Page:Scrapbook of a Historian - Frances Fuller Victor.djvu/3

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SCRAPBOOK OF A HISTORIAN—FRANCES FULLER VICTOR
327

goods being brought by vessels from San Francisco into the Umpqua river, and hence taken to the interior. At that period there was an upper and a lower Scottsburg, about two miles apart ...

The scrapbook includes in the general miscellany she has pasted neatly on the pages the following additional articles on the Pacific Northwest: "Northern Seaside Resorts," 1894; "The Wild Game of the Pacific," 1897; "The Search for Fretum Anian," from the Overland Monthly for November 1869; "Boundary Dispute Over San Juan Island," from the San Francisco Chronicle for February 16, 1896; and "The Pioneers of Oregon," in two parts, from the Overland Monthly for July and August 1874.

In the clippings about her, and in some things she contributed herself through interviews or directly to the papers, there are several references to the shabby way she felt Hubert Howe Bancroft had treated her in turning her out to pasture after his 39 volumes were completed.

Under the heading "A Literary Pioneer," the Impress had this to say in 1895:

Eleven years of this valuable life was given to more elaborate literary labors on the Bancroft History: fully six volumes of that important work coming from her brain and pen. Only four of these can be segregated-Oregon, Vols I and II; Washington, Idaho and Montana; and Nevada, Colorado and Wyoming.

Another reference, with the caption "The Woman Historian," claims the same amount of Bancroft production for her, and says in addition:

Mrs. Victor's individual labors in the Bancroft library covered a period of eleven years, between 1878 and 1889 . . .

These years of unremitting toil, during which her identity was practically lost in the shadow of a publisher's name-years of bookworm seclusion and absorption in her tasks—left their inevitable impression upon body and brain.

A clipping from the San Francisco Call for February 14, 1898, marked in ink "Author not known," speaks of Bancroft's lack of integrity in the following blunt terms: