"Opere" del Galileo

In 1655, 13 years after the death of Galileo Galilei, the first edition of his complete works was issued, Opere di Galileo Galilei (Bologna: H.H. del Dozza, 1655). But there was one very big problem. Galileo's Dialogo, where he so persuasively defended the heliocentric view of the solar system, was still on the index of forbidden books. In order for the Opere to have wide distribution, it could not be included.

While the publisher did not want to push too hard, he did cleverly work the heliocentric view into the work. The frontispiece to the book depicts Galileo in animated conversation with the muses. He gestures to the sky, where you can just make out the planets orbiting the sun. It was a gesture to an unavoidable omission.

Our "Opere" is completed by our first edition of the Dialogo di Galileo Galilei (Fiorenza: Per Gio: Batista Landini, 1632). Come see them both by asking for Rare QB3 G14 1655 and Val 520 G133d.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Augustus Saint-Gaudens, an Irish-born, American sculptor, was arguably the finest American sculptor of his time and a founding member of the Cornish Colony located in Cornish, New Hampshire. The summer retreat for artists included notables such as Maxfield Parrish, Percy MacKaye, and the American author Winston Churchill.  Rauner Library holds the papers of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, which include correspondence, photographs, drawings and records of his commissions.

Among Saint-Gaudens's many works are a number of Civil War monuments, including a bronze bas-relief memorializing Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts regiment, the first Union regiment to be made up entirely of African-American soldiers.  The monument was unveiled in Boston in 1897 and stands on Beacon Street across form the State House.

Shaw Memorial in Boston

Numismatics was another of Saint-Gaudens's interests and he was chosen by Theodore Roosevelt to design a new twenty-dollar gold piece that is considered one of the most striking examples of American coinage.  Included in the collection are numerous design sketches and correspondence with Roosevelt.

Design for the double eagle coin

A guide to the microfilm version of the collection is available online and the papers themselves can be viewed by visiting Rauner and asking for ML-4.

Over the Rainbow in Hanover

Judy Garland, the iconic singer and entertainer, playing pool in a frat basement at Dartmouth?? Who knew?? Well, the Alpha Theta scrapbook in Rauner Library contains photos and news clippings and a note signed by Miss Garland to the brothers. She came in January of 1967 and spent four days in Hanover, accompanied by Tom Green, class of '60, former president of Alpha Theta and assistant editor of the Daily Dartmouth, who had been working with Miss Garland on her autobiography. Shortly after their visit to Hanover, Miss Garland announced that she was engaged to marry Mr. Green (he would have been husband number five). They planned to marry at Dartmouth and then honeymoon in Europe. The magic that Hanover worked on Miss Garland did not last and the marriage never took place. We would surely love to hear Mr. Green’s description of their visit but alas, he is no longer with us. We must settle for the account found in the Daily Dartmouth (January 11, 1967).

To view the clippings and photos, ask to see the Alpha Theta scrapbook, DO-77, Box 6620.

Emblem Book

Andrea Alciato (1492-1550), distinguished humanist and legal scholar, launched a new genre, the emblem book, that combined classical epigrammatic poetry forms with themes from the medieval bestiary.  Emblem books proliferated throughout western Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries and were didactic, rather than devotional, in nature. Alciato’s Emblematum liber, as it was commonly known, was a best seller in both Reformation and Counter-Reformation countries and remains among the most reprinted books in history.  We recently acquired a 1576 edition from Lyon entitled, Diverse imprese accommodate a diverse moralita con versi che i loro significati dichiarano.... Tratte da gli Emblemi dell' Alciato with 180 woodcuts.

“In Adulatores,” or “On Flatterers,” compares the flatterer who “feeds on the wind of popular approval” with the chameleon, who “is always breathing in and out with open mouth the bodiless air on which it feeds” and takes on the appearance and coloration of those around it.

The Grief of Winter Carnival

The first snow sculpture, 1925

Winter Carnival, the brainchild of Fred Harris, 1911, founder of the Dartmouth College Outing Club, began as a series of sporting events designed to get students outdoors and clear away the winter doldrums. By the 1930s, Carnival had transformed into a series of parties, balls and contests (such as the crowning of the Queen of Snows) that had barely a passing connection to winter sports. Dartmouth men trapped in the woods of New Hampshire had turned it into the best excuse yet to invite women to campus. National Geographic actually dubbed it the “Mardi Gras of the North.”

Waiting for dates to arrive on the Carnival Train

F. Scott Fitzgerald with Walter Wanger, 1915,
at Carnival in 1939

Following each Carnival, the Outing Club ran “Grief Meetings” where they detailed problems and issues in the vain hope of avoiding the same problems the following year. In 1933 they reported 2,848 people in attendance. By 1939, the year Budd Schulberg 1936, and F. Scott Fitzgerald showed up on campus with a film crew to create the movie “Winter Carnival,” the event had grown so big that The Dartmouth reported, “Dartmouth must soon decide whether its largest social event of the year should be curtailed.” This did not come to pass, and Carnival went off again the following year with no apparent changes.

It took the outbreak of the Second World War to bring the tradition to its knees. Even then, it was not dead. Carnival was back and going strong again when the war ended. Now, 100 years after Fred Harris’s first modest ski contest, Carnival still thrives, albeit on a scale more in keeping with what the DOC wanted in 1939.

Winter Carnival Committee members, undated

Christi und Antichristi

Propaganda played a major role in the spread of the Reformation. While the leaders of the Reformation were members of the clergy, and were used to a formal, scholarly form of communication, to reach the people they resorted to a visual, didactic method. We recently acquired this example of Protestant rage published in Wittenberg in 1521, Passional Christi und Antichristi.  Through a series of 26 woodcut illustrations, the life of Christ is juxtaposed with the life of the Pope. The text is in the vernacular German and contrasts excerpts from the Gospels with quotations from canon law. As you might expect, the Pope doesn't fare well in the images.

The most satirical image shows Christ driving the merchants from the Temple next to an image of the Pope counting his money from selling indulgences. But the darkest is the day of judgment: As Christ ascends, the Pope is driven into the fires of hell.

The title page is also telling: there is no author, publisher or place of publication listed. It is believed that Luther himself began selecting the texts continued by Melanchthon assisted by Schwertfeger. But no printer was going to risk church censure by claiming responsibility for such an incendiary book.

Ask for Rare Book NE 1150.5 .C7 P379 1521.

The Christie Warden Murder

On July 17, 1890, Andrew Warden, a farmer in the Hanover area, took on a hired hand who called himself Frank Almy.  Almy was actually a convicted felon named George Abbott who had escaped from prison in Winsdor, VT, three years before.  He began courting Christina, known as Christie, one of the Warden's daughters and exchanged several gifts with her.

In April the following spring, Almy was fired by the Wardens due to lack of work to be done on the farm.  He left the area for Boston, but returned in June obsessed with the idea of seeing Christie again.  He hid himself inside the Warden's barn and made several attempts to see her during the next month.  Finally, on July 17, 1891, he encountered Christie, her sister Fanny, her mother, and a friend walking home from a Grange meeting.  He pulled Christie from the group at gunpoint and dragged her off the road, where he shot her and then escaped.

After searching for a month, Almy was discovered hiding in the Warden's barn.  He was severely wounded and finally captured after a standoff of several hours and then taken to the Hanover Inn, where a crowd of 1500 demanded to see "the monster."  The photo above shows Almy lying on a cot during this event.  The photograph below is of the crowd outside the barn during his capture.

Almy was convicted of murder and hanged on May 16, 1893.

There are several sources of information about the murder.  Ask for the vertical and photo files labeled "Warden, Christie."  Newspaper clippings of the events can be found in a scrapbook compiled by Harold Gibson: DC Hist LD 1438.8 .G5  There is also a small collection of manuscript material: MS 761