Keeping the Merchandise Clean

In about 1920, flashy book jackets became all the rage. Publishers recognized that a dust jacket could do more than simply protect a book in transit. They put cool pictures on the front and studded the back with catchy blurbs, and the book jacket become a powerful point-of-sale marketing tool--and a collector's item as well.

It wasn't always so glamorous. In the 19th century, book jackets were pretty plain. They listed the author and title, and sometimes the publisher, but were not enticing in the least. Their whole point was to protect the cover during distribution and sale. As soon as any self-respecting book buyer got home he or she would discard the jacket and enjoy the pristine cover, spared the ravages of shipping and handling.

All of that makes late-19th-century book jackets very rare. We are lucky to have a handful scattered in the collections. Lafcadio Hearn's Youma (New York: Scribner's, 1890) is a prime example. You can see it yourself by asking for Val 816 H35 Z5.

Fireworks

On June 23, 1828, John Treadwell of the Class of 1830 set off fireworks near Dartmouth Hall. That doesn't sound like that big of a deal but, in this circumstance, it was. On June 24th, a special meeting of the faculty was called to discuss his case and, on June 26th, the faculty meted out a ten-week suspension from Dartmouth.

We have a small clutch of hastily written notes from that week. It appears Treadwell had exhibited a pattern of bad behavior during his time at Dartmouth. The fireworks were merely the latest disturbance. It appears the faculty had had enough, and they interrogated Treadwell. During the meeting, he "stated several manifest falsehoods," as documented in notes and dispositions.

He was banished to the "care and instructing of the Rev. Joseph Perry in Thetford, Vt." In October, Perry wrote a not-very-enthusiastic report to the faculty about young Treadwell's progress. While he had not "been altogether as industrious as would have been desirable and perhaps upon the strict principle might fall under the charge of some indiscretions," the good Reverend believes that Treadwell's former bad habits were likely the result of "unhappy connections."

Hmmm--we are still not sure what all he did, but either the faculty opted not to readmit or he decided not to return: he never completed his degree.

To try to puzzle it out yourself, ask for MS 828374.

Money Talks

One of our lesser-known book collections in Special Collections is the Wilfrid Scawen Blunt collection. It was given to the college in 1940 by legendary Dartmouth professor Herbert West, a member of the class of 1922. The Blunt collection contains seventy-seven volumes of first-edition works by the author, including presentation copies and other rare issuances of his work.

Born in Sussex, England, in 1840, Blunt was publicly known for his anti-imperialistic stance towards European global dominance. His scathing condemnation of European self-righteous expansion frequently emerges in his writing. In his work Satan Absolved, Blunt refers to the phrase, "White Man's Burden," which was a term coined by Rudyard Kipling in an 1899 poem published about the Philippine-American War. The phrase was seized upon by expansionists and imperialists as a justification for the often violent subjugation and subsequent financial exploitation of other nations and peoples, under the pretense of bringing to them the "gift"

of civilization. Blunt places this concept in the mouth of his character, The Lord God, in Satan Absolved, who says:

This Anglo-Saxon man hath a fair name with some.

He stands in brave repute, a priest of Christendom,

First in civility, so say the Angel host

Who speak of him with awe as one that merits most.

In response, Blunt's character Satan rails against this thinly-veiled notion of white supremacy: "Their poets... write big of the 'White Burden.' Trash! The White Man's Burden, Lord, is the burden of his cash."

In addition to his anti-imperialism, Blunt also dallied with the Islamic faith, and wrote a book titled The Future of Islam. He and his wife, Lady Anne Noel Blunt, lived for a long time just outside of Cairo, where they established an Arabian horse-breeding farm that was partially responsible for saving the Arabian breed from extinction. Blunt's love of horses is evident in Satan Absolved. Here in Special Collections, we have a proof copy of the poem containing numerous manuscript corrections. In one of Satan's responses to The Lord God, he originally speaks of "Large hearted elephants, the wolf, the wolverine." However, in our version, Blunt has crossed out the wolf and the wolverine and instead substituted "the horse how near divine."

To examine his other corrections and emendations of his poem, or to read Satan's withering critique of imperialism in full, come to Rauner and ask to see Blunt 31, copy 2.

Students for Social Alternatives

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village. The mass demonstrations were a crucial turning point for the gay rights movement, leading to mobilization and advocacy and creating the foundations for today's LGBTQIA+ activism. The ripple effect hit some college campuses almost immediately, but took some time to reach Hanover. On January 2nd, 1978, Stuart Lewan '79 publicly asserted the presence of Dartmouth's gay community by pitching a table at Winter term registration for a new "Gay Student Support Group." A sign over his head proclaimed, "Get on Down and Party with the Students for Social Alternatives." 55 students signed up for the promised regular newsletter.

Lewan followed up with an editorial in the January 6th issue of The Dartmouth entitled "Helping gays adjust to Dartmouth." He starts with a nod to Stonewall by bemoaning, "So, about 10 years after most other colleges of similar prestige, Dartmouth is giving birth to its first gay student group. Why has it taken so long?" He then lists all of the things that gay people feared at Dartmouth and beyond, and calls for broad campus support of the community, but most importantly for Lewan, he calls for the gay community at Dartmouth to come out of the closet, claim its place on campus, and support each other to fight back against fear.

There is a militant tone to his editorial--and it provoked some predictable backlash in the letters to the editor, but Lewan's work, along with that of fellow student leaders, helped begin the long process of opening the campus and making it someplace where more people could feel welcome. You can learn a lot more about Stuart Lewan by listening to his oral history on the Dartmouth SpeakOut site.

Commonwealth and Confederation

What could be more iconic than the Canadian national flag? With its bright stripes and large red maple leaf, the emblem of our neighbor to the north stands out in a field of national banners. It's hard to imagine the country having a different standard. Still, the Canadian flag as we know it is a relatively recent development. The flag was adopted in 1965 after a great amount of debate and deliberation. It's almost entirely based upon the flag of the Royal Military College of Canada and is only one of several official flags for the country; others include the Canadian Red Ensign flag and the Royal Union flag.

While looking through the Stefansson Correspondence collection, we discovered an earlier proposal

for an official Canadian flag. In a letter written in January 8th, 1946, to Vilhjalmur Stefansson, an Allen Ronaghan of Islay, Alberta, suggests a different design to solve the "vital problem" of the lack of a distinctive national flag. Instead of using the Red Ensign flag, which he claims is racist because its coat of arms excludes numerous people groups, Ronaghan recommends instead a flag, presumably of his own design. Ronaghan's flag represents the theme of "Commonwealth and Confederation" and so stands in opposition to other flags which raise objectionable points, in his mind. His flag retains the Union Jack symbol in the upper left corner because, as he puts it, "A flag that ignored the Union Jack simply would not be acceptable to the entire Canadian people, regardless of what some ultra-nationalists may say on occasions when emotions run away with them."

However, instead of using a coat of arms, Ronaghan recommends the image of Ursa Major on a blue field. The Big Dipper is relevant and appropriate for many reasons, he says, because it's ubiquitous in Canadian skies at night. Also, it bears a "marked resemblance to Canadian confederation," with each star in the constellation representing a different province or territory. Finally, in a tactical move that was doubtless meant to appeal to Stefansson's interests, Ronaghan notes that the Big Dipper "points north" and that Canada must do the same if she is to become "truly great," ostensibly by developing its great stretches of northern wilderness. Stefansson, a world-famous Canadian arctic explorer, appears to be sympathetic to this argument; he has highlighted this portion of Ronaghan's letter.

To see Ronaghan's letter and the enclosed pamphlet that outlines the details of his flag design, come to Special Collections and ask to see MSS-196, Box 65, Folder 14, "Ronaghan."

Experiencing Black Theater in America

This past spring, Associate Professor of Theater Monica Ndounou taught a class made possible through an experiential learning seed grant from the Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning. Titled “The Making of 21st Century Exhibits: Curating a National Black Theater Museum/Institution,” the course was cross-listed with the Theater Department and African and African-American Studies Program. This class provided seventeen students an opportunity to learn about black theater history, scholarship and practice in the U.S. and abroad. In the process, students helped develop ideas and curated exhibits that represented a range of formats and platforms. As social media and academe become interdependent in the 21st-century digital era, the course enabled participants to imagine and implement exhibits for the museum as a digital and onsite space where national and international contributions to developing black theater can be shared with the larger public.

The current student-curated exhibit in Special Collections, “Experiencing Black Theater in America,” is one facet of the experiential learning component of the class. Another component was a visit to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., that helped students conceptualize the possibilities for translating the material covered in class into exhibit form. The class also used the opportunity to consider which gaps in the D.C. collection should be filled during the constantly evolving curation process at the National Black Theatre Museum in Memphis, TN, a project conceived and developed by Ekundayo Bandele, CEO and Founder of Hattiloo Theatre, who also participated in the course. Other experiential learning opportunities included activities with the local community’s regional black theatre, JAG Productions, and a chance to attend events featuring choreographer Camille A. Brown during her spring 2019 Dartmouth residency.

The majority of the documents in this exhibit come from the papers of Theater Professor Errol Hill, the first African-American educator to receive tenure at Dartmouth College. A Trinidadian native, Hill joined the faculty of Dartmouth’s Drama Department in 1968 and worked tirelessly here for twenty-one years before retiring in 1989. Hill was a wellspring of productivity, whether as a scholar, a playwright, or a director: over the span of his career, he wrote eleven plays, authored or edited fifteen major books and periodicals, and wrote twenty-five major articles on drama and theater history. While at Dartmouth, he taught a portfolio of thirteen different courses on acting, directing, playwriting, and theater history, directed thirty-three full-length productions, and wrote numerous influential works including Shakespeare in Sable: A History of Black Shakespearean Actors (1986) and, with Professor James Hatch, A History of African American Theatre (2003). Professor Hill passed away in 2003 but his legacy endures.

The exhibit will be on display in Rauner Library's Class of 1965 Galleries in Webster Hall until September 6th. You can download a list of materials and read the exhibit text at the following website: https://www.dartmouth.edu/~library/rauner/exhibits/experiencing-black-theater-in-america.html.

Abraham Lincoln and His Generals

A while back we posted about a sheet of Abraham Lincoln's signatures on a piece of White House stationery that were authenticated by his personal secretary John Hay. Although it's hard to top that exciting find, we have another Lincoln-related item from the Codex collection that we think is also pretty amazing. In a book that has been beautifully bound in blue morocco leather with gold tooling, we have another treasure trove of autographs from the Civil War, including not only Lincoln's signature but numerous other important figures from the Union Army during that time.

The cover of the book reads, "Abraham Lincoln and His Generals | A Collection of Autographs | 1861-1865," and the contents do not disappoint. All told, there are twenty-seven pieces of correspondence or

other paper that bear the signed names of many of the sixteenth president's generals during the war, along with engraved portraits of most of them. Most of the letters are fairly pedestrian and deal with day-to-day business or social courtesies; moreover, a lot of them were written decades after the conclusion of the war. Still, it's thrilling to see so many different hands by so many different Civil War military leaders in one place. My personal favorites are the letter signed by Lincoln, saying only "I so advise" in response to a subordinate's request for his approval (bringing our total number of Lincoln signatures up to twenty!); the pardon issued by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1872 for Jacob C. Clark, who apparently was arrested for selling liquor without a permit but didn't realize he was breaking the law, and the intimidating engraving of General William T. Sherman, who would go on to serve as the Commanding General of the Army (and briefly the Secretary of War) under President Grant.

To have a look through this Union gallery, come to Special Collections and ask for Codex 002120.