The Glutton's Spoon

Dartmouth has its share of quirky traditions. One of the oddest involved a giant wooden spoon. Each fall, usually in October or November, the Junior Class would assemble and a series of "honors" would be bestowed on class members. Among the awards was a giant wooden spoon given annually to the "heaviest eater of the Junior Class." The tradition appears to have started sometime before 1871 and continued up to 1906.

We have two of the spoons in our collections. One has been painted and shows a student departing from the college with suitcases in hand, above reads, "Thru Dartmouth's Classic Hall I Strayed." The other was presented to Randolph McNutt, Class of 1871. McNutt appeared to have stayed fit despite his hearty appetite, but he did become a fat cat in the business world, amassing a fortune as a distributor of school furnishings and through real estate dealings. He bequeathed $500,000 to Dartmouth in 1927, and two years later, Tuck Hall was renovated and renamed McNutt Hall in his honor.

Ask for Realia 79 to make yourself feel a little lighter after your holiday feast.

Respect My Authoritah!

Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Spain, ruler of half of Europe and a goodly portion of the New World, may not have respected Cartman's "authoritah" but he would have agreed with the sentiment. This grant of arms to Nicholas de Almacan of Arequipa, Peru, from May 14, 1552, features Charles V in the center of the illuminated border.  Facing the reader, he is flanked by an image of Caesar on the right and the conquistador Pizarro on the left, both ceding their authority to him though their gaze.  The highly decorated initial letter adds another lay of authority to the document: it contains the crest of the arms of the House of Habsburg.

The recipient of the coat of arms was a conquistador who fought with Pizarro and established himself in Peru. The image of Pizarro is a true rarity: perhaps his only known life portrait.  The coat of arms is displayed in the text, and the whole is framed with images of conquest and the New World's bounty.

To see this remarkable document, ask for Lansburgh 15.

Dancing with Vesalius

One of our favorite books here in Rauner Library is Andreas Vesalius's De Humani corporis fabrica libri septem (Basileae: Ex officina Ioannis Oporini, 1543). The web is full of great information about the book, so we won't wax poetical about it, but we are excited to announce that it has inspired the Dartmouth Dance Ensemble. They will be performing this Friday, November 19, at 3:30 inside the glass box, and we will have Vesalius out in one of our display cases.  Here is the Dance Ensemble's description of the event:

The Dartmouth Dance Theater Ensemble will be performing behind the glass on three of the levels of the protected environment housing the priceless collection of books.

The theme of the performance is based on Andreas Vesalius's De humani corporis fabrica (On the structure of the human body) anatomical illustrations of the dissected body circa 1543. This extraordinary book is in the Rauner Special Collections and was displayed in the atrium gallery area of Baker Library last year. The anatomical drawings have inspired the group choreography conceived by ensemble member Mayuka Kowaguchi '11.

This will mark the first dance performance event, which utilizes and features the unique architecture of Rauner Library.

We hope to see you there!

And, if you ever want to see the book, just ask for Rare QM25.V4

Printed at the Sign of "The Penguins"

We have plenty of contemporary artists' books in Rauner that make inventive use of ordinary objects, but it's much rarer to find an older book bound with materials as strange as packing crates and harness leather. Aurora Australis, an anthology of poems, essays, and illustrations about life in Antarctica, has an excellent reason for its odd binding -- it was printed by the members of Ernest Shackleton's 1907-1909 Nimrod Expedition in the middle of an Antarctic winter.

Pressed for space in its small ship, the expedition brought along an iron handpress, an etching press, paper, ink, and type, but planned to improvise a binding from the lightweight wood boards of the expedition's packing crates. The editor was Shackleton himself, and the printers were two sailors who had had only three weeks training in presswork and lithography. The end result is both charmingly quirky and astonishingly professional given the conditions in the hut where the press was set up. As one sailor described:

Dust from the stove fills the air and settles on the paper as it is being printed.... It is too cold to keep the printer's ink fluid; it gets sticky and freezes... the printers were called away while the candle was burning, and... when they returned they found that the plate had overheated and melted the inking roller of gelitinous substance. I believe it was the only one on the Continent and had to be re-cast somehow.

In all, about 90 copies of Aurora Australis were printed, bound, and distributed to the members of Shackleton's expedition. Rauner's is affectionately known as the "Oatmeal Copy" for the label which is partially visible on the inside board cover.

Ask for Stefansson G850 1907 .A8 to see Aurora Australis for yourself. Also, make sure to take a look at an historical introduction to the text in our facsimile copy: Stefansson G850 1907 .A8 1986.

Posted for Anne Peale '11

Freshman Caps

Had you been a College freshman 99 years ago, you would at this moment be purchasing your freshman cap, a newly instituted requirement intended to make it easier to identify members of the entering class.

On October 26, 1911, The Dartmouth proclaimed:

Freshman caps will henceforth add a touch of the picturesque and a deeper hue to Dartmouth's campus.  The custom just initiated is worthy of continuing down the long years of the history of the College until it becomes a tradition as fixed and revered as the traditions that cluster about the old pine or the senior fence.

It is curious how few years are required to establish a new custom and to give it all the authority of a habit handed down from antiquity.  Four years hence, when all the classes now present in College have graduated, the freshman cap will have become a permanent feature of Dartmouth undergraduate life, and the ordinary student will associate its origin with the Indians, Eleazar Wheelock, the "Dartmouth Song," and the founding of the College.

In actuality, the freshman cap tradition lasted not quite sixty years.  The style of cap, or beanie, changed somewhat over the years, as did the consequences of not wearing it.  In the 1950s a Dartmouth Night tug-of-war with the sophomore class determined whether freshmen could stop wearing the caps or had to keep wearing them until mid-November.  The class of 1973 was the last class, as far as we know, to wear the beanies.

Ask for Realia 93 to examine our collection of distinctive headgear.

Gibson Girls

This original 1896 edition of Pictures of People by Charles Dana Gibson is currently on display in the Hood Museum's Space for Dialogue, in an exhibition curated by Sarah Peterson '10.  Sarah describes the compilation of Gibson's early pen and ink drawings as follows:

The book mainly focuses upon the Gibson Girl and her exploits while finding a mate: It was of principle importance to the Gibson Girl to secure a husband while she was young and beautiful. Therefore many of Gibson’s drawings explore the themes of love and courtship. This focus is present in “A Little Story: By a Sleeve.” The Gibson Girl in this image circa 1896 is wearing the most fashionable dress of her day. Interestingly, it is her garment that is central to the action of the scene. In the 1890’s the sleeves of dresses became increasingly large, until in the mid-1890’s they reached balloon-like proportions. Here, the Gibson Girl’s dress serves as evidence that the young man and woman were sitting inappropriately close to one another just before the servant arrived.

The Gibson Man was made by Charles Dana Gibson to accompany his leading female in her search for love. He is strong chinned, slim, and attractive, yet at times rendered powerless by the mystifying allure of the young Gibson Girl. However, ultimately he will succeed in his pursuit of the free and independent lady and she will in the end accept marriage and motherhood or be doomed to the fate of becoming an old maid.

You can see the Gibson Girl on display with the rest of Sarah's exhibit at the Hood Museum through January, 2011. After that, ask for Rauner Illus G357pi.

"More like Dr. Watson than Sherlock Holmes"

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, lost his son Kingsley during the 1918 influenza pandemic, two weeks before the Armistice that ended the First World War. Over the course of the war, Conan Doyle’s brother, two brothers-in-law, and nephew also died. In the wake of these losses, he became devoted to promoting spiritualism, which may have provided consolation in his grief, as it did to many who sought contact with departed loved ones. Many of Conan Doyle’s spiritualist writings omitted identifying him as the creator of Sherlock Holmes.

Among Rauner Library’s collections is the archive of the Arctic explorer Viljhalmur Stefansson, who taught at Dartmouth from 1947 to 1962. Stefansson first met Conan Doyle in London in 1913, and the two corresponded during Stefansson’s Arctic travels and through the First World War. Stefansson visited Conan Doyle in England in 1920, and wrote later in his autobiography that in terms of spiritualism, he found Conan Doyle’s “ready acceptance inconsistently naïve. Confronted with the spirit world, Doyle was more like Dr. Watson than Sherlock Holmes.”

Despite his friend’s skepticism, Conan Doyle enlisted Stefansson’s help in debunking a fraudulent séance during his 1922 American lecture tour. When Conan Doyle returned to England, he wrote to Stefansson that he felt his work in America had brought “knowledge and comfort to a lot of people.” He went on to write: “How strange our tasks! You are working on reindeer and I on disembodied spirits & both are equally part of the great whole. I quite see the Imperial aspect of your work.”

Come and see these materials and many others at the new exhibit in Rauner Special Collections Library, “The Adventure of the Archives: Detecting Sherlock Holmes in Rauner,” in the Class of 1965 Galleries. The exhibit was curated by Laura Braunstein and will be on display through December 22.