The Beehive: Official Blog of the Massachusetts Historical Society

This Week @ MHS

Elaine Grublin — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:00:00 GMT

It looks like it will be another busy week of programs at the MHS. There is something for everyone this week.

Tuesday, 7 February at 5:15 PM, John L. Bell, author of the Boston1775 blog, will present his paper "Marital Infidelity and Espionage in the Siege of Boston" as part of the Boston Early American History Seminar Series. Professor Bob Allison, Suffolk University, will give the comment.

Thursday, 9 February a new exhibition, A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life: The Photographs of Clover Adams, 1883-1885, opens. The exhibition is free and open to the public 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM, Monday through Saturday, through 2 June.

Also on Thursday, the History of Women and Gender Seminar continues with a presentation at the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University. Ruth Feldstein, Rutgers University at Newark, will present her paper "Performing Civil Rights: Black Women Entertainers, the 'Long' Civil Rights Movement, and Second Wave Feminism." Daphne Brooks, Princeton University, will give the comment.

And on Saturday, 11 February the Saturday tour "The History and Collections of the MHS" returns. This free 90-minute tour departs the MHS lobby promptly at 10:00 AM.

Readers Relate: The History of Abnormal Eating

Anna J. Cook — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:00:00 GMT

Welcome to the third installment of our Beehive series, "Readers Relate," in which we bring you a variety of examples of the type of research being done here in the MHS library.

Today's responses come from Kathryn Segesser, a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto who visited the MHS in early January on an intensive research trip.

1. Can you briefly describe the research project that brought you to the Massachusetts Historical Society?

My research looks at abnormal eating in late eighteenth to early-nineteenth-century America and England. I'm focusing predominantly on medical texts that discuss the causes and nature of both prolonged abstinence from and over-indulgence in eating but I'm also interested in other genres of writing and uncovering personal experiences of such behaviors. I'm essentially trying to see if these eating patterns were conceptualized as more than just physiological, if there emerged an idea that the behaviors resulted from a choice, and if such theories developed in both regions within similar timeframes. I began my American archival research only recently. My visit to the MHS was at the start of this portion of my research and I planned to consult mainly manuscript sources.

2. What specific material in our collections made coming to the MHS important to your research? Was there a specific collection or type of material that you consulted?

I knew that the MHS would be important for the early period I'm studying but there was no one collection I had in mind, given the nature of my topic. I thought that I'd concentrate my attention on the diaries held at the MHS but, although I consulted these, I found a wealth of medical notebooks, records and printed material that I was unaware of prior to arrival. Medical manuscripts, microfilms and printed material all proved valuable.

3. While you were working here, was there something you examined that surprised you? What was it, and why was it surprising?

The diaries I consulted at the MHS were the first eighteenth-century American diaries I'd seen. I expected them to be rather more descriptive and instead found them to briefly record routine daily occurrences. On the other hand I did not expect to find so many medical manuscripts, especially those that contained comprehensive comparisons of treatment methods and reworked notes on select cases. Several manuscripts had incredibly detailed descriptions. For example, Edward Holyoke's series of notes to the Massachusetts Medical Society contain a wealth of information about the seasons and incidents of disease in 1780s Salem. I hadn't really seen such localized and consistent reporting of that nature before.

4. Is there a particular quote (or visual image) from the material that you consulted that stands out for you? What is the quote (or image) and why is it important?

There were two sources that really stood out. The first was the State of the Asylum report for the Philadelphia Asylum (Philadelphia, 1821). This source contains the earliest record I've found of an American asylum admitting someone for a constant refusal of food previous to admission'. The second was Benjamin Lynde Oliver's medical notebooks, 1760-1835 (contained in the Oliver Family Papers). In his notes on hydrophobia I found a very early description of the use of what was essentially electric-shock therapy to cure this disease' as well as separate classifications for genuine' and hysterical' hydrophobia. The fact that Oliver separated types of hydrophobia based upon principles of a mental impulse, rather than just physical reactions, is encouraging for my project.

5. If you brought a visitor to the MHS and you had a chance to show them ONE item from our collections, what item would it be?

Although this source did not prove fruitful for my particular research I really enjoyed reading Aaron Wight's diaries because of the illustrations he drew to accompany his accounts. The drawings helped to immediately indicate the aspects of his life that he was most keen to record. These images, such as this one, from his March 1773 entry, make his notes one of the most visually engaging and lively diaries I've seen.

We invited Kathryn to share anything further about her research that Beehive readers might be interested in. She writes:

I am a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto, in my third year of the programe. I'm currently following a summer's research in England with a term travelling around the north-east American coast. I came to this topic via a previous interest in the institutional treatment as well as the popular use of the idea of insanity in eighteenth-century England. I have chosen to shape my thesis as a comparative analysis in part because there is a considerable degree of information exchange across the Atlantic and in part because discussions of pre-nineteenth-century disordered eating have tended to be Eurocentric. The research I have undertaken so far - both in England and America - suggests that my early theory, that there was an attempt to understand these patterns from a psychological perspective will hold, if perhaps the transition towards such an understanding is fairly tentative.

This Week @ MHS

Elaine Grublin — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:00:00 GMT

Our winter/spring event season is in full swing. Mark you calendar and plan to attend at least one event this week.

Tuesday, 31 January, at 5:15 PM, the Boston Immigration and Urban History Seminar Series makes it 2012 debut with "Orphan Evacuation or Big Business?: The Institutionalization of Korean Adoption," presented by Arissa Oh of Boston College. Susan Zeiger, Primary Source, will provide the comment. Seminars are free and open to the public, but an RSVP is required.

Wednesday, 1 February, at 12:00 PM, W.B.H. Dowse Fellow Robyn McMillin, University of Oklahoma, will present a 1-hour brown bag lunch program on her research "Science in the American Style, 1690-1820: Texts, Objects, and Ideas in Popular Practice."

Thursday, 2 February, at 6:00 PM, Ann Lucas Birle, International Center for Jefferson Studies, to discuss the recently published Thomas Jefferson's Granddaughter in Queen Victoria's England: The Travel Diary of Ellen Wayles Coolidge, 1838-1839. This program, which will be preceded by a reception at 5:30 PM, is also free and open to the public. To ensure that we have a seat for you, please register for the event.

Visit our online calendar for more details about the programs listed above. And please note that there is no building tour scheduled for Saturday, 4 February. Tours will resume on Saturday, 11 February at 10:00 AM.

Stephen Greenleaf Bulfinch, Post 10

Elaine Grublin — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:00:00 GMT

The following excerpt is from the diary of Stephen Greenleaf Bulfinch, including Bulfinch's thoughts on the events of the past year and some comment on the Trent Affair.

Thursday, January 2d

The close of the year 1861 has led back my thoughts over its course. It has been one of sadness to the country, and in some degree of disgrace, from the madness on one side, the imbecility at first on the other, and the unprincipled manner in which people have used the national sufferings to promote their private fortunes. But there is much to thank God for, in the noble resurrection of patriotic feeling. We are just delivered, - we trust, - from the great danger of a war with England, about the capture of Mason & Slidell. Their surrender, consummated yesterday, is in accordance with American views of the rights of neutrals, & will, we hope, remove in some degree the bitter prejudice of our English cousins, - in whom we feel a good deal disappointed.

Monday, January 13^th

We have news of a great expedition going down the Mississippi from Cairo, - & of Gen. Burnside's expedition from Annapolis for parts unknown, - which the army of the Potomac are held in readiness for a speedy advance. God save the United States!

From abroad, we hear of a somewhat better feeling in England towards us, which we hope will be increased when they hear of our acquiescence in their demand for release of our prisoners, Slidell, Mason & etc. There is a good deal of incitation here however, at the cause which England has pursued. Another item of recent news is the death of Prince Albert, who seems to have been universally esteemed & lamented.

Be sure to check back in February to read Bulfinch's comments on the Burnside Exposition and the Union victories at Forts Henry and Donelson.

Guest Post: Uncovering A Passionate Friendship

By Laura Prieto, Simmons College — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:00:00 GMT

Love letters come in many varieties, but there's a resonant familiarity about the language of longing.

Alice Bache Gould and Henrietta Child came of age as neighbors on Kirkland Street in Cambridge. The young women shared a keen love of books, and enjoyed discussing their ideas and projects. Literary accomplishments marked the male and female lines of both of their families; Alice's relatives included poet Anna Cabot Lowell Quincy Waterston, and author Catharine Sedgwick was Henrietta's great-aunt.

Henrietta continued her studies informally while Alice's ambitions took her away from New England: to Bryn Mawr for a bachelor's degree and eventually to the University of Chicago for doctoral work in mathematics. Alice hoped for a career as a scholar and university teacher while Henrietta felt an obligation to her family at home. In 1896, both young women lost their brilliant fathers, astronomer Benjamin Apthorp Gould and Harvard professor Francis James Child. Alice continued to travel in ever wider circles, from Cambridge to Chicago to the Caribbean. She could not land the kind of teaching positions she wanted and she found it increasingly hard to work on her dissertation.

Through those restless years, Alice stayed bound to Henrietta through letters. They wrote lengthily and often, sometimes daily. Advice, observations, jokes, recipes, and frivolities, all have their place on the pages exchanged. The two women even continued their serious studies together through their correspondence, taking up the History of Mathematics written in 1758 by French author Jean tienne Montucla (1725-1799). Alice visited Henrietta in October 1902 before embarking for Puerto Rico with another friend and neighbor, Susie Preble. "I see the Navy has followed you to have a sight of those low-necked dresses you took with you," teased Henrietta.

Alice and Henrietta's affection and intimacy are always in evidence, but their long separation in 1902-1903 led Henrietta to chafe against her "duty" to stay with her mother and sister. (Alice Bache Gould Papers, MsN-1309, Box 14, Folder 9) She confessed to Alice,

I have been indulging in thoughts, or dreams perhaps, about you, thinking how it would be if we could go off together, how we should get along -- whether you would not be almost as depressed with me as without me, but still that I would risk it gladly if it were right to leave home -- because I did not like to have you go off by yourself & I thought in some ways it would be a change that I could put to use. I could study & cheer you up a bit & together -- Well the rest was sentiment & not over wise, not according to the real way of life I suppose.

I am going to Montucla now, & be sensible.

Your loving friend,

Henrietta

I think of you a lot.

Don't be discouraged, my little girl. Keep up brave heart, & try to make the best of things just as they are, then they will not be so bad. I should like to be beside you to night when the lights were out & then we could have a talk.

Henrietta's language is so passionate, and seems so un-self-conscious. What should we make of it? In the 1970s, women's historians like Carroll Smith-Rosenberg began to study the "romantic friendships" that blossomed between women in nineteenth-century America. These intense relationships often began at school and were nurtured within the "female world" of the domestic sphere, wherein women were supposed to be the affectionate, sentimental, innocent sex. In adulthood, such relationships could co-exist alongside a woman's conventional male-female courtships and marriage, or they could become her primary commitments. When the women in question lived together, they might be called a "Boston marriage." Whether they were lovers in a physical sense is usually impossible to prove either way, and scholars differ on whether the sexual aspects even matter. Are the erotic possibilities essential or a prurient distraction?

They never lived together, as Henrietta fantasized doing; but Henrietta Child and Alice Bache Gould fit the quintessential profile of romantic friends. They were well educated women of a certain social class who addressed one another with deep love and intimacy. They expressed their feelings for one another in the language of courtship, welcomed physical closeness, and used playful, maternal endearments ("my little girl"). They never married. If anything is surprising to the historian in their letters, it is their timing. Henrietta wrote her letter a decade after the sensationalized trial of Alice Mitchell, who said she murdered her dear friend Freda Ward "because she loved her" and could not be with her. The court and the press accused Mitchell of "unnatural affection," sexual perversion, and insanity. By then, the theories of Richard von Krafft-Ebing and other pioneers of sexology had begun to classify "homosexuality" as a psychiatric disorder. Publicity cast new suspicion on intense same-sex friendships, making unseemly what had no one had objected to before. Yet in early 1900s Cambridge, proper young women could still "indulge" in feelings of love for one another.

Alice's search for fulfillment eventually took her to Simancas, Spain, where she conducted ground-breaking archival research on Columbus' first voyage and worked for the U.S. embassy during World War I. Henrietta ended up on an adventure of her own. In 1911, after her mother's death, she left New England to teach at the Hindman Settlement School in rural Berea, Kentucky. She spent the rest of her life there, as an inspiring storyteller in the local school system.

An increasingly hostile climate and the pressures of family may have kept them from "going off together;" but their loving friendships helped give Henrietta and Alice the strength to pursue meaningful lives, on their own terms.

The Beehive: Official Blog of the Massachusetts Historical Society

This Week @ MHS

Readers Relate: The History of Abnormal Eating

This Week @ MHS

Stephen Greenleaf Bulfinch, Post 10

Thursday, January 2d

Monday, January 13th

Guest Post: Uncovering A Passionate Friendship

Monday, January 13^th