolinian that there was no way he could live and be happy in New Haven, or any place outside of North Carolina.  And so he did, I'm afraid, leave at the end of a year and went back, \r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=6600.0,6900.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"and of course made a spectacular career for himself, concentrating on writing and editing books about North Carolina, which, and nobody else has done the work that he has done on that state.  And of course he had a prominent job in the rare book section of the Chapel Hill Library, and of course was a full professor for many years teaching history.  So, and of course I kept up with him and his wife, that is, after he married a wife, when he got back, and I am godmother of their first child.  So it was a pretty happy relationship.  I'm sorry, he would have been such a help here, but I couldn't imagine his being happy anywhere else but in North Carolina.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So you were then the librarian after Ms. Hall died?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Ms. Hall, Ms. Hall, no.  Not, Ms. Hall retired --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Oh, right, she retired. \r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: -- because she was not well.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I see.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: And I, it was hard for me.  I mean, I liked her, and I think she liked me too, but she lived in Wallingford, Connecticut, and drove back and forth every day.  And as she became ill and resigned -- you see, her friends in the library were also my friends who were nearer her age.  I was very influenced by a woman I met early on, who took me under her wing very early, Dorothy Livingston.  She worked in the catalogue department and was subsequently head of it for a while before she died.  But she, you see, Ms. Hall's friends would have been her age in the library, and Mrs. Livingston would be the one who kept up with her after she retired and lived in Wallingford.  I had no car, no way of getting out to see her, so that I don't really know, and I'm sorry I have to say this, too much about the last years of Ms. Hall.  And she, I think she died in 1950.  But by the end of 1946 I was doing what had to be done in the Rare Book Room, and then sometime in the early 1947, Mr. Babb (sp?) appointed me librarian, a great surprise to me and I'm sure a great surprise to some of the people, some people in the Sterling Library, who might have, well have thought themselves more capable of doing it.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Did you ever, did you ever experience any resentment or sense that this wasn't, this wasn't --\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: No, no I didn't.  I can't say, I mean, would have been very polite in those days, (inaudible) known about it.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You must have been thrilled, though.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, well I was, yes, as far as I can remember now, yeah. (laughter)\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So you remained, then, the librarian in the Rare Book Room until the Beinecke opened?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Until the Beinecke opened, right.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.  And the Beinecke opened, what was that, '63?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: '63.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: And then, of course, the Beinecke was, as you know, from the very beginning of 1930 when Sterling opened, there had been built special rooms for various other special collections.  And they, with their curators, moved over to Beinecke.  \r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=6900.0,7200.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So we had a group of four and then another one was formed by Mr. Osborne's collection.  But there was the American Literature, German Literature, Western Americana, those were the, and the Rare Book Room, those were the four.  And then the Osborne Collection was formed after Beinecke was opened, and Mr. Osborne had a room, an office, as a matter of fact, right next to mine.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So when, when the staffing arrangements of the Beinecke was formalized, what was exactly your position at the Beinecke?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: My position was that I, there were all kinds of things that had to be done in the new library, much bigger, much more elaborate.  And it was not known who was going to be the director.  Mr. Liebert, Herman W. Liebert (sp?) had been curator after Mr. Tinker left, had left the library in 1955, Mr. Liebert, who had been, who had come back to the library to perform a particular task, which was to write a guide to special collections at Yale.  But when he came, Mr. Babb found him so useful and gave him so many extra things to do that Mr. Liebert never got around to preparing the guide, which would have been so essential.  So when the library, Beinecke was discussed, and plans were made, and Mr. Liebert was involved in that with Mr. Babb, of course, and the Beinecke family --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Were you, as the librarian to the Rare Book Room and obviously that was going to be a substantial part of the Beinecke Collection, were you involved in any of these plans and arrangements?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: As we all were.  Yes, it seemed, no more than the other curators.  And we met, we talked with Mr. Babb, we were sent home, and were sent on vacation in the summer of 1958 with the admonition, now design a new library as you think it ought to be.  We, of course, the talk was then of a new Rare Book Library.  So we did.  And I, you know, thought seriously, made some sketches and made some comments, and such.  Then we all came back, and then we all met in a room, and what did we see?  We saw a huge model of the building that had already been designed, totally unlike anything any of us could have imagined.  So what could we do?  We looked at the plans for the court level, where everything was -- the reading room, the desk, offices, and everything -- and we made, we did make it several recommend -- useful and used recommendations for changes in that area.  I cannot tell you what they are now, because I don't remember what they would have been if we hadn't said that this should be here, and this should be, but it was, it was a surprise to all of us.  And we had as much input on the important area as we could, \r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=7200.0,7500.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/26","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"and of course the whole point of that, the library, being built around a glass tower, with most of the books underground was the new and very interesting idea, which was carried out not only in the Beinecke Library, but versions of it have been made in couple of other places, including New British Library.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.  Absolutely.  That central tower and the way it works underneath it, I mean, as soon as I saw the Beinecke that's what it reminded me of and I hadn't realized that the Beinecke maybe had been the, the blueprint for it. (laughter)  So you were --\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: So (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So what was your --\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: The problem then was to arrange the organizational chart of what was going to happen over there.  First, you had to have a director.  It was not settled immediately that Mr. Liebert, who of course very much wanted to be the director, would in fact be the director.  But it did happen.  And my position was, there was not going to be -- well, my position was that there were a lot of things that you had to do in this new, no, not my position.  The situation was there were a lot of things you had to do in the new.  And of course I was concerned about my position, but I knew what I, of all the things that had to be done, I knew which ones I wanted to do, and which ones I didn't want to do.  And so we made lists of things, and on one side was this, and on the other side, personnel problems, building problems, all that sort of thing, which I would not have enjoyed and would not have been any good at.  And so the library, it was decided that the library would hire a man for an assistant librarian position.  And that I would -- and at that point, Mr. Edwin J. Beinecke came, whom I had gotten to know in 1952 when he gave his Stevenson Collection and I put up a massive Stevenson Collection, an exhibition.  And I should tell you more about that sometime.  Mr. Beinecke decided to give me a, or to establish a named position for me, the Edwin J. Beinecke Research Librarian.  And so that is what I was called from the beginning, which was exactly, I did for the general collection, which all the other curators who were brought over with their collections did for their collections.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  So it was, so you go the position you wanted?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: I did.  I couldn't have done the other one.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: And Kenneth Nesheim (sp?) was engaged to do that.  And he came and helped, and his first job was to help us move the books from Sterling over to Beinecke.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So do you think that, in a way, throughout your career at Yale you always chose the subject you loved, over potential promotion?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: I didn't have any choice.  I mean, I didn't, I would never have been considered for the assistant librarianship.  I wasn't, I had no qualifications for that. \r\n\nINTERVIEWER: But you could argue the man didn't have any qualifications either, because they hadn't any library qualifications.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Who?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You could argue that maybe --\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Who?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: That some of the men who got these kinds of promotions \r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=7500.0,7800.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/27","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"maybe weren't necessarily all that better qualified than you.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Which man?  I don't see any man around getting promotions.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Oh, right.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: I see Mr. Nesheim, and coming in from a, just a background, I don't know.  I know that he'd been to library school, and had always been interested in special collections, but I don't know how good he was going to be, but at least it was his problem and not mine. (laughter)  But I can finish up, which I hope we will do pretty soon.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes, yes.  That, there's, I want to ask you one other thing, yes.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: But I was just saying a word or two about Mr. Beinecke.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: E. J. Beinecke, Edwin J., who collected Stevenson and gave us his wonderful collection.  And we, he shipped it in something like 52 cases to the Rare Book Room in late, oh, I don't remember when.  But in the Spring, close to the Spring of 1952, we were having the exhibition, and I had to open all of the cases, line up the things, learn enough about Stevenson to put up an exhibition filling the entire Sterling Library, and that meant working day and night, and weekends, and finally it was done.  And finally I was to meet Mr. Beinecke at, we had a big reception in the Rare Book Room.  All the tables in the middle of the room were moved, and there was going to be a bar at the back, and a beautiful flower arrangement, which I organized.  We had some beautiful silver library, some (inaudible), and this was a big silver bow, which I took to the florist, and they put in it lilac -- you see, this must have been early Spring -- and pink tulips.  And it was by far the most beautiful thing you'd ever seen.  It was on the table back there.  And then we were all gathered, it was a black tie, at least I think it was black tie.  If it wasn't, I was pretty fancily dressed up. (laughter)  Anyway, the, and there in the, somewhere in the Rare Book Room I was told, Mr. Beinecke would like to see you.  So I'm taken and put face to face with Mr. E. J. Beinecke.  And he'd had some time to look at some of the exhibition, and so he takes me by the arm, and he says, goes around the exhibition, now I want to show you this.  Or I want to tell you about this.  And isn't this so and so.  And I just spent weeks of my life learning all of this to put this up, and it seemed to me that he was impervious to that.  And, but anyway, I went with him, and I listened, and we talked.  And we had a nice time.  I didn't know how much he thought of what I had done, but anyway, it was a Friday, and the next morning, Saturday, I was not coming to work.  I had had it with putting up the exhibition and so forth and so on, and I'm going off to play tennis with a friend, and telephone rings early in the morning, and it is Mr. James T. Babb.  And now Mr. Babb doesn't normally call me at home, and Mr. Babb says, Marjorie, I want to see you.  He had a very deep voice.  And I said, oh, well, where would you like me to come or to be?  I'm coming over.  And I think, and he says, have you got any clothes on?  I say, yes, I've got my tennis clothes on, I'm just going out to play tennis.  \r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=7800.0,8100.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/28","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Oh, well, he said, well, I don't want to ruin your tennis game, but when are you coming back?  And I say, oh, by noon.  I'll be there at noon.  Mr. Babb had never been into my basement apartment, one room basement apartment, but he wanted to see me at noon.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You must have been anxious.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, he may not have wanted to ruin my tennis game, but he certainly did.  I had no idea what I had done, or what was going to happen to me.  And I got back and at 12:00 o'clock Mr. Babb comes in, and he throws a letter on the couch, and it's addressed to me from Mr. Beinecke.  And Mr. Beinecke wants to give me a television set.  Now, this is 1952, and I don't want a television set.  I don't want anything to do with television.  I haven't time in my life for this.  So, I say that to Mr. Babb, who is (laughter) concerned.  He says, what am I going to tell Mr. Beinecke?  And I said, well, you see here, I have just bought my first ever Magnavox phonograph set.  And I say, I have two records so far, why don't you suggest that he give me a little money for buying some records?  So he agrees to do that, and he goes back, and I gather he smoothes it over OK.  Mr. Beinecke, I don't believe, held it against me that I didn't want a television set.  So, I get a check for $100 to buy records with.  And then the days pass, and weeks pass, and Mr. Beinecke comes up to see the exhibition again.  And of course he asks, he wants to see me, and so Mr. Babb brings him into my office and I am just about ready to go abroad on my first trip abroad.  And Mr. Beinecke asks if I'm going to Edinburgh, and I say, no, I'm sorry, I'm not.  And he looks at Mr. Babb and says, if I give her the money, will you give her the time to go to Edinburgh?  And of course, what could Mr. Babb say? (laughter)  So he says yes.  So Mr. Beinecke gives, adds $250 to my travel money, and off I go.  And I go to Edinburgh, and again I make a friend with a librarian of the, in the National Library, in the Robert Louis Stevenson Collection, because I go there, spend two, three days working on, looking at the collection and so forth and so on.  And the curator takes me to lunch and so forth, and then we see each others whenever I'm in Edinburgh, and so.  So, Mr. Beinecke and I had, he would write to me, occasionally he would, he needed a bit of information, I would look up something for him, and so forth and so on.  And then every Christmas until he died, he sent me a check for $100.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Goodness.  That's amazing.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Mr. Babb -- the first one I got, I couldn't believe it.  It didn't seem to me it was quite the right thing.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Well, it's certainly unorthodox.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: It certainly was.  So I went in, holding this in my hand as if it was burning my fingers, to Mr. Babb and said, what am I going to do with this?  And he said, (laughter) well, you're just going to take it, and I wish I had one. (laughter)  So, anyway --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: This would be a good opportunity to let you talk a little bit about Mr. Babb, because I think he, at least on one occasion, said that he believed that all the best jobs should go to men.\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=8100.0,8400.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/29","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MARJORIE WYNNE: I never heard that, but, I'm sure he did believe it.  \r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You think?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Because, as I've told you, it, I had never wished for a job that I could, might have had but couldn't, because somebody else had it,  except that job at Swarthmore.  Now, if I had gotten that job, you know, I would never have gotten to Yale and the Rare Book Room.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: That's a very optimistic way of looking at the events that happen to us in our lives.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Right, right.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Maybe that's the way one survives, is with that kind of optimism.  Now, if you could just fast forward, because I know that we're coming to the end of this, but what I'd really like to hear from you is the story of how you got to be one of the very few women who's got their portrait up in a public place in Yale.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And how that came about.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, I'm the last person to tell you how it came about.  I mean, I am, have no idea why it was wanted, of why Mr. Turner -- I just know that one day --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: This was after your retirement you said?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Oh, this was long after my retirement.  And although I knew Mr. Turner a little bit, I had never met him in connection with the library, so that when he was appointed the director of Beinecke, I was happy to be already acquainted with him.  And then there were some things that I had on my mind, and I cannot -- oh, I know.  After the, after I retired, I worked quite a bit for the 18th century short titled catalogue.  And that meant that I had access, still had access to the stacks where I would have to go and check things, and so on and so forth.  And I was coming to the end, not of the work, but of my enthusiasm for it.  And also, and I, as many people have done in the past, wondered what they were going to do when they retired.  And I was asked early on, before I retired, if I would help with this project, which involved entering bibliographical questions about Yale copies of certain 18th century books.  And I said that I would.  Well, I did this diligently for a while, and then what happens to everybody, as you, the longer you are retired, the less free time you have.  You find that your time is taken up with any number of things, and that was certainly true of me.  And the first thing I did was to become, allow myself to be made the Secretary of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences.  And --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: That was during the time when Kathy Skinner (sp?) was the President.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes, so.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Anyway, the point of this is that I felt I ought to give, turn over in some way to the library, responsibility for answering the questions.  And it was the real question there was, did the library want to take that responsibility?  Because not every library does.  So I was prepared to speak to Mr. Turner about that.  And he, and he invited me to lunch, and one day, \r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=8400.0,8700.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/30","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"and I had my agenda, and I went through it.  We had a little talk, present talk, and then I brought up my problem.  And then he resolved that.  And then he said, now I want to ask you something.  And so that's when he asked me if I would have my portrait painted.  And my first reaction was, no.  And it was my second, third, and fourth reaction.  But I was won over by people talking to me, especially the ladies in the Beinecke Library.  And all the friends that, that Alice had called in.  And so I did indeed agree to that.  But, what more can I say?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Well, it's an amazing tribute to your contribution all those years -- and a fitting one.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, that's very nice.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: People can't avoid seeing you every time they come into the Beinecke (laughter).  There are two, two things that we, I forgot to ask you, and I hope we could just finish up with asking you about those.  And that was, there were, I think, two institutions of Yale that you were able to penetrate almost, male institutions that you were able to penetrate.  One was, I'd love to hear the story of how you became a fellow of college.  And the other thing is about the Elizabethan Club.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, the fellow of the college is very simple. \r\n\nINTERVIEWER: But you became a fellow quite early on.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: I did, the first, as soon as it was, as soon as when we were elected, and that is again because of Mr. Tinker.  Mr. Tinker, long dead, this is in the, I forget what year, but --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: It was about '66, wasn't it?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Something like that.  Mr. Tinker, long dead, but in the days when Mr. Tinker was there and the book fellows would come in, faculty, friends, one of his most devoted was the master of Timothy Dwight (sp?), whose name was Thomas Bergen (sp?).  And Mr. Bergen was a, just a marvelous man.  I was very fond of him.  Funny as he could be, and he and Mr. Tinker got along so well, liked each other.  And so here I am with Mr. Tinker, and here's Mr. Bergen, so Mr. Bergen knows me.  So Mr. Tinker leaves, you know, that he, he kept his quarters in Davenport College until 1955 when he then went to live in a small house in Wethersfield, Connecticut, near his sister who lived, by that time was living in Hartford.  And he was in a house staffed by nurses and caretakers around the clock.  He died in 1963.  Anyway, well, it was just natural that when Tom Bergen was walking by the Rare Book Room, the entrance to the Rare Book Room, he would have stopped in to see Mr. Tinker, so now he stops in to say hello to Marjorie.  And Timothy Dwight has the Chub (sp?) Fellowship, which you have heard about, and it would bring to the campus, in those days for a week, members of, political scientists, or, then there was, pushing for artists, and I forget all of the categories there.  But even before women were fellows, and because he had the Chub Fellowship, he would be inviting \r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=8700.0,9000.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/31","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"people to come and perform.  They would have to say, give a tea for the, for the people at Timothy Dwight.  They would have to teach a class, or meet with faculty, even meet with faculty wives on occasion, and give a public lecture.  It was long, it was really long and a very prominent affair.  And Mrs. Bergen, Florence Bergen, would help a great deal by, on the spare hour or so, taking the Chub Fellow around to show various things and of course people were often coming into the Rare Book Room to show things.  And Florence would bring people in, and so when they had their dinner parties at the home, in the master's home, they would sometimes invite me to fill in empty space.  So I would go and enjoy these very much.  The Frederic Marches (sp?) were there once, and the composer whose name escapes me -- well, anyway, that was then.  And so it was, when the fellows were, when they were admitted in 1966 or seven, it was sort of natural that Mr. Bergen would say, well now, what about Marjorie Wynne?  And so he comes into my office and he too throws a letter -- not throws it -- on my desk, which is of course a invitation from the university, from the (inaudible) to be a member Timothy Dwight.  So I was thrilled.  So that's how, I mean, it was not so odd.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Well, obviously not so odd, because the --\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Because he knew me.  Because I knew him well.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.  Yeah, but what maybe was interesting was that again the first, I think the first eight women who were admitted as fellows to the colleges were all faculty women.  (inaudible), I think, Sonny Mitzgiven (sp?), and Marie Baroff (sp?), and a few other women of that generation became fellows, but again you were one of those, amongst that first group of women who were admitted.  But, again, you weren't faculty so that was -- you must have been the only non-faculty woman at that point, or near enough to be one of the first.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, I never thought of it, and I didn't know who the --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: The others were.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Sorry, I don't remember about the other people.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah, yeah.  Were you ever involved with the Helen Hadley Hall (sp?) Fellowship?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: No.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: No?  Because that had been set up some years before, because there was no college fellowship for women at Yale at that time.  And Helen Hadley Hall, of course, was for the female graduate students, it was opened in, I think, in '62 or '59, '62, something like that.  And for a while there was a fellowship of women there, but you were never involved in that?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Mm mm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: No.  That's OK.  The other great bastion of male undergraduates, of course, was the Elizabethan Club.  So tell me about your association --\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, (overlapping dialogue; inaudible), naturally where Yale was going, becomes a coed.  So there was no problem about that.  But, although I went, I did some things there early on, I can't remember exactly when the -- my earliest connection with the Elizabethan Club was as librarian of the Rare Book Room, people who wanted to use a book that was English, well, to use any book from the Rare, from the Elizabethan Club, had to use it in the Rare Book Room.  And, so here I am, the librarian, and the, what I have to do is go and get permission from the then librarian, who was up on the second floor and his name was Gilbert Truxil (sp?), and, but \r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=9000.0,9300.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/32","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Mr. Truxil was the librarian, and he had to go and get the book, and bring it back to me.  And then, when Mr. Truxil retired, Gene Waif (sp?), who just died last week, I'm sorry to say, he was one of the group, he and his wife, the group that I did know, you know, Maynard Mack (sp?), and Louis Marks (sp?), Gene Waif, and, you know, I was just known to them.  That's all.  They all were, in one way or another, I would have known them.  And Gene Waif then had to learn how to open the vault, and he quite rightly felt that he should take inventory of what was there.  And he asked me if I would come over with him some time, it would have had to have been morning, Saturday morning, and help him take inventory.  And so of course I did.  And we would have changed around little things, or something, made some changes.  One thing we did was to close the books, several of the most famous Core (sp?) Fellows had been left open on a shelf so that people who did come in when the vault was open would be able to see justly.  And it was not a good thing to do, because the title pages became (inaudible) and we even now just carrying on the work, I’m trying to reverse that process and to clean the title pages.  Anyway, I don't really know how it happened, I don't think that I was ever -- in fact I may not be a member of the Elizabethan Club.  I don't think I ever --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Were formally inducted?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Was formally received --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: But when you were, in those days when you were going with Gene to the, to do the inventory, were you, you must have been the only woman in the building.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Could have been.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah, yeah.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Could have been.  But I'm sure it was nothing improper about that. (laughter)\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I just wondered if the undergraduates looked askance?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: They wouldn't have been there.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Not on a Saturday they wouldn't be, yes.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Not on Saturday morning.  You see, team would, well, they could have been there.  They could have been.  But, oh, I don't think they would have cared what woman was there.  And so then I, then I kept on.  And then I would help, and eventually I was taught to be in, open the vault, because then I would go over and get the book after Mr. Truxil died, and take them back.  Or Gene, if he was, if it was handy.  And then eventually I would stop and come in and have tea, but not very often because I had other things to do, and it was not until I retired that I, well, I was asked to be chairman of the House Committee.  And this was in 1996 when the great renovation was done.  And the Club was closed for about four months or so, emptied, and then put back together again, after electrical wiring had been, a handicapped bathroom had been built, an extra room, back porch and a room above, and so forth, various changes.  And so that's when I did spend a great deal of time \r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=9300.0,9600.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/33","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"and energy studying the, what was the getting the new things.  What I did was not change the look, but where the gold curtains were dirty, and shredded, and thrown away, I selected, found a new gold, had everything made to same specifications.  New carpeting, new lights, every lamp in the building was a new one.  Every, selecting curtain material for every room, and having it installed.  It was a huge task.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: But an enjoyable one?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, yes, in a way.  (laughter)  It was very tiring at times.  Anyway, by that time I -- and by the time it opened in 1996, in Sep -- probably not until October, it was (inaudible).  And then, so then I began, and of course I had more duties as the House Committee, the steward reports to me, who runs it.  And so, we're a lot of, we had a lot of things to iron out there. \r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Were you ever involved in other committees throughout the university, beyond library committees?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: No, I was not.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: No?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Mm mm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Is there anything you would do differently, looking back?  Is there any you would do differently in your Yale career?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, I wouldn't, it's hard to say what I would have done during, while I was working, but certainly since I, when I'm retired, of what I -- I became aware, later in the time I was working, that I was not volunteering enough.  That was an area that I would have enjoyed if I had felt that I had the time for it.  And obviously I didn't feel I had the time, and I do feel that when I retired I should have done that.  But, maybe when you're 70, it's too old to start, I don't know.  I should have started something.  But that's one of the things I regret in my life, that I, general life, that I was not a, say that I didn't work for hospice, or for the hospital, or for some, in some way, volunteering for something.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: We all do these, we all sometimes make choices that just by default, sometimes, don't we?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Right.  But I seem to have done a, I did other things.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  You did a remarkable amount, you know, with your involvement with the Grolier (sp?) Society, and others in your retirement.  So you've been clearly active right up until the present day, which is --\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Right.  And President of the North End Club for three years.  And then President of the English Speaking Union for two years.  And so.  \r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Would you encourage a woman to go into librarianship today?  Have you encouraged women to go into librarianship?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, the one of two of my best friends did, whether I had any influence on her I don't know.  But she is enlisted to an important position at Emory University.  Hmm...I can tell people if they ask me what the pleasures of working in a library are, although I must say that libraries are so different today from what they were.  Although, the rare books are probably pretty much the same.  \r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=9600.0,9900.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/34","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"I mean, I think I would be, I would feel comfortable in most rare book collections, rare book libraries anywhere.  But the other part of it, the technological part, would be beyond me and beyond my interest.  I don't know.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes, it is a, it is a profession that is being transformed by technology.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Yes, it has.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: It really has.  And I suppose maybe there's less room for the scholar librarian, the person who's interested in the rare and finer aesthetic aspects of the job.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Well, I don't think so.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You don't think so?\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: If you read the literature, publications of famous libraries, the big libraries, it's still very interesting, and something that I try to keep up with all the time.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Yes, if you friended the British Library, I'm an American friend of the British Library, and people come and, as they came to visit us not so long ago, and I went to meet them.  I think that part of it may be more likely to remain the same.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Thank you very much, Marjorie.  That was such a pleasure.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: You're welcome.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Thank you.\r\n\nMARJORIE WYNNE: Mm hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I hope you enjoyed it and it wasn't too miserable for you.\r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=9900.0,10005.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277/transcript/31943/annotation/35","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"END OF INTERVIEW","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48972/file/122277#t=10005.0,10045.416"}]}]}]}