Banning Books

On Monday, we welcomed Professor Peggy Baum's Writing 5 class, titled "Rights of Writers." Peggy wanted her students to engage with issues that challenge journalists, so we found some great items in the collection that engage with the issue of censorship. One of them was a book titled Mother Goose Rhymes, and across the cover was blazoned the word "CENSORED." The volume was filled with innocent rhymes made dirty by the blacking out of certain verbs, making the point that the mere act of censorship can cause innocuous words to contain dark import. We thought that this would be a great subject for a blog post but, when we did a quick search online, we found that the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine had scooped us seven years ago.

However, their article set us on a new tack. We discovered that the book was one of many written by Kendall Banning, a member of the class of 1902. Apparently, in addition to numerous volumes of prose and poetry, Banning had also written a "fake 1784 cookbook"! Our curiosity piqued, we mentioned the oddity to Jaime Eeg '18, the Edward Connery Lathem '51 Special Collections Fellow. As it happened, she was in the midst of planning an exhibit on cookbooks, set to open in April 2019. Eeg plucked the very volume from her cart of treasures, handed it to us, and we began to read.

As a Christmas prank in 1912, or thereabouts, friends of Banning were gifted a little book, titled The Squire's Recipes, that appeared to be a collection of mixed drink recipes collated by Banning's great-grandfather Calvin Banning in 1784. Banning claimed that he had discovered the pamphlet in his grandmother's attic in Connecticut, and soon the secret was out. Libraries all over the nation asked for copies, newspapers announced the discovery of a long-lost New England early printed text, and prohibitionists foamed at the mouth. Soon, after his great-grandfather's reputation began to be besmirched, Kendall Banning came clean and confessed that the ancient tome was actually of his own making. As a loyal son of Dartmouth, he had included a recipe for a drink called 'The Dartmouth Drachm.' He warns that, "because of its potency, it should be repeated cautiously."

To see a 1912 reprint of the original book, come to Rauner and ask for Alumni B227sq. To read some innocent nursery rhymes made dirty, ask for Alumni B227mo.