Building Bridges

As Independence Day fast approaches, it is hard not to feel a sense of anticipation in the air. Perhaps it emerges from imminent firework displays, the onset of long summer days, remembrance of our Founding Fathers, or familial traditions of hot dogs, hamburgers, and all things red, white, and blue.

Thomas Paine and his work of propaganda, Common Sense, is often overshadowed by these familiar representations of Independence Day. Nonetheless, he is an important figure in America’s early history. Paine was an Englishman who immigrated to the United States in 1774. A publicist, writer and orator, Paine soon became very active in the fight for independence upon his arrival in Philadelphia.  In 1776, Paine published his pamphlet criticizing the British government and calling on the colonists to declare their independence and fight for freedom. 

Common Sense became a sensation throughout the colonies and among the higher ranks of political greats such as George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. The relatively short work is remembered for its influential ideas and its impact on the American Revolution. For Paine and Americans in agreement with his arguments, independence was a want, a necessity, and, above all, their right. Rauner Special Collections Library has a copy of the tenth edition of Common Sense from 1776, the same year that the pamphlet was originally printed. The fact that a tenth edition was printed during its first year of publication demonstrates its true popularity. This particular copy was also quite popular with its previous owners: the wear and tear on the pages resembles a beloved novel that has been read and re-read.

In addition to his interest in politics, Paine was also very focused on the sciences and is credited for experimenting with marsh gas, a smokeless candle and the construction of bridges. It is his passion for bridge-building that is fascinating to us here at Rauner. In our manuscript collections, we have a handwritten letter from Paine to Benjamin Franklin, dated June 14, 1786,  that references Paine’s homegrown bridge models. Franklin at the time had retired from his role as Ambassador to France and had assumed his new role as Governor of Pennsylvania. It can be concluded from the letter and some additional research that Paine and Franklin had a relationship akin to mentor and protege, which can be traced back to Paine’s first arrival in America: Franklin had met Paine abroad and had written a letter of introduction for him in the early 1770s. The relationship formed during those early days of revolution lasted into Franklin’s later years and was close enough to warrant Paine seeking Franklin’s observations on his bridge models; the two men evidently shared a passion for more than politics.

To see our copy of Paine’s Common Sense, ask for Rare E211 .P126 1776.

To read Paine’s letter to Benjamin Franklin, ask for Ticknor MS 786364.1.

Posted for Julia Logan, a library school student at Simmons College who is Rauner's Public Services summer intern.

The Friday Fowl at Rauner

As we have mentioned in a previous post, Rauner Library owns an incomplete copy of James Audubon's Birds of America that previously belonged to Dartmouth's favorite son, Daniel Webster 1801. In years past, we have enjoyed displaying various birds depending upon the particular holiday, such as a turkey at Thanksgiving or a crow at Halloween. However, beginning in Winter Term 2014, we here at Rauner Library decided to be more egalitarian in our display of Audubon's drawings. For the last twenty-three weeks, we have been turning a page in one of the massive tomes every Friday morning. We call it "The Friday Fowl at Rauner," and we are almost through the first of three volumes. We plan to keep going until all of the fowl have been viewed, and then we'll start the process all over again.

The Friday Fowl for any given week will be on open display in Rauner's reading room, but if you can't make it here in person, or if you'd like a preview ahead of time, be sure to "like" Dartmouth College Library's Facebook page, where a snapshot of the bird of the week is posted every Friday. A few of our more enjoyable pages this term have been the Golden Eagle and the Barn Swallow, but it's hard to choose a favorite from among all of these amazing hand-painted masterpieces. We're always excited to see what new and wonderful bird will appear. To be one of the first to witness the week's favored fowl, show up in the reading room between 10:30-11:00 on Friday, which is generally when we turn the page.

The call number for the three double elephant folios is Rare QL674 .A9 1827.

Roman Rooms

George Ticknor 1807 was a professor of languages at both Harvard University and Smith College during the 19th century and amassed a formidable personal library during his many trips to Europe for both study and pleasure. In particular, his collection of Spanish and Portuguese literature was arguably the best of its kind in the United States during his lifetime. Rauner Library was given a significant portion of Ticknor's library by his estate as well as his library furniture, mantlepiece, and sculptures, all of which now reside just off Rauner's reading room in a room named after the family.

In addition to George's library, furniture, and artwork, Rauner also holds his personal papers and those of his wife Anna, which include personal travel diaries written during their travels abroad in the 1830s. The diaries are filled with interesting perspectives on the countries and places that they visit, and comparing the couple's entries on any given day is a fun exercise in seeing how different individual impressions and experiences can be. Anna's diary is written in a beautiful cursive hand and begins in May of 1835, when the Ticknors landed in England, and ends in September of 1837 near the Splügen Pass between Switzerland and Italy.

In the winter of 1836, The Ticknors took up residence in Rome on the third floor of a private house overlooking the city. Anna took it upon herself to draft in her diary a floor plan of the rooms, which is quite detailed and provides a fascinating example of the style in which wealthy families of the period were accustomed to traveling. The apartments include "six sleeping rooms, a sitting room and dining room, servants' eating room, kitchen and outer & inner antechambers." For Anna, however, the best quality of the rooms is that they are situated upon the side of one of Rome's many hills and are therefore provided a wonderful and constantly sunny view of the city. She also mentions that everything has been provided for them upon their arrival, and that this comprehensive service is possible because tourists of their stature are so common in Rome.

Anna's diaries can be found in her personal papers, MS-1249, while George's diaries are located in his papers, MS-983. The Ticknor Room at Rauner Library can be viewed any time that the reading room is open.

Sailing to.....

Before Mercator, pilots used charts that showed the location of ports and coastal features and provided directions on how to navigate between these points of reference. Details of the coast were critical as vessels often chose to sail closer to land to mitigate potential open sea and weather hazards. These earlier maps were known as portolan charts - a name derived from the Italian - and are often fantastically detailed and depict the coastlines of the major land masses with stunning accuracy.

Our portolan chart was made by Nicolas Comberford around 1657 in Redcliffe, England and depicts the Mediterranean and Black Sea. True to the style, numerous coastal towns and cities are pinpointed and the small islands of the area are numbered and listed in tables in the interior spaces of the adjoining countries. As with most portolan charts, the interior land masses are left largely blank since the focus of the chart was navigation on the water. Unlike most portolans, Comberford has not included the standard compass lines connecting major destinations, opting instead for a more open grid to demonstrate direction and relative distance.

The chart is constructed of vellum attached to hinged and folded oak boards. Despite its use on ship, the map shows very little water staining and is brilliantly colored with gold leaf accents. Though the map apparently belonged to a Captain John Smyth, this is, alas, not the Captain Smith of Virginia fame. That Captain Smith died before the creation of this chart.

Ask for Codex 657940 to see the chart.

One Lick Less

We have nine sheets of the corrected galley proofs from William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying along with a letter from Edith Greenburg of Cape and Smith. The publishers were in a rush to get the book out, and Faulkner was tardy on getting his proofs back to them. So, they sent him a handful of questions about specific concerns they had and asked for an immediate reply via air mail.

They were understandably perplexed by a large gap left on page 164 in the sentence, "The shape of my body where I used to be a virgin is a        and I couldn't think..." Was it on purpose? The first edition, also in our collection, reveals that it was indeed intended.

But what caught our eye was a suggested rewrite of a sentence to shorten a page and, thus, keep a single line from appearing on the next page to end the chapter.  What was "Pa breathes quietly, with a faint, rasping sound, his jaw working the snuff slowly against his gums," became "Pa breathes with a quiet, rasping sound, mouthing the snuff against his gums." Same meaning, but a different rhythm and a different visceral sense.  One line less, one line less...

To see the proofs ask for MS 930469; for the first edition, Rare PZ3.F272 As.

They Played Here?!

In May 1964, the Ronettes came to Dartmouth on a package tour with Soul Sister, Carl Holmes, and King Curtis to play Green Key weekend. It was a particularly good couple of years for popular music on campus. Johnny Cash was here in February 1964 to shoot an episode of Hootenanny, and Peter, Paul and Mary played Dartmouth's Leverone Field House in 1965.

We just mounted an exhibit in the Baker Library Main Hall that looks back on pop music acts that played Dartmouth when they were in their prime. It features the likes of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw (with Billie Holiday), Duke Ellington, Pete Seeger, Simon & Garfunkel, Ray Charles, Sly and the Family Stone, Cat Stevens, Bruce Springsteen, the Grateful Dead, Labelle, the Clash, and the Bangles among others.

As we were putting the finishing touches on the exhibit a little miracle occurred.  We leaned that Noel Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary was going to be on campus to participate in Baccalaureate with his wife Elizabeth. They graciously took some time after the ceremony on Saturday to walk through the exhibit with us. Here is Noel in front of the "folk" case with a poster from the 1965 concert.

The exhibit will run through August 31, 2014--so come in and take a look.

That Sinking Feeling

Two years ago, a writer for Dartbeat, the Dartmouth student newspaper's blog, posted a fascinating entry about the sinking of the Titanic. The author, Kristin Yu, mentioned that two of the passengers on board the ship were related to a member of the class of 1912, Howard "Rainy" Burchard Lines, and were on their way across the Atlantic to attend his graduation. Mary Lines, Rainy's sister, and Elizabeth Lines, his mother, were among the lucky few to survive the horrendous tragedy that became a cultural phenomenon which persists even to this day. A few years later, sadly, Lines himself would die while serving in France as an ambulance driver in World War I.

Recently, while exploring our archives, a visitor to Rauner made a thrilling discovery related to this already gripping tale. Rauner Library holds various WWI materials connected to Howard Burchard Lines, about which we've already blogged. In addition to his papers, we also have Lines' membook, a scrapbook with a personalized cover that was distributed to Dartmouth freshmen upon their arrival on campus from the mid-1800s into the 1930s. As one of our previous blog entries makes clear, membooks were full of empty pages that Dartmouth students would fill with various mementoes from their time at college. By the time a Dartmouth man graduated, he would have accumulated a souvenir compiled of newspaper clippings, dance cards, programs and tickets to cultural events, personal photographs, pressed flowers, and any other little oddities that caught the owner's fancy.

Lines' membook is filled with these typical scraps and bits of his college years. Because of the 100th anniversary of World War I, he was fresh on our minds when a visitor came in and asked to see a sample membook, and so we paged his membook for her. What she found next gave us goosebumps: among the pages of Lines' scrapbook, between dance cards and other superficial vestiges of boyish fun, lie two small but weighty slips of paper. One is a boarding pass of sorts that allowed Mary Lines and one passenger admittance to U.S. Customs from RMS Titanic; the other is a telegram to Howard Lines that tersely states: "Safe on board carpathia. Lines." RMS Carpathia was the ship made famous by rescuing the survivors of the Titanic on that cold night in April, who doubtless all attempted to contact their loved ones immediately from the ship to let them know that they were okay.

Who knows what other fateful documents lie hidden within the pages of these old membooks, awaiting discovery after more than a hundred years? Come in and help us with the hunt by asking to see a random membook, or see the telegram and ticket for yourself by asking for Lines' membook (DC History Membook Lines 1912). Also, for more on Howard "Rainy" Lines 1912, ask to see his Alumni File or any number of items related to his experiences during the war, including MS-452.