Post by Jayne Ptolemy, Manuscripts Curatorial Assistant
In 1880 William Brunton, a Unitarian minister from Boston, began composing a special diary that recorded the everyday activities of his young son, Herbert, whom he affectionately called Bertie. “It is a work of pure love,” the enamored father wrote, explaining that he was “not going to make anything very elaborate or literary—it is simply for your own use and amusement—Some of the fairy flowers that grew in your childhood’s garden.” William wrote of Bertie’s moods and interests, the sweet and funny things he said, the toys he played with, the pictures he drew, and, through it all, we see William’s deep and abiding paternal affection.
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| One of Bertie’s drawings from 1881, from the William Brunton Journal, Duane Norman Diedrich Collection. His father had noted elsewhere, “You begin to take a fancy for drawing & you have drawn with chalk everywhere, & you have filled paper after paper with your pictures. You like steam engines especially but attempt almost everything.” |
Like any father, however, William also experienced some of the frustrations that accompany parenthood. In late May, 1880, he wrote, “Last night a pretty little event happened. It was a fine moonlight night & you were sleeping in your cradle. When you woke up about two oclock and lay awake some time & Mamma of course urged you to go to sleep again. You tried & failed– & then in a pretty soft voice you said—Please Mamma may I lie a little on the edge of your bed? And Mamma took you in & let you be in the middle which drove me out as you kick so.” Bumped out of his own bed by his young toddler, William took it all in stride and remained “perfectly devoted” to Herbert, even writing him a poem, “Our Bertie’s King of the Household.”
In a remarkably similar vein, John J. Hagan wrote a song dedicated to his infant son, “Monarch of All He Surveys.”
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| John H. Hagan, “Monarch of All He Surveys.” (Philadelphia: Bazaar of the Muses, ca. 1898). |
The chorus speaks to the power children can yield over their parents. “Monarch of all he surveys, His subjects laud paeans of praise, Our hearts, his domain and there he will reign Forever and grace of three days; With his voice the welkin will ring, His mandate will bring anything, No potentiate, however great, Can rule with our Household King.”
The Clements’s Graphics Division holds further evidence of fathers’ love. The tenderness and joy in these cabinet cards from the David V. Tinder Collection require no explanation.
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| David V. Tinder Cabinet Card Collection, William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan. The majority portion donated by David B. Walters in honor of Harold L. Walters, UM class of 1947 and Marilyn S. Walters, UM class of 1950. |