Writing Prompts: The Old Autograph Book

Back in 2002, my mother and I went shopping in the antique stores in downtown Leesburg, VA. And in one of those stores, I found the above book. I love stuff like this. Give me an old book whose previous owners underlined favorite passages and scribbled copious notes in the margins, or old postcards with vacation memories, or anything that gives you a glimpse of the thoughts and lives of the strangers who owned something before you did, and I’m tickled to death.

And when I flipped through the book, I was even more enchanted.

When I took it to the cash register, the salesclerk glanced through it. Something crossed her face as she looked up at me and she didn’t say anything for a moment, and I knew exactly what was going on: She was trying to come up with an on-the-fly reason not to sell the little book to me. Maybe she was another ephemera lover who wanted it for herself; maybe she thought they were letting it go for too little money; maybe she thought someone named in that book could have become Somebody. I don’t know.

But I stood there holding my money out and ready to argue if need be, and finally she handed it over.

OK, Nicole. What’s so great about this thing?

It’s how the previous owners used it. Some of them wrote down little poems or sayings. Some of them drew sketches or cartoons. Some of them even painted beautiful little watercolors. And although there are a few contributions from the 1980s, the majority of the drawings and poems are from the 1930s and 40s.

What’s curious is that previous owners didn’t use consecutive pages; they jumped all over the book. When I first sat down to go through it, I felt like I was on a treasure hunt; I’d flip through several blank pages and then turn up a tiny, gorgeous watercolor of a rocky coast. There aren’t nearly as many entries as I might have wished, but the pages that have been used are mostly delightful.

And the entries also hop around in time; a little poem jotted down in 1941 comes several pages before a doodle from 1937.

Something else I only recently noticed adds to the book’s mystique: Words like realise are spelled in the British fashion rather than with an American “z”, and several of the dates are in day/month/year format. So on top of everything else, this little book crossed the Atlantic with someone. I’m wildly curious as to how it ever ended up being sold in Leesburg.

I’ve always wanted to share this book with people but was never sure of the best way to do so. It’s extremely fragile and I suspect the scotch tape peeling off the spine is older than I am, so it’s not the kind of thing I’d schlep around in my purse to show off. But now I’ve finally come up with an idea: I’ll occasionally post drawings or poems from its pages and use each new entry as a writing prompt for a little bit of fiction about the book.

Eventually I’d like to pass the autograph book down to someone who I think will love it as much as I do. For now, I’d like to share it with my Medium friends.

Here’s a teaser image, a wish for something I suspect we will all need in the coming months and years: