October 25, 1910

“Alpha Delta Phi Entertains: Enjoyable Rarebit Party and Dance”

“Last Saturday night an informal rarebit [see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_rarebit] party was held at the Alpha Delta Phi house, 122 Vernon Street [lists chaperones and attendees] . . . After some time had been spent around the fire singing college songs, the whole party adjourned to the dining room, where several of the young ladies officiated at the chafing dishes.  The rugs and furniture were then removed from the rooms, and the remainder of the evening was spent in dancing.  Excellent music was furnished by Clark, ’11, on the violin; Moore, ’14, on the mandolin; and Adam, ’14, on the piano.”

Best advertisement:  Brown, Thompson & Co.  “For Hallowe’en / You will find in our Corner Store a line of Novelties, very appropriate in the way of Pumpkins, Ghosts, Witches, Cats, Pumpkin Lanterns, etc., for favors and the like.  For table decorations, we have a nice showing of fancy crepe papers and napkins, also Place cards, Tally cards, and everything you need in the way of Hallowe’en appointments.”

Tags: From the Archives

One of the most impressive illustrated travel books in the Watkinson is by Abbe Jean-Claude-Richard de Saint Non (1721-1791), entitled Voyage pittoresque ou Description des royaumes de Naples et de Sicile (Paris, 1781-1786), bound in five folio volumes.

According to Gordon Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book, 1700-1914, “Saint-Non is one of the most engaging figures in the chronicle of the French illustrated book.  A small, almost frail man, he was often referred to as ‘little Saint-Non.’ Unaffected, modest, and amiable, his generosity was prodigal, and his loyalty proverbial.”

“Forced by his prominent and wealthy family to accept the priesthood as a suitable occupation for a younger son, Saint-Non was soon embarked on a significant career as an ecclesiastical official.  Early in life, however, he had acquired a taste for music, drawing, and above all engraving, and when his career met a political check in 1753, he turned his thoughts towards the encouragement of the arts.  Aided by the considerable fortune of his family, he became one of the notable amateurs of history.”

Saint-Non became adept at etching, and on his first visit to Italy in 1759, which overwhelmed his sensibilities with its grandeur, he began furiously sketching, engraving, and painting what he saw.  He toured Naples, Vesuvius, Herculaneum, and Pompeii with the painters Jean-Honore Fragonard and Hubert Robert, and eventually published a set of etchings containing 89 designs on 19 sheets [Suite de nix-feuille d’apres l’antique (Paris, 1762)], which we do NOT have in the Watkinson.  The subjects, as with some in the present work, are classical remains discovered in recent excavations.

Shown here is a view of Naples, and a plan of same.

Tags: Browsing the Stacks

The Watkinson has two issues (vol. 1 numbers 3 & 4) of the first newspaper published in the colony of Liberia. From 1830 to 1834, its editor was John Brown Russwurm, a Jamaican-born mulatto who was educated in Canada, graduated from Bowdoin College in Maine, and then settled in New York where, in 1827, he and Samuel Cornish co-founded Freedom’s Journal, the first black newspaper in the United States. The Liberia Herald became the fifth oldest newspaper in Africa after the French-language periodicals published in Egypt during the Napoleonic occupation of 1797, the Cape Town Gazette of South Africa, 1800, The Royal Gazette and Sierra Leone Advertiser, 1801, and The Royal Gold Coast Gazette, 1822.

The library record is here: http://library.trincoll.edu/voyager/shortcut.cfm?BIBID=276493

Tags: Browsing the Stacks

Friday, October 21, 1910

“Freshman Rules Posted”

“Freshman!  Conduct yourselves always in a respectful and obedient manner towards your superiors.  Evidence of this respect must be shown by saluting al professors, graduates, and men of higher classes.  All throwing of water or calling out of windows, shouting on the campus or throwing snow-balls is strictly forbidden.  The placing of notices upon the bulletin-board is also prohibited.  Unless accompanied by a man of class, you are forbidden under any circumstances to appear at Heub’s, or in a box at any theatre.  The freshman cap must always be worn except on the Sabbath or when going down town.  The cap must not be disguised or defaced or altered.  In attending all college meetings, sings, and games, promptness is compulsory.  Obtrude not yourselves unbidden into the discussion of your superiors, nor offer advice unsolicited.  Neither make yourselves conspicuous by the display of loud haberdashery or clothing.  Never smoke pipe or cigar or wear school insignia of any sort in public.  Also the wearing of khaki and corduroy and the carrying of canes will not be tolerated.  Sitting upon the college fence is forbidden.  You are further required to step off the board walk at the approach of a superior, and in passing up and down Vernon Street to use the south side exclusively.”

Best advertisement:

FOR MEN’S EVENING DRESS WEAR.  Just received from Switzerland new importations of pure silk mufflers….

Tags: From the Archives

James Mullalla,  A View of Irish Affairs since the Revolution of 1688 (Dublin, 1795).

The first edition of this treatise on Irish politics, to which Washington subscribed (for fifty copies) in the year he ratified the Jay Treaty, the accord which began a decade of peace with Britain.  Mullalla, ‘patriot’ historian, Trinity (Ireland) scholar and Freemason, analyzes the ‘calamities of the nation invariably flowing from public misrule, barbarous manners, private interest, and the rage of parties’.  He cites archives and authors studied at Oxford and Cambridge, and discusses the effects of political actions undertaken at the Vatican, at Westminster and on Irish soil.  Mullalla achieved notoriety in 1792 when he produced “the most politically provocative [pamphlet] of all.”  His Compilation on the Slave Trade, respectfully addressed to the Irish People, with its “blunt assertion of the African’s right to revolt against his master was a highly unusual feature in the anti-slavery discourse” (Rodgers).  A View of Irish Affairs sees Mullalla revisit the theme of Irish manumission, as he discusses the “narrow and illiberal policy of Great-Britain.”  Despite this, he is on the whole optimistic about the future relationship between the nations.  SEE Nini Rodgers, “Ireland and the Black Atlantic in the Eighteenth Century,” Irish Historical Studies, 32:126 (2000), pp. 174-192.

Tags: New Acquisition

Today is Columbus Day, and we librarians are busily working as the students are off visiting family, watching the game (whichever game is on in your part of the country), or sleeping off last night’s party.

Plumbing the depths of the Watkinson today, I drew up quite a nice nugget–Noviter historiarum omnium repercussiones, printed in Venice in 1506.  This is a chronicle that contains one of the earliest printed accounts of Columbus and his voyages.  The great Americana bibliographer Henry Harrisse gives us the following description in 1866:

“Many of the historians of the fifteenth century were mere chroniclers, who kept a historical register of events in the order of time, beginning a mundi incunabulis[i.e., the cradle or beginning of the world], and ending with the year when the manuscript was intrusted to the printer.  Every two or three years, additions were made and new new editions published under the name of the author who had given celebrity to the work, even after he was dead and buried within the walls of the monastery, which had often been his only sphere of action and personal influence.  The present chronicle is one of that character.”

The author was Jacopo Filippo Foresti da Bergamo (1434-1520), who “was of a noble family, and abandoned the world to become a monk of the Augustine order.”   The first edition of this work was printed in Venice in 1483, and it was reprinted with additions as late as 1581.  The first edition to mention Columbus was printed in Venice in 1503.  Aside from this 1506 edition, the Watkinson has an edition printed in 1492, which (of course) makes no mention of the world-changing event that happened that year (it only covers events up to 1490).

Tags: Anniversaries

In the October 14, 1910 issue of the Tripod, the following books were among those reported as “additions to the library”:

An Account of Some of the Descendants of John Russell, the Emigrant, by the late Gurdon Wadsworth Russell (Trinity Class of 1835).  The book is still here:  http://library.trincoll.edu/voyager/shortcut.cfm?BIBID=564598

Shakespeare and His Critics, by Charles F. Johnson (gift of the author, and it was reviewed in the Tripod in 1909).  The book is still here:  http://library.trincoll.edu/voyager/shortcut.cfm?BIBID=401511

Music in the Church, by Peter Christian Lutkin.  The book is still here:  http://library.trincoll.edu/voyager/shortcut.cfm?BIBID=491463

Proceedings of the Second National Peace Congress, Chicago, 1909, ed. by Charles E. Beals.  The book is still here:  http://library.trincoll.edu/voyager/shortcut.cfm?BIBID=521362

 Best advertisement:  Promoting the various aspects of the college, including the library:  “The LIBRARY contains about 60,000 volumes, 30 per cent of which have been purchased within the last twelve years.  It is open daily for consultation and study.

Tags: From the Archives

Lisboa, José da Silva.  Principios de Direito Mercantil, e Leis de Marinha para uso da mocidade portugueza, destinada, ao commercio.  (Lisbon: Impressão Regia, 1801-1819). 

This work first appeared in 1798 (here expanded), proved highly influential, and was a pioneer of its kind published in Portuguese.  It covers such matters as insurance, commercial risk, averages, foreign exchange, contracts, the conduct of the ships’ company, and mercantile law.  The author was a native of Bahia and a distinguished political economist, who later became Visconde de Cairú.  He attributed many of the ills of Brazilian society to the reliance on negro slaves and later in 1818 ascribed the progress in São Paulo to the preponderance of the white race there (Maxwell, Conflicts and Conspiracies: Brazil and Portugal 1750-1808, 1973, pp. 227-8).  “In Portugal the harshest critic of the colonial system was José da Silva Lisboa . . . who guided the economic policy of Dom João VI in Brazil . . . Upholding liberal principles, he spread the ideas of Adam Smith in numerous works” (Emilia Viotti da Costa, “The Political Emancipation of Brazil,” IN From Colony to Nation: Esays on the Independence of Brazil, ed. by Russell Wood, 1975).

Tags: New Acquisition

October 7, 1910

“Trinity 21, Worcester 0. ‘Tech’ Men Go Down Before Superior Team Work—Trinity Plays Well in First Game”

Mention is made of Hudson, “a big, 200-pound freshman who played full-back,” who “came to Trinity from Shattuck School, in Fairbault, Minnesota, where he played for two years on a championship preparatory school team.”  He “suffered a severe wrench of the left ankle” while dodging two other players, which was “the first accident he has ever sustained from football.”  Tough luck, injured in the first game of the season!

Best Advertisement:  Fatima cigarettes—guys smoking around a trophy.  How many packs did they smoke the day before the game?

Tags: From the Archives