Separated at Birth?

"On Friday, June 24, Mr. Dickey started his fishing trip. Others, not part of the fishing party, were on hand with missions to accomplish prior to the 'informal lunch.' And then the guest arrived..."

This is the folksy start to a photo album titled "A Friend Came to Lunch." Assembled by Edward C. Lathem and the Stinehour Press, it commemorates Dwight D. Eisenhower's visit to John Sloan Dickey's annual fishing party at the Second College Grant in 1954.

The pictures are priceless. Ike donned a DOC jacket, while various Dartmouth administrators decked themselves out for a weekend of fishing. In some pictures it is hard to distinguish Dickey from Eisenhower. After all the hoopla--understated as it was--"Quiet returns to the Dartmouth College Grant."

To see it ask for D.C. History LD1446 1955 .D378.

A Woman's Voyage Round the World

In 1766, Jeanne Bare disguised herself as a man and joined the the crew of Louis Antoine de Bougainville. Two years later she became the first woman to circumnavigate the globe. She left no published account of her voyage, but in 1791, another woman, Mary Ann Parker, joined her husband John Parker, Captain of the Gorgon Man of War, and sailed around the world. After her return, she wrote and published her experiences in A Voyage Round the World (London: John Nichols, 1795) written "for the advantage of a numerous family."

Someday we need to do an exhibit of 18th and 19th century women's travel narratives. They are often so different from their male counterparts. Parker's narrative is full of local color and commentary on the peoples she met with detailed accounts of homes and meals. She gives special attention to the slaves of Cape Town, commenting on their beauty and habits of dress.

Interestingly, this is the only published account of the voyage, and it adds a small fragment to the history of famed mutiny on the Bounty.  The Gorgon carried eleven of the Bounty mutineers from Cape Town back to Portsmouth where they faced trial.

To see it, ask for Rare G440.P12 1795.

Dartmouth-Flavored?!

Here at Rauner, we like food. We've written about Super Bowl snacks, cookbooks produced in Hanover, and "Maid's Night Out" dinners at the Hanover Inn. Dartmouth has also produced a wide variety of Dartmouth-themed or Dartmouth-specific foods, drinks and, for the lack of a better word, concoctions. Most Dartmouthians know of green eggs, from the Dr. Seuss classic Green Eggs and Ham, written by Dartmouth alum Ted Geisel (Class of 1925). 

One of the most palatable is "Dartmouth Ice," served at a "testimonial dinner" for José Clemente Orozco (the creator of the murals in the Orozco room in Baker-Berry library) in 1934. What was this Dartmouth Ice? An ice cream? Or was it more like a sorbet? Was it green? Nothing survives to give us a hint.

The most famous may not be a food after all. The "Green Machine," served from a garbage pail, includes vodka, rum, limeade and lime sherbet. The only information in our file states that the recipe was requested in 1981 by the Library of Congress for an "unnamed Congressman." Now, campus organizations are no longer allowed to serve punches or have hard alcohol, leaving the "Green Machine" to survive only in the archives.

For one of the strangest Dartmouth recipes -- Mountain Sticky Stew -- stay tuned. We'll be posting on the DOC confection soon.

To see our collection related to José Clemente Orozco, ask for DL-34 (4 boxes). The "Green Machine" Vertical File supplies the recipe for the drink and for green eggs and ham. The first photo can be accessed online and is probably of a house party from 1922. If you want to test your Latin, look at Virent ova! Viret perna!! (Rauner Alumni G277v).

Apple Pie Abecedaries

Fall is in the air, and with it, the beginning of a new academic year and the arrival of apple season. While brainstorming autumnal-themed entries, I came across several books about apples, and eventually realized that there was a strange current running through these books.

They were all alphabet books, or abecedaries, that began with an apple pie and ran through all the letters until the pie was eaten. To my surprise, the  "Apple Pie ABC" is actually a famous nursery rhyme. The first version of the rhyme was published in the late-eighteenth century in England and became wildly popular in English-speaking countries by the nineteenth century.

One of the earliest versions in our collection comes in the form of a miniature chapbook. The final few pages are dedicated to "the Tragical Death of an APPLE-PYE." Rather dramatic, though I later realized that it would indeed be a tragedy from the pie's point of view.

In this rhyme, all the letters in the alphabet want to eat a single apple pie, but unless they establish an order, there won't be any pie for some of the less-greedy letters. Curiously enough, the rhyme includes "&" as the final letter, for a total of 27 letters, unlike the 26 we think of today.

The late nineteenth century brought a fantastically illustrated version by Kate Greenaway. This edition centers around a group of children, each named after a letter, and their adventures with a massive apple pie. They are alternately polite (D dealt it) and wicked (F fought for It). G is perhaps my favorite letter, showing a boy with a stick beating off the other children, who drop their plates as they run away. Greenaway skimps out on the end of the alphabet, declaring "UVWXYZ all had a large slice and went off to bed."

To read more about the tragic demise of the apple "pye," ask for Miniature 147. We have several versions of Kate Greenaway's book, including a first edition and a 1978 reprint, demonstrating the rhyme's enduring popularity.

At the Hop

Every day, the Dartmouth Coach enters the small town of Hanover and pulls up in front of the Hopkins Center. I remember stepping down the short bus steps and looking around the Dartmouth campus for the first time. As I gazed at its scenic landscape, I obtained a sense of the history that took place here. Across the green from where I stood is Rauner Special Collection Library. Inside, one can find endless documents on the history of Dartmouth College, starting from its origins up to the present day. The evolution of Dartmouth’s campus and its buildings represents the numerous different time periods this College has experienced. Altering one space on this historic campus can change Dartmouth’s “feel”. Until I researched the changes of Dartmouth’s physical plant during World War I for a history class, little did I know that the place I first pulled up to, Hopkins Center, was one of the most controversial buildings to be built.

As one can see from the photos accompanying this post, the Hopkins Center has a different style of architecture than the rest of the campus. In the late 1920s, Dartmouth College’s Advisory Committee on Plant Development created a plan for constructing a new social center. However, the College needed to overcome some challenges before the plans for the building could be approved. In the late 1950s, the Board of Trustees and Dartmouth community as a whole felt that Georgian architecture was out of style and was no longer suited for its campus. The Advisory Committee on Plant Development asked Wallace Harrison to develop a design for this new social center. Harrison’s design was modern, which resulted in countless debates if this was the direction Dartmouth College wanted to go. The location for the Hopkins Center was another massive issue that resulted in delayed approval, given that the Hanover Green was a highly desirable location in town. However, after many years, the development plans for Hopkins Center were approved and the facility was built in 1961.

The Hopkins Center has become one of the key buildings on this campus. It has awakened students' interests in the art community and provides an educational environment that allows students' creativity and passion for art to explode. Information on this building is just a small fraction of the historical documents that the Rauner Library collections contain about Dartmouth’s campus.

For more information on Dartmouth’s historical campus, go to Rauner Library and look at Dartmouth College Historical Evolution and Preservation:Strategies for the Landscape(D. C. Hist LD1422.9 .D334 1996). To see more great photos of the Hopkins Center, and other buildings on the Dartmouth College campus, browse the images in our Photographic Files and Photographic Records collections, many of which are available for free download online.

Posted for Danny McManus '17, HIST 62 class.

Moby-Dick, or, the Plurality of the Whale

“Call me Ishmael.” Even if you have never read Moby-Dick, chances are you know the first line and something about Captain Ahab’s obsessive hunt for the white whale. The plot and key characters have become part of our popular culture and are referred to by people who couldn’t tell you if Ahab survives his final encounter with the beast that took his leg.

One reason the novel has so thoroughly entered our popular imagination is because it is not really just one novel. Moby-Dick has been repackaged time and time again to serve multiple purposes and satisfy different audiences. It has been a muse for artists, a dry meditation on the human condition for students to suffer through, an exciting story of the sea, and an action story befitting of comic book heroes.

Our latest exhibition, Moby-Dick, or, the Plurality of the Whale --  a riff on the full title of the novel, Moby-Dick, or, the Whale -- opens this Friday, showcasing editions that span centuries, artistic styles, and even genres. We've blogged about our two first editions of Moby-Dick, but now we have a chance to showcase a larger portion of our Melville collection. From the first editions, to the famous Rockwell Kent illustrations (one seen above), to comic books and even a dinner plate, this show has something for all audiences.

This gif shows one of the editions that didn't make it. The gilt edges of this 1923 edition, when correctly manipulated, reveal a hand-painted scene of the harbor at Christiansted, St. Croix, in what is now the U. S. Virgin Islands. You can't view the image without bending the book -- and it would be horrible for the book to be kept like this for the next three months! 

Come see Moby-Dick, or, the Plurality of the Whale, on display from September 4 to November 15, 2015, in the Class of 1965 galleries on the mezzanine level of Rauner!

If you want to see the edition with the fore-edge painting, ask for Rauner Melville PS2384 .M62 1923c.

Be a Trip Leader

No, not a Merry Prankster, that is so 1960s. We are talking about the Dartmouth Outing Club Freshmen trips. They are in full swing right now--hikes out into the wilderness and close encounters with wildlife are a great way to transition students into a new life and build early friendships.

Each year close to 200 students lead the trips. This year, they are all coming into Rauner Library in groups of 10-15 to see a room filled with documents from the DOC records that show the history and development of the trips. This year's favorite piece is an application from 1991 to be a trip leader. The student added a cover letter apologizing for turning in his application late, then went on to elucidate his skills on the accordion and bag pipes. "I play a mean polka to Guns & Roses tunes and can play a hellish rendition of the Flintstones on the 'pipes. Of course I can play Dear Old Dartmouth on either instrument.  Might this aid in waking the sleeping freshmen come in handy to you?"  When asked on the application if he would be willing to have a faculty member along on the trip, he answered yes, that he could think of one English Professor who "loves this sort of pseudo-Hemingway adventure."

But it was his idea for the T-Shirt pictured here that must have won him a spot as a trip leader.

The history of the trips is well documented in the DOC Records (DO-1) which are available for inspiration here in Rauner.