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

Kept at Room Temperature...

The 100th anniversary of Winter Carnival, the impending major winter storm, and the building of the snow sculpture on the Green has us thinking about snow. We toyed with an entry on the Blizzard of 1888, but learned it wasn't so bad here in Hanover compared to the rest of the country (just 25 inches of snow and light winds). We also thought of Wilson Bentley, a Jericho, Vt, farmer who set out to prove that no two snowflakes are alike, but then we learned he had no Dartmouth connection. Then it came to us, one of our favorite non-items in the collection: a bit of snow from the world's largest snowman from 1987.

For Winter Carnival in 1987, Dartmouth students decided to break the Guinness world record for largest snowman. After the snowman was confirmed to be the largest ever, bits of it were packaged up and sold as souvenirs. We have one, but the artifact has lost some of its luster over the years. "Kept at room temperature," as our catalog record so helpfully notes, and stored in a non-airtight container, our bit melted and evaporated years ago. What is left is the container, an air-filled bag with only a few stray water molecules left of the once grand snowman.

Come see it--or see what it was, by asking for Realia 151.

Shooting Script

Rauner holds a collection of film scripts that was established in memory of Hollywood producer Irving Thalberg.  Started in 1937 with a donation by Walter Wagner, the collection has grown to almost 2500 items.  One of these scripts is from Cecille B. DeMille's 1938 version of The Buccaneer, which starred Fredric March and Franciska Gaal.  The copy held by Rauner was presented to the library by DeMille and includes the cast list which is partially handwritten and shows several substitutions for various roles.  Also included in the script are numerous film frames laid in next to the relevant dialog.  The frame here is from "Sequence B."

LAFITTE   
What makes you think I'm not a gentleman?

GRETCHEN
Your rings tell me --

Other scripts include newspaper clippings and reviews as well as stills from the film and behind the scenes.  The 1944 version of the thriller Gaslight starred Joseph Cotten and Ingrid Bergman.  They are shown here "relaxing" off screen with director George Cukor.

To see The Buccaneer script, ask for Scripts 37.  To see the Gaslight script, ask for Scripts 2238.  You can also search the catalog for other scripts the library holds.

Dartmouth Traditions: Senior Fence

Seniors posing on the fence

The senior fence was built in 1897 as a place for seniors to gather on the Green. It was originally located along the west side of the green, but moved in 2003.  Seniors sat on the fence to socialize, carve canes and watch events on the Green.  It was also the place where they gathered before or after events associated with Senior Week. In the early years it was reserved for use by seniors, though girls were tolerated.  On the other hand, underclassmen so foolish as to sit on the fence, risked a dunking in the “terrible trough,” a watering trough on the South West corner of the green.

The Terrible Trough