Next Wednesday, October 5th, is #AskAnArchivist Day! During the day, several members of our staff will be on social media to take YOUR questions! Wonder about the oldest book in our collection? Curious about the number of collections we have?Interested in what archivists do all day? Want to know why we’re so passionate about what we do and why it matters? Just ask!
Archives around the country (and the world!) will be answering questions and engaging with people on Twitter. If you want to ask us about something, be sure to include us (@VT_SCUA) in your tweets. Or head to the Facebook page for the International Archive of Women in Architectureand ask there. You can also ask questions to the broader community–just use #AskAnArchivist and see who responds! Join the conversation on October 5th!
I love stumbling across letters in our collections that offer a glimpseof everydayromance. It’s something we can all relate to. So I when I came across a letter while digitizinga collection from a Confederate soldier confessing his feelings of “somethingmore than friendship, farexceeding gratitude,” I was excited to share.
The letter, found in the Koontz Family Papers,was written by Angus Ridgill, a private from Alabama, to Nellie Koontz, a young woman living in the Shenandoah Valley, in August, 1863. The letter was ostensibly written as a thankyou note toNellie and her family for housing him recently as a lone soldier, but Angus also uses the opportunity to confess his infatuation with her.
First page of Angus Ridgill’s letter to Nellie Koontz, dated August 17, 1863. See it online here
He writes:
“I amnaturally a creature of impulses, and the first fewmoments I passed in yourcompany was sufficient tomake me entirely subservientto your will, be that what it may.”
He continues with assurances that this confession was not hisoriginal intention of the letter, that he doesn’t expect his feelings to be fully reciprocated, and can only wait for an appropriate response-
“still I do trust thatyou will allow me time andopportunity to prove anythingwhich you may wish to know…”
He finishes with an apology:
“if all thistime I have been presumingtoo much upon your formerkindness I most humbly askyour pardon, hoping at thesame time that I havenot forfeited your friendship.”
Whether Angusever received a response from Nellie is notknown. But seeing as this letter was not immediately torn to shreds, but instead, carefully saved alongside those from her brothers and cousin (who were also off fighting for the Confederacy), we can assume his message hadsome significance to her.
An ‘A.G. Ridgill’ is listed as a private in the Washington Battalion, Louisiana Artillery, andinthe 1870 census, Angus Ridgill is listed as age 24, making himonly 16 or 17 when he wrote this letter. Inthe 1860 U.S. Census, Ellen F. ‘Nellie’ Koontz was listed as 16 years old, making her19 in 1863 at the time ofthis letter. I guess this provesteenage love messages were alive and well 150 years ago, just with more cursive and less emojis.
Sadly, census records also tell us that Angus and Nellie didn’t end up together. In the 1880 census, A.G. Ridgill, now 33, is listed as living in Van Zandt, Texas, working as a farmer and married to an Elizabeth, age 29. Alsoliving with him is an 8 year old step son, and two daughters, ages 5 and 3. In the same yearNellie, now listed as Nellie F. McCann, is married to N.F. McCann, an editor, and also has ason, 8, and two daughters, ages 4 and 2. Hopefully they both found true love with their respective spouses and were happy with their marriages and families at this stagein their lives.
In addition to thisletter, the Koontz Family Papers contains correspondence from brothers George and Milton Koontz and their cousin George Miller, each of whom served in the Confederate armies of Virginia. The collection also includes letters sent from other friends and two diaries and a sketchbook from Milton Koontz. The entirety of this collection is now online, including transcripts. Take a look at the collection here.
If you are curious what Special Collections looks like behind the scenes, Kira Dietz showed a glimpse of onsite storage previously in this blog. Well, we also have offsite storage in the Library Storage Building, managed by the University Libraries. In addition to Special Collections, Newman Library and the Records Management Department house material at the storage building. Unlike storage onsite, the shelving is so tall and aisles so long, special equipment is used to access materials up to the top and down the rows.
Library Storage Building, showing the lengths of aisles and some of the maps we house out there (before they were placed in boxes) alongside the University Libraries’ offsite books and other publicationsLibrary Storage Building, showing the height of aisles – on the right side you can see some of the archives boxes and architectural drawings from Special Collections
Special Collections houses our large manuscript collections, most of which are accessed less frequently than onsite storage. Space is available where we can work, but we have to schedule with the other departments, who use the same office space. Recently, several students and I have been working on collections housed offsite, including the William C. Wampler Congressional Papers with 250 boxes of files from Hon. Wampler’s nearly two decades in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Pocahontas Mine Collection, which is approximately 900 cu. ft. with over 7,000 maps of mines in southwestern Virginia and Appalachia operated by CONSOL Energy and its predecessors (look out for more info on this collection when processing is done).
A student worker reviews a map from the Pocahontas Mines Collection at Library Storage Building. Some of the maps like this one are so large, we have to unroll them bit by bit and weigh them down to view them during processing.Processing the Wampler Papers and other such large collections offsite means we have to temporarily store them in the hall and in the shared office space before they can be reshelved!The Wampler Papers during processing at the Library Storage Building
The University Libraries are currently working on another offsite storage building, this time with movable shelves. Movable shelves greatly increase the storage capacity in locations, but need strong floors to keep them stable! We also have a small, secure space in the basement of Newman Library that is shared with the rest of the library for temporary storage for our larger or more unwieldy collections, such as part of the Avery-Abex Metallurgical Collection with over 200 containers, many in unusually types and sizes.
Examples of unique shelving that came with one of our collections
Avery-Abex in basement
I hope that you’ve enjoyed this look behind the scenes!
Over the past few months, I’ve been processing a collection of performing arts programs, advertisements, and clippings gathered by Virginia English teacher John Barnes (1905-1979). Barnes held both a Bachelor of Philosophy and a Master of Education and taught English at Lane High School in Charlottesville, VA from 1949-1958 when he became Guidance Director.
Over the years, Mr. Barnes collected numerous newspaper clippings and articles focused on the theatre and entertainment industries beginning in the late 1800s. He also gathered an impressive collection of playbills and programs from around the world for various mediums including plays, musicals, movies, orchestral performance, opera, ice skating, circus, and more. The playbills and programs are from the 1900s through the 1980s with the majority from 1940-1960. There are bills from small local theatres and from national playhouses. Given my interest in the theatrical arts, I had a blast working with this collection!
There are simply too many amazing things in this collection for me to show them all to you – Broadway and West End playbills, early film programs, circus programs from the Soviet Union, a kabuki program from Japan, cabaret programs from France, and more. Since I can’t show everything in one blog post, I’m going to focus on some playbills that feature American celebrities.
The playbills from the National Theatre (Washington, D.C.)inthe 1940s & 1950s caught my eye because they feature prominent images of the performers and downplay what show they are performing in. Some of the shows don’t even have their title on the cover – and it’s surprising what shows that happens to. I found this interesting since the trend in recent years on Broadway is to focus on the show rather than who the performers are.
A great example is this playbill from the November 9, 1942 National Theatre opening performance of Thornton Wilder’sThe Skin of Our Teeth. The title of the show appears nowhere on the cover. Instead, there are pictures of Tallulah Bankhead– star of stage and film and well known for the play Little Foxes and the Hitchcock film Lifeboat, Fredric March – Oscar winner for the 1931 film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Florence Eldridge – known for the playLong Day’s Journey into Night, and Florence Reed – a well known stage and screen actress who appeared in silent film and a few talkies, including the role of Miss Havisham in the 1934filmGreat Expectations.
Even when the show title is included, the trend is to feature the performer. This example is the cover of the playbill for the October 31, 1955 performance of the musical The Vamp which starred Carol Channing – wildly well know for her roles in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Hello, Dolly!.
I would speculate that featuring the performers was done to increase ticket sales – a typically effective strategy. These performances were also occurring during World War II and the period immediately following. I imagine celebrity was as much a distraction then as it often is today.
This playbill again only mentions the performers on the front. For me, this is the crown jewel of the National Theatre playbills in this collection. Despite misspelling her last name on the cover, this playbill jumped out at me because of the familial resemblance Diana Barrymore bears to her niece Drew Barrymore. That made me pick this up … then I saw what it was and I was even more excited.
This playbill is from the November 27, 1944 performance of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. The cast and show both are amazing! The show is based on the classic novel of the same name by the same author. It includes one of the “Best opening lines in literature, ever” according to Marie Claire UK(“Last night I dreamt I went toManderley again.”). It also has one of the creepiest and most menacing female antagonists: Mrs. Danvers.
This production mixed celebrity with the play’s compelling story and this playbill hints at the cultural drama embodied in the production. Diana Barrymore was acting royalty, coming from a family well-known in the industry. She was married to Bramwell Fletcher (known for The Mummy with Boris Karloff) – who was significantly older (18 years) – and in this show, they play husband and wife.
In addition topairing this celebrity couple on stage to entice the audience, Florence Reed portrayed Mrs. Danvers! As I mentioned before, Reed was well known for her role as Miss Havisham in Great Expectations. Given the celebrity involved in this production, I’d be interested to see what the tabloids were printing about it.I also think it would have been an effective diversion for Washington theatregoers looking to escape the realities of World War II America.
These few glimpses merely scratch the surface of what John Barnes collected. The finding aid is not yet online, so I can’t share it here, but the collection has been organized and is available for use. Just visit the Special Collections reading room and ask for the John Barnes Performing Arts Collection, Ms2016-005. If you have any interest in the performing arts or historic print advertising, you’ll be glad you did.
Dia dhaoibh! When I found out I’d be posting on March 17th, I knew I had to do something for St. Patrick’s Day. You see, I love the Irish! I love the annual celebration of Ireland that happens this time every year! I love the shamrocks, the parades, and the green decor everywhere! I DO NOT, however, love the ever present corned beef and cabbage or the green beer.
Since I have been assaulted by corned beef and cabbage one too many times in my life, I decided to explore our History of Food &Drink Collection in search of more palatable Irish fare. During my search, I found various recipes for Irish potato dishes, a few roasts, and even one recipe for the dreaded corned beef. While I was searching, I came across a little Irish cookbook. No, literally! the book’s title is A Little Irish Cookbook (TX717.5 .M877x 1986).
A Little Irish Cookbook includes 28 recipes representing everything from breakfast to dessert. The book was originally published by The Appletree Press Ltd. in Ireland in 1986. The copy held by Special Collections was published the same year by Chronicle Books in the United States but was printed in Ireland. The author, John Murphy, states in his introduction that the book is not intended to represent all of Irish cuisine. It is merely a collection of recipes that “…if a visitor to Ireland were to encounter only what is in this book … he would be satisfied that he had eaten well in the Irish style.” That makes me think it’s perfect for a St. Patrick’s Day repast.
In celebration of Ireland and St. Patrick’s Day, I’ve created a five course menu from Mr. Murphy’s book. The menu is below accompanied by the appetizing illustrations from the book.
But first … Since March is Women’s History Month, I want to spend a moment talking not about the author of the book but about its amazing illustrator, Karen Bailey. Karen Bailey is a working artist with a studio in Ottawa, Canada. Her first art exhibition was in 1981. Since then, she has had both solo and joint exhibitions across Canada and the United Kingdom. She has provided illustrations for a number of Appletree Press books, including “Irish Toasts”, “A Little Scottish Cookbook”, “A Little American Cookbook”, and “A Little Canadian Cookbook”. More examples of her work can be seen on her website: www.karenbailey.ca.
Now for our menu:
MENU
Gar Goile(appetizer)
Boxty
Introduced in the book as “… a traditional potato dish, celebrated in the rhyme:Boxty on the griddle, boxty in the pan,If you can’t make boxty, you’ll never get your man.”
Anraith (soup)
Irish Stew
This is a classic that everyone should expect when looking into an Irish cookbook. Murphy describes his recipe as “… hearty, nourishing, and traditional enough.”
Crsa isc (fish course)
Dublin Lawyer
Ireland is an island, so I had to include some seafood! Plus, I love seafood and this is my menu. 🙂 While I wasn’t able to find the origin of this dish’s amusing name, many sites on the Iternet claim it has to do with the wealthy status of lawyers in Dublin. Regardless, I firmly believe Murphy when he says “This dish is delicious and traditional…”
Promhchrsa (main course)
Spiced Beef with Champ
First, the Spiced Beef. With this dish, I’m slipping into Christmas fare a little but I couldn’t pass up this delicious image from Karen Bailey. The Spiced Beef “… can be made at home, but it does take time.” according to Murphy.
As for Champ, it “… is a simple, warming dish which is cheap, easy to produce and very filling. I’ve actually tried Champ and it was wonderful!
Milseog(dessert)
Gooseberry Crumble
OK. I’m partial to gooseberries but there’s another great reason to highlight this dish in my menu. It’s apparently so good the publishers not only included it in the 28 recipes but they also printed the recipe a second time on the included bookmark!
I hope you enjoy whatever you decide to make for St. Patrick’s Day! And remember: Women’s History Month is only half over! If you haven’t already, be sure to check out our online exhibit for Women’s History Month 2016.
The last post to this blog about the William J. Heron Speculative Fiction Collection was in October 2013. As a fan of science fiction, I think thats too long to go without exploring the treasure trove of early science fiction contained in the collection. The Heron Collection includes thousands of classic science fiction magazine issues from many of the best known pulp titles. While perusing the collection, I discovered Nebula Science Fiction[PN6120.95.S33 N42], the first Scottish science fiction magazine (and, as far as I can tell, the only Scottish science fiction magazine until Spectrum SF started its short life in 2000). Nebula originally caught my eye because of its title. I thought it might be associated with the Nebula Awards but thats not the case. I was pleasantly surprised, however, to discover that an author Im currently reading, Robert Silverberg, had his first story published in Nebula: Gorgon Planet was published in issue #7 in February 1954.
Nebula Science Fiction published a total of 41 issues from Autumn 1952 to August 1959. The magazine was published by Crownpoint Publications in Glasgow, Scotland and was subsidized by its editor, Peter Hamilton. It was published in the later part of the pulp magazine era which spanned from approximately the 1890s through the early 1960s. Pulp magazines gained their name from the quality of paper used to publish them. They were printed on paper made from wood-pulp which turns yellow and brittle more quickly than other types of paper. The magazines were not intended to last and collections like the Heron Collection are special partly because they preserve the history of early fiction magazines printed in this way. In Britain, Nebula was an important publication in the genre along with New Worlds and Science Fantasy. Itincluded work from many authors who are well known today, including Robert Silverberg, John Brunner, A. Bertram Chandler, and Robert A. Heinlein.
Nebula Science Fiction v.1:no.1 (Autumn 1952)
Robert Silverberg contributed 7 stories to Nebula beginning in 1954. Silverberg has won multiple Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards, is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, and was presented with the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award in 2004. His first published work, Gorgon Planet, appeared in Nebula Science Fiction #7 in February 1954. Other stories of his inNebula include: “Always” (March 1956), “Solitary” (March 1958), “Godling Go Home” (April 1958), “The Fires Die Down” (June 1958), “Strong Waters” (January 1959), and “The World He Left Behind” (February 1959).
Nebula Science Fiction no.7 (February 1954)
John Brunner had 6 stories in Nebula beginning in Spring 1953. Brunner also has won Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. His best known works include Stand on Zanzibar, and The Sheep Look Up. His stories began appearing in Nebula with Brain Power in issue #2.His otherNebula stories are: “By the Name of Man” (July 1956), “Hope Deferred” (November 1956), “The Number of My Days” (December 1956), “Treason” (May 1957), and “The Hired Help” (February 1958).
Nebula Science Fiction v.1:no.2 (Spring 1953)
A. Bertram Chandler was published 5 times in Nebula starting with The Window in issue #22 in July 1957. Chandler was the recipient of four Ditmar Awards from the Australian Science Fiction Foundation. In 1992, the Australian Science Fiction Foundation established the Chandler Awards, a juried award for Outstanding Achievement in Australian Science Fiction, in his honor. His four other works in Nebula are: “The Successors” (August 1957), “Artifact” (September 1957), “Motivation” (April 1958), and “Words and Music” (July 1958).
Nebula Science Fiction no.24 (September 1957)
Robert A. Heinlein stories appeared in Nebula 3 times starting with Ordeal in Space in issue #9 in August 1954. Heinlein is a winner of the Locus award, multiple Hugo and Prometheus Hall of Fame awards, and was presented with the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award in 1975. He quoined the terms grok, waldo, and speculative fiction and popularized terms such as TANSTAAFL (there aint no such thing as a free lunch), pay it forward and space marine. In 2003, The Robert A. Heinlein Award was established to honor outstanding published works in science fiction and technical writings to inspire the human exploration of space. It is administered by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society. Heinlein’s other two stories in Nebula are: “Rebellion on the Moon” (April 1955) and “Green Hills of Earth” (January 1956).
Nebula Science Fiction no.9 (August 1954)
TheWilliam J. Heron Speculative Fiction Collection includes 37 of the 41 published issues of Nebula Science Fiction[PN6120.95.S33 N42], including most of the issues containing the works of Silverberg, Brunner, Chandler, and Heinlein. It also includes 85 issues of New Worlds[PR1309.S3 N49] and 78 issues of Science Fantasy[PR1309.S3 S45].Allare available to view in the public reading room at Newman Library.
I started working with Special Collections in September. I wasn’t sure what to really expect. I had previously done artifact analyses at my high school, but the work I have done here has been a bit different. The majority of collections I have worked on with Special Collections are either Civil War related or Engineering related. Both types had their own quirks. The Civil War soldiers and writers thought it was necessary to store hair in their letters and the engineers took few good pictures, though both were surprisingly good at sketching.
A letter from a Civil War Soldier in 1862. Collection Finding Aid:http://search.vaheritage.org/vivaxtf/view?docId=vt/viblbv01811.xml
As I read through each collection, these people’s lives, I consistently learned something new. I organized and processed a collection by a Chemical Engineer from Alaska who produced rocket fuel and science fiction. His name was John D. Clark. In addition, I organized the files of an Aerospace Engineer named Blake W. Corson, Jr. I found these two men particularly inspiring because they both believed it was their responsibility to serve the people around them with the skills they had. In engineering classes we are taught many things, part of the curriculum are ethics. Part of ethics are to use the skills you have to better the world. Both Clark and Corson embodied these ethics and consistently strove to make the communities surrounding them better. Corson, for example, created multiple documents detailing a better waste management system for Newport News, Virginia, that he eventually mailed to President Jimmy Carter. As I uncovered more documentation on these men I learned a great deal about their lives and I grew to admire them.
Correspondence Receipts from the Blake W. Corson, Jr. Papers (In Processing)
I was also reminded of my on mortality, many of the people who I now hold in high esteem are dead. Every collection I have processed was for someone who died. Many were eloquent in the way they worded their thoughts others went from talking about an execution to the minced pies they were eating. In my opinion some of the soldiers were heroes and some of them weren’t and some of them just wanted to see their families one more time. The engineers are heroes in their own way as well. Both were key cogs in the space agency machine working towards the goal of getting rockets off of the ground and making better aircraft for the military. All are dead. Sometimes I do not notice that these people are buried somewhere near their families or in an undiscovered grave waiting for the next Civil War historian to discover them. When I remember these things I remember why I sit at a desk for a minimum of two hours at a time writing a person’s name once or even a hundred times. The idea is that this person will be remembered and their distant relatives might find their names. They will be found as a relic from the past that a family can reminisce over or claim as their heritage. I am glad that I have been a part of that process, even if only for a little while.
Apollo Escape Craft Sketch from the Blake W. Corson Jr. collection (In Processing)Apollo Escape Craft from the Blake W. Corson, Jr. Collection (In Processing)
Since I have talked a lot about the things that I have processed I want to give you an idea of work I do. The steps seem repetitive, but I actually find the work relaxing and remedial.As a processing intern, my responsibilities have been relatively straight forward and simple. I wanted to end on these steps because they are the dictionary definition of what I do as opposed to my personal definition of what I do.
Step 1: Look at files. Read the files if they do not span longer than a cubic foot of box.
Step 2: Organize and catalog each document in the collection. Personally I color code with plastic clips.
Step 3: Review organization and file order, reorder.
Step 4: Label each folder with a box number and folder number.
All Strange Away by Samuel Beckett, Illustrated by Edward Gorey; published by Gotham Book Mart, 1976
A few days ago, for no apparent reason, except, perhaps all the rain we’ve been having, I thought of a quote from a book by Samuel Beckett. Even though it had been about forty years since I first read it, I remembered the quote quite well. The in-and-of-the-world lyrical beginning was especially unusual for Beckett, in my experience. Still, I could not remember which book it came from. Beckett was a favorite in those days, and I had read a lot of his work (maybe more than was good for me) in a pretty short period of time. I didn’t think it was a particularly famous quote. For example, it wasn’t the end of The Unnamable:
. . . you must say words, as long as there are any, until they find me, until they say me, strange pain, strange sin, you must go on, perhaps it’s done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don’t know, I’ll never know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.
Nope, not that one. It wasn’t from the scene in Molloy that involves sixteen sucking stones, a number of pockets in a greatcoat (and trousers), and an attempt to place the stones in those pockets in such a way that Beckett’s character could most easily assure himself of sucking those stones in equal measure over time.
And it wasn’t the passage that begins with, “I can’t help it, gas escapes from my fundament on the least pretext” and ends with, “Extraordinary how mathematics help you to know yourself.” This is also from Molloy, and I’ll let you imagine what comes between those two fragments.
At about the same time I was trying to remember which book “my” quote came from, I realized that I’d never seen nor gone in search of a book by Beckett in Special Collections. This, of course sent me to the stacks (ok, to Addison, first) in search of Beckett. I know we have a large collection of modernist fiction, but over more than seven years . . . no call for Beckett. What I came up with surprised me. Not only was it a book I’d never seen before, it was one I’d never heard of. This required a bit of sleuthing.
The book, All Strange Away, was written in 1963–64, but not published until 1976 in the special edition we have in Special (naturally) Collections . . . an edition illustrated by Edward Gorey! (! The idea of a collaboration between Gorey and Beckett is amazing itself !) That’s a picture of Gorey at the top of this post, along with one of Beckett and the covers and spine from All Strange Away. Gorey wrote more than 100 books and illustrated many more. His dark sensibilities are often front-and-center in books like The Gashlycrumb Tinies in which twenty-six children whose names begin, in sequence, with each letter of the alphabet, have their deaths described (and illustrated) in one of twenty-six ways . . . all in rhyme, of course. (“M” is for Maud who was swept out to sea. “N” is for Neville who died of ennui.) Beckett’s text in All Strange Away begins:
Imagination dead imagine. A place, that again. Never another question. A place, then someone in it, that again. Crawl out of the frowsy deathbed and drag it to a place to die in. Out of the door and down the road in the old hat and coat like after the war, no, not that again. Five foot square, six high, no way in, none out, try for him there.
All Strange Away, title page
Like several of Beckett’s works from the mid-sixties, All Strange Away takes place in a bare space, or nearly bare. A stool is present, but the only dynamic seems to be imagination, that and the alternate presence and absence of light. Oh, and, maybe, the space changes size. In this text, the space is called the Rotunda and only one person inhabits it. In The Lost Ones, started by Beckett in 1966 and published in 1970, the space is a flattened cylinder 50 meters around with rubber walls 18 meters high. Two hundred people inhabit this space, which leaves about 1 square meter per person. Light and heat fluctuate, and there are ladders with which to climb the walls, and recessed spaces in the upper parts of the wall to occupy. I remember reading The Lost Ones, too.
Gorey’s illustrations, one or two per page, grace the margins of All Strange Away. Here are three of them:
But wait, there’s more. How did Beckett and Gorey, who could be seen as an ideal illustrator for Beckett, ever get together in the first place? The key lies in the publisher, the Gotham Book Mart of New York. First, if you’ve never had the opportunity to visit the Gotham Book Mart, forget it. You missed your chance. This literary bookshop and meeting place—the kind of place that just doesn’t exist anymore—closed in 2007 after operating continuously somewhere in midtown Manhattan (it did move a few times) since 1920. It was still enjoying its long heyday when I used to visit in the 1970s and 80s. The James Joyce Society, for example, was founded there in 1947 with the founder and owner of the shop, Frances Steloff, serving as the society’s first treasurer.
If you lived in New York and were interested in things literary, it was a regular stop. If you were visiting town, you’d go to see books that you’d see nowhere else, along with dozens and dozens of photographs of writers, often in the shop, perhaps standing where you were standing.
Gotham Book Mart reception, 9 November 1948. Among the authors present: W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore, Gore Vidal, Delmore Schwartz, Tennessee Williams, Randall Jarrell
Although Gorey’s first book, The Unstrung Harp was published in 1953 and The Doubtful Guest (1958), did much to establish his standing among a wider readership, it was his friendship with Andreas Brown, owner of the Gotham beginning in 1967, that really propelled his career. Actually, the Gotham Book Mart published more than a dozen of Gorey’s books, exhibited his illustrations, and, generally, brought him and his work to something like a mass audience. (Gorey’s annimation appears every time Mystery! is introduced on PBS.) One presumes that Brown may have brought the Beckett to Gorey, but I know of no details on the matter. I now know that Gotham Book Mart also published another collaboration between the two, Beginning to End, in 1989, just before Beckett died.
And . . . did I mention that the book is signed by both Beckett and Gorey . . . and numbered! Our copy is number 136 of 200.
All in all, this was quite the find. You never know what will show up in Special Collections until you have reason to look. (Today, I found out that we have a first [1854] edition of Thoreau’s Walden. But that’s a story for another day.)
So what was the quote that provided the germ for this post? It was from a work of Beckett’s called The End, written in 1946:
The earth makes a sound as of sighs and the last drops fall from the emptied cloudless sky. A small boy, stretching out his hands and looking up at the blue sky, asked his mother how such a thing was possible. Fuck off, she said.
Although I sometimes find it hard to believe, back in February, I celebrated 6 years with Virginia Tech Special Collections. Time flies when you’re having fun, and since then I’ve processed, scanned, scoured through, or somehow handled a LOT of manuscript materials. I certainly can’t remember everything about every item, but there are plenty of things that stick with a person: a particularly exciting image, a sad letter, a plan from a local house that has to be seen to be believed…I could make you a long list.One thing you can never forget, however, is your first collection. Only about a week or so after I started, while trying to learn how processing happened here (every institutions has its methods), we bought a glass plate negative with two copies of a print. It’s not a life-changing finding aid in the scheme of things (though it is a cool plate!), but meant (and still means) something to me.
TheIvanhoe, Virginia, Moonshine Still Glass Plate looks, well, like this:
Print made from glass plate negative of a still near Ivanhoe, Virginia, c.1932
This is a print made from the plate and it depicts a working still. If the approximate date we have is close, then this was a still that was in action during Prohibition in the United States. We were primarily interested in it for the local history (Wythe County) connect. In 2009, the culinary history collection was well established, but we hadn’t started collecting materials on the history of the cocktail in America just yet. I always feel like this item was a little ahead of its time, since we would start collecting on the cocktail, distilling, and Prohibition about three years later.
If you’re curious what the plate itself looks like, I’ve made an attempt to photograph it, but our digital camera doesn’t like to focus on an object like this (which makes the prints extra helpful!):
There’s a short and sweet finding aid for this collection available online. We didn’t have much to go on, so it’s by no means my longest or most researched guide, but it was how I started learning about Virginia Tech Special Collections and how I started experimenting with EAD (that’s Encoded Archival Description, the XML schema we use to create our finding aids). Six years later, I would say I’ve come a long way, but I’m still learning everyday. I’ve worked with collections ranging in size from a single item tomore than 100 boxes. Our processes have changed and evolved, too, as we’ve added new software, skills, and people to the department. I can’t wait to see what happens next, and I hope you continue to follow us the blog and visit us! We have a lot of memories on our shelves, waiting to be discovered.
Here in Special Collections we have any number of items easily recognized as rare or unique: a letter from Charles Lindbergh to Apollo XI astronaut Michael Collins; a diary written by former slave Jeffrey Wilson; a first edition of James Joyces Ulysses. These items are among those that even a casual visitor would see as exceptional treasures. We have other items, however, that might at first glance seem commonplace but are in fact surprisingly rare, and such is the case with this studio portrait of William Dabney Martin.
William Dabney Martin, The Amazing Guy Who Smiled
Who was he, this dapper young man with the unruly mustache, smiling back at us from more than a century ago? Unfortunately, we know nothing definite of Martin, whose photo is found within an elegant 19th-century album in the Price Family Collection (Ms2012-047), purchased by Special Collections at a local estate auction in 2012. Clues found within the album suggest that he was the same William D. Martin who was born in Virginia in 1873, a son of Samuel and Josephine Martin. The owner of a Rocky Mount, Virginia, jewelry store, Martin married Nora Powell, and the couple had five children. Census records indicate that William Martin died young, between 1913 and 1920; the latter year found Nora, a widow, living in Prince Edward County with four of her children.
Given that we know nothing about the subject of the portrait or the studio in which it was created, it seems that the picture deserves no more notice than any another 19th-century photograph. But it is Martins smile that makes the image remarkable.
While looking through any collection of 19th-century studio portraits, one might understandably reach the conclusion that our ancestors were a stern and humorless lot. In a collection of a hundred photos, we might find, at most, a dozen in which the subject wears any expression other than a frown or scowl. Within that dozen, we might find within the mix of faces an occasional neutral or kind expression, but a discernible upturn of the mouth is a rarity, and a grin is even more uncommon. To find a subject wearing a full-out, tooth-baring smile, like that of the Amazing Guy Who Smiled, is downright extraordinary.
Certainly the latter 19th century wasnt devoid of humor; the era gave us the wit of Mark Twain and the satire of Thomas Nast. The era’s humor, however, rarely seems to have crossed the threshold of the portrait studio. In examining the photos below, typical of the time and pulled from the same album in which Martins photo is housed, we might be forgiven for thinking that people of the late 19th century were overwhelmed by despair and dyspepsia.
We can almost hear Phoebe Heckman Boone telling the photographer to get on with it.
Frances Heckman Noels festive hat says Independence Day parade, but her dour expression says funeral procession.
Julia Wood Margaret Francis Middleton Hunt Heckman. Her name says it all.
James and Theodore Price. The hairless Theodore seems bemused by the hairbrush with which hes been asked to pose. James appears frightened, as though he’d been caught smiling and threatened with punishment if he did it again.
Even The Amazing Guy Who Smiled didn’t always smile.
Creed and Hannah Ikenberry Heckman, here with an unidentified child, may have been been party favorites, renowned for their wit and affability, but the camera failed to capture these qualities.
The beautiful Frances Folsom Heckman holds us all in disdain.
One theory blames poor hygiene for the absence of smiles in old photos. The theory contends that few people had good teeth, and the frowns were a way to hide an unflattering feature from posterity. It hardly seems likely, though that self-consciousness would have motivated nearly everybody to frown at the photographer. Moreover, the hygiene theory doesnt account for the dearth of even close-mouthed smiles.
Others claim that the tendency toward frowns may be attributed to the long exposure times required by early photography. Anybody whos had to hold a smile for more than a few seconds for a camera can attest to how quickly it becomes a strain. In the earliest days of studio portraiture, long exposure times certainly contributed to stilted poses and a lack of spontaneity. By 1880, however, advances in technology had eliminated the problem of long exposure times. Still the frowns persisted.
It seems likely that social customs of the day provided the most compelling reason for portrait subjects ill-humored appearances. Though studio photography quickly grew in popularityby the late 1800s even small towns had at least one portrait studiothe process and expense of portraiture continued to make it a significant event, and it was not one to be frivolously wasted. In a letter to the Sacramento Daily Union, Twain wrote, A photograph is a most important document, and there is nothing more damning to go down to posterity than a silly, foolish smile caught and fixed forever. Twains views reflected Victorian-era codes of conduct that considered open displays of emotion as unseemly and something in which only by the coarse, the drunken, and the foolish engaged. And so, because nobody wanted to be remembered by posterity as a grinning idiot, smiles were largely discouraged in the portrait studio.
Societal changes and the advent of personal cameras, particularly Kodaks Brownie, greatly loosened strictures on photographic conventions, and spontaneity became much more the norm. Some decades later, as film gave way to digital cameras and smartphones, the values of the Victorian era vis–vis photography were completely reversed. If the novelty and expense of 19th-century studio portraiture led to frozen frowns, then the ubiquity and negligible expense of digital photography naturally led to such 21st-century phenomena as the duckface, a trend that would certainly have had most Victorians sternly spinning in their graves. But William Dabney Martin–non-conformist, iconoclast, rebel, smiler–may have understood.
