02.01.2012

Sukie Amory

Sukie Amory wears several hats at Amory Architects, where she collaborates with staff on interiors and gardens and blogs on various topics in landscape and design.  She is also a frequent contributor to HORTUS, a British garden journal owned and edited by David Wheeler, whom Amory met in 2007 on a tour of private Belgian gardens.  (You can read the current issue of HORTUS on the second floor).

Amory jokes that hers was perhaps an unlikely upbringing for a garden writer.  As a young child in the 1950s, her family moved from Norfolk, Virginia to Chicago, where her parents threw themselves into the civil rights movement.  She remembers her mother dressing her in her Sunday best to march with Dr. Martin Luther King. Her father, an Episcopal priest, assisted Malcolm X in his lawsuit to allow Korans in jails and established the first halfway house for men coming out of prison.  She remembers him being in jail himself for weeks during the Freedom Rides in Jackson, Mississippi and receiving a Black Panther escort when Chicago burned after Malcolm X’s assassination

Certainly, as a young urban woman, she would never have thought that someday she would be writing about an estate garden in the Ukraine designed by a Polish count for his Greek mistress or lilacs in Duxbury or elm trees and Olmsted.  Nor would she have thought she’d be spending all of her spare time reading up on Persian water features or how to overwinter agapanthus.  Back then, her heart was set on working for a metropolitan opera company.  She studied English and German literature at Harvard/Radcliffe and British theater history at the University of London, eventually working for the Cambridge (UK) Music Festival and the centennial Bayreuth Festival.  Upon returning to Boston, she worked for Sarah Caldwell’s Opera Company and later the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities.

And yet, something in her mother’s stories of running wild through a white-flowered garden on a farm outside of Richmond, VA must have made an impression.Looking back, Amory finds her memories of visiting relatives in Tidewater Virginia and up in the Blue Ridge Mountains have as much of the feeling of “home” as does the bustle and grit of Chicago.  The setting which was to have the greatest impact on her aesthetically was her paternal grandfather’s shade garden on the Lafayette River in Norfolk, which she describes as having been “a cool haven of magnolias, crabapples, crepe myrtles, loblolly pines, boxwood and ivy.”  It was the perfect spot to muse upon of her favorite line of garden poetry from George Herbert: “Annihilating all that’s made/ To a green thought in a green shade…” 

In 1988, Amory and her husband, architect David Amory, established the firm Amory Architects.  They were working on their own particularly ragged fixer upper in Brookline when she happened to attend a lecture at the Arboretum where the speaker declared that, in Britain, even the ugliest council flat could be transformed with a tiny allotment of roses and vines.  Amory went straight to work transforming the Brookline property with a front cottage garden and a rear shade garden inspired by the one kept by her grandfather.  The finished product turned out so well that it was featured on the cover of Globe Magazine and in Outside the Not So Big House.

Amory first walked into the Boston Athenæum in the summer of 1974 where she and other college students spent a sweltering season under the benevolent supervision of former director Rodney Armstrong, checking Cutter call number shelf lists against books in the Drum.  She says they marveled over finds such as an original Martin Luther tract with charge cards and chortled over early catalogue entries like: Women—see Social problems.  Recently, she’s been able to enrich her garden writing with great finds in our rare book collection, such as an early edition of Thomas Whately’s Observations on Modern Gardening, an influential book that Thomas Jefferson had in his pocket when he and John Adams went on a tour of British gardens—around the same time that Catherine the Great was having it translated into Russian.  Images from our collections also appear in her Winter 2010 HORTUS article, “Our Burnished Stomping Ground: The Public Garden, Boston.”

Amory is quick to point out that not all garden writing is about palaces and country estates.  In the Summer of 2010, Amory wrote a piece for HORTUS entitled “The Gift: A WPA Garden in Virginia” about the Azalea Gardens that grew into today’s Norfolk Virginia Botanical Garden and the African American women who endured miserable working conditions to bring it to fruition. The article was particularly moving for Amory to write, not only because it involved her hometown but also because it enabled her to discuss gardens with the spirit of social justice bequeathed to her by courageous parents.    Designed for “gardeners who read, and readers who garden,” the HORTUS Winter 2012 issue includes Amory’s article “Pilgrim Lilacs: ‘Making Poetry Out of a Bit of Moonlight,’” as well as an article by Athenæum author Judith Tankard on the best American gardening books of the past 25 years.  Amory is currently writing on Isabella Stewart Gardner as a gardener and the new greenhouses and plantings at the newly reopened museum for HORTUS Summer 2012.  David Wheeler will publish her piece on the Arnold Arboretum in four installments in 2013, allowing her to cover its swashbuckling plant hunters of the last century to  today’s cutting edge research on tropical and temperate forests across Asia as well as beloved local traditions like Lilac Sunday. 

01.12.2012

Thomas Russell Sullivan

January 2012
By Noah Sheola

“One hurries through Pemberton Square, oppressed by the swollen bulk of the Court-House and its dependencies where the lawyers make skyward for light and air in rushing elevators, to come upon the Athenaeum crowded by domineering neighbors, that having despoiled it of dignity seem to be elbowing it away.” Thomas Russell Sullivan, Boston New and Old (1912)

Novelist and dramatist Thomas Russell Sullivan was born November 21, 1849 at Boston to the Thomas Russell and Charlotte Caldwell (Blake) Sullivan.  His great-grandfather James Sullivan had been Governor of Massachusetts and the first president of the Massachusetts Historical Society.  The elder Thomas Russell Sullivan had been a Unitarian minister in Keene, N.H., before moving to Boston and becoming a schoolmaster.  Sullivan attended Boston Latin School and aspired to go on to Harvard College.  Both of his parents died by the time he was fourteen, however, and Sullivan was forced to support himself rather than attend college.  He took on a series of office jobs, eventually becoming a bank teller.  As a clerk for the Bowles Brothers firm, Sullivan lived in Paris and London from 1870 to 1873, cultivating an appreciation for fine arts and especially the theatre.  With the failure of Bowles Brothers in 1873, Sullivan returned to Boston, working for Union Safe Deposit Vaults of Lee, Higginson & Company by day and writing original plays at his Charles Street residence by night.  By 1880 Sullivan’s plays, including both originals and adaptations of French comedies, were regularly staged at the Boston Museum, a Tremont Street venue which showcased natural history specimens as well as theatrical performances from 1846 to 1903.

In 1885 Sullivan published his first novel, Roses of Shadow, a sentimental romance which soon earned him local renown as a promising literary talent.  Soon after, Richard Mansfield, then among the most famous actors in America, befriended Sullivan and suggested he adapt Robert Louis Stevenson’s latest bestseller, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  Mansfield would take on the dual title role himself.  Sullivan’s adaptation, titled Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, premiered at the Boston Museum on May 9, 1887.  The Boston reviews were favorable, and after some revisions the production traveled to New York in September and to London the following year. 

The London production of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde will forever be associated with the series of unsolved murders attributed to Jack the Ripper.  The show opened just days before the first of five horrific murders in London’s Whitechapel district.  Just as more recent critics have blamed horror movies and video games for acts of violence, London tabloids immediately cited Mansfield’s portrayal of the depraved Mr. Hyde as a factor in the Ripper slayings.  Letters to newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic posited that Jack the Ripper was surely a real-life Jekyll and Hyde, a seemingly respectable member of society, perhaps a doctor, leading a double-life as a serial murderer.  At least one theatergoer became convinced that Mansfield himself was the killer, and tipped off the London police accordingly.  The publicity made Mansfield famous, but show attendance waned as many Londoners deemed the play to be in bad taste.  Mansfield soon closed the production and revived one of the romantic comedies on which he had built his career, returning to America not long after.  The actor was never seriously under suspicion by any official investigation.  Nevertheless, with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde looming so prominently in the Ripper mania of the London tabloids, it is perhaps inevitable that Mansfield is so often remembered in this dubious context. 

Though the London production had proved a disappointment, Sullivan was sufficiently encouraged by the critical response in Boston to quit his day job.  Now regarded as Boston’s leading dramatist, Sullivan was at last able to earn a living as a writer.  He collaborated with Mansfield once more in 1891, writing Nero, in which Mansfield played the Roman emperor.  The play was a critical and financial failure and the ever volatile Mansfield had become impossible to work with.  Jekyll and Hyde would prove to be Sullivan’s only major theatrical success.  Though Sullivan’s career in the theatre had come to an end, he would remain a respected figure in Boston’s literary community on the basis of his novels and short stories. 

Sullivan became a proprietor of Boston Athenaeum in 1889 and was elected to the board of trustees in 1909.  He also served as vice president of the Tavern Club from 1886 to 1908, and socialized at the club almost nightly.  In 1899 Sullivan married Lucy Wadsworth (1869-1947), daughter of the accomplished ophthalmologist Dr. Oliver Fairfield Wadsworth.  Sullivan had known Dr. Wadsworth since at least 1893, when he consulted the doctor after losing sight in his left eye. 

Thomas Russell Sullivan died on June 28, 1916 at his home in Boston.  A eulogy written by Henry Cabot Lodge was published in the annual proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society shortly thereafter, Sullivan having joined the society just two months prior.  He was interred in the Sullivan family plot at Mount Auburn Cemtery, to be joined by Lucy upon her death in 1947.  The Sullivans had no children.

Thomas Russell Sullivan is, admittedly, an obscure and minor author.  His novels and stories are seldom read, and his sole theatrical triumph forever overshadowed by the stature of Robert Louis Stevenson, the original creator of Jekyll and Hyde.  Sullivan did, however, leave behind a legacy of perhaps greater significance than his literary endeavors. Portions of Sullivan’s diary were published in 1917 as Passages from the Journal of Thomas Russell Sullivan, providing historians with a trove of anecdotes and observations relevant to the study of Boston society in the 1890s.  Quotations from Sullivan’s journal appear with some regularity in the work of Walter Muir Whitehill and other historians seeking to evoke Sullivan’s time and place.  Sullivan’s manuscripts, personal papers, and letters are kept at the American Antiquarian Society, Harvard University, and the Boston Athenaeum.  Along with published diary excerpts and his final published work, Boston New and Old (1912), the written record of Sullivan’s life represents an important resource for understanding the theatre scene and literary life of Boston in the late nineteenth century.

Image courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.  Collection of the Boston Athenaeum.

Selected Bibliography:

Roses of Shadow (1885)

Day and Night Stories (1890)

Tom Sullivan (1893)

Ars et Vita and Other Stories (1898)

Courage of Conviction (1902)

Heart of Us (1912)

Boston New and Old (1912)

References:

Athenaeum officers. (1909, Feb 09). Boston Daily Globe (1872-1922), pp. 12-12. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/501196610?accountid=35416

Danahay, M. A., Chisholm, A., & Sullivan, T. R. (2004). Jekyll and Hyde dramatized: The 1887 Richard Mansfield script and the evolution of the story on stage. Jefferson, N.C: McFarland & Co., Publishers.

December Meeting. Samuel Abbott Green; The Periodization of History; History at Harvard College in the ’70’s; Letter of Richard Oswald; Thomas Russell Sullivan
M. A. De Wolfe Howe
Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society , Third Series, Vol. 52, (Oct., 1918 – Jun., 1919), pp. 44-84

October Meeting, 1916. Gifts to the Society; Thomas Russell Sullivan; Letters of John Stuart Mill, 1865-1870; Letter of Elkanah Lane, 1839; George Harris Monroe
Edward Stanwood
Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society , Third Series, Vol. 50, (Oct., 1916 – Jun., 1917), pp. 1-36

Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society , Third Series, Vol. 67, (Oct., 1941 – May, 1944), pp. 581, 583-654

Table gossip. (1888, Jan 29). Boston Daily Globe (1872-1922), pp. 13-13. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/493657368?accountid=35416

T. Russell Sullivan, dramatist, is dead. (1916, Jun 29). Boston Daily Globe (1872-1922), pp. 20-20. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/503062051?accountid=35416

Sullivan, T. R. (1917). Passages from the journal of Thomas Russell Sullivan, 1891-1903. Boston: Houghton Mifflin company.

12.01.2011

Liza Ketchum

December 2011
ByEmilia Poppe Mountain

Liza Ketchum was born in Vermont to Martha Graham dancer, Barbara Bray Ketchum, and historian, Richard M. Ketchum.  As a child, she created an imaginary world for herself and spent many hours composing stories about it.  Both parents encouraged her creative interests, and her father would illustrate the stories she and her brother wrote about their stuffed animals.

Ketchum studied creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College as an undergraduate and received her Master’s in Education from Antioch University Graduate School.  In 1969, she spent a year in England studying some of that country’s progressive education models.  These models encouraged creativity and the exploration of learning through a child’s strengths and interests.  She later co-wrote a book about British primary education (Children Come First) and opened a pre-school in Marlboro, Vermont, where she was able to implement many of the techniques she had studied. 

At one point, children’s writer and friend Katherine Leiner commented, “Since you teach children and you like writing—why not write for children?”  Ketchum took that suggestion and coupled it with her love of history.  She remembers that when she was young, history was taught on the following topics: Ancient Greeks and Romans, Wars, and famous American white men.  Her books have sought to address what was omitted by considering, for example, what it might have been like to be a half-Pequot, half-Anglo farm boy in Vermont just after the Revolutionary War (Where the Great Hawk Flies, winner of the Massachusetts Book Award); a surfer teen who doesn’t fit the cultural mold of his straight, male peers (Blue Coyote); orphans travelling from Illinois to Kentucky who faced the very real dangers of indentured servitude (Orphan Journey Home); and the experience of young entrepreneurs during the California Gold Rush (Newsgirl).  Other books include non-fiction titles focused on ordinary people who have accomplished extraordinary things.  She is currently working on a novel that explores the adventurous, popular side of Vaudeville, as well as the prejudice and challenges faced by African American performers.  Many of her plots are inspired by her personal genealogical research.

Dust jacket: Ketchum, Liza. Newsgirl, New York : Viking, 2009.

Ketchum’s father gave her the gift of a Boston Athenæum membership many years ago.  She was living in Vermont at the time but took advantage of our book mailing program.  She loves Virginia Woolf and lately has been reading a lot of Jim Harrison.  She greatly admires young adult books by Gary Schmidt, Ellen Levine, M.T. Anderson, all teaching colleagues as well as members of her writing groups.  For comfort and inspiration, she turns to the poetry of Mary Oliver, and when she needs to be completely diverted, she enjoys the mysteries of P.D. James and Donna Leon.  Ketchum relies on the Boston Athenæum’s collections for research as well as for pleasure.  A favorite title is John David Borthwick’s Three Years in California.  She found both his gold rush stories and original art inspiring and was able to use some images in her non-fiction book, The Gold Rush. As a part of our Bicentennial series in 2007, Ketchum, along with M.T. Anderson, Irene Smalls, and Rebecca Doughty, read aloud from children’s books written by Athenæum members from the past.  Ketchum’s choice was Barbara Cooney’s Miss Rumphius.

Today, Ketchum lives in Massachusetts and teaches writing for children and young adults through Hamline University’s low-residency MFA program in St. Paul, MN.  She has recently completed a new novel that takes place in Boston in 2004 and is about “death, war and baseball.”  She enjoys talking baseball with members of the library’s staff and confesses to having purchased satellite radio for the family car so that she and her husband can listen to Red Sox games on the road. To learn more about Ketchum see her website.

Selected Bibliography:

Blue Coyote. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 1997
Library of Congress Classification, Children’s Library
PZ7 .K488 Bl

Gold Rush; Based upon the Public Television series; with an introduction by Ken Burns and Stephen Ives. Boston: Little, Brown, 1996
Library of Congress Classification, Children’s Library
+F865 .K4 1996

Into a New Country: Eight Remarkable Women of the West. Boston: Little, Brown, 2000
Library of Congress Classification, Children’s Library
F569 .K45 2000

Newsgirl. New York: Viking, 2009
Library of Congress Classification
Children’s Library
PZ7 .K488 New 2009

Orphan Journey Home.  Illustrated by C.B. Mordan. New York: Avon Books, 2000
Library of Congress Classification, Children’s Library
PZ7 .K4888 Or 2000

Where the Great Hawk Flies. New York: Clarion Books, 2005
Library of Congress Classification, Children’s Library
PZ7 .K488 Whe 2005

11.03.2011

Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson

November 2011
By Casey Pellerin and Noah Sheola

Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823 – 1911) was a proprietor of the Boston Athenaeum, the author of numerous books on American literature and history, and a social reformer who championed the causes of women’s suffrage, the temperance movement, and the abolition of slavery.  As a Union colonel in the Civil War Higginson commanded the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, the first federally authorized regiment of African-American soldiers. Higginson is also remembered as one of the “Secret Six”, half of whom were proprietors or frequenters of Boston Athenaeum, who funded the radical abolitionist John Brown.  In later years Higginson would also gain renown as the literary mentor and publisher of Emily Dickinson. 

Born in Cambridge to Stephen Higginson Jr. and Louisa Storrow, Higginson came from a well-to-do family, his father having been a successful merchant and his grandfather a member of the Continental Congress.  Higginson graduated from Harvard College in 1841 and from Harvard Divinity School in 1847, the same year he married Mary Elizabeth Channing.  A Unitarian, Higginson accepted a ministry in Newburyport where his outspoken support for women’s suffrage, labor rights, and the abolition of slavery soon proved too radical for the conservative community.  He was asked to resign after two years.  In 1852 Higginson became pastor of the Free Church in Worcester after an unsuccessful bid as the Free Soil party candidate in the Third Congressional District of Massachusetts.

In the 1850s Higginson worked tirelessly for the temperance movement, women’s suffrage, and the abolition of slavery, nominating Lucy Stone and Susan B. Anthony to serve on the committee on credentials at the 1853 World’s Temperance Convention in New York.  He joined the Boston Anti-Slavery Vigilance Committee and befriended fellow abolitionists Wendell Phillips and Theodore Parker.  In 1854 Higginson was arrested as he participated in the  attempt to free escaped slave Anthony Burns from the Boston Courthouse.  Following the John Brown’s failed uprising at Harpers Ferry in 1859, newspapers revealed that Higginson and fellow abolitionists Samuel Gridley Howe, Theodore Parker, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Gerrit Smith, and George Luther Stearns, had provided much of the financial backing for Brown’s actions.  The “Secret Six” had adopted a no-questions-asked attitude towards Brown, whom they admired as a righteous crusader against slavery.  The operational details of the conspiracy were likely known only to Brown and his immediate family. 

With the advent of the Civil War, Higginson joined the Union Army and in November 1862 accepted a request from Brigadier General Rufus Saxton to become colonel of the First South Carolina Volunteers, a regiment consisting of slaves freed by the Union army.  Higginson thus had the distinction of commanding the first federally authorized African-American regiment.  Colonel Higginson’s military career ended in 1864 following a bout with malaria.  Colonel Higginson memorialized his war years in the book Army Life in a Black Regiment (1870). 

After the war Higginson applied himself to literary endeavors.  His poetry appeared in The Present and The Harbinger and he contributed regularly to the Sunday edition of the Boston Globe, the Nation, and Woman’s Journal.  Higginson published several works of history and biography, one novel, and a text on flowers.  In 1879, two years after the death of his first wife, Higginson married Mary Potter Thacher, with whom he would have two daughters.  Now residing in Cambridge, Higginson served two terms as a Republican representative to the Massachusetts legislature before an unsuccessful bid for Congress as a Mugwump Democrat in 1888 (the Mugwumps were Republicans who changed parties to protest the Republican presidential candidate James G. Blaine).

While a prolific author in his own right, Higginson is best known in literary circles as the friend and editor of Emily Dickinson.  Higginson’s correspondence with Dickinson dates from 1862 when she sent him four of her poems in response to a piece Higginson had written in the Atlantic Monthly, in which he had offered encouragement to young writers.  Higginson praised Dickinson’s work but advised her against seeking publication too soon.  The two met for the first time in 1870 and maintained frequent correspondence until Dickinson’s death in 1886.  Dickinson’s first volumes of poetry were published in 1890 and 1891, co-edited by Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd.  While Higginson and Todd were typical of nineteenth-century editors in freely moving stanzas and amending spelling as they saw fit, modern critics blame them nonetheless for altering Dickinson’s original intent.  As a result, subsequent editions of Dickinson’s work have privileged her manuscripts.

Colonel Higginson died on May 9th, 1911 at Cambridge.  He received a military funeral, his casket draped in the worn Union flag of the First South Carolina Volunteers.  Between 1886 and 1891 Colonel Higginson had been a proprietor of the Boston Athenaeum.  A 1902 feature of the Boston Sunday Herald featured a photograph of the second floor reading room (see below), noting the chairs where sixteen notable authors preferred to study and write, among them Colonel Higginson.

Selected Works:

The Afternoon Landscape: Poems and Translations. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co.,1889.
Cutter Classification: VEP. H533

Army Life in a Black Regiment. Michigan State UP, 1960.
Cutter Classification: 9549.H535.2

Atlantic Essays. Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1882.
Cutter Classification: VE3.H533

Book and Heart: Essays on Literature and Life. New York: Harper & Bros., 1897.
Cutter Classification: VE3.H533.b

A Book of American Explorers. Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1877.
Cutter Classification: B21.H53

Carlyle’s Laugh, and Other Surprises. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1909.
Cutter Classification: XVE.H533

Cheerful Yesterdays. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1898.
Cutter Classification: 65.H535

Common Sense About Women. Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1882.
Cutter Classification: DY.H53

The Complete Civil War Journal and Selected Letters of Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Ed.Christopher Looby. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2000
Library of Congress Classification: CT275.H528 A3 2008

English History for American Readers. New York: Longmans, Green, 1893.
Cutter Classification: 8E.H533

Harvard Memorial Biographies. Cambridge: Sever and Francis, 1866.
Cutter Classification: 664.H26

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1902.
Cutter Classification: 65.L862.h

History of the United States from 986 to 1905. New York: Harper & Bros., 1905.
Cutter Classification: 95.H53.2

Malbone: An Oldport Romance. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1884.
Cutter Classification (Off-Site Storage): :VEF.H5351.m

Margaret Fuller Ossoli. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1884.
Cutter Classification: 65.Os7.h

The Nonsense of It: Short Answers to Common Objections Against Woman Suffrage. Boston: American Woman Suffrage Association.
Broadside – Appointment Required: Bro. 1.277

The Procession of the Flowers, and Kindred Papers. New York: Longmans, Green, 1897.
Cutter Classification: IW.H53

A Reader’s History of American Literature. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1903.
Cutter Classification: XW5.H53.r

Short Studies of American Authors. Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1880.
Cutter Classification: XW5.H53.s

Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic. New York: Macmillan Co., 1898.
Cutter Classification: VEL.9H53

Young Folk’s History of the United States. Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1875.
Cutter Classification (Off-site storage): VEJ.H53.y

References:

“Col. Higginson is Laid at Rest.” Boston Globe 13 May 1911: 1.Edelstein, Tilden G. Strange Enthusiasm: A Life of Thomas Wentworth Higginson. New Haven, Yale UP: 1968. Print.

Higginson, Mary Thacher. Thomas Wentworth Higginson: The Story of His Life.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1914. Print.

Jones, Howard Mumford.  Introduction. Army Life in a Black Regiment. By Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Michigan State UP, 1960.

“Thomas Wentworth Higginson.”  Civil War Trust, n.d. Web. 8 July, 2011.

“Thomas Wentworth Higginson.” New York Times 21 May 1911.

“Thomas Wentworth Higginson.” Worcester Area Writers. WPI Archives & Special Collections. Web. 8 July 2011.

Uncle Dudley. “Uncle Dudley’s Notions.” Boston Daily Globe 2 Jan. 1898: 30.

Wineapple, Brenda. White Head: The Friendship of Emily Dickenson & Thomas Wentworth  Higginson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008. Print.

09.30.2011

Dan McNichol

October 2011
By Emilia Poppe Mountain

Dan McNichol “grew up in the dirt” of Bryn Mawr, PA.  He played in the sand with Tonka trucks and blocks, and when he got older, worked for his father’s firm, the D.J. McNichol Construction Company. On the McNichol side of the family, he comes from at least five generations of Irish road builders. At this point, he believes road dirt is in his DNA. 

Given his background, it’s not surprising that while many grumble when they hear the words big and dig in the same sentence, McNichol thinks it was “the most exciting thing in the world” to have been in the middle of a city torn asunder by cranes and construction vehicles.  He had been studying the Big Dig from afar in his White House appointed position at the Department of Transportation, so when he was offered a position to be one of the spokespeople for the Big Dig, he couldn’t have been happier. 

After years of answering questions for the BBC, The Discovery Channel, The New York Times, and other news and education agencies, McNichol found himself identifying less with the politics of the Dig and more as its historian and storyteller.  The Big Dig (2000), a book he was required to leave his job in order to write, not only tells the story of tunneling and construction techniques but of the poor residents who lost their neighborhoods, an island with Native American artifacts used as a dumping ground and later a park, quiet but creative engineers, “black mayonnaise,” razor blades, rats, and of course, politicians—some eager and some reluctant to move forward. The book also contains stunning images.  Of the photographer Andy Ryan, McNichol commented “Andy and I were joined at the hip during the project” and marveled at Ryan’s uncanny ability in capturing the exact shot he was hoping to have for the book.

Dust jacket: Michnichol, Dan. The Big Dig; photographs by Andy Ryan. New York, NY : Silver Lining Books, Inc., 2000.

McNichol’s second book, The Big Dig at Night (2001) was conceived one evening while walking his dog, Emma.  There in the darkness, he saw a man named Stephen SetteDucati taking pictures of workers at a construction site, and the wheels in his brain began to turn.  He realized that he had yet to fully document the most dangerous, and perhaps most interesting aspect of the Big Dig—the night shift.  McNichol especially enjoyed the artistic element of this particular book and all of “the lights and shadows” to which SetteDucati was originally drawn.

His third book, The Big Dig Trivia Quiz Book (2002), was an amusing factoid project, and even more amusing was seeing the book beside Big Dig calendars and candy bars at large bookstores.  His fourth book was The Roads that Built America: The Incredible Story of the U.S. Interstate System (2003).  When asked how he managed to acquire so many wonderful historic images for the book, McNichol responded that he was amazed at how many “road history buffs” wanted to help him.  His art director used many Corbis and Getty images, but while doing research at the National Road Museum, National Archives and Federal Highway Administration, the Eisenhower Presidential Library, and other libraries and historical societies, staff were always eager to find materials for him, as if helping him tell the story stemmed from some patriotic higher calling in which all wanted to take part. 

McNichol has many construction heroes, his two favorites being President Eisenhower and John Louden Mcadam.  It was the latter who brought him to the Boston Athenæum for the first time so that he could take a look at the 1819 edition of Remarks on the Present System of Roadmaking.  It’s wasn’t long before McNichol became a regular in the 5th floor reading room.  When he needs to take a break from his technical writing, he often turns to Irish writers like James Joyce and Leon Uris.  His absolute favorites, however, are Hemingway, Kerouac and Steinback, who all knew something about travel and the road.  “I can’t help it,” McNichol remarked.  “I’m road-centric. Construction centric.”  Steinbeck, who worked for the roads in his youth, even features in McNichol’s fifth book, Paving the Way: Asphalt in America (2005).

Dust jacket: McNichol, Dan. Paving the Way: Asphalt in America.Lanham, MD : National Asphalt Pavement Association, c2005.

Today, McNichol has his sights set on roads outside the U.S. “Romans mistakenly get credit for building the first significant road-net. But, it was the Chinese who developed the first major road-system with its many Silk Road trade routes.” Every year McNichol and his Chinese born wife, Dr. Jin Ji, spend a month in the Central Nation [China], while he studies China’s rapid infrastructure development. McNichol muses about the concentric circles of the world’s road-making:

“Roadways began making their way into history with the Chinese Silk Roads which first connected Eastern and Western cultures. The Romans improved on the Silk Roads when they built their fabled 50,000-mile network spreading across Europe. The British helped launch the American Industrial Revolution with Macadam’s flexible road pavements that became the first pavements used in the US. Highway paving was mechanized to an art form during the construction of the Eisenhower Interstate System. Completing the circle, the Chinese are modeling their new superhighways, I call the ‘interprovincial System,” from specifications taken from the US Interstate System. My research has gone full circle, around the world and back to where it began – China.”

For the latest news on Dan McNichol’s work, one may visit his website.

08.31.2011

Norma Farber

September 2011
By Casey Pellerin

Norma Farber, children’s book author, poet, and accomplished singer, was born in Boston on August 6, 1909, and died on March 21, 1984. During those years, she published six books of poetry for adults and eighteen books for children, with many more children’s books published posthumously. She attended Girls’ Latin School, and she earned her Bachelor’s from Wellesley College in 1931 and her Master’s from Radcliffe College in 1932. She married Dr. Sidney Farber, founder of what became the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, in 1928.

Farber began writing poetry while at Girls’ Latin School and began publishing her poetry in local newspapers and magazines, such as the Boston Globe, in the 1950s. Her first book of poetry for adults, The Hatch, was published by Scribner in 1955. Farber’s wrote in a variety of formats, including lyric poetry and sonnets.  Critics have praised Farber’s poetry for its energy, originality, and bold use of alliteration, drawing favorable comparisons to the work of Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Her poetry earned her the Golden Rose Award from the New England Poetry Club in 1958, and numerous awards from the Poetry Society of America. After her death, the Norma Farber First Book Award, awarded annually by the Poetry Society of America, was established to recognize a first book of poetry published by an American poet.

Farber began writing for children in the late 1960s. Her first children’s book, Did You Know It Was the Narwhale? was published in 1967.  Of recurrent themes in her children’s books Farber wrote in a short autobiography:

Book Cover: "This is the Ambulance Leaving the Zoo," title page singed by Farber.

It dawned on me a while ago that I have two obsessions (in my children’s books): the alphabet, and Noah’s Flood. … Alphabet poems and stories enchant me because these twenty-six letters are the warp and woof, the living texture of our spoken and written communication. I just can’t celebrate the English language loudly enough.

Her numerous alphabet books include As I Was Crossing Boston Common, which was awarded the Children’s Book Showcase Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1976, I Found Them in the Yellow Pages, and This is the Ambulance Leaving the Zoo. Each features the alphabet in different ways – a turtle describes the exotic animals he sees being paraded through the Boston Common, each beginning with a letter of the alphabet, in the first, while the second, appropriately printed on yellow paper, lists various services and business found under each letter of the alphabet, with illustrations for each making the yellow pages’ entry come to life. This is the Ambulance Leaving the Zoo is written as a series of events and places, in rhyme, creating a fun nonsense story. At the end, though, the story is repeated in reverse, with each letter of the alphabet getting a line.

As for her second “obsession,” Farber soon branched out from writing solely about Noah’s Flood in Did You Know it Was the Narwhale?, Where’s Gomer?, and How the Left-behind Beasts Build Ararat, to include the story of Jonah and the Whale and the birth of Jesus in her collection of published works.

[Norma Farber, WGBH Radio Drama]. Photograph.

Other children’s books by Farber include There Goes Feathertop!, a retelling of “Feathertop” by Nathanial Hawthorne. She wrote nonsense stories, such as There Once Was a Woman Who Married a Man, which tells the tale of a woman’s varied attempts to coax her silent husband into speaking, and children’s poetry, such as Never Say Ugh! to a Bug.  Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast (1977), inspired by a quote from Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, is a collection of four poems and two short stories, with drawings by six different illustrators, including Tomie De Paola.  Farber was also noted for her collaborations with illustrators Marc Brown (I Found Them in the Yellow Pages) and Arnold Lobel (As I Was Crossing Boston Common).

Two works that stand out among her later works are How Does it Feel to be Old? (1979) and Mercy Short: A Winter Journal, North Boston, 1692-93 (1982).  Mercy Short, is a young adult novel about an indentured servant who believes she’s been bewitched. Set during the Salem Witch Trials, the story is based on actual events and includes Cotton Mather as a character.  In How Does it Feel to be Old?, Farber answers the question put to her by her granddaughter.  Told from a grandmother’s perspective, How Does it Feel to be Old? has been lauded as a lighthearted yet serious meditation on aging and mortality.

Norma Farber was a prolific writer, with a zest for the fun and absurd, and a deep appreciation for literature that comes through in all of her writings.  Summing up her willingness to take on unfamiliar subjects, Farber wrote in an autobiographical sketch, “I should admit that I can be tempted, even in my seventies, to undertake new and difficult assignments. I welcome a challenge, a dare! Love to try something I’ve never tried before, especially if it seems to be way beyond me.”

Selected Bibliography:

Adult Poetry:
A Desperate Thing, Marriage is a Desperate Thing. Boston: Plowshare Press, 1973.
Library of Congress Classification
PS3556.A6 D4

Something Further: Poems. Ann Arbor, MI: Kylix Press, 1979.
Library of Congress Classification
PS3556.A6 S6

Poets of Today. Vol. 2. New York: Scribner, 1955.

Children’s Poetry:
Small Wonders: Poems. New York : Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1979.
Children’s Library
PZ8.3.F224 Sm

Never Say Ugh! to a Bug. New York: Greenwillow Books, 1979.
Children’s Library
PZ8.3.F224 Ne

When It Snowed That Night. New York: HarperCollins, 1993.
Children Picture Book
Children Picture Book +FARBE

Alphabet Books:
As I Was Crossing Boston Common. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1973.
Children’s Library
PZ8.3.F224 As5

I Found Them in the Yellow Pages. Boston: Little and Brown, 1973.
Children Picture Book
Children Picture Book +FARBE

This is the Ambulance Leaving the Zoo. New York: Dutton, 1975.
Children Picture Book
Children Picture Book +FARBE

Children’s Books:

Biblical Stories:
A Ship in a Storm On the Way to Tarshish. New York: Greenwillow, 1977.
Children’s Library
PZ8.3.F224 Sh

How the Hibernators Came to Bethlehem. New York: Walker & Company, 1980.
Children’s Library
PZ7.F2228 Ho 1980

How the Left-behind Beasts Built Ararat. New York: Walker & Company, 1978.
Children’s Library
+PZ8.3.F224 Ho

Where’s Gomer? New York: E.P. Dutton, 1974.
Children’s Library
PZ7.F2228 Wh

 Other Children’s Books:
How Does it Feel to be Old? New York: Dutton, 1979.
Off-site Storage
+HQ1061.F37 1979

Mercy Short: A Winter Journal, North Boston, 1692-93. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1982.
Children’s Library
PZ7.F2228 Me 1982

Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: Stories and Poems. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1977.
Children’s Library
PZ7.F2228 Si

There Goes Feathertop! New York: E.P. Dutton, 1979.
Children’s Library
PZ8.3.F224 Tg

There Once Was a Woman Who Married a Man. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1978.
Children’s Library
PZ8.3.F224 Th

Three Wanderers From Wapping. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1978.
Children’s Library
PZ7.F2228 Ti

References:

Loer, Stephanie. “Children’s Spring Review: From exuberant nonsense to lyricism.” Boston Globe. ProQuest Historical Newspapers Boston Globe (1872-1979). Web. 11 June 2011.

“Norma Farber.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2000. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 11 June 2011.

“Norma Farber.” Major Authors and Illustrators for Children and Young Adults. Gale, 2002. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 11 June 2011.

“Norma Farber, 74, Is Dead; Author of Books for Children.” New York Times 23 March 1984: D15.

Wheelock, John Hall. Introductory Essay: The Fourth Voice of Poetry. Poets of Today. Vol. 2. New York: Scribner, 1955.

07.28.2011

William Kuhn

August 2011
By Emilia Poppe Mountain

William Kuhn first heard of the Boston Athenæum at the Royal Archives while researching Victorian courtiers. Apparently, one Henry Ponsonby had written to his mother from Boston in May 1863 that “All the public libraries of the town have reading rooms for ladies, and Mary has considerable thoughts of turning Bostonian …” Certainly something for which Boston can be proud!  Kuhn said he felt immediately at home at the Athenæum, with staff and members greeting him with a friendly “Hi Bill!” in almost no time at all.

Kuhn’s first three books addressed his interest in explaining why England didn’t abolish the Monarchy along with France and the United States—especially when the throne was held by a woman.  Why would a nation with the most sophisticated democracy in Europe and whose leaders prided themselves on rationalism maintain a conceivably “irrational” attachment to a royal female figure? Kuhn theorized that Britain ensured democratic stability by including the monarchy in the constitution, thus lending the government a sense of historical stability.  It was a paradox to be sure, but one that seemed to work.  Furthermore, while people understood on some level that the Queen was not actually making the day to day decisions about their political future along with Parliament, their emotional attachment to her created an attractive theater of government that kept them interested in politics.

Kuhn’s interest in British Royals originated from a sabbatical his father took to study in London, when Kuhn was just eleven years old.  At first, the thought of leaving his birthplace in Columbus, Ohio was rather traumatic.  Indeed, he remembered collapsing against his refrigerator in abject misery.  And it got worse.  Upon moving to England, he learned he was no good at cricket, didn’t know a thing about British history, and that the entire country spoke with a funny accent.  However, when an essay he wrote on the Thames River was selected for performance by a student in the drama program, he enjoyed for the first time the writer’s complete sense of joy at seeing his work become more than just words on a piece of paper.

The idea for Kuhn’s first book, Democratic Royalism: The Transformation of the British Monarchy, 1861-1914 (1996), came from meeting an anthropologist who made the comment that everyone is his field was interested in the rituals of so-called “primitive cultures.” Wouldn’t it be interesting, the anthropologist asked, to read something about the rituals of so-called “civilized” societies for a change?  Kuhn’s second book, Henry and Mary Ponsonby: Life at the Court of Queen Victoria, was inspired by a group of letters he found at the Royal Archives written between a husband and wife who had served Queen Victoria.  The letters were hilarious and irreverent, and yet somehow still managed to be loyal and detached.  Kuhn’s third book, The Politics of Pleasure: A Portrait of Benjamin Disraeli (2007), was conceived after a series of Anti-gay incidents occurred at Carthage College where he was teaching history.  It struck him that there were many figures in history that had to negotiate unusual sexual identities, Disraeli being a prime example.  One wouldn’t expect a two-time Victorian prime minister to have dressed in Byronic outfits as a young man or to have written a slew of novels featuring feminine and flamboyant men.  Yet somehow, Kuhn found that Disraeli’s refusal to live up to conventional standards made others live up to his. 

Dust Jacket: William Kuhn. Reading Jackie: Her Autobiography in Books.New York : Nan A Talese/Doubleday, c2010. Image courtesy of Nan A. Talese/Doubleday.

While Kuhn looked at Disraeli’s early novels to see whether they could be made to speak for Disraeli himself, in Reading Jackie: Her Autobiography in Books (2010), Kuhn explored how a collection of books could be made to yield information about the person who put them together.  Kuhn asserts that Jackie didn’t simply edit books: she chose subjects and authors, encouraged certain writers and helped shape the texts as they were being written, making the works equally revealing about her as a person.  Moreover, she was a voracious and eclectic reader.  She read and edited works on historic building preservation, fairy tales, European royals and Tiffany, but also rock & roll music, sensual, drug-addicted ballerinas, Indian courtesans and witchcraft—hardly what one imagines after viewing the wispy-voiced fashion icon give that famous televised tour of the White House.

The success of Reading Jackie has meant that Kuhn can now focus on his writing full-time.  “It’s been an incredible privilege to be able to come to the Boston Athenæum in the morning, go up to the fifth floor and sit down in one of those bays and start working.” Another great boon of Reading Jackie’s success has been Kuhn’s opportunity to branch out into the world of “American royals.”  He is currently at work on the fifth floor exploring the social circles of Isabella Stewart Gardner, John Singer Sargent and Henry James.

06.08.2011

Francis Parkman

June / July 2011
By Noah Sheola

Francis Parkman (1823-1893) was a trustee of the Boston Athenæum from 1858 until his death in 1893. He is best known for his seven-volume history France and England in North America. In recognition of his talent and accomplishments, the Society for American Historians annually awards the Francis Parkman Prize for the best book on American history. Though Parkman made his mark as an historian of the colonial era, it is for his special contribution to the scholarship of the American Civil War that the Boston Athenæum is indebted to him. In the final months of the war, Parkman played a crucial role in procuring for the library books, newspapers, and pamphlets printed in the Confederate States of America during its four-year existence. Thanks to Parkman’s foresight, the Boston Athenæum is home to one of the most extensive collections of Confederate imprints in the world. As we commemorate the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War, it is fitting to remember Francis Parkman’s life and achievements.

The son of a Unitarian minister, Parkman was born in Boston in 1823. During his boyhood at the family farm in Medford, Parkman spent countless hours exploring the nearby expanse of forest now known as the Middlesex Fells Reservation. As a sophomore at Harvard College studying American history under Jared Sparks, Parkman conceived of one day authoring a comprehensive history of the Anglo-French struggle for control of North America. He graduated in 1845, and went on to complete a law degree at Harvard in 1846. Having little interest in the legal career his father had insisted upon, Parkman chose to embark on a westward journey with his cousin Quincy Adams Shaw. He took bareback riding lessons from a troupe of local circus artists in preparation for the adventure. The firsthand accounts Parkman gathered from settlers and his observations of life among the Sioux tribe formed the basis for his first published work, The Oregon Trail (1849). 

An avid outdoorsman, Parkman nonetheless struggled with bouts of ill health and failing eyesight. By 1848 his eyes were so sensitive to light he confined himself to darkened rooms, relying on his sisters or friends to read his notes and take dictation. For the rest of his life Parkman suffered recurrent headaches, insomnia and near blindness, a confluence of maladies he dubbed “the enemy.” Often unable to see his own handwriting, he devised a wire lattice to guide his hand. He preferred writing in red pencil on orange paper, finding that combination the least stressful to his sensitive eyes.

Parkman married Catherine Scollay Bigelow in 1850, and in 1852 purchased a summer home in Jamaica Plain where he built an expansive garden. Parkman specialized in roses and lilies, cultivating hybrids of those flowers which still bear his name. The Parkmans had two daughters, Grace, and Katharine, and a son, Francis, who died of scarlet fever at age three. Catherine Bigelow Parkman died in 1858; Parkman never remarried.

In the ensuing decades, Parkman’s career as a horticulturist occasionally threatened to eclipse his more scholarly ambitions. He published The Book of Roses in 1866 and was appointed professor of horticulture at Harvard’s Bussey Institution, teaching from 1871 to 1872. He regularly exhibited his hybrids at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, which lauded him with over three hundred prizes over his lifetime. 

In 1865, Parkman built a house at 50 Chestnut Street in Boston which has become a National Historic Landmark. Still living most of the year at Jamaica Plain where he could garden, he spent winters on Beacon Hill, not far from the Boston Athenæum, of which he had been a trustee since 1858. With the Civil War concluding, Parkman, along with librarian William F. Poole and fellow trustees Donald McKay Frost and Raymond Sanger Wilkins, saw the importance of securing, for the benefit of future historians, newspapers, broadsides, books, and pamphlets printed in the Confederate States of American. As the Library Committee of the Boston Athenæum presciently reported in January 1866:

“The sudden collapse of the Rebellion in the early part of the year seemed to the Committee to furnish an opportunity, which should be instantly used, of obtaining the newspapers and other publications issue at the South during the War; and of which very few had ever gone beyond the Confederate States. These fugitive publications had a peculiar historical interest; and unless secured promptly, before they were destroyed, or had fallen in the hands of collectors, they would be forever beyond our reach. A Poor Richard’s Almanac of the year 1752 is priced on an English sale catalogue at five times its weight in gold; and one hundred years hence, a rebel almanac, or a dingy file of Southern newspaper, may, perhaps, reach a corresponding value.”

In the summer of 1865, Parkman traveled to Richmond, authorized to spend up to $500. He stayed only a few days, long enough to procure a complete file of the Richmond Daily Examiner, a newspaper which covered the events of the Civil War from the perspective of the Confederate capital. Poole remained in Richmond for several months. The diligence with which Poole procured imprints for the Athenæum is memorably described in Walter Muir Whitehill’s introduction to the 1955 checklist.

The ensuing decades saw Parkman bring to fruition the life’s work he had first envisioned as an undergraduate at Harvard. Pioneers of France in the New World, published in 1865, was the first of seven volumes to comprise France and England in North America, subsequent volumes being published every few years, concluding with the 1892 publication of A Half Century of Conflict. Still struggling with almost crippling disability, Parkman nonetheless traveled abroad during this period to consult primary sources in France and Canada. In recognition of his emergent reputation as America’s answer to Macaulay, Parkman was named president of the Massachusetts Historical Society, serving from 1875 to 1878. The preeminent American historian of his generation, Parkman died in 1893 at his home in Jamaica Plain. He is buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery.   

While Parkman’s literary talents are still admired, the authority his scholarship once enjoyed has eroded. Modern critics have faulted Parkman for crossing the line demarcating known facts from historical fiction, with some detecting a persistent anti-Catholic and anti-French bias. Replete with passages lauding the triumph of civilization over savagery, Parkman’s work typifies the “imperialist” historiography late 20th-century scholars such as Francis Jennings labored to discredit. Modern readers who delve into Parkman’s personal politics will likely be disappointed by his fervent opposition to voting rights for women. With his work so steeped in the prejudices of his time and place, and written from a decidedly privileged outlook, academics now are more likely to read Parkman as a document of intellectual life in 19th-century Boston than for a reliable account of the events he chronicled. 

Yet his books are continually reprinted, with paperback editions readily available at mainstream bookstores, suggesting an appeal that goes beyond academic interest. Parkman’s critics compare his work unfavorably to historical fiction, citing the almost cinematic detail of his descriptions, yet it is precisely because his work so closely resembles well written fiction that it remains enjoyable to modern readers. In Parkman’s prose the quotations from letters and other primary sources function almost as dialogue for his protagonists, while richly descriptive passages place the reader in the midst of dramatic events. These are the qualities readers continue to enjoy, even as scholars continue to chip away at the veracity of his accounts. Parkman’s ability to spin a good historical yarn is thus both liability and asset, depending on the reader.

Other aspects of Parkman’s life and work are similarly paradoxical. He eschewed secondary sources as unreliable, but nonetheless adorned his narratives with the trappings of historical fiction. He was an outdoorsman who championed the grandeur of the American forest, but spent much of his life in darkened rooms struggling with near blindness and chronic pain. And while his monumental histories of the colonial era are his most obvious legacy, his foresight in gathering contemporary documents at the close of the Civil War is arguably the greater achievement.

Selected Works:

France and England in North America.  New York:  Literary Classics of the United States, 1983. 
Library of Congress Classification
F1030 .P24 1983

Journals of Francis Parkman.  New York:  Harper, 1947.
Cutter Classification
65 .P233

The Oregon Trail.  Madison:  University of Wisconsin Press, 1969
Cutter Classification
B7 .P23 .4

Works of Francis Parkman.  Boston:  Little, Brown, and Company, 1902. 
Cutter Classification
93Y .P23

References:

Crandall, Marjorie Lyle (1955).  Confederate imprints:  A checklist based principally on the collection of the Boston Athenaeum.  Boston:  Boston Athenaeum.

Doughty, Howard  (1962).  Francis Parkman.  New York:  Macmillan.

Farnham, Charles Haight (1900).  A Life of Francis Parkman.  Boston:  Little Brown and Company.

“Parkman, Francis (1823-1893).” Encyclopedia of World Biography. Detroit: Gale, 1998. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 4 May. 2011.

Petersen, Mark  (2002).  How (and why) to read Francis Parkman.  Common-Place.  Retrieved May 18, 2011 from http://www.common-place.org/vol-03/no-01/peterson/

Schama, Simon (1991).  Dead Certainties.  New York:  Knopf.

Whitehill, Walter Muir (1973).  Franics Parkman as Horticulturist.  Arnoldia.  Volume 33 Number 3.  Retrieved May 25, 2011 from  http://arnoldia.arboretum.harvard.edu/pdf/articles/939.pdf

04.01.2011

Anne Alison Barnet

April / May 2011

By Emilia Poppe Mountain

Why doesn’t anyone in the South End sit on their front stoops anymore?  How did female college students circumvent their curfews in the 1960s? What was it like to live in the same neighborhood as God?  For answers to these questions, look no further than Athenæum member Anne Alison Barnet’s South End News column – “Alison’s Adventures.” 

Barnet moved to the South End in 1964 as a Boston University student.  This may come as a surprise to anyone who sees her apartment filled with books, posters, photos and other South End paraphernalia, but Barnet was actually born in Staten Island, NY.  It was there at the age of nine that she wrote her first short story in a diary with a lock and key—a piece of “true crime” about a neighborhood boy who took out his friend’s eye with a BB gun.  In a finale rather appropriate to our current Edward Gorey exhibition, the sharpshooter’s parents buy the aggrieved friend a Superman suit—which he dons—but not being able to see very well with only one eye—eventually flies into a glass window and breaks his hand.  Since then, Barnet has never been without a journal for recording the bizarre and unconventional.  Even her gym bag has one.

But these days, it is most certainly the South End that drives her writing.  In fact, it wasn’t until she learned that her great-grandfather had lived in the South End that she began research for her book Extravaganza King: Robert Barnet and Boston Musical Theater.  So began a ten year journey into the life of a prosperous sugar merchant, who in the 1890s turned librettist, director, stage manager, and costume designer in order to raise funds for the building of the armory of the First Corps of Cadets in Boston.  His “extravaganzas,” with their lavish productions and enormous casts, featured cadets and many male Harvard graduates trained in the Hasty Pudding tradition.  The men played the female roles and these “hefty, muscular leading ladies raised laughter rather than eyebrows from the audiences of prominent Bostonians who attended the shows.”

By the time Barnet joined the Boston Athenæum in the late 1990s, she had mostly completed her manuscript for Extravaganza King.  Nevertheless, when her volunteer work in the art department allowed, she amused herself by looking up Robert Barnet and his friends in the Harvard directories and alumni books.  When asked what she likes best about being an Athenæum member, she replied, “I feel like in here I can just go around and find things that interest me and nobody’s going to bother me…I crave quiet.”

Front page: Boston Globe. Jan. 30, 1894

At present, Barnet is spending these quiet moments preparing a series of articles and lectures on “obscure and eccentric” South End residents, such as Dr. Merrill Moore, who was both psychiatrist and poet and Lorin Deland, who was not only a businessman and advertising pioneer, but an actor who spent his free time assisting unwed mothers.  While other resident historians have tended to focus on the neighborhood’s architecture, churches and sports teams, Barnet says her interest will always be primarily in the neighborhood’s people.  Her former landlady, the Franklin Square House porters (a.k.a. “eunuchs”) and Mel Lyman, who declared himself God in the late 1960s a few blocks from Barnet’s student residence, make frequent appearances in her writing.  If you’d like to become further acquainted with Barnet’s wry sense of humor and the extraordinary cast of characters she has immortalized in prose, just check out her articles in the South End News or attend one of the lectures she gives periodically at her local library and the South End Historical Society.  Rumor has it she showed up at the last one dressed as a 1970s rooming house landlady.

Selected Bibliography:

Extravaganza King: Robert Barnet and Boston Musical Theater.
Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004.
Library of Congress
CT 275 .B373065 B37 2004

Articles:

 “Slumlords and Hippies – 1968.” South End News (online).  13 January 2011.

 “Close to the heart of Boston.” South End News (online). 6 October 2010.

 “We’ve never stooped so low.” South End News (online). 24 September  2009.

03.17.2011

The Harris Family

March 2011
By Noah Sheola

The Reverend Thaddeus Mason Harris, his son the naturalist Thaddeus William Harris, and grandson William Thaddeus Harris, a lawyer were all published authors, and all three were members or staff of the Boston Athenæum.  Their respective vocations ranged from theology, to entomology, to law and genealogy, but each generation earned his living at least part of the time as a librarian, primarily at Harvard though William Thaddeus Harris worked at the Athenæum as well.  The Harris family legacy comprises a trove of early American sermons, a landmark publication in the study of American insects, the transcribed epitaphs of two old cemeteries, and one enduring ghost story.

Thaddeus Mason Harris was born July 7, 1768 in Malden, Massachusetts to William and Rebekah (Mason) Harris.  His father had run a public writing school in Charlestown until the Revolution, when the British burned much of Charleston including the Harris property.  The family subsequently moved to Lancaster.  After a hand-injury thwarted his apprenticeship to a saddle-maker, young Thaddeus Mason Harris attended Harvard College, graduating in 1787 before settling down to teach school in Worcester.  He returned to Cambridge and Harvard in 1789 to obtain a theology degree, and served as librarian of the Harvard College Library from 1791 until 1793 when he was ordained as Unitarian minister of the First Parish Church in Dorchester.  In 1795 he married Mary Dix of Worcester, with whom he would have nine children.  Thaddeus Mason Harris contracted yellow fever during an 1802 epidemic and later traveled to Ohio, at the time a wild frontier state, later publishing an account of the journey.  He received a Doctorate of Theological Studies from Harvard in 1813 and saw many of his sermons published in his lifetime.  He resigned as minister from the First Parish Church in 1836 and died April 3, 1842 at Dorchester.  He is buried in the Old North Burying Place in Uphams Corner, Dorchester.

A lifetime member of the Athenæum, Reverend Harris was known to frequent the library in the afterlife as well. In a sketch which has become part of Boston Athenæum folklore, Nathaniel Hawthorne relates how, in 1842, he spotted the ghost of Reverend Harris reading his own obituary in that morning’s paper.  Hawthorne reports to have seen the Reverend Harris frequently at the Athenæum in the ensuing weeks, but hesitated to address him as they had never been properly introduced.  While visiting friends in England decades later, Hawthorne related the anecdote to his host who insisted he write it down for her.  The manuscript was later published in Living Age, February 10, 1900.

Thaddeus William Harris, the eldest child of Thaddeus Mason Harris and Mary (Dix) Harris, was born November 12, 1795 in Dorchester.  He fitted for college at Dedham and Bridgewater and received his A.B. degree from Harvard in 1815.  He went on to attend Harvard Medical School, receiving his M.D. in 1820 and later practicing medicine with Dr. Amos Holbrook of Milton, Massachusetts.  In 1824 he married Dr. Holbrook’s daughter Catherine, with whom he would have twelve children. 

By 1819 Dr. Harris had developed a professional interest in botany and entomology, corresponding often with his colleagues in the natural sciences.  In 1831 he became Librarian of Harvard College, a full-time position which required him to relegate his scientific research and writing to his spare time only.  He nonetheless compiled the first systematic classification of American insects, and secured his reputation with the 1841 publication of his Treatise on Some of the Insects Injurious to Vegetation.  He authored dozens of articles on botany and entomology, regularly consulting books at the Boston Athenæum for his research.  His friend John Lowell was a co-founder of the Athenæum and Dr. Harris is reported to have recommended works on natural history for the library to purchase.  Thaddeus William Harris died in Cambridge, where he had lived most of life, in 1856.  He is buried in Cambridge’s Old Burying Ground. 

William Thaddeus Harris, eldest child of Thaddeus William and Catherine (Holbrook) Harris, was born January 25th, 1826, in Milton, Massachusetts.  He suffered from a congenital curvature of the spine and lifelong frailty.  He entered Harvard College in 1842, excelling in Latin and philosophy and received his A.B. in 1846 and LL.B. and A.M. degrees from Harvard Law School in 1848.  He became editor of the New England Historical and Genealogical Register in 1849, and later worked as a librarian at both Harvard College and the Boston Athenæum from 1850 until 1851.  An ardent student of genealogy and local history, he published Epitaphs from the Old Cambridge Burying Ground in 1845 and was subsequently engaged by the Massachusetts Historical Society to revise the manuscript of Hubbard’s History of New England for its 1848 reprinting.  He later transcribed the epitaphs of the old burying ground in Watertown, to be published by his brother Edward in 1869 as Epitaphs from the Old Burying Ground in Watertown.  In 1853 William Thaddeus Harris was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar, though he never practiced law.  Owing to his feeble constitution, William Thaddeus Harris succumbed to illness on October 19, 1854, at twenty-eight years of age

.Title page: Harris, Thaddeus William. A Treatise on Some of the Insects of New England which are Injurious to Vegetation.

While there are many instances of Boston Athenæum membership as a family affair, the Harris family deserves a special distinction.  An aptitude for academic writing seemed to run in the Harris family, and librarianship itself, as career or short-term avocation, became a sort of family tradition.  Today it is mainly the ghost story by which the Harrises are remembered at the Athenæum, but this need not be the case.  A full-length biography of Thaddeus William Harris by Clark A. Elliott was published in 2008 in recognition of his importance to the history of science, while editions of his published correspondence can be read at the Boston Athenæum and other libraries.  The Boston Athenæum owns many of Reverend Harris’s sermons in their original editions which can by consulted by appointment, while William Thaddeus Harris’s epitaph transcriptions remain a valuable resource to genealogists on the trail of Cambridge and Watertown’s early residents. 

Selected Works:

Harris, Thaddeus William.  A Treatise on Some of the Insects of New England which are Injurious to Vegetation. 
Cutter Classifiction
KZX .H24 t.2

Harris, Thaddeus William.  Entomological Correspondence of Thaddeus William Harris, M.D.
Cutter Classification
KZ .3H24

Harris, William Thaddeus.  Epitaphs from the Old Burying-Ground in Cambridge, with Notes. 
Cutter Classification
F74.C1 H3

Harris, William Thaddeus.  Epitaphs from the Old Burying-Ground in Watertown. 
Cutter Classification
F74.C1 H3
964W31 +H24

Bibliography:

The Athenæum Centenary—The Influence and History of the Boston Athenæum from 1807 to 1907 with a Record of its Officers and Benefactors and a Complete List of Proprietors.  Boston:  The Boston Athenæum, 1907. 

Elliott, Clark A.  Thaddeus William Harris (1795-1856).  Nature, Science, and Society in the Life of an American Naturalist.  Bethlehem, Penn.:  Lehigh Universtiy Press.  2008   

Frothingham, Nathaniel L. Memoir of Rev. Thaddeus Mason Harris, D.D.. Cambridge: Metcalf and Company. 1855.

Gilman, Arthur, ed.  The Cambridge of Eighteen Hundred and Ninety-Six. Cambridge:Riverside Press. 1896.

Harris, Edward Doubleday. William Thaddeus Harris, A.M., LL.B. in Memorial Biographies of the New England Historic Genealogical Society: 1853-1855, Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society. 1881.

—. Memoir of Thaddeus William Harris, M. D. Cambridge: J. Wilson and Son.University Press. 1882.

Harvard College Class of 1846.  Class Book.  HUD 246.714f.  Harvard University,Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Harvard University Archives.  Biographical Folders.  Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.