...And a Happy New Year

Folks in Canaan, New Hampshire, were living it up at the start of 1915. It is a contrast to the somber mood of war torn Europe that we just blogged about. Apparently, the revelry of New Year's Eve wasn't enough, so the Hotel Riverside had a plan: a New Year's Day Ball with Smith's Orchestra and refreshments. Tickets for the gentlemen were 50 cents, but the "ladies" got in for free.

And if dancing wasn't your thing, whist tables were set up for some good clean fun, or perhaps some light gambling.

You can see the poster in all of its pink glory by asking for Broadside f915101. And have a safe and healthy New Year!

For Remembrance

One hundred years ago this Christmas, families all over Europe were finally experiencing a time of peace after several long years of war. The armistice that had ended World War I was not yet even two months old; with it came an opportunity for reflection and grief as the loss of loved ones was doubtless made sharper by the advent of the holiday season.

In England, a literary journal titled The Bookman published an essay in its 1917 Christmas edition that listed the numerous English poets who had died in the conflict. The essay proved popular enough that, a short while later, the publishing company of Hodder and Stoughton issued a longer version in book form, entitled For Remembrance and complete with photographs of the deceased. The author and editor, A. St. John Adcock, provided a short commentary on each soldier-poet interspersed with quotations from that author's work.

The first image the reader encounters, facing the title page, is a portrait of the poet Rupert Brooke by Sherrill Schell in 1913. The year after the image was taken, Brooke would enlist in the Royal Navy and, tragically, die of sepsis from an insect bite while on a ship in the Aegean Sea. The image of Brooke was likely chosen not only because he was very photogenic, but because his poem "The Soldier" – "If I should die, think only this of me:/ That there’s some corner of a foreign field/ That is for ever England" – was one of the most famous war poems of all time, and has become a symbol of the war’s early patriotic fervor.
This feeling of national pride and energy would famously dissipate over the course of the war as British losses mounted. Poets like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon became the new voice of a generation that had grown disenchanted with the jingoism of its political leaders. One would be at a loss to find signs of this sea change in public opinion within the page of Adcock's book, however. He acknowledges that "there is too much gone that can never return" and states that "the soul of a nation lives in its literature." Curious, then, that there is no mention of prominent dissenting voices such as Owen, Sassoon, and others. Perhaps the wounds were too fresh for a nation still grieving its losses (and critical voices were too controversial for the publisher).

To see For Remembrance, come to Special Collections and ask for Brooke 1.

On Counterfeiting

Laban Heath was a New England engraver who, by the mid 1860s, had discovered a way to stay relevant. As an engraver, he had been involved in the engraving of paper currency which, at the time, was issued only by state banks. This changed with the National Currency Act of 1863, which established a new national currency. Heath did not agree with the supposition that this new money would be "entirely secure from counterfeiting and [that]…no knowledge of detecting [would] be necessary… ."

Prior to the Act, the only way of protection came via bank note reporters, publications in which the various banks described counterfeiting they had identified in their own notes. Heath felt that a new system could also profit from a new way of looking at counterfeit money. In 1864, he published his first guide, Heath’s Infallible Counterfeit Detector At Sight – The Only Infallible Method of Detecting Counterfeit, Spurious, and Altered Bank-Notes, and Applicable to All Banks in the United States and Canada, As Now in Circulation, Or That May Be Issued.

In the introduction, Heath states that his guide would provide the same means of detecting used by "Engravers, Brokers, Cashiers and other experts." He then sets out to describe the various ways in which different sections of a bill can or cannot be "successfully Imitated":

The general principle upon which the detection of counterfeit is based is that all parts of genuine notes are engraved by machinery – with some exceptions hereafter named – while all parts of counterfeit notes are engraved by hand, with exceptions hereafter given.

Heath also includes "full illustrations" based on genuine engravings he was able to procure "with great difficulty, owing to the misuse which might be made of them by counterfeiters." This difficulty, he admits, has unfortunately raised the cost of his guide. There are indeed several plates with a variety of examples in this little booklet, including an example of a counterfeit bill, the plate of which was obtained "at great trouble" from counterfeiters "and taken from them at the time of their arrest."
In addition to the illustrations, Heath gives many examples of how counterfeiters proceeded to alter bank notes. One example is “piecing,” in which a counterfeit note is cut up into pieces that are then pasted onto genuine ones.

Laban continued to update his guide over the years, with new editions in 1866, 1867 and 1870. He also patented a simple microscope and telescope in 1866 and an Improved Adjustable Compound Microscope in 1877.

Heath’s Counterfeit Detector At Sight can be found in ML-86, The Papers of the Wheeler Family of Orford, NH.

A History of Hocus-Pocus

We've blogged before about Cornelius Agrippa's De Occulta Philosophia, and we've also blogged before about the word "abracadabra" within the context of Werner Pfeiffer's work. However, when Lebanon High School's AP English class visited us recently, we had a chance to revisit both. One of the high school students discovered in Agrippa's text a triangular diagram of "abracadabra," much like the one represented in Pfeiffer's book.

This makes sense; although the word was a synonym for nonsense in Pfeiffer's day, it has had an association with magic and healing since at least the third century AD. Roman physicians recommended that people inscribe the word in this triangular form on an amulet and wear it to ward off malaria. As late as the 1600s, people believed that the word had the power to fend off disease; Daniel Defoe, in his Journal of a Plague Year, notes derisively that Londoners were inscribing the word on their homes in the hopes that the Great Plague would pass them by.

Nowadays, it seems like the only appearances of the word, or variants of it, are in works of fiction; one series in particular, starring a bespectacled young wizard with a lightning scar on his forehead, comes to mind. However, our first edition of Agrippa's book still has some magic left in it, thanks primarily to the wizardry of the luxury binders Sangorski & Sutcliffe. To lay hands upon the work and be transported by its wonder, come to Special Collections and ask to see Rare BF1598.A3 O4 1533.

The Arctic Mariner

Ugh, what to do when you are on the search for Sir John Franklin and stuck in the ice... for the entire arctic winter... waiting... getting hungry... very bored... kinda cold....

Let's write a song! Then we can print it with the Ship's printing press! Hey, let's print it on silk to make it really fancy!

We just acquired one of those remarkable survivals of polar exploration. This broadside was printed by Benjamin Young, the ice quartermaster on board the Intrepid. The Intrepid set off with the Resolute in 1850 to search for Sir John Franklin and, unsuccessful, returned in 1852. We are not sure who on board wrote it, but copies were probably printed on both silk and paper: paper for the crew, silk for the officers.

To sing along, and imagine life locked in the ice, ask for Stef M1978.S2 A738 1851.

The Aura of the Original

In Special Collections, we sometimes get a bit obsessive about "aura,"that mystical energy that surrounds authentic historical artifacts. It is utterly context specific, and created solely from our cultural expectations, but it is still real. People get a tremendous rush from seeing the original and interacting with it. It opens people's minds to new ways of knowing, excites their imaginations, and, we think, makes them more likely to learn from their encounters. It is one of the reasons why active learning works so damn well in Special Collections.

So, we were delighted today to find a new term to express that "aura" from Ebenezer Sibly's A Key to Physic and the Occult Sciences (London: Printed for the Author, 1800?): "The Insensible Perspiration." It is just so much better than the sensible kind!

To learn more about it (with the original book, mind you!) ask for Rare RS81.C96.

Global Geography

While searching the stacks for materials related to regional agriculture, we discovered a University of Chicago PhD dissertation among the collections. The text, titled "The Evolution of Land Utilization in Lebanon, New Hampshire," was written by Edward Nathaniel "Nat" Torbert, a member of the Dartmouth class of 1925. The data in this tome, which is nearly three inches thick, explores the ins and outs of farming from 1800 up to the date of its composition.

Although Torbert's research is interesting, especially when discussing the move from rural to urban environments in the 1800s, we were most fascinated by the photographic prints that he pasted into the pages of his
dissertation. Images of White River Junction, West Lebanon, and Lebanon abound, and each one provides a captivating portal back to life in a small rural town in the 1920s. Perhaps the photos are so particularly compelling because Torbert went on to be an award-winning amateur photographer.

Torbert was evidently a man meant to be outdoors and in the field. He initially was a professor of geography at San Jose State College, but soon shifted into a more active role: he worked with the Tennessee Valley Authority for several years before moving into successive international positions that revolved around his specialty in economic geography. From 1950 to 1951, he worked on a reclamation program in Haiti. Soon after, Torbert headed to Afghanistan as the chief planning engineer for an irrigation project that was meant to bring water to 3.5 million acres of farmland.

However, after only a few months there, he contracted bulbar polio, a particularly nasty variant of the disease which attacks the brain stem. At first, he and Elise, his wife, assumed that he had the flu. Within two days, his arms and vocal cords were paralyzed. A week later, after being airlifted out of the country on board the US Ambassador's plane, Torbert passed away in the Seventh Day Adventist hospital in Karachi, Pakistan. In a letter home, his wife said that she was "not prepared for the rapid progress of the disease nor for its fatality," that Norbert never regained consciousness enough to realize he had polio, and that "he remained sweet, patient and cheerful until the very end." Soon after, the United States Department of the Interior awarded him its highest honor, the Distinguished Service Award. At the awards convocation, Douglas McKay, Secretary of the Interior, described Torbert as "broad in his thinking, considerate in his approach, firm in his beliefs, skillful in his operations, and unyielding in his devotion to purpose."

To see Nat Torbert's dissertation, including some amazing views of early 20th-century Lebanon, ask for Alumni T63e.