Drama On the Ice

It was extremely difficult resisting the urge to blog about the Titanic this week. Never the less, let's talk about a more local cold and dangerous ice-related event: the filming of D.W. Griffith's classic melodrama, Way Down East, starring Lillian Gish.

In March of 1920, Griffith, his crew and cast were filming on location in White River Junction, including shooting barn dance scenes at the Hotel Coolidge. Mostly, Griffith needed a frozen river and a snow storm to shoot the famous scene when our heroine is cast out into a blizzard, wanders blindly onto the frozen river, collapses and ends up floating down toward the falls on an ice floe.

The ice floe scenes were shot on the Connecticut and White Rivers, and drew crowds of local residents to watch the production. When she was on campus many years later to receive the first Dartmouth Film Award, Ms. Gish recalled that there had been some Dartmouth students who turned up to watch the filming, but they quickly lost interest, partially because the star was way out in the middle of the river, but also because it was just so terribly cold. A program for a September 1920 showing of Way Down East at the Majestic Theater in Boston comments on the expense of the engineering staff and the difficulties of "picturizing the elemental forces in the ice break-up of the river" which ultimately would make it one of Griffith's most expensive films.

The program also tells us that the film was a "simple, plain, old-fashioned story of very plain every-day people." Fortunately, I do not know any every-day people in the Upper Valley who would send their sons' girlfriends out into a blizzard to be washed down the Connecticut River on a piece of ice… but perhaps things were different in 1920.

Ask for the Way Down East photo file and the vertical file on Lillian Gish.

Ada Blackjack

In 1921 Ada Blackjack was hired as seamstress and cook for the ill-fated expedition to Wrangel Island.  The members of the expedition were handpicked by Vilhjalmur Stefansson in an attempt to establish a permanent settlement on the island and thus establish a claim for Canada.  Allan Crawford, Fred Maurer,  and Milton Galle disappeared in January, 1923 while trying to cross the Chukchi Sea to Siberia after the expedition's supplies ran out.  Lorne Knight died on the island - apparently from complications related to scurvy. Finally, after several months alone on Wrangel, Ada Blackjack was rescued in 1923 when another colonization company was landed on the island.  That attempt also failed and the island was eventually claimed by the Soviet Union.

Diary for April 15 - 17, 1923

Starting in March, 1923, Ada kept a diary in which she recorded daily events on Wrangel.  An entry from April 15 reads "I was out the traps they was nothing and storming looking weather today.  And I got my boots soles already and soak them and knight said he feel bad." A later entry from June 22, 1923 reads "I move to the other tent today and I was my dishes and getting some wood."  On the surface a fairly normal entry, this was actually the day Ada found Knight dead in the tent that they had been sharing. A later narrative of the expedition by Ada reveals that Knight "died June 22, 1923, I found him dead the next morning after he saw me crying."

Though she was the lone survivor of the expedition, Ada Blackjack shunned publicity and tried to disappear from public view, emerging only to refute allegations that she had been responsible for Knight's death.  She died in 1983.

Ask for Stefansson Mss 8 to see Ada's diary, photos, and other material. A finding aid is available.  Additional material on the Wrangel expedition can be found in Stefansson's papers (Stefansson Mss 98 and Stefansson Mss 196), the papers of Harold Noice (Stefansson Mss 91) and the papers of Ingles Fletcher (Stefansson Mss 34).

Blake's Soul

Robert Blair's poem The Grave was an enormous popular success in the 18th century. Written in 1743, it came out in nearly 50 separate editions by the end of the century. But, it is most famous today for an edition that came well after Blair's death. In 1808, William Blake used the popular "graveyard" poem as a vehicle for a set of 12 etchings showing his vision of life after death.

The book had an impressive list of subscribers, including the queen (who received a dedicatory poem by Blake). It was a bold move: Blake was still relatively unknown, while Blair's poem was standard reading. But in fact, Blake overwhelms the poem and takes over the book -- even putting his own portrait on the frontispiece in the place that should have been reserved for Blair.

Ask for Val 825B57 R31.

Getting to Yeats's House

Following up on the curious relationship between Ezra Pound and Robert Frost, we have to share another little nugget from the collection. When Pound was helping Frost make the connections he needed to establish himself as a poet, he set up a meeting for Frost with W.B. Yeats. This postcard is an artifact of the meeting: directions to Yeats's house in Pound's hand. It might not seem like much, but it's electrifying to hold.

Ask for MS 1178, Box 12, Folder 3.

Strange Bedfellows

If politics makes strange bedfellows, it gets really weird when you add poetry. There is a file in our collection of Robert Frost's correspondence labeled "Pound, Ezra," that contains a record of an astounding literary relationship. It starts with a 1913 letter from Ezra Pound letting Frost know that he has just completed a flattering review of Robert Frost's first book, A Boy's Will, for Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. The subsequent letters show a disintegrating relationship as the two prickly poets go their separate ways, philosophically, stylistically, and politically.

This typo-filled letter from around 1936 appears to be the end of the relationship. Writing from Italy, Pound accuses Frost of "filling up the young on misinformation to relieve your inferiority complex" which puts him "in the swine class." Pound then "candidly" says he "had hitherto considered you a man, not a shit."

But the relationship did not end there. When Pound was being held in St. Elizabeth's Hospital avoiding prosecution for treason after making pro-fascist radio broadcasts from Italy, Frost teamed up with Archibald MacLeish to persuade the Attorney General to release Pound. The "Pound" file contains a letter from Ernest Hemingway to Frost on Pound, and another from T.S. Eliot.  Strange Bedfellows...

We are just about to complete a major reprocessing of our Frost manuscripts that will result in a much more accessible collection. If you want to see the Pound file, ask for MS 1178, Box 15, folder 29.

Dartmouth Traditions: Math Burial

In the 1800s students were required to study math for the first two years of their college career. According to Leon Burr Richardson’s History of Dartmouth College, beginning sometime in the 1830s the sophomores would celebrate the end of their math studies by burying their textbooks in a pseudo funeral on the Green. In 1874 the College forbade the burial of books. According to The Dartmouth,  students took this new rule literally and began practicing cremation instead.

It seems likely that the anti-burial rule was put in place to discourage the continuation of the practice, which appears to have been linked with some amount of drunkenness and rowdy behavior. The funeral was often conducted at night and William S. G. How (non-graduate from the class of 1856) noted in his journal that in 1852 the funeral took place at around 3 AM.

Dartmouth Aegis, 1884

The rites were quite elaborate. In 1884 the ceremony included a costume parade with students dressed as priests as well as robed and masked men holding a bier full of textbooks. Following the parade, a funeral service was enacted, complete with oratory and singing. The oratory and singing was followed by cremation of the bier full of books in a bonfire. It is not clear when the math funeral came to an end, but it appears to have continued into the 1880s.

A mock eulogy from 1852 is available as well as additional materials in the vertical file "Mathematics, burial of."

Anyone for Ukulele?

A stringed instrument shaped like a very small guitar with only four strings, the ukulele became extremely popular in the United States in the early part of the twentieth century.  It continued to be a favorite until its gradual decline in the 1970s, though a more recent upswing in popularity has brought the uke back into the public eye.  Part of the ukulele's popularity was its relatively low cost and ease of transport, which made it very popular among amateur musicians.  Music publishers quickly realized that they could cash in on this phenomenon and began selling sheet music to popular songs with special ukelele chord tablature or fingerings.

Rauner Library has an extensive sheet music collection and over a thousand of these pieces contain ukulele chord diagrams.  These range from classic opera such as a sextet from Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor to Cab Calloway's Minnie the Moocher to the title track from Singin' in the Rain.

To see all of the ukulele sheet music pieces, search the library catalog and ask for your favorite.