The Willie Pape Scrapbooks: An Antebellum Alabama Child Prodigy

William Barnesmore "Willie" Pape

William Barnesmore "Willie" Pape was born February 27, 1850 in Mobile, Alabama, the son of William O. and Tabitha McBride Pape.  His talent for music was discovered at a very early age and in 1854, Willie’s father began giving him music lessons.  He was so gifted that even at the age of thirteen he was able to play many of the most demanding piano sonatas from memory.

Concert program, 1863.

Willie and his father traveled to New York in preparation to travel to Europe just as the American Civil War erupted.  Alabama, in fact seceded from the Union while they were traveling in January of 1861.  Rather than going abroad as planned, they stayed in New York for two years.  Willie continued his studies under Sebastian Bach Mills.  After brief concert tours to Havana, Cuba, and Canada, Willie and his father finally left for England in 1863.

Sheet music cover featuring Willie Pape

Willie's first public performance in England on 27 April 1863 was a huge success and eventually led to the patronage of the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1864.  He spent several more years in England, performing and touring, until returning to the United States in 1875 and resettling in Mobile.  He retired from his musical career at the tender age of seventeen years old.  When he left England, Willie gave up the piano completely, though he did play church organ throughout his his life.


He was married twice; first to Ella Anderson (around 1880) who died on 9 August 1889; and then to her sister, Mary Anderson.  Ella and Willie had three daughters, Ethel, Ella, and Hazel; Mary and Willie had one son, William Sherwood.

He began his second career not long after he returned to Mobile, studying medicine. In 1882, Pape graduated from the Medical College of Mobile and began his practice in Mobile. He also served on the faculty of his alma mater where he was a Professor of Physiology and Hygiene.  He died August 30, 1901.

William Barnesmore Pape in later life

The Willie Pape scrapbooks were donated to The University of Alabama Libraries in 2012 by Dr. William Pape Wood.  We would like to thank the descendants of William Barnesmore "Willie" Pape for this generous and historically important piece of Alabama and music history.

A letter from Mother, March 21, 1861

The two Willie Pape scrapbooks offer interesting insight into his world as a young musician and performer.  The letters he received, as well as concert programs, reviews and other materials are contained in these rare scrapbooks.  They include impassioned letters from his mother and grandmother that discuss family business as well as the War, illness, disease, and death. We also know that young Willie Pape sent a letter to President Abraham Lincoln just two weeks before his assassination.  The letter spoke passionately about a young man's struggle to connect with his family during the Civil War and the heartache that the war and prolonged separation had caused him. 

It reads:

Willie Pape, 9 Soho Square London Pianist to the Royal Family at Marlboro House
By Command of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, June 6, 1864
March 29, 1865

Your Excellency --

I left my native town, Mobile, Alabama, for the purpose of pursuing my studies under the best musicians in Europe, on the 1st of March, 1861 -- now four years since. On my arrival in New York I was informed by my father who accompanied me that our State had seceded from the Union, & that we had better remain a while before we embarked for England. I remained in the North for two years studying and occasionally appearing in public for the benefit of charities. On my arrival in England I was permitted to appear at several Grand Concerts, at which the Royal Family attended, and I have been honored by the highest position attainable by an artist.
 

I have written my mother many times, and to my Grandmother, by the way all letters to the South go. (I don’t know how that is, only they are deposited in a basket at Bishopgate street, & prepaid), but I have not heard a word from any of my family since the mails were stopped.
 

I was fifteen years old on the 27th of last month, and have been absent from Mobile since I was 11. I am very anxious to hear from my Mother if there is means of doing so.

I am in daily communication with Her Majesty or the Prince of Wales. They are my patrons & friends, and despite jealousies of native pianists, they awarded me the highest honors. It has been a source of great dissatisfaction to the Royal Academy that an American should have been so honored, but in this country merit alone gives precedence in the fine arts.

The honor of your answer will make very happy one who, although raised to so high a pinnacle of favor, is at all times unhappy and despondent.

I am informed that property left me by Grandfather has been confiscated through our absence from the so-called Confederate States.  Our property was assessed at 25,000 dollars.

To the Hon. Abraham Lincoln.

The Pape scrapbooks will be on exhibit in the lobby of the W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library beginning Friday, December 15, 2012.   The University of Alabama Libraries would like to thank the descendants of William Pape for their generous gift of these treasured and historically significant items

Everything you ever wanted to know about Hoole's incredible Tiffany Window....

Art Historian Dr. Robert Mellown's article, originally published in the Winter 1993 issue of Alabama Heritage Magazine is now available on our website. Along with the article, you'll find a link to a series of beautiful details of the window in our Cool@Hoole Flickr page, photographed by Teresa Golson.

But just because we can, here is the article as it appears on the Hoole website!

A Stained-Glass Tiffany Knight By Robert O. Mellown
Originally published in Alabama Heritage, Winter 1993 (No. 27)

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori
It is sweet and noble to die for one’s country.

For centuries, this stern and dignified pronouncement by the Roman poet Horace has been associated with patriotism. Appearing on countless European and American war memorials, the Latin inscription also adorns a beautiful stained-glass window in Tuscaloosa at The University of Alabama. Designed in 1925 by Tiffany Studios in New York and commissioned by the Alabama Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (U.D.C.), the handsome memorial commemorates the role university students played in the Civil War.

The window is a fascinating social document as well as an exceptionally fine work of art. When it was installed, sixty years had passed since Yankee troops burned the neoclassical campus of the University of Alabama on April 4, 1865. By 1925 the mythmaking of the "Lost Cause" was in full swing throughout the South.

Few Southerners were still alive who could recall the war years, and as their numbers dwindled Confederate veterans and their families (especially their wives and daughters) took steps to ensure that the memory of those who had fought in the nation's most tragic conflict were not forgotten. Memorials of all sorts, in a wide variety of media, were erected in cities, towns, and battlefields across the South.

Perhaps the most ubiquitous monuments erected during this period of romanticizing the Civil War were the monuments to Confederate soldiers placed on courthouse squares throughout the South. Aesthetically, a wide gap existed between those marble or concrete Rebel soldiers, rifle at the ready, and Tiffany's ideal "Christian Knight" depicted on the university's richly colored memorial window. Nevertheless, the sentiment remained the same. An inscription on the window might well be placed on any Confederate memorial: "As crusaders of old, they fought their heritage to save."

The dedication of the memorial window may have represented the zenith of the cult of the "Lost Cause" in west Alabama. The ceremonies took place in front of the newly constructed Amelia Gayle Gorgas Library (now Carmichael Hall), where the window was originally located. The audience consisted of the university community, Tuscaloosans, officers ofthe United Daughters of the Confederacy, and seven elderly Confederate veterans who had been University of Alabama cadets during the Federal invasion of April 1865.

The audience's enthusiasm was whipped into a feverous pitch by speeches, including one by former governor B. B. Comer (also a former university cadet), and by patriotic songs sung by the varsity glee club. These included "We're Tenting Tonight on the Old Camp Ground" and "The Bonnie Blue Flag." According to reporters, toward the end of the program "the Glee club sang the song that these veterans had patiently waited for—Dixie! They leapt gallantly to their tottering feet and the old, wild rebel yell rose lustily, terribly from their feeble throats. After this outburst," the window was unveiled, the setting sun illuminating its rich hues.

The window itself is a showcase of various types of glass and construction techniques which made Tiffany-designed products internationally known. Particularly impressive is Tiffany's use of scores of intricately cut pieces of glass to describe the details of the knight's armor and the delicate details of the landscape.

Tiffany "painted" with glass, his palette consisting of an astonishing variety of luminous opalescent glass that he created by combining white milk glass with one or more colors of pot metal glass. Depending on the combinations of colors, such glass could be used to imitate the veins in the marble columns or the soft hues of the cloud-filled sky.

"Drapery glass" was used to create not only the color but the texture of the knight's flowing robe. This technique, invented by Tiffany, required the glassblower (protected by asbestos gloves) to toss a glob of molten glass on an iron table, where he kneaded and folded the red-hot mixture like bread dough until the desired loops and streaks were formed.

The extraordinary depth and luminosity of the knight's attire, including the shirt of chain mail that extends below his breast plate, were achieved by sandwiching or "plating" several layers of differently textured and colored glass on top of one another. These built-up areas are visible on the back of the window.

To achieve the effect of dappled light shining through foliage in the background, Tiffany used "mottled glass" and a few touches of "confetti glass." These types of glass, perfected in the Tiffany studios, were made by throwing various chemicals (for a mottled effect) or broken glass scraps (for a confetti effect) into the molten glass. As was usually the case, actual paint was used only to define the noble features of the knight, but even here the designer incorporated plated glass to achieve the glow of living flesh.

The production of a Tiffany memorial window was labor intensive, requiring hundreds of hours of work and a high level of craftsmanship. For these reasons, large windows cost several thousand dollars, a hefty sum in 1925, when glass workers received three dollars a day and their supervisors were paid twenty-one dollars a week.

The University of Alabama window cost $5,000, but Tiffany studios gave the U.D.C. a $1,700 discount. Even with the discount, the organization found it necessary to pay off the sum in installments.

In 1939 the Alabama window was removed from the old Amelia Gayle Gorgas Library on campus and installed in the present main library, which bears the same name. This year [1993], in a move partially funded by the U.D.C., the window will be relocated once again, this time to the new collections building on the east side of the University of Alabama campus, where it will grace the walls of the William Stanley Hoole Special Collections Library*.

*The window is in the lobby of the W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library on the 2nd floor of Mary Harmon Bryant Hall, 500 Hackberry Lane, and is visible from the street below. Please visit the library to see the window in person. You can also view a series of photographs we have placed as a set on Cool@Hoole's flickr page. These images were graciously taken by photographer and friend of Hoole Library, Teresa Golson in July 2010. (Photographs in the original article [not shown here] were by Alice Wilson). Special thanks to Dr. Robert Mellown and Donna Cox Baker and Alabama Heritage for allowing us to republish this piece online.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow!

Well, maybe not tomorrow -- but if you haven't had a chance to visit our exhibit, Hear Hair Here: Hair Do's and Hair Don't from the Hoole Library's Sound Recording Collections, please be sure to do soon. New and exciting exhibits are coming to the Hoole Library lobby soon -- stay tuned. And speaking of hair, this photograph is from the Keyes Family Papers, 1846-1944, a collection of correspondence, diaries, biographical notes, scrapbooks, photographs, memorabilia, and other papers concerning the emigration of the family of Athens, Alabama native Dr. John Washington Keyes and his wife Julia Hentz Keyes to Rio de Janiero Brazil after the Civil War. The family subsquently travelled all over the world.

The finding aid for this manuscript is available here. The photograph shown here is labeled on the back with the caption, "Beth's hair abt. 17 yrs."