[Posted by Sally Dickinson, Special Collections Librarian, Watkinson Library]

Today in the Watkinson we were filling an interlibrary loan request and were having trouble finding the requested cartoon.  Henry Arneth was looking at the German version of the weekly Puck but coming up empty-handed.  I suggested looking in the American edition, which was easier to navigate.  And guess what?  We found it!  What could be more timely considering the upcoming elections, than this picture of senatorial shenanigans we discovered?

Puck was a satirical rag published in New York in the 1880’s.  You could buy it on the street corner for 10 cents every Wednesday.

I also got a kick out of the cover of the Jan. 2, 1889 issue:

[Posted by Dan Milner, University of Birmingham (England); recent link:  http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/aroundthemall/2011/04/smithsonian-folkways-releases-civil-war-naval-songs/]

Stan Hugill was the last seaman known to have sung sea shanties aboard a British merchant ship.  Hugill was also a prolific maritime painter and author of books on sea songs.  In Sailortown (1967), he mentions a New York shanghier who operated a combination hostelry-cum-grogshop named Larry Maher.

About 10 years ago, I found a Civil War period broadside sheet titled “Larry Maher’s Big 5-Gallon Jar” printed by H. De Marsan at 54 Chatham Street. New York, and I made mention of the piece in “Irish Maritime Songs from New York’s 19th Century Music Emporiums,” a presentation I made at the 2006 Mystic Seaport Music of the Sea Symposium.  It is quite evocative, as shown in this passage:

Come, all you jolly sailors bold, that lives both near and far; / I’ll sing you a short ditty concerning Larry Maher: / He keeps a slop-up boarding house, and sells rot-gut to the tars, / And the scourge of New-York City is… his big five-gallon jar.

So, if you want chain-lightning, step into Larry Maher, / And he’ll serve you with abundance from his big five-gallon jar.

When first I came to New-York, I came here on a spree, / And hearing tell of Larry’s place, I went the sights to see: / Some drunken shells in the corner lay more swilling at the bar, / And Larry was supplying them from his big five-gallon jar.

Now, one glass of Larry’s beverage will make your heart to ache, / And, when you get keeled over, your cash he’ll surely take; / But when you wake next morning, you’ll be far outside the bar, / Removed away to Liverpool by… gallus Larry Maher.

Two years later, I found an entry in a Manhattan city directory, “Maher Lawrence, liquors” beginning in 1857.  But the name of the song’s composer eluded me until August 2010 when I set my eyes on a second “Larry Maher” ballad sheet at the Watkinson Library, printed by J. Wrigley of “27 Chatham Street (opposite City Hall Park) New York.”  James Wrigley and Henry De Marsan were competitors and both were located at the addresses printed on their broadsides between 1861 and 1864.  The texts vary slightly, but the Watkinson broadside has one additional piece of information.  It specified the lyricist as G.W. Watson.

As I begin writing my Ph.D. dissertation on Irish life in New York City, the Wrigley broadside is a most welcome find.  Thanks to you, Peter Knapp and your colleagues for the helpful hospitality shown during my visit.

[Posted by Henry Arneth, Trinity ’09 and a member of the Watkinson staff]

Gustav Doré (from Gosling, below)

For over 100 years, the names Dante and Doré have been linked in literature; one of the reasons is that Dante’s Divine Comedy—the epic poem—is one of the many works illustrated by Gustave Doré and is one of Doré’s best known illustration cycles.  The strongest evidence on how this union came about is straight from the artist’s mouth:  “I conceived at this epoch the plan of these large folio editions of which Dante was the first volume published…My idea was then and always has been since, to produce in a uniform style an edition of the best authors, epic, comic, and tragic” (Lehmann-Haupt).

Doré’s assessment was made in 1861, the same year as he illustrated his famous “Doré” Bible.  However, despite the fact that Doré had been illustrating books for a number of years, there was still some doubt about the desirably of such a large book.   The proposed size was about 16 inches high and about a foot wide when the book was closed—a large and costly format.  Part of the publisher’s hesitation was the final cost to the consumer; but given the man that Doré was, he also had an answer to that problem—to bring out the first book of the Divine Comedy at his own expense.   This meant that all of the profits would also be Doré’s as well.  The edition of 3,000 sold out within weeks and was subsequently translated into many languages.  In the end, to ensure that the book would see the light of day,  he sold the rights to the printer and two of the engravers.

For the prolific Doré, this wasn’t much of a blow.  He was constantly working, and he liked to work quickly from his head—rarely, if ever, doing any preliminary sketches, and often drawing straight onto the wood block.  This is not to say that he didn’t understand the art nor that he couldn’t sketch, but that he chose to skip a step—which harkened back to Doré’s childhood when he would often envision a scene, right down to the most minute details, as he listened to stories.  “When a fairy tale was told to him, he immediately visualized the whole scenery with every detail of costume and character in perfect reality” (Lehmann-Haupt).  Apparently, this type of visualization was a gift Doré carried with him all his life.

But then it wasn’t unusual for an artist to sketch his idea on a block and leave it for an apprentice of sorts to do the actual engraving—it was the way most texts were illustrated.  In the history of art, many great artists would paint what was deemed as the most important areas (faces, hands, general poses and compositions) in their paintings while assigning other, less important areas to the amateurs in his workshop. “He [Doré] thoroughly understood the technique of wood engraving, although I am not sure that he ever engraved a single line into a piece of boxwood with his own hand” (Lehmann-Haupt).  So, in a way, Doré was simply continuing a long tradition.  But unlike the artists of old however, Doré allowed his engravers to sign their work.  If you take a close look at Doré’s engravings, you will sometimes notice two signatures—Doré’s and a second name.  This second name is that of the artist who did the actual engraving.

This practice can also account for a slight discrepancy in the quality of the engraving in Doré’s work.  After the Inferno had been released, there was a lapse of several years before Doré illustrated the other two books of the series—in 1868 he added 60 plates to his Dante, for Purgatory and Paradise—which were of inferior quality compared to the images he designed for the Inferno seven years earlier.  If we are to believe Lehmann-Haupt’s claim that Doré may never have engraved a line for himself, the proof could be found in the lack of consistency in Doré’s illustrations for the three books that comprise the Divine Comedy.

Sources:  Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt, The Terrible Gustave Doré (1943); Nigel Gosling, Gustave Doré (1974)

[Posted by Henry Arneth, Trinity ’09 and a member of the Watkinson staff]

Shelf reading in Watkinson Library one day, I spotted an interesting spine; upon closer inspection, I discovered that the “text” I was looking at was actually a collection of scientific pamphlets from the early 19th century that had been bound together.  I couldn’t resist, and opened the cover; it fell open to the pamphlet I was intrigued by immediately!  When I first read the spine, I expected to see a comparison to the Loch Ness creature, or even the creature rumored to be in Lake Champlain—but then I had been conditioned to expect a sea serpent to be more like a dinosaur or similar creature! I scanned the opening:

“In the month of August 1817, it was currently reported…that an animal of very singular appearance had been recently seen in the harbour of Gloucester, Cape Ann, about thirty miles from Boston.  It was said to resemble a serpent in general form and motions, to be of immense size, and move with wonderful rapidity; to appear on the surface of the water only in calm and bright weather; and to seem jointed…”;  I was hooked!

Then came some first-hand accounts of the creature; the voices of the men came alive in their words: “…between 80 and 90 feet in length…” (Solomon Allen, 3rd); “…his head appeared to be shaped like a sea turtle…” (Amos Story); “I saw him open his mouth, and his mouth appeared like that of a serpent; the top of the head appeared to be flat” (Epes Ellery); “…I supposed, and do believe the whole belly was nearly white” (Nathan Gaffney).  All that ran through my mind was “Could it be true?” as I read the depositions the taken by the Linnaean Society members.

It seemed the “sea serpent” was very much like what is now known as a sea snake, and in the end, according to the report, a smaller version that was referenced in the pamphlet as being the “progeny” of the considerably larger, first sighted creature, was killed in Cape Ann and later dissected.  Included in the pamphlet was an illustration of the drawings made at the time of dissection.

For the Linnaean Society of New England, this must have been an incredible discovery; up to that time I’m sure that there had been nothing like a sea snake seen on the New England Coast before: “In consequence of these reports, at a meeting of the Linnaean Society of New England, holden at Boston…a committee [was appointed] to collect evidence with regard to the existence and appearance of any such animal” and the pamphlet was the result of the report by that committee.  In fact, sea snakes aren’t common in New England; their primary home is in the warm waters around Australia.  However, the Cape Ann area is where the first American “sea serpent” was reported—in the 1630s!

The early 19th century was still a time of discovery, and with men living on the sea as they did—particularly in Gloucester and Cape Ann, the sighting of an animal of this size and nature, a creature never seen before in their nets, would certainly cause concern.  One of my first thoughts was that this unfortunate snake got caught in one of their nets and was pulled out of its natural habitat…but then how to account for the length of the snake?  The witnesses claimed that it was 80 to 90 feet long and that the head was the size of a barrel.

[Posted by guest blogger Lynn Fahy, Catalog Librarian]

Elisha Stanley was a student at the Edward Hall Family School for Boys in Ellington, CT in 1863. He and other teenage boys lived with Hall and his family and attended classes in the building next door, which is now a private home. One of Stanley’s textbooks, Sallust’s history of the war against Jugurtha, and of the conspiracy of Cataline is in the Henry Barnard Collection of 19th century American textbooks in the Watkinson Library. Stanley signed the endpaper, “Elisha Stanley, Jefferson City, Missouri. Ellington, Ct., Jan. 12, 1863.” Library record is here: http://library.trincoll.edu/voyager/shortcut.cfm?BIBID=98318

While doing research for my pictorial history, Images of America: Ellington, I learned that that Yanosuke Iwasaki, the second president of the Mitsubishi Corporation, had attended Hall’s school in the early 1870s, about ten years after Elisha Stanley. I also discovered that Mitsubishi was unaware of the Ellington connection. I contacted Seiichi Narita, the historian of the Mitsubishi Corporation in Tokyo by email. Our correspondence led to a visit by Narita to Ellington in August 2005 to confirm Iwasaki’s attendance at the school. Iwasaki’s brother Yataro wanted to prepare his younger brother for what he saw as a developing global economy by studying in the United States and learning English. Narita and I visited the home that had housed the classrooms of the Hall School. Elisha Stanley had scratched his initials and name in script on windows in one of his classrooms, and they are still there!

Narita was working on a history of the Mitsubishi Corporation that was just published this spring in Japan, and he wanted to know what Iwasaki would have studied, so he visited the Watkinson Library and examined Elisha Stanley’s textbook. Yanosuke Iwasaki and his son Koyata, the fourth president of Mitsubhishi, collected books, artworks and other cultural treasures to help preserve Japanese heritage at a time when they feared that Westernization would destroy it. The Seikado Bunko Art Museum in Tokyo houses their collection. Narita donated Art treasures of the Seikado to the Watkinson Library at the time of his visit.  Library record is here:  http://library.trincoll.edu/voyager/shortcut.cfm?BIBID=750806

This blog will be dedicated to “guest” bloggers–students, faculty, staff, alumni, and others who find things in the Watkinson that they just can’t keep quiet about.  Anyone is welcome to send me (Richard.Ring@trincoll.edu) a write-up of something they have discovered while working with Watkinson materials, and I’ll proof and post it as soon as possible (I reserve the right to edit all posts; if a contributor objects to the edits, I can remove the post).

Richard J. Ring, Head Curator & Librarian of the Watkinson Library