Costumes of the East

One of our favorite genres of book at Rauner is the costume book, which is usually a collection of images that display the various forms of dress that people wear from all over the world. Although the historical accuracy of these images can often be suspect, they are fascinating to explore, if only to get a sense of how American or European culture perceived other races and peoples over a hundred years ago. At Rauner, we have a beautiful first edition of The Oriental Album by Henry Van-Lennep, who was a missionary to Turkey and other parts of the Ottoman empire for twenty years (1840-1860). Although Van-Lennep was born to European merchants in Smyrna, he was educated in the United States, and so he returned here in 1861 to transform the many drawings that he had made of the Turkish people while abroad into a printed book.

The result was The Oriental Album, published in New York in 1862. There are twenty

chromolithographic prints in this oversized album, each purporting to represent a different common figure or type of person in Turkish or Ottoman society. Each image is accompanied by paternalistic, moralizing, and sometimes incorrect descriptions of the individuals that are represented. For example, for the image of the "Turkish Woman (unveiled)," Van-Lennep says that "the custom of ages and the requirements of the Koran have produced in the female sex a strong sense of real shame, which does not allow them to let any part of their faces appear besides their eyes."

Despite the inaccuracies and questionable representations of the Ottoman Empire and its people, Van-Lennep's Oriental Album was one of the few large chromolithographic works created during the 1860s in America and is still considered by some to be the best American costume book created during the 19th century.

To flip through Van-Lennep's book of beautiful images, come to Rauner and ask to see Rare DR432 .V3 1862.

50 Years Ago...

The Class of 1968 is back on campus now to lead the class of 2018 into Commencement. Fifty years ago this week, they were deep in their final exams and preparing for Senior Week. But another Dartmouth alumnus, Budd Schulberg '36, was in Los Angeles following Robert Kennedy's run for the Democratic nomination for President. That week he witnessed the second earth shattering assassination of the year.

This photograph taken by Harry Benson, shows the chaos in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel on the night of June 5th, 1968. The distraught man in the center with the white hair is Schulberg. Off in the right hand corner is Jimmy Breslin, who had written the famous account of JFK's funeral that was centered on the grave digger.

Schulberg and others writers had just met with Bobby on the night of the California primary. They were standing nearby when he was shot and were among the first people to rush at Sirhan Sirhan. As you would imagine the event had a lasting effect on Schulberg and he wrote about it several times.

To see the photograph and read Schulberg's thoughts on Bobby Kennedy, ask for MS-978, Box 25.

Dartmouth Blues

With commencement only a few days away, we happened to stumble upon some images of a past graduation ceremony inside an alum's personal photograph album. Charles L. Hildreth was a member of the class of 1901 who grew up in Westford, Massachusetts. After graduating from Dartmouth College, he attended Harvard Law School and became a practicing attorney in Lowell, Massachusetts, for many years before dying there at the age of eighty-eight.

What makes Hildreth's photographs truly remarkable is not merely the
crispness of the images, but also that they are all cyanotypes. A cyanotype is an image made by employing a photographic printing process that produces a cyan-blue print; engineering blueprints are probably the most familiar example of the process. We have a few examples of these fascinating images here at Rauner, and Hildreth's are some of the best of them. The image of men and women wearing their turn-of-the-century finest while crowded near the stump of the Old Pine, for example, is a fascinating look into the fashion of the time. It's hard to believe that they were wearing so many layers at that time of year.

Another image, one of my favorites, shows a group of people gathered in front of Dartmouth Hall with Rollins Chapel in the background. On the steps of Dartmouth Hall, initially unremarkable, stands what appears to be a studio camera, complete with black hood for the photographer to hide behind. While two men fuss with the camera, the crowd listens to an orator perform. These are only two of the many remarkable cyanotypes from the album; there are also some fantastic images of the bonfire tower, both before and after being set ablaze. To turn the pages of Hildreth's book, come to Dartmouth and ask to see Iconography 1574.

Larger than Life

Recently, we had the opportunity to collaborate with the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire. They borrowed several documents from our Augustus Saint-Gaudens papers to round out an exhibit on the American sculptor--the first major display of his work in New England in over thirty years. When our materials came back to us after several months away, it provided an opportunity to reflect upon the accomplishments of one of the most important American artists of his generation.

Saint-Gaudens is perhaps best known for his bronze bas-relief on Boston Common, the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial. However, we were reminded today of another influential work that Shaw completed in 1887 at the age of thirty-nine: Abraham Lincoln: The Man. Often referred to as Standing Lincoln, Shaw's massive 12-
foot statue stands on a pedestal in Lincoln Park in Chicago. Saint-Gaudens was specially selected to cast the giant monument, a fitting choice in part because the artist held the late president in high esteem and had been at his inauguration. The initial sketches that Saint-Gaudens made of the monument evince his attention to detail, all the way down to the pedestal decorations.

The influence of Standing Lincoln on both the public and other artists was significant. Numerous replicas were made and now stand in places as far-flung as London and Mexico City. Smaller replicas were cast by Saint-Gaudens' widow, Augusta, after his death and now reside in art museums all over the country. The local significance of this statue is also worth mentioning: Standing Lincoln was the first monument completed by Saint-Gaudens in Cornish, New Hampshire, where one of his friends had lured him with the promise that the area had "many Lincoln-shaped men." Saint-Gaudens would become so enamored of Cornish that he decided to establish his studio there. Saint-Gaudens' presence attracted like-minded artists that included important figures like the painter Maxfield Parrish and the American novelist Winston Churchill. The regular but informal gathering of these artists every summer eventually morphed into an extended social network that would come to be called the Cornish Colony. Today, the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site is the only national park system site in the state of New Hampshire (other than our portion of the Appalachian Trail).

To explore the Augustus Saint-Gaudens papers, come to Rauner and ask for boxes from ML-4.

The World in Your Hand

I pulled this book off the shelf just because it was so cute: a book less than 4 1/2 inches tall boasting "Atlas" from 1601 on the spine. I expected a few fold out maps, but I found the whole world compressed between the pages. It is based on a pocket atlas issued by Plantin in 1590--it might even use the same plates. Each page opening gives you a short textual description on the verso and an engraved map on the recto.

Most of Europe gets detailed treatment, but all of the Americas (North and South) are relegated to one map--the same is true for Africa. What is the purpose of an atlas like this? It can't get you anywhere, and it doesn't have enough information or detail to give you a good sense of any of the places depicted. Maybe it was some kind of power thing--a statement of ownership or dominance. Or, just a quick reference guide for the geographically confused.

To judge for yourself, ask for McGregor 131.

In the Still Watches of the Night

You wake up in the middle of the night with an inspiration--an idea that may be gold, or may just seem good when you are semi-conscious. Usually we just forget them, but can pretend in the morning that they were genius.

In 1935, Maxfield Parrish sketched out, both textually and literally, one of these moments in a letter to his son Max, who was trying to earn a little extra money as a carver:

I awoke in the still watches of the night and thought a body might turn an honest penny at some arts and crafts show by buying one of those big maple wood bowls at a hardware store and carve the rim and color it, somewhat like the scheme of color of the pohengles. And he might put on some kind of savagely ornamented handles too. I simply mention it. No, it needn't look anything like the object portrayed below.

At the bottom of the page, Parrish sketched a beautiful bowl in color pencil. Parrish worked the carriage of his typewriter to frame it in the left margin--an artist at work.

This is just one example of some the of materials we had out for a class earlier this week that had been studying Van Gogh's lavishly illustrated letters. The highlight was Andrew Wyeth's blueberries.

To see the Parrish sketch, ask for ML-62, Box 6, Folder 8.

Sparring with Mailer

On November 23, 1952, Budd Schulberg wrote a review of Picture by Lillian Ross for the New York Times Book Review. Ross, who was a New Yorker writer at the time, had written five articles for on John Huston’s filming of The Red Badge of Courage which she turned into a novel—the subject of Schulberg’s review.

In his review Schulberg was critical of Ross’s attempt at impartiality to the subject matter- Hollywood and its movers and shakers. However, he conceded that the book presented “Hollywood’s more heroic attitudes as well as its more foolish and familiar ones.” Among the many book reviews Schulberg did during his lifetime, this one does not stand out in any particular way, except that it provoked a verbal sparring with another writer, Norman Mailer.

Mailer, in a letter to the editor of the New York Times Book Review rebuked Schulberg’s review of the book accusing him of being more “concerned with reviewing his attitude to Hollywood than Miss Ross’ book.” Mailer also felt that “Mr. Schulberg was doing his piece in such a way as to offend not a single important person in the Hollywood community.”

Three weeks later, Schulberg responded. Acknowledging a brief acquaintance with Mailer, he reminds him that in years past such a “calculated insult like your letter to the Times” might have led to a different response. However, Schulberg felt that “words seem to be the only weapons handy to the occasion” pointing out that Mailer was impugning his honor rather than his judgment and that he would normally “have classified your letter as the crack-pot kind I usually choose to ignore.” He continues that he was “struck by the callowness of your assumption that our differing opinions of Miss Ross’s book reflected your courageous honesty and my craven insincerity. This reeks of the black-and-white self-righteousness that makes clear thinking so difficult these days.” Schulberg than proceeds for another page and a half to defend and analyze his review while dissecting Mailer’s arguments. “I hasten to add, however, that I am not accusing you of having written it [the letter] in order to worm your way into the good graces of Miss Ross or The New Yorker.”

Norman Mailer did not lose any time responding to Schulberg as a week later he wrote another letter, this one directly to Schulberg in which he apologized for not having sent his initial letter directly to the latter, arguing that the reason for that was that he could not bear “a certain kind of book reviewing” and that it was more important to him “that the editor hear it for whatever my two cents are worth than the critic.” He continues to admonish Schulberg accusing him of doing something “which as an author rather than a critic is unforgiveable.”

Whether a book is good or terrible the labor put into it deserved the respect of treating the book as something in and of itself rather than as a tumbling board for the reviewer. I mean, look Budd, really and truly who gives a damn how many times you read the book, how you discussed it with your family… . The fact of the matter is that you spent, as I remember, what with chatting and synopsis, about three quarters of your review before you could get to judgement, and I don’t have to tell you that a writer reads his review for the judgement.

After a short treatise on “Impartiality and tact,” Mailer eventually gets to an apology.

Now for slandering you. All right, I did and there are nine chances in ten that I was wrong and hasty, and for those nine chances I owe an apology. But why in the devil must you feel that I must assume that you are pure and incorruptible. Who is?... Where I erred and where I do feel ashamed is imputing a vulgar conscious motive to you – I would have resented it just as much…. I feel I was wrong in writing the letter the way I did, and I think you were wrong in writing the kind of review you did. Let’s leave it this way.

We are currently re-processing some of Budd Schulberg’s correspondence. If you want to read the verbal sparring in its entirety ask for MS 978, Box 33, Folder 7.

Here is the original book review by Budd Schulberg, "What Makes Hollywood Run?"