Manuscript thesaurus/poet’s reference turned scrapbook of selected works, &c, by Mary Isabella Purington Cummings
The only centralized collection of her writing, which was published mostly under pseudonyms during the second half of the nineteenth century.
A poet’s manuscript thesaurus organized around 170 “Initial Nouns” from Worcester's Unabridged Dictionary. Many entries contain synonyms and their meters, plus some rhymes, related terms and “riffs.” Some entries are fleshed out more than others, especially words related to anatomy, illness, and other jargon-rich fields; cross-references are often cited. The volume is unsigned, but is presumed to have been compiled by Mary Purington Cummings as a writing resource. A perfect reference for plotting traditional verse, the entries are immensely poetic themselves—each concept marinating in its vocabulary, and the writer’s efforts, meticulous and laborious, are laid plain.
Hardcover 12mo, 7 x 4.5 inches; (4), 1-130, 143-170, (2) leaves. Undated, likely compiled ca. 1860s-1870s. Full calf in fair condition: boards slightly bowed and binding just holding, leather cracked and chipping along joints, 1-inch loss at the heel. Pages numbered rectos-only to 170, corresponding with entries; nos. 131-142 excised, leaving approximately 320 pages of content. Just over 100 clippings pasted on a little more than half the contents, leaving many of the manuscript thesaurus pages intact. In tenuous but resilient condition.
Mary Isabella Purington Cummings was born in 1838 to Rachel Pennel and Isaac Purington in Bowdoinham, Maine; she married Amasa Cummings around 1860 and had two sons, Leroy and Francis. The family moved from Maine to San Diego around 1890. Her mother died when she was 9; isolated in rural Maine, she turned to the solace of books. She wrote prolifically and first published at age 17, using various pseudonyms which have left her a vague legacy. The first page contains the brief obituary of her husband, Amasa Cummings, who died in 1898. While the entries throughout the volume aren’t chronological, it does suggest a considerable length of time must have passed between its creation and repurposing. Likewise, a separation in the mindset of an older poet to transform the reference from a point of origin to a destination for her work, finally forming a corpus.
Among the poems collected here, she’s published as Brunswick Nell, Mae, Bell, Mary Isabella, Mrs. C., M. Belisa, M.I.C., and variations of her given name. Her early publications, going back to at least 1858, retained her given name, Mary I. Purington or Cummings, after marriage; and the later poems published after moving to San Diego around 1890 also retain authorship under a recognizable form of her given name. Cummings is listed once in Cushing’s Initials and Pseudonyms as “Captain Carnes,” author of an 1872 juvenile book, Little Toss, and likely authored other juvenile works in the 1870s and 1880s which remain obscure.
Early in her career, she published regularly as “Brunswick Nell” in the Boston Cultivator, but also had early success as M. I. Cummings in Spiritualist publications. “Prison Bars” appeared in The Evening Star, then in the inaugural issue of the Spiritualist journal The Herald of Light, which advertised a forthcoming story of hers, “The Ghostly Telegrapher,” based on a true “phenomenal occurrence” that converted the main characters to Spiritualism, aligning with publication’s mission. Her interest in Spiritualism is unsurprising given her mother’s death at a young age. Many of her poems are marked by persistent melancholy; she has a fixation on shipwrecks but takes solace in nature.
She likely made a distinction in the quality and subject of pseudonymous work compared to those published under a variation of her given name, which account for most of those she’s included here. Many are also backed with lined paper, evidence of being excised from another scrapbook and possibly arranged in this volume with an editorial eye—the “selected works” of a writer whose oeuvre was scattered among pseudonyms spanning nearly half a century.
One of the few other records of Mary Cummings is a letter she wrote to Walt Whitman in 1890 after finally reading Leaves of Grass. She addresses him, “Brother,” and projects a kinship with him and a shared identity of being “writers.”
“Being a confirmed and rather melancholy invalid myself—something in that book overwhelmed me with sorrow—a sorrow not quite like anything I ever felt before…. I have always been a writer from early childhood, but was, by fate, planted in such a stern, cold, barren soil, that I have, in turn, suffered leaf-flight and twig-flight, and with a fair enough outside, shall fall, at last, with my heart eaten out—dead at the core…. Oh, this compulsory life thrust upon us without wish or will of ours—Crying in the darkness because of scourgings for other's sins, reaching for the hand of one who could support you and missing it—Oh, the riddle of life!!—I shall be only too glad to give it up. A primary school, is it? I have missed the recess, and shall be glad of the announcement—dismissed.” (excerpt from Whitman’s online archive)
Whitman forwarded Cumming’s letter to his friend and biographer R. M. Bucke—whose relationship with Whitman also began after Burke read Leaves of Grass and sent Whitman a letter (albeit a few decades earlier). Bucke writes of it to Whitman, “Well, I have your good letter of 14th enclosing Rhys' and M. J. Cummings (whoever he (or she?) may be—(melancholy enough) the poor soul seems to have had a bad time.”
There is no record of Whitman responding, but it is worth noting that the letter comes just before Mary Cummings got a second wind as a San Diego poet. By the 1890s, her son, Leroy had also begun publishing poetry. The book includes about ten of his poems and has two later publications laid in, one dedicated to Eamon de Armas and both of Irish political interest. Whether it was encouragement or even competition from her son, she seems to emerge around this time—several decades into publishing under pseudonyms—desiring recognition. Some of her earlier poems, like “Prison Bars” and “The Butterfly’s Song,” are reprinted. She’s named in an 1893 article complaining that San Diego papers don’t celebrate their local poets, including Mrs. Cummings and her son Leroy as deserving recognition.
Though it is signed, “NON-POET,” she may have been the author, herself—she sneaks herself in last and has added some proofreading marks to the clipping, as if it was incorrectly copied. The statement concludes, I believe that San Diego has more devotees to the muse, in proportion to its population, than any English speaking city in the world, and that the time is not far distant when she will be ready to dispute the laurels with Boston as ‘The Home of Poets.’ Yours, NON-POET.
This clipping definitively ties her to “Mary J. Cummings,” in the October 1892 Magazine of Poetry, which contains the only biographical information found about her, beyond of census data:
“She was left motherless at the age of nine years. Her family at that time lived on a little out-of-the-way farm, and no one would have predicted for the child other than a meagre and desolate existence. As a scholar, eager, apt and receptive, she found, even at that early age, a solace for her lonely hours in writing fragments of prose and rhyme. Her books, and the pets which she found in her rural surroundings, were her loved and chosen companions… Her whole life illustrates what can be done by that component part of character which Western people call "sand" and Eastern folks term "grit," —but to express it more elegantly-her life shows that indomitable energy and unfaltering perseverance are forces of almost unlimited power in winning success in life.”
That the remarkable manuscript was repurposed as a scrapbook for her writing may seem unfortunate, but it creates a complex portrait of her life as a writer. It's a rare opportunity to see multiple facets of a writer's process and explore her authorship through the hodge-podge of time and print. It's a messy thing, ultimately less full of logic than intent, but a small miracle that this much of her survives within the object.
An index of poem titles and transcript of the Whitman letter can be found in this PDF.