The Palimpsest

The Palimpsest, vol.65 no.4, July-August 1984

The Palimpsest, vol.65 no.3, May-June 1984

The Palimpsest, vol.65 no.2, March-April 1984

Gabbert, Dean

English

The Death of an American College: A Retrospective Look

Fredericksen, Mary K

The State of the State: Iowa in 1885

Index for 1984

Parish, John C

Palimpsests
by John C. Parish
The editor of "Iowa’s Popular History Magazine’ is 
often reminded by members of the State Historical 
Society of Iowa, by colleagues in the history profes­
sion, and even by friends and relatives that there is 
something unique about the Palimpsest. The 
reminders most often come in the form of questions.
How do you pronounce the name of your maga­
zine?’ (The editor sometimes says, "The Pal.) 
"Why is it called whatever it’s called? Sometimes the 
questions have an ominous ring: "Don’t you think it 
would be nice to change its name?
I would like to state my agreement with the notion 
that the pronunciation of "palimpsest" will always 
be a problem, but I disagree with suggestions that 
the name of the magazine should be changed. It’s a 
robust and still moderately young journal. As a 
matter of fact, it is celebrating its sixty-fourth birth­
day this July. Its name remains meaningful. This 
fact can be made most clear, perhaps, by reprinting 
an article which appeared in the first issue of the 
Pal impsest. The article, entitled simply Pal­
impsests," was written by John C. Parish, the first 
editor of the magazine. I n it, he clearly answered all 
the questions which are but barely covered in that 
little note which appeared on the inside front cover 
of that first issue and has appeared in every suc­
ceeding issue.
(What better way could there be to wish a happy
papyrus rolls, parchment sheets, and vellum 
books each served the need of the scribe. But 
they were not so easily procured as to invite 
extravagance in their use or even to meet the 
demand of the early writers and medieval 
copyists for a place to set down their epics, 
their philosophies, and their hero tales.
And so parchments that were covered with 
the writings of Homer or Caesar or Saint Mat­
thew were dragged forth by the eager scribes,
and the accounts of Troy or Gaul or Calvary
• *
erased to make a clean sheet for the recording 
of newer matters. Sometimes this second 
record would in turn be removed and a third 
deposit made upon the parchment.
The papyrus rolls and the parchments of the 
early period of palimpsests were merely 
sponged off— the ink of that time being easily 
removable, though the erasure was not always 
permanent. The later parchments were usually 
scraped with a knife or rubbed with pumice 
after the surface had been softened by some 
such compound as milk and meal. This method 
was apt to result in a more complete oblitera­
tion of the text.
But there came men whose curiosity led
birthday to a proud journal than to reprint a piece 
by its first editor?)
—Ed.
P alimpsests of a thousand and two thou­sand years ago were parchments or other 
manuscript material from which one writing 
had been erased to give room for another. The 
existence of these double texts was due chiefly 
to the scarcity of materials. Waxen tablets,
John C. Parish's article originally appeared in the July 1920 issue 
of the Palimpsest, volume 1, number 1.
them to try to restore the original writing. 
Atmospheric action in the course of time often 
caused the sponged record to reappear; chem­
icals were used to intensify the faint lines of the 
old text; and by one means or another many 
palimpsest manuscripts were deciphered and 
their half-hidden stories rescued and revived.
On a greater scale time itself is year by year 
making palimpsests. The earth is the medium. 
A civilization writes its record upon the broad 
surface of the land: dwellings, cultivated fields, 
and roads are the characters. Then time
The Palimpsest 147
sponges out or scrapes off the writing and 
allows another story to he told. Huge glaciers 
change the surface of the earth; a river is turned 
aside; or a flood descends and washes out the 
marks of a valley people. More often the 
ephemeral work of man is merely brushed 
away or overlain and forgotten. Foundations of 
old dwellings are covered with drifting sand or 
fast growing weeds. Auto roads hide the Indian 
trail and the old buffalo trace. The caveman s 
rock is quarried away to make a state capitol.
But the process is not always complete, nor
does it defy restoration. The frozen sub-soil of✓
the plains of northern Siberia has preserved for 
us not only the skeletons of mammoths, hut 
practically complete remains, with hair, skin, 
and flesh in place — mummies, as it were, of 
the animals of prehistoric times. In the layers of 
sediment deposited by the devastating water 
lie imbedded the relics of ancient civilizations.
1 he grass-grown earth of the Mississippi Valley 
covers with but a thin layer the work of the 
mound builders and the bones of the workmen 
themselves.
With the increasing civilization of humanity, 
the earth-dwellers have consciously and with 
growing intelligence tried to leave a record that 
will defy erasure. Their buildings are more 
enduring, their roads do not so easily become 
grass-grown, the evidences of their life are 
more abundant, and their writings are too 
numerous to be entirelv obliterated.
Yet they are only partially successful. The 
tooth ol time is not the only destroyer. Man­
kind itself is careless. Letters, diaries, and 
even official documents go into the furnace, the 
dump heap, or the pulp mill. The memory of 
man is almost as evanescent as his breath; the 
work ol his hand disintegrates when the hand is 
withdrawn. Only fragments remain — a line or 
two here and there plainly visible on the pal­
impsest of the centuries — the rest is dim if it is 
not entirely gone. Nevertheless with diligent 
effort much can be restored, and there glows 
upon the page the fresh, vivid chronicles of
long forgotten days. Out of the ashes of Mount 
Vesuvius emerges the city of Pompeii. The 
clearing away of a jungle from the top of a 
mountain in Peru reveals the wonderful stone­
work of the city of Machu Picchu, the cradle of 
the Inca civilization. The piecing together of 
letters, journals and reports, newspaper items, 
and old paintings enables us to see once more 
the figures of the pioneers moving in their 
accustomed ways through the scenes of long 
ago.
The palimpsests of Iowa are full of fascina­tion. Into the land between the rivers 
there came, when time was young, a race of red 
men. Their record was slight and long has been 
overlain by that of the whites. Yet out of the 
dusk of that far off time come wild, strange, 
moving tales, for even their slender writings 
were not all sponged from the face of the land. 
Under the mounds of nearly two score counties 
and in the wikiups of a few surviving descen­
dants, are the uneffaced letters of the ancient 
text.
And the white scribes who wrote the later 
record of settlement and growth, read the ear­
lier tale as it was disappearing and told it again 
in part in the new account. These new comers 
in turn became the old, their homes and forts 
fell into decay, their records faded, and their 
ways were crowded aside and forgotten.
But thev were not all erased. Here and there 
have survived an ancient building, a faded 
map, a time-eaten diary, the occasional clear 
memory of a pioneer not yet gathered to his 
fathers. And into the glass show cases of 
museums drift the countless fragments of the 
story of other days. Yet with all these survivals, 
how little effort is made to piece together the 
scattered fragments into a connected whole.
Here is an old log cabin, unheeded because 
it did not house a Lincoln. But call its former 
occupant John Doe and try to restore the life of 
two or three generations ago. It requires no 
diligent search to find a plow like the one he
148 The Palimpsest
used in the field and a spinning wheel which his 
wife might have mistaken for her own. Over 
the fireplace of a descendant hang the sword 
and epaulets he wore when he went into the 
Black Hawk War, or the old muzzle-loading 
gun that stood ready to hand beside the cabin 
door. And perhaps in an attic trunk will be 
found a daguerreotype of John Doe himself, 
dignified and grave in the unwonted confine­
ment of high collar and eravat, or a miniature of 
Mrs. Doe with pink cheeks, demure eyes, and 
fascinating corkscrew curls.
Out of the family Bible drops a ticket of 
admission to an old time entertainment. 
Yonder is the violin that squeaked out the mea­
sure at many a pioneer ball. Here is the square
foot warmer that lav in the bottom of his cutter*
on the way home and there the candlestick that 
held the home-made tallow dip by the light of 
which he betook himself to bed.
In the files of some library is the yellowed 
newspaper with which — if he were a Whig — 
he sat down to revel in the eulogies of “Old 
Tippecanoe' in the log cabin and hard cider 
campaign of 1840, or applaud the editorial 
which, with pioneer vigor and unrefined 
vocabulary, castigated the low scoundrel 
who edited the “rag” of the opposing party.
But most illuminating of all are the letters 
that he wrote and received, and the journal 
that tells the little intimate chronicles of his dayj
to day life. Hidden away in the folds of the 
letters, with the grains of black sand that once 
blotted the fresh ink, are the hopes and joys
and fears and hates of a real man. And out of the 
journal pages rise the incidents which con­
stituted his life — the sickness and death of a 
daughter, the stealing of his horses, his strug­
gles with poverty and poor crops, his election 
to the legislature, a wonderful trip to Chicago, 
the building of a new barn, and the barn warm­
ing that followed.
Occasionally he drops in a stirring tale of the 
neighborhood: a border war, an Indian alarm, a 
street fight, ora hanging, and recounts his little 
part in it. John Doe and his family and neigh­
bors are resurrected. And so other scenes loom 
up from the dimness ofpast years, tales that stir 
the blood or the imagination, that bring laugh­
ter and tears in quick succession, that, like a 
carpet of Bagdad, transport one into the midst 
of other places and forgotten days.
Time is an inexorable reaper but he leaves 
gleanings, and mankind is learning to prize 
these gifts. Careful research among fast disap­
pearing documents has rescued from the edge 
of oblivion many a precious bit of the narrative 
of the past.
I t is the plan of this publication to restore some of those scenes and events that lie 
half-hidden upon the palimpsests of Iowa, to 
show the meaning of those faint tantalizing 
lines underlying the more recent markings — 
lines that the pumice of time has not quite
rubbed away and which may be made to reveal
* *
with color and life and fidelity the enthralling 
realities of departed generations. □


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The Palimpsest, vol.65 no.4, July-August 1984

The Palimpsest, vol.65 no.3, May-June 1984

The Palimpsest, vol.65 no.2, March-April 1984

The Death of an American College: A Retrospective Look

The State of the State: Iowa in 1885

Index for 1984

Palimpsests

Memories of a POW

Iowa in the 1880's

The Palimpsest, vol.65 no.6, November-December 1984

2,796

4,035