I took a break recently to help with the best kind of archival tedium: numbering the pages of old scrapbooks. The books were created by David French, a Pomona College student in the 1930s. French amassed several folios of his nature drawings and homespun poetry, with each volume dedicated to a different feature of the Claremont landscape (wildflowers and leaves were evidently his particular favorites).
French’s notebooks will soon become part of the Claremont Colleges Autograph and Manuscript Collection here at Special Collections. Lovingly made and steeped in a strong affection for poetry and nature, these folios provide a wonderful glimpse into the mind of a Pomona College student as he documented a much sleepier and more pastoral Claremont
