Seeking Truth as a Rule

While preparing for a class this last week on the History of Africa from 1800 to the present day, we explored a small collection that immediately drew us in. The collection consists of the papers of Fela Sowande MBE, a Nigerian musician and composer, who was born in Nigeria in 1905. After receiving an initial education in Lagos, Nigeria, he traveled to London in 1934 to study European classical and popular music.

Over the next several decades, Sowande would accumulate an impressive resume of musical performance and accomplishment: In 1936, Sowande was solo pianist in a performance of George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue." He also played as duo-pianist with Fats Waller, and was theatre organist for the BBC, as well as organist and Choirmaster at Kingsway Hall, London. Later, he studied organ privately under Edmund Rubbra, George Oldroyd, and George Cunningham and became a fellow of the Royal College of Organists in 1943.

Sowande also won several prizes, obtained a Bachelor of Music degree at the University of London, and became a fellow of Trinity College of Music. During World War II, he worked as musical advisor for the Colonial Film Unit of the Ministry of Information, providing background music for educational films. From 1945-1952, Sowande was an organist and choirmaster at the West London Mission of the Methodist Church. Sowande's orchestral works include "Six Sketches for Full Orchestra," "A Folk Symphony," and "African Suite for string orchestra"; these all display clear characteristics of African rhythms and harmonies.

Later in life, Sowande moved to the United States, where he taught in the Department of Pan-American Studies at Kent State University. One of my favorite documents from the collection is his "Standard Rules for the Student," which he presumably distributed at the start of his college courses. He first drew it up at Howard College in 1969 and then eventually "restructured" it during a visit to Dartmouth College in the summer of 1975. One of his rules seems especially relevant to our current climate: "Seek TRUTH and pursue it, to the extent of remaking your own mind no matter the cost, should it become necessary." To explore the Fela Sowande Papers, ask to see MS-78.

Fake News from 1775

So, we have an account of the Battle of Bunker Hill that you don't hear told too often here in the United States. This broadside, printed in Boston on June 26th, 1775, casts aspersions on the "Rebels" that dared to raise a battery on the heights of the Charlestown Peninsula. Luckily for the citizens of Boston, the brave and valorous King's Troops rushed forward to defend the town. According to this version of events, clearly written and distributed by a loyalist, the British forces easily overran the barricades and sent the rebels packing after inflicting significant casualties on their forces. As this report, hot off the presses, concludes,"This Action has shown the Bravery of the King's Troops, who under every Disadvantage, gained a complete Victory over Three Times their Number, strongly posted, and covered by Breastworks, But they fought for their King, their Laws and Constitution."

However, this report doesn't really line up with the known historical facts of the conflict. For example, there were two attempted assaults on the hill before the colonists retreated only because they had run out of ammunition. Although the British technically won, the implications of the altercation were sobering. A rag-tag group of local militia had withstood several assaults by British infantry and had inflicted more casualties on the King's troops than would be experienced at any other point in the Revolutionary War; over a thousand soldiers were wounded or killed. In contrast, the colonists suffered less than five hundred casualties, although the losses of General Joseph Warren and Major Andrew McClary were admittedly a tough blow.

To see this very rare Boston-printed and unashamedly British broadside, ask for Broadside 775940.

Watching January Unfold

We've blogged before about one of our artists' books that was printed by the Janus Press. In fact, the artist and the founder of the press are the same person, Claire Van Vliet. Although she found the Janus Press in 1955 in San Diego, in 1966, Van Vliet moved the press to the tiny town of Newark, Vermont, where it still resides and continues to produce stunning collaborations by gifted book artists, writers, papermakers, and printmakers. Since she relocated to Newark, Van Vliet has won a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship, often colloquially called a "genius grant" because it is awarded to creative individuals of significant ability without any strings attached.

Van Vliet's artistic prowess and creative intellect is evident in the many innovations in book design that the Press has generated over the last sixty-five years. We've found another little work of beauty by Van Vliet that we want to share with you today called Four Months / Four Seasons. Printed in 2010, the multi-volume work is the first of a series on the seasons by various artists. The four small books, titled January, April, October, and May, are contained with a simple but masterfully made wooden slipcase.The accompanying brochure states that "each of these four books is printed from seven carved linoleum blocks onto multiple sheets of paper. The sheets subsequently are attached to each other and folded to created seven accordion openings that together form a panorama".

The image below is from the January volume and, although it's hard to convey the true experience of unfolding this wintry panorama in person, we hope that you'll enjoy them all the same. If you'd like to see all four panoramas in person, come to Rauner when we're open and ask to see Presses J268fifo.

Many Times Removed

As just about everyone here at Dartmouth knows, we have a copy of Shakespeare's First Folio, published in 1623 by friends and fellow troupe members of the playwright and poet. It's probably our most requested item, just after our first edition of the Book of Mormon. And, as we've blogged about before, we also have two Second Folios (1632), three Third Folios (1662), and two Fourth Folios (1685). Some of these folios are what we sometimes call "Frankenstein Folios," in that they've been pieced together from the remnants of multiple partially-destroyed originals. Others have had specific pages removed or severely damaged, to the extent that pen and ink facsimiles have been pasted in to fill the gap. They're all technically still originals, sorta, but maybe not in the eyes of bibliographic purists. In addition to those "complete" Folios, we also have a decent number of fragments from all four Folios, including a complete Timon of Athens from the First Folio and King Lear from the Second Folio. There's even a cleverly bound book titled The English Historical Plays of William Shakespeare, which is really just the "Histories" chunk of the Fourth Folio.

To get a list of all of the Folios in all their various conditions so that you can come in and look at them, follow this link to a search query in the library catalog. There's a 20th-century spoiler in that list, but otherwise (I think!) the rest of the Folios are there.

Readying America for a Vaccine

Sometimes you stumble on something in the collections and you can't quite believe how timely it is. While doing some research on Smallpox, we came across the second part of Benjamin Waterhouse's Prospect of Exterminating the Small Pox (Cambridge, 1802). Waterhouse had the idea that he could take the vaccine recently developed by Edward Jenner and perform mass vaccinations in the United States to eradicate the disease. It is hard to overstate the impact of the epidemic in North America. It was doing irreparable damage to entire cultures and the death rate was staggering, so finding a way to curb its destructive force was imperative. Waterhouse, a flawed product of his time, started by vaccinating people with no agency: his own children and the enslaved people in his household (part of a long, and horrific legacy of medical experimentation inflicted on Blacks in America). Then he proposed a vaccination program on a grand scale, even trying to enlist the support of his former college roommate, President John Adams.

A public health initiative of that scale demanded public acceptance of the efficacy and safety of the vaccine. Waterhouse's book is a determined attempt to persuade a portion of the public--primarily doctors and the learned class--that this was an opportunity to change the nature of preventative medicine. Notably, our copy is a presentation copy to the Library of Dartmouth College by Waterhouse himself. You can just see him sending off copies to colleges and universities, especially those with medical schools, where his ideas would be well received. 

To see it, ask for Rare RM786.W32.

Charter Day: Celebrating Edward Mitchell

Charter Day is upon us marking the start of Dartmouth's 252nd year. It is a good occasion to take a look back at Dartmouth's history for other formative moments. This year, let's celebrate Edward Mitchell. In 1824, Mitchell applied to Dartmouth with all of the standard qualifications the College demanded at the time; he had all the necessary letters of recommendation; he passed his entrance exams; and he was even friends with the family of former Dartmouth President Francis Brown. The faculty, recognizing his merits, accepted him, but the Board of Trustees intervened and denied him admission: they balked because Mitchell was Black

Enter the students! As word spread of Mitchell's denial of admission, the students prepared a petition and submitted it to the Board of Trustees. The Board reversed its decision, and Mitchell became the first African American admitted to any of the institutions that would one day become the Ivy League. Mitchell graduated in 1828 and later became an ordained minister. For more of his story, listen to the "Opinions of Diversity" podcast episode written and narrated by Julia Logan. You can see the petition by asking for MS 824525.

Combating a Plague

You thought bleach was weird, check out this "cure" for the plague prescribed by the esteemed physician Nicholas Culpeper:

Take a Cock chicken, pull off the feather till the Rump be bare, then hold the bare fundament of the Chicken to a Plague Sore and it will attract the Venom to it from all parts of the body and dye; when he is dead, take another and use likewise; you may perceive when all the Venom is drawn out, for you shall see the Chicken no longer pant nor gape for breath; the party sick will instantly recover.

Got it--now we just need to find some chickens...

To see this cure and many others, as for Culpeper's School of Physick (London: Obadiah Blagrave, 1678), Rare R128.7 .C84 1678.