Answers to Questions of Chinese Script, 1801

By Andrea Cronin, Reader Services

In a prior blog post, “Chinese Hanzi Characters in 1801,” I wondered what message the Chinese script on the verso of the 30 July 1801 letter from Captain Samuel Barrett Edes of the snow Pacific Trader to American merchant Sullivan Dorr expressed. Last month, to my great surprise, I received two separate e-mails regarding the script.

The first correspondent, professional Chinese translator Ye Aiyun, graciously gave me a direct translation of the Chinese characters:

带到省十三行凿石街交泗兴办馆收，即交花旗“哆”开拆，立取回头信带回。二十二日澳付，准廿三到省，如无番信回音，办馆X回书。信X二元，澳已交一元。

[This letter] is to the Sixin Grocery Store at Stoning Street in Canton, and the store will send it to Dorr of the flower flag country (United States of America). If Dorr writes back, his letter will be sent to Canton in the same way. This letter should arrive at Macao on [September] 22nd and back to Canton on the 23rd.  If the foreigner [does not have a letter to send back in return], the store will just leave it [alone]. The postage is two dollars, and [the people in] Macao have paid one dollar.

Ye’s translation confirmed my first assumption about the script.  It definitely gives directions for delivery of the letter to Sullivan Dorr.

Paul A. Van Dyke, professor at Sun Yat-sen University in Canton, China, and former Benjamin F. Stevens fellow at the MHS, also wrote concerning the Chinese script. Van Dyke gave me further context for the letter:

“The address on this envelope is to Sullivan Dorr’s residence in Canton, which was in the Thirteen Factories area. It is clear from the Chinese inscription that this [letter] was sent to the Thirteen hong district 十三行。 The confusion comes in the name of the street Zao Shi Street (鑿石街) which does not exist on any maps [of which] I am aware. And the name of the building Si Xing Ban Guan (泗興办館) is also very strange and appears in [none of the] listings of the buildings in this district. In short, we know all of the Chinese names of the streets and buildings in this district at this time and these names do not appear.”

Yet another mystery arises from this letter! Van Dyke explained that perhaps this address is a small undocumented alley within the American Factory, a trading post that American Consul Samuel Shaw constructed and Sullivan Dorr, at one time, managed. Responding to my previous post, Van Dyke also addressed my final query concerning who might have written this note. He stated that Chinese compradors (provision purveyors), pilots, linguists, and merchants were generally literate, so any one of them could have written the instructions for delivery.

Thank you to my generous correspondents Ye Aiyun and Paul A. Van Dyke for their answers to my questions. Do you have any additional information to contribute to this conversation? Please leave a comment on the blog or feel free to e-mail me.

Posted in From Our Collections

This Week @ MHS

By Dan Hinchen

The Red Sox are back in town, increasing foot traffic around the Society. This week, though, is a quiet one at the MHS, with only two events on the schedule.

If you are headed to Fenway Park on Tuesday, 8 April, why not stop by the MHS on the way for a free seminar? Starting at 5:15PM, Jonathan Anzalone of Stony Brook University presents “A Mountain in Winter: Wilderness Politics, Economic Development, and the Transformation of Whiteface Mountain into a Modern Ski Center, 1932-1980.” Comment provided by Jim O’Connell, National Park Service. This seminar – part of the Environmental History series – examines the development of Whiteface Mountian as a skiing spot with the broader context of the Adirondack Park’s transformation into a playground for the masses. Wilderness politics, class divisions, and the vicissitudes of nature combined to frustrate administrators and strain their relationship with business leaders, winter sports enthusiasts, and wilderness advocates. The debate sheds brighter light on disparate interpretations of modern recreation and economic development. Seminars are free and open to the public; RSVP required. Subscribe to receive advance copies of the seminar papers.

On Saturday, 12 April, there will be a free tour that is open to the public. The History and Collections of the MHS is a 90-minute docent-led tour of the Society’s home at 1154 Boylston Street. The tour explores all of the public space in the building, touching on the history, art, architecture, and collections of the Society. No reservation required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

Finally, remember to visit the MHS soon to see the current exhibition, “Tell It With Pride: The 54th Massachusetts Regiment and Augustus-Saint Gaudens’ Shaw Memorial.” This exhibit, organized by the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington, D.C., is open to the public Monday-Saturday, 10:00AM-4:00PM, through 23 May.

 

 

 

Posted in This Week @MHS

From Medicine to Music: #8 The Fenway

By Dan Hinchen

Around the Neighborhood – #8 the Fenway

These days, the Historical Society is hemmed in by institutions devoted to the study of music. Our neighbor to the east on Boylston Street is the Berklee College of Music. Around the corner to our southwest the New England Conservatory occupies several buildings. But, in looking through some old photos recently, I found that a very different group once rubbed shoulders with the MHS on the Fenway.

The second iteration of the Boston Medical Library was founded in 1875, thanks mainly to the efforts of the then 30-year-old Dr. James Read Chadwick with tremendous support from the older Dr. Henry Ingersoll Bowditch. Beginning in December 1874, these two men and many other prominent Boston doctors held several meetings and published circular letters to gain support for the founding of a new medical library in the city. Once there was enough support, Chadwick drew up a constitution and by-laws for the new library and, in October of 1875, the Boston Medical Library opened in two rooms at No.5 Hamilton Place in downtown Boston. It would take only three years for the rooms to become inadequate for the Library’s needs.

In February, 1878, the Boston Medical Library Association began making appeals for help in acquiring a new space. The property they purchased was located at 19 Boylston Place, previously both the home of Dr. Samuel G. Howe and a boardinghouse. This spot served as the Library headquarters for the next 23 years until the space was outgrown once again. In his History of the Boston Medical Library¸ Dr. John Farlow noted that “There was no doubt that No.5 Hamilton Place was outgrown in 1878, and No. 19 Boylston Place was outgrown in a still greater degree in 1900. How the library ever continued to exist and serve its members in the overcrowded quarters, seems more or less of a wonder, as we look back on it.”[i]

In May 1899 members of the Library were asked to decide between two parcels of land on which to construct a new building. At the meeting, a committee presented brief statements advocating for either a lot at St. Botolph and Garrison Streets or a lot on the Fenway. Regarding the lot on the Fenway, the committee stated:

On the Fenway we can buy two (or three) lots facing west by south, and next the Historical building. The western light will be very strong on the front. We can build fifty feet front by one hundred deep. The rear is tolerable, but not attractive. The front view is unsurpassed. It will be quiet, clean, bleak. It will appreciate in value of land. We cannot build a symmetrical building, without wells and irregularities. We are limited to seventy feet in height on the front. We may be allowed to carry the rear higher for a book-stack. We must buy a third lot, and keep it wholly or partially unoccupied for side windows and for future growth. We shall have a building twice as long as it is wide, and with a dark centre, unless we have plenty of side windows.[ii]

With a vote of 53 for and 19 against, the Association decided in favor of the Fenway lots. A building committee composed of Drs. John Collins Warren, James Read Chadwick, and Farrar Cobb selected Shaw and Hunnewell as architects. In November 1899, the committee awarded the $86,000 contract for erecting the building to the McNeil Brothers. They also gave contracts for heating, bookstacks, wiring, and an elevator well with room for the machinery. By 12 January 1901, the Library opened to the public with a dedication occurring that evening, just two years after the completion of the MHS’ home at 1154 Boylston Street.

The Boston Medical Library in 1919 at 8 Fenway. A portion of the MHS is seen on the left. What do you think happened to the planned side windows? (“Boston Medical Library” Unknown Photographer, 1919. From the Massachusetts Views collection. Massachusetts Historical Society.)

The Boston Medical Library remained at #8 Fenway for 64 years until the Library closed its doors on 14 June 1965. Over the next two all of its holdings were removed and merged with the collection of Harvard’s newly built Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine. On 16 June, the Countway opened to readers.

On 15 January 1964, the Boston Medical Library trustees agreed to sell their building to the neighboring Boston Conservatory of Music for the price of $300,000. The actual sale did not occur until after the move to the Countway in July 1965, and the Library did not officially vacate the property until 2 September.[iii]

If you are interested in finding out more about the history of the Boston Medical Library you can search our online catalog, ABIGAIL, to see what materials we have relating to it. In addition to several printed volumes relating to the Library, the MHS holds significant collections of materials related to many early members of the Library, including Henry Ingersoll Bowditch, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Collins Warren, and Charles Pickering Putnam.

[i] Farlow, John W., The History of the Boston Medical Library, Norwood, Mass.: The Plimpton Press, 1918.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Garland, Joseph E., The Centennial History of the Boston Medical Library, 1875-1975, Boston: Trustees of the Boston Medical Library, 1975.

 

Posted in Uncategorized Tagged

Perry-Clarke Collection Guide Online

By Susan Martin

The guide to the Perry-Clarke collection is now online! Originally acquired by the MHS back in 1968, this collection has been available for research since then, but the old unwieldy paper guide needed a major overhaul. We hope this streamlined, fully searchable online guide will bring even more researchers to these wide-ranging and important materials.

Primarily the papers of Unitarian minister, transcendentalist, author, and reformer James Freeman Clarke (1810-1888) and his family, the collection consists of 64 boxes of correspondence, sermons, lectures, journals, notebooks, and other papers and volumes. Included are papers of Clarke’s wife Anna (Huidekoper) Clarke and members of the Huidekoper family, who were involved in the establishment of Meadville Theological School in Meadville, Pennsylvania, as well as papers of James and Anna’s children, Lilian, Eliot, and Cora. Much of the collection documents the family’s interest in social reform movements.

The Perry-Clarke collection may be best known to our researchers as the home of the 1844 journal and commonplace-book of Margaret Fuller, a close friend of the family. But I found many other items equally interesting. For example, one small manuscript diary entitled “Notes of a Nile voyage by S. A. Clarke, 1873.” S. A. Clarke was James’s older sister Sarah Anne, better known, it turns out, by the name she adopted later, Sarah Freeman Clarke (1808-1896). She was an accomplished artist, teacher, and philanthropist, and her Nile diary is that of a well-educated, well-traveled, late-Victorian American woman in an unfamiliar country.

Here’s an excerpt from 22 Dec. 1873:

We left Alexandria at ten o’clock A.M. The way was of perpetual interest. The camels pleased us particularly, walking along the embankment. They walk with their long necks stretched out, and their heads well up. They are ugly, but most picturesque, and one never tires of watching their solemn stride. They carry wonderful burdens. Four or five large building stories bound together with ropes, on each side, and which must bruise them at every step, is a common burden. They are the most patient of laborers, and with their backs piled with burdens, and an Arab on the top of all they make a most sketchable mass.

And about two months later inside one of the temples at Karnak:

In the room next to that where is a portrait of Cleopatra, I unfold my easel to make a sketch of some Sphinx heads which lie there. The sun glares in at the door and the noise of the Arabs without is distracting. I close the door and the place is now lighted only from some holes in the roof. There is light enough for me, but if I move the dust rises in clouds. Is this the dust of the Ptolemaic or the Pharaonic dynasty? It is very choky. The flies are also tormenting. They are the direct descendants of the flies that Moses procured to plague Egypt. […] As I sit there working alone the spirit of the past comes over me with much power. I have never been so near the old Egyptians as at this moment. […] I get a Sepia sketch of this suggestive corner. There is no time for more. The door opens, the Arabs scream, my friends come to look me up and we must go on. But I have added something important to my gallery of memories, and also to my portfolio of sketches.

Cleopatra

Sarah Freeman Clarke sailed the Nile in a dahabeah like this one (from the Perry-Clarke collection)

To learn more about James Freeman Clarke, Margaret Fuller, and the Clarke and Huidekoper families, see ABIGAIL, the online catalog of the MHS.

Posted in From Our Collections Tagged

Are We All Created Equal?

By Kathleen Barker, Education Department

In the introduction to his 1903 book The Souls of Black Folk; Essays and Sketches W.E.B. Dubois argued that “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.” Is that problem still with us today, or do twenty-first-century Americans face a different challenge with respect to race and social justice? This is just one of the intriguing questions we will discuss next Wednesday, 2 April, at the final session of our film & discussion series, “Created Equal.” Facilitated by Joanne Pope Melish, author of Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and “Race” in New England, 1780-1860, this series was made possible through funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

These public programs center on four nationally-acclaimed documentary films that address various aspects of the long Civil Rights movement. (Visit the Created Equal website to learn more about each film, including how to view it online.) Our first event, on 12 February, explored the issue of marriage, and the laws that regulate who can marry whom. In 1958, Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving were married in Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, the couple lived in Virginia, where it was technically illegal for them to live as a married couple because Mildred was of African American and Native American descent and Richard was white. The Lovings’ case, which was eventually heard by the Supreme Court of the United States, raised many issues—in the 1950s and in our discussion—about the definition of rights and how the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does (or does not) protect certain rights.

On 12 March, we moved backwards in time to discuss the abolitionist movement using the three-part PBS film The Abolitions. Participants enjoyed debating the methods used by filmmakers to bring this era to life. A fruitful discussion about the film, its intended audience, and “traditional” narratives of American history took up most of the evening. Why, for example, was Frederick Douglass the only back abolitionists mentioned? Here in Boston and New England we recognize the important contributions made by African Americans such as Lewis and Harriet Hayden, and William Cooper Nell.  Participants were distressed to find that these local protagonists were left out of the narrative! We ended the program with this provocative inquiry: were the abolitionists successful?

Our last event will address two important post-Civil War issues. We will watch clips from Slavery by Another Name, which describes the huge system of forced, unpaid labor, mostly affecting Southern black men, that lasted until World War II. We will also view segments of Freedom Riders, a film that celebrates the Freedom Rides of 1961, and the often terrifying conditions faced by black and white volunteers as they attempted to desegregate public spaces in the Deep South. It’s not too late to join us! Contact the Education Department (education@masshist.org) to register, or visit our web calendar  to learn more about the program.

Posted in This Week @MHS

This Week @ MHS

By Dan Hinchen

March draws to a close, finally seeming to trade its lions for lambs. As April arrives we have a slew of programs at the Society this week. So, let us waste no time and get right to it.

Kicking things off on Tuesday, 1 April, stop by at noon for a special author talk with Larry Ruttman who will discuss his book American Jews & America’s Game: Voices of a Growing Legacy in Baseball. Ruttman’s talk will look at the four main subjects of his work: baseball, American Jewish life in the United States over the last century, American history, and the revealing personal lives of people involved with the game. This talk is free and open to the public.

And on Tuesday evening, beginning at 5:15PM, is the latest in the Early American History Seminar series. In this edition, Jeff Perry of Purdue University presents “From ‘Disturbers’ to Protectors of the Peace: Baptist Church Discipline and Legalities on the Trans-Appalachian Frontier.” In his paper, Perry considers how the instability engendered by the missionary movement and the rise of competing religious sects impacted individual churches’ visions of their own authority and their role in regulating their wider communities. In so doing, he speaks to the constantly changing nature of secular and religious authority in the United States. Comment provided by Stephen A. Marini, Wellesley College.  Seminars are free and open to the public; RSVP required. Subscribe to receive advance copies of the seminar papers.

At noon on Wednesday, 2 April, pack a lunch and come by for a Brown Bag talk. This time, long-term research fellow Chris Cameron, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, presents part of his research for “Liberal Religion and Slavery in America, 1775-1865.” His talk explores the disparate ways that liberal ministers engaged with the institution of slavery, whether as pro-slavery thinkers, colonizationists, or radical abolitionists. Cameron also examines the theological underpinnings of liberals’ views on slavery, as well as the differences between Unitarian, Universalist, and Transcendentalists’ engagement with the institution. This event is free and open to the public.

That evening, beginning at 5:30PM, is a film screening and discussion, part of “Created Equal: America’s Civil Rights Struggle,” a series made possible through a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, as part of its Bridging Cultures initiative, in partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. “Created Equal: Slavery by Another Name & The Freedom Riders” will feature clips from two films, one based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Douglas Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name, and the other based on Raymond Arsenault’s 2007 book Freedom Riders. Both films can be viewed in their entirety at createdequal.neh.gov. Joanne Pope Melish is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Kentucky and a visiting scholar in American Studies at Brown University. She is the author of Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and “Race” in New England, 1780-1860, and she will facilitate the discussion for the evening. Registration for the event is required at no cost. To Reserve: Click here to register online or call the MHS reservations line at 617-646-0560.

The second seminar of the week will take place on Thursday, 3 April, and is part of the History of Women and Gender series. Beginning at 5:30PM, “‘Talents Committed to Your Care’: Reading and Writing Antislavery” explores the historically contingent identities and the material texts that men and women produced in and through their engagement with a remarkably rich transatlantic literary culture. In looking not only at the cultivation of individual identities but also at the establishment of collective ties, it will be measuring the degree to which gender played a foundational role. Mary Kelley, University of Michigan, will present the material while Elizabeth Maddock Dillon of Northeastern University will provide comment. Seminars are free and open to the public; RSVP required. Subscribe to receive advance copies of the seminar papers.

Finally, on Saturday, 5 April, come by at 10:00AM for The History and Collections of the MHS, a 90-minute tour of the Society’s public rooms led by a docent or MHS staff member and touching on the history of the Society, and the art and architecture of building at 1154 Boylston Street. The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information, please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

Also, do not forget to visit the MHS to see the current exhibition, “Tell It With Pride: The 54th Massachusetts Regiment and Augustus-Saint Gaudens’ Shaw Memorial.” This exhibit, organized by the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington, D.C., is open to the public Monday-Saturday, 10:00AM-4:00PM, through 23 May.

 

 

 

 

Posted in This Week @MHS

“Feat of strength – not of skill”: George Preble’s Description of Sumo Wrestling in Japan, 1854

By Andrea Cronin

“While we were looking at [150-pound sacks of rice] & I was thinking of getting them off to the ships a procession of fifty athletes filed before us,” wrote Lt. George Henry Preble of the U.S.S. Macedonia in a journal of his voyage to China and Japan on 24 March 1854. “Without being tall, these men were giants of bone and fat & muscle – weighing from 200 to 400 lbs each. As we had seen nothing of the kind before, we received them with exclamations of surprise. They were entirely naked except that they wore a stout silken girdle or sash about six inches broad about their loins concealing what modesty should not expose. At a given signal each of these “strong men” for that is the English translation of their Japanese name, seized two packages of the rice, and holding them above their heads carried them with apparent ease to a place beyond [Commodore Matthew Perry] and deposited them in another pile ready for embarkation.”

George Preble drawing of

Preble’s impression of sumo wrestlers, or Japanese “strong men,” caught my attention as I was reading the George H. Preble diaries in search of material pertaining to the Treaty of Kanagawa, 31 March 1854. In this display of culture and resources just days before the signing of the treaty, the Japanese gifted the Americans with Imperial presents including rice, brocades, silk, lacquered furniture, and a small box of toys. In return, the Americans set up a working example of miniature railroad engine, car, and working telegraph line. In a rather condescending note, Preble thought that the American gift of The Birds of America by John James Audubon was worth more than all the Japanese gave. In the same tone, he recounted a detailed description of a sumo match:

The Japanese invited us to the rear of the [Treaty House] and introduced again their strong men this time as wrestlers. … two of our naked & fat friends disrobed of their gay aprons entered and squatted down in the center of the circle. Then they rubbed themselves under the arms & thighs, with the loose black earth, … they then planted themselves firmly on their feet with their hands on their hips – next locked arms, and struggled. The one striving to push the other outside the circle. It was a simple endurance of breath, and feat of strength – not of skill. There was no attempt at tripping with the feet, or what we call wrestling. … At first the exhibition was interesting but it soon grew tedious from repetition. I was glad to be summoned from it …

George Preble was a difficult man to impress. Many of his assumptions about Japanese culture stem from his assessment that the Japanese at the time were technologically, politically, and socially 300 years behind the progress of the Western world, especially due to the Japanese emphasis on isolationism. While I generally disagree with Preble’s values in his assessment, his description of a sport, which endures in Japan, is enjoyable nonetheless. Today, the rikishi (wrestlers) still wear the keshō-mawashi (apron) and mawashi (loincloth) in the dohyō (circular ring). The match is won by pushing the opponent outside of the circle or forcing the opponent to touch the ground with any part of his or her body other than the feet. George Preble missed the similar culture of discipline and ceremony between the Japanese wrestlers and his sailors in his quick tedium of the event.

Posted in Uncategorized

This Week @ MHS

By Dan Hinchen

As spring struggles to take hold we are keeping our fingers crossed and hoping that the potential storm does not interrupt any of the programs on tap this week.

First up, on Tuesday, 25 March, is “Boston’s Chinatowns and Recent Senior Migration,” the next edition of our Immigration and Urban History Seminar series. Presented by Nicole Newendorp of Harvard University, the discussion centers on the life ways and services available to low-income, primarily non-English speaking Chinese seniors who live in Boston’s downtown Chinatown and Quincy, a satellite Chinatown in the suburbs. In so doing, it re-focuses attention away from the traditional question of defining Chinatown through residential space to the problem of defining community more generally for a heterogeneous group of migrants with a rich diversity of life experiences. Wing-Kai To of Bridgewater State University will provide comment and the talk begins at 5:15PM. Seminars are free and open to the public; RSVP required. Subscribe to receive advance copies of the seminar papers.

Then, on Thursday, 27 March, there is a special event for new Members and Fellows of the Society.”New Faces & New Acquisitions” begins at 5:30PM and is a unique opportunity for new Fellows and Members to learn more about and view a selection of the Society’s most recent acquisitions, including letters from a stunning collection of Adams and Cranch family correspondence and items from the Civil War archives of Capt. Luis F. Emilio of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment. There will also be a reception and the chance to view the current exhibition, Tell It With Pride: The 54th Massachusetts Regiment and Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ Shaw Memorial. Registration is required at no cost. Please call 617-646-0560 or register online by clicking here. For more information about becoming a Member, click here.

Finally, on Saturday, 29 March, there will be no public tour. Instead, beginning at 12:00PM is a special public program: “Tell It With Pride.” Visitors are invited to enjoy an afternoon program of exhibition tours and special talks at the MHS related to the Tell It With Pride exhibition currently on display. The afternoon will feature a presentation from the men of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment Company A, time to view the exhibition and to converse with the men of the 54th Regiment, and two lectures. The first lecture, starting at 2:00PM, is from author Kathryn Greenthal and titled “Augusts Saint-Gaudens’ Shaw Memorial: Its Context and Its Creation.” The second lecture, starting at 3:00PM, is “Consecration and Monument: Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts 54th Regiment,” presented by Henry Duffy, Curator of Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in Cornish, NH. This program is presented in partnership with the Friends of the Public Garden. To Reserve: Click here to register online or call the MHS reservations line at 617-646-0560. Please register if you plan to attend ANY part of this program (even if you can not join us for the entire afternoon).

 

Posted in This Week @MHS

“He cannot degrade her”: Louisa Catherine Adams on Women’s Natural Equality

By Amanda A. Mathews

While Abigail Adams is often cast into the role of proto-feminist based on her famous “Remember the Ladies” letter to John Adams in March 1776, Louisa Catherine Adams also expressed strong feelings about the natural equality of women, particularly in regards to their intellectual capacity, which were grounded in her understanding of Scripture and Christianity.

In a letter to the abolitionist and women’s rights advocate Sarah Grimké in 1838, Louisa wrote:

When God breathed the breath of life into the nostrils of the creatures of his hand, that breath was an emanation of his own nature! I would modestly enquire how in the simple act of inspiring this vitality into the body of Eve, that unchanging and immutable principle, should take a different form in the spiritual existence of the two human beings, who we are told inhabited Paradise!!!

Ere these bodies received the vital inspiration, they were a mere transcript of death; and liable to corruption, but on the instant the divine inspiration was inhaled, these clods became animated in the perfection of human loveliness, so equal in mind, and in the joys of immortality, but the woman so exquisite in her beauty, that Man next to his God even then worshipped at her shrine! and we no where see an evidence of inferiority in the female; but only the sensitive tenderness of Adam, who in the excess of his love spared her from those toils to which he would not expose her beauty. . . .

The Bible repeatedly asserts, “that a virtuous Woman is above all price”; and this was the result of Solomons wisdom— and it was through the Medium of a Woman, in the emblematic purity of her innocence and loveliness, as this being above all price; that the Messiah came into the world to call Sinners to repentance, and to redeem our degenerate race from Sin and death—

Man may subvert woman for his own purposes. He cannot degrade her in the sight of God, so long as she acts up to those great duties, which her Nature and her Constitution enforce; and which enjoins the highest virtues that combine society, in the relations of daughter, Wife, and Mother: from whence originate all the great characteristics which enoble man from the Cradle to the tomb—

This topic would be a recurring one in Louisa’s writings, both in her diaries and letters, in the last twenty-years of her life, and perhaps inspired her to record her “Narrative of a Journey from Russia to France,” which she prefaced:

It may perhaps at some future day serve to recal the memory of one, who was—and show that many undertakings which appear very difficult and arduous to my Sex, are by no means so trying as imagination forever depicts them— And that energy and discretion, follow the necessity of their exertion, to protect the fancied weakness of feminine imbecility.

Louisa Catherine Adams diary

Posted in From Our Collections Tagged

This Week @ MHS

By Dan Hinchen

The Ides of March have come and gone and life at the MHS continues. This week is a busy one with plenty of public programs to satisfy your craving for history. First up, on Monday, 17 March, beginning at noon is an author talk with Emily Lodge. While the biographies of the Lodge patriarchs have been well-documented, the stories of the influential Lodge women have never been authoritatively chronicled. From the earliest days of the American colonies, through the Gilded Age, and into the first years of the 21st century, The Lodge Women, Their Men, and Their Times traces the family’s remarkable history through its female figures. This event is free and open to the public.

On Wednesday, 19 March, join us for a Brown Bag lunch talk presented by Katie Moore of Boston University. “‘Dam all pumpkin states’: King Williams War in the North and Colonial Legitimacy” examines the collapse of the Dominion of New England in the spring of 1689, brought about when provisional authorities in Boston and New York seized power. How did Puritan divines and a German militia captain use war with the French to legitimate their authority to colonists, colonial leaders, and Native American allies? How did they justify strategy, finance, and diplomacy? Stop by at noon to learn more about this fascinating project. Brown Bag lunch talks are free and open to the public. [This event has been rescheduled from February 5 when it was postponed due to snow.]

Also on Wednesday is a special event for members of the Jeremy Belknap Giving Circle. “An Evening at the Bostonian Society” begins at 6:00PM and features Brian LeMay and Nat Sheidley discussing ongoing plans for the Society and leading a tour of the building, including the tower with its resident ghost, with a reception to follow. The Bostonian Society is located at 206 Washington Street in Boston. To register, please call 617-646-0543 or e-mail awolfe@masshist.org. For access to these special events, join an MHS Fund Giving Circle today!

Then, on Thursday, 20 March, is the next event in the New England Biography Seminar series. Stop by at 5:30Pm for “The Days of Their Lives: Using Diaries, Journals, and an ‘Almanack’ to Recover the Past.” Moderated by Susan Ware, General Editor of American National Biography, this program will feature a conversation with Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, 300th Anniversary University Professor at Harvard, who is using diaries (men’s and women’s) in her broader study of Mormon history; Louisa Thomas, an independent scholar and the author of “Conscience” (about her grandfather Norman Thomas), who is writing a biography of Louisa Catherine Adams; and Noelle Baker, Editorial Consultant to The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau, who is preparing a digital edition of Mary Moody Emerson’s diary. Seminars are free and open to the public; RSVP required. Subscribe to receive advance copies of the seminar papers.

And on Saturday, 22 March, come by at 10:00AM for The History and Collections of the MHS, a 90-minute tour of the Society’s public rooms led by a docent or MHS staff member and touching on the history of the Society, and the art and architecture of building at 1154 Boylston Street. The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information, please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

Also, do not forget to visit the MHS to see the current exhibition, “Tell It With Pride: The 54th Massachusetts Regiment and Augustus-Saint Gaudens’ Shaw Memorial.” This exhibit, created in cooperation with the National Gallery of Art, Washington, is open to the public Monday-Saturday, 10:00AM-4:00PM, through 23 May.

 

 

 

 

Posted in This Week @MHS