Visitors to the Sibylla home frequently remarked on what a quiet child little Luella was, always with her nose in a notebook, furiously scribbling marks that nobody else could decipher. Only two of her sisters and a favored scullery maid knew Luella’s secret. She was an enthusiastic collector of odd sounds.

Although she didn’t speak until the age of seven (and rarely after that), from infancy Luella could perfectly copy the songs of the wrens that nested outside her nursery window. By the age of three she had devised a system of sonic notation that enabled her to write down and later recall sounds that she found amusing. Luella expanded on her uncanny ability to precisely mimic the sounds she collected using strange instruments that she fashioned with items pilfered from the trash heap.

As a young lady, she took many solitary trips, packing little but a notebook, a fireproof box of indelible pencils, her spectacles and a spare pair of serviceable shoes. She was sometimes glimpsed in the dim corners of side-show tents, interviewing showpeople, other times patiently coaxing recalcitrant alley rats or standing for hours with her ear to a tree trunk. Luella often brought home souvenirs from her rambles, and enjoyed compiling and cataloging her sounds and memorabilia. She painstakingly labeled most of the specimens, but the source of some remains obscure, as do the methods she used to capture them. Luella even appears to have collected voices rarely heard in modern times, like those of giants, fairies and talking beasts. Her quiet nature and unique methods of sonic capture also made it possible for her to preserve the sounds of things like trees and moonlight, which you might have thought were silent.

Later in life, Luella took an interest in chemistry, and began using specially prepared bottles to capture and preserve sounds at their source. However, after an accidental discovery of Luella’s collection provoked her mother’s favorite cook to apoplexy, Luella stored it away in a locked bureau with specially lined bureau drawers, where over the years several specimens were spilled, creating indelible sound stains. Another unintended mishap forced Luella to switch from glass sound jars to tin canisters, but in her journals she remarked that this method had the drawback of sonic staleness. By the time the phonograph was invented, Luella was quite elderly, and spent much of her time in a small armchair by the picture window, reading her childhood journals and chuckling.

Luella’s phonarium is all that remains of her adventures in sound hunting and collecting, and it will continue to mystify and entertain our researchers for many years to come.