Money Talks

One of our lesser-known book collections in Special Collections is the Wilfrid Scawen Blunt collection. It was given to the college in 1940 by legendary Dartmouth professor Herbert West, a member of the class of 1922. The Blunt collection contains seventy-seven volumes of first-edition works by the author, including presentation copies and other rare issuances of his work.

Born in Sussex, England, in 1840, Blunt was publicly known for his anti-imperialistic stance towards European global dominance. His scathing condemnation of European self-righteous expansion frequently emerges in his writing. In his work Satan Absolved, Blunt refers to the phrase, "White Man's Burden," which was a term coined by Rudyard Kipling in an 1899 poem published about the Philippine-American War. The phrase was seized upon by expansionists and imperialists as a justification for the often violent subjugation and subsequent financial exploitation of other nations and peoples, under the pretense of bringing to them the "gift"

of civilization. Blunt places this concept in the mouth of his character, The Lord God, in Satan Absolved, who says:

This Anglo-Saxon man hath a fair name with some.

He stands in brave repute, a priest of Christendom,

First in civility, so say the Angel host

Who speak of him with awe as one that merits most.

In response, Blunt's character Satan rails against this thinly-veiled notion of white supremacy: "Their poets... write big of the 'White Burden.' Trash! The White Man's Burden, Lord, is the burden of his cash."

In addition to his anti-imperialism, Blunt also dallied with the Islamic faith, and wrote a book titled The Future of Islam. He and his wife, Lady Anne Noel Blunt, lived for a long time just outside of Cairo, where they established an Arabian horse-breeding farm that was partially responsible for saving the Arabian breed from extinction. Blunt's love of horses is evident in Satan Absolved. Here in Special Collections, we have a proof copy of the poem containing numerous manuscript corrections. In one of Satan's responses to The Lord God, he originally speaks of "Large hearted elephants, the wolf, the wolverine." However, in our version, Blunt has crossed out the wolf and the wolverine and instead substituted "the horse how near divine."

To examine his other corrections and emendations of his poem, or to read Satan's withering critique of imperialism in full, come to Rauner and ask to see Blunt 31, copy 2.