Tag Archives: books

June 2, 2025

Hawthorne’s Salem Notebook

By daseger

For a blog with Salem in its title, I have written relatively few posts about witches, or Hawthorne. Faithful followers will understand the former slight, but I haven’t really discussed my thoughts about Hawthorne here, I think. Essentially I am not a fan of the man or his works. He strikes me as very haughty and melancholy and over-dramatic and not subtle and there are particular aspects of his biography and character which I really don’t like, particularly his attitude towards race and any expression of social reform and his treatment of Salem sculptor Louise Lander in Rome. I don’t think his novels have aged well: just a brief comparison with a near-contemporary like Jane Austen will illustrate what I mean. Despite her smallish world, much smaller than that of Hawthorne, her works are classic and current because she understood people much better than he did. It’s no revelation that Hawthorne was a misanthrope, but it’s difficult to get past that, really, at least for me. In the last year or so, I have been trying to get closer to Hawthorne by reading his notebooks: they’re by my bedside in nice editions and I have been been dipping into them regularly. I started with the European notebooks (English, Italian) and then last month picked up the “lost” notebook, which he kept in Salem from 1835-1841. And now I find myself looking at him not altogether but a bit differently: he seems young, very impressionable, very curious, but still judgemental. True to form, young Nathaniel was not really social in any sense in the world—he even calls himself a recluse—but he is a good observer so he is a good source for Salem. This notebook was published by his widow Sophia in the 1860s in a highly-edited American version: most critics use the word bowdlerized. She took out all the interesting bits! More than a century later it was rediscovered, and published in a 1978 facsimile edition by the Pierpont Morgan Library, which has the original manuscript in its collection.

The entries in the notebooks are basically observations interspersed with story ideas. Hawthorne is always walking around Salem: in general (but not always) he prefers to walk away from the city center into nature, to the Willows and Winter Island, to North Salem, along the coastline. Sometimes something he sees will prompt a story idea but usually the story ideas are coming out of his head rather then his environment. He seems to be practicing describing settings, rather than people’s characters. Sophia took out his descriptions of a well-dressed drunken couple observed on a trip to Boston, and young ladies bathing at the Salem shore, but they are restored in the 1978 publication, and another (really great, but again somewhat detached) discourse on society is a great description of the celebration of July 4 (his birthday!) on Salem Common. I made a list of highlights, but you will surely have your own: the lost notebook, which is also Hawthorne’s Salem notebook, is a quick, engaging read.

On Nature: Hawthorne loves the shoreline and describes its features in great detail. He seems to relish “marine vegetables” in general of an olive color, with round, slender, snake-like stalks, four or five feet long, and a great leaf, twice as long, and nearly two feet broad; these are the herbage of the deep-sea. I had never heard of samphire, or mutton sauce, growing somewhat like asparagus; it is an excellent salad at this season, salt yet with an herb-like vivacity, and eating tender. A succession of cookbook authors agree: where have I been? It’s all over Juniper Point, along with jellyfish. Hawthorne also liked to observe farmland and farm animals, especially pigs, which surely are types of unmitigated sensuality; — some standing /^in/ the trough, in the midst of their own and others victuals; — some thrusting their noses deep into the filth; — some rubbing their hinder-ends against a post; — some huddled together, between sleeping and waking, breathing hard; — all wallowing in each other’s defilement; — a great boar -going /swaggering/ about, with lewd actions; — a big-bellied sow, waddling along, with her swag-paunch. He’s judgemental even of PIGS.

Samphire illustration by Mrs. Henry Perrin from British Flowering Plants (1914).

I would have like to have seen this, but the Bulfinch Almshouse/Hospital was demolished in 1954: The grass about the hospital is rank, being trodden, probably, by nobody but me. The representation of a vessel under sail, cut with a pen knife, on the corner of the house. I would have liked to have seen both the building and the vessel carving.

The Salem Almshouse and Hospital of Contagious Diseases built 1816, Frank Cousins glass lantern slide, Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum via Digital Commonwealth.

Looking glasses: Young Hawthorne clearly loved nature, but he was a materialist too, interested in and inspired by structures and objects. I found multiple reference to mirrors: To make one’s own reflection in a mirror the subject of a story. An old looking-glass—somebody finds out the secret of making all the images that have been reflected in it pass back again across its surface.

Wondrous Forces: Many of the story ideas which pop up in the notebook involve plots in which some sort of wondrous force drives the action. I like this one: a person to be writing a tale, and to find that it shapes itself against his intentions; that the characters act otherwise than he thought; that unforeseen events occur; and a catastrophe which he strives in vain to avert. It might shadow forth his own fate — he having made himself one of the personages. Hawthorne seems very interested in all forms of magic, particularly of the kind that alters forms, like alchemy. What I think was the Deliverance Parkman House (demolished just before Hawthorne began his notebook entries; he must have seen it) draws forth several alchemical connections: the house on the eastern corner of North & Essex streets (supposed to have been built about 1640) had, say sixty years later, a brick turret erected, wherein one of the ancestors of the present occupants used to practice alchemy. He was the operative; a scientific person in Boston the director. There have been other Alchemysts of old in this town — one who kept his fire burning seven weeks, and then lost the elixir by letting it go out.

Stereoview of a drawing of the Parkman House, New York Public Library Digital Gallery.

Macabre bits: Hawthorne’s interest in the dead and dying are pretty well-known and there are certainly lots of death references in the notebook: one story idea involves a young couple [who] take up their residence in a retired street of a large town. One day, she summons several of the neighbors in, and shows them the dead body of her husband. That’s it! I wonder where he was going with that? He is of course enchanted with and by the Old Burying Ground on Charter Street where he encounters the grave of his witch-trial judge ancestor and the famous epitaph of Nathaniel Mather, “an aged person that had seen but nineteen winters in the world.” Hawthorne admits that he is quite considerably affected by these words, which he himself revealed to the world when I had away the grass from the half buried stone, and read the name.

July 4: Probably my favorite entry is Hawthorne’s depiction of a very festive Fourth in Salem in 1838. It was a “very hot, bright sunny day,” and the town was “much thronged”. On the Common were booths selling gingerbread &c. sugar-plums and confectionery, spruce-beer, lemonade. Spirits forbidden, but probably sold stealthily. On the top of one of the booths a monkey, with a tail two or three feet long. He is fastened by a cord, which, getting tangled with the flag over the booth, he takes hold and tries to free it. The object of much attention from the crowd, and played with by the boys, who toss up ginger bread to him. He goes on to describe more of the festivity, but he can’t help himself from commenting on the “plebianism” of the crowd!

True Crime via Wax Figures: A very festive July 4th/birthday for Hawthorne as he also attended an exhibition of wax figures which made quite an impression on him. Wax-figure displays had been happening in Salem from at least the 1790s: they were often patriotic or religious in theme, but this particular “statuary” consisted  almost wholly of murderers and their victims; — Gibbs and Wansley the Pirates; and the Dutch girl whom Gibbs kept and finally murdered. Gibbs and Wansly were admirably done, as natural as life; and many people, who had known Gibbs, would not, according to the showman, be convinced that this wax figure was not his skin stuffed. The two pirates were represented with halters round their necks, just ready to be turned off; and the sheriff behind them with his watch, waiting for the moment. The clothes, halters, and Gibbs’ hair, were authentic. E K. Avery and Cornell, the former a figure in black, leaning on the back of a chair, in the attitude of a clergyman about to pray; — an ugly devil, said to be a good likeness. Ellen Jewett and R. P. Robinson; — she dressed richly in extreme fashion, and very pretty; he awkward and stiff, it being difficult to stuff a figure to look like a gendeman. The showman seemed very proud of Ellen Jewett, and spoke of her somewhat as if this was figure was a real creature. Strang and Mrs. Whipple, who together murdered the husband of the latter. Lastly the Siamese Twins. The showman is careful to call his exhibition the “Statuary”; he walks to and fro before the figures, talking of the history of the persons, the moral lessons to be drawn therefrom, and especially the excellence of the wax- work. Gibbs and Wansley were notorious pirates, Ellen (Helen) Jewett was a Maine girl who became a prostitute in New York City and her murder in the spring of 1836 triggered sensationalist headlines for the rest of the year as R.P. Robinson was tried and acquitted of the crime. E.K. Avery was Ephraim Kingsbury Avery, a Rhode Island Methodist minister accused of murdering a factory worker in his congregation named Sarah Cornell whom he had impregnated: he too was aquitted and this was another sensational murder case involving a (very) lasped clergymen which perhaps inspired The Scarlet Letter. In yet another notorious case, Jesse Strang and Elsie Whipple conspired to murder the latter’s husband outside Albany in 1827: she was acquitted and he was executed. I guess “Siamese twins” refers to the conjoined Bunker twins from Thailand who were thrown in here for good sensationalistic measure.

Cornell Digital Collections.

Social Commentary: Hawthorne does not seem to be interested in the contentious causes of his time and place. Salem was characterized by dynamic temperance and abolition movements in the 1830s, and he makes no mention of them in his notebook except for another story idea, a sketch to be given of a modern reformer — a type of the extreme doctrines on the subject of slaves, cold-water, and all that. He goes about the streets haranguing most eloquently, and is on the point of making many converts, when his labors are suddenly interrupted by the appearance of a keeper of a mad-house, whence he has escaped.

While I enjoyed reading Hawthorne’s Salem journal more than the European ones, especially in this unadulterated form, I can’t say I like him anymore than I did before I delved in. I do admire his curiosity, his descriptive abilities, as well as his tendency to engage—-and often wrestle with—the past, even in his odd anti-humanistic way. When I read his proposal of a history of modes of punishment, ancient and modern I finally understood the rationale behind the Salem Museum of Torture! (just kidding; I doubt a Hawthorne connection). And while a statue on Hawthorne Boulevard and the House of the Seven Gables stand testament to Hawthorne today in Salem, there is also a wax representation, which seems appropriate, given his fascination with that genre.

I pinched this photo of Hawthorne’s wax figure at the Salem Wax Museum of Witches & Seafarers from the author J.W. Ocker’s website, Odd Things I’ve Seen. In “Wax City,” Ocker observes that Salem tells its history through wax museums, and I agree, although I would put quotations around the word “museums.” Ocker wrote the great book The Season With the Witch about his residency in Salem during Haunted Happenings in 2015, and since Salem’s tourism has escalated so much over the past decade, I think he should return for a sequel.

11 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in Culture, Salem

May 12, 2025

A Salem Printer & Procrastination

By daseger

It’s the end of the semester, a transitional time in which I traditionally don’t quite know what to do with myself. Instead of finishing up all of my little annoying tasks, I am persusing random pieces of print here and there. My stepmother has observed that my father can be sidetracked very easily from any task by “printed matter,” generally a newspaper or magazine, something that can be read quickly but is not (by him). I have observed this many times. It runs in the family: I too can be diverted by printed matter, but for me, it’s not the text but rather the type. I don’t really care what the words (or images) are, it’s how they have been printed, their design and composition. This goes back decades with me, since I wrote my dissertation on English printers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I did so much research on their world, their shops, their type, that I became a typography fan for life. If I happen to spot a striking typeface, a new-to-me specimen pamphlet, or an interesting title page, I will chase these impressions down to the ends of research database-earth. That happened this past weekend: hours went by, but I did discover a new Salem printer. One glance at the bookplate of Irving Kinsman Annable in the large collection of bookplates amassed by Daniel Fearing at Harvard’s Houghton Library, and I was lost.

Annabale (1867-1949) was a Salem resident who established and ran the Berkeley Press of Boston for over 50 years, eventually passing the business down to his son Walter. When I read some of the advertisements for the Press, I assumed they were job printers, producing forms and flyers, envelopes and enclosures. These very practical (and emphemeral) products were the basis of the Berkeley business, but clearly the Annabales had an artistic and skilled devotion to their craft and were not just pumping pieces out. Inland Printer, the long-running printing industrial periodical, has many reviews of the Berkeley Press, and also features the full range of its advertising: again and again the claim is “a specialty of out-of-the-ordinary printing.” Besides these orders, the Berkeley Press produced or contributed to lots of specialty publications for regional institutions and trade organizations, as well as a succession of patriotic pamphlets, including the Declaration of Independence and Gettysburg Address. Houghton Mifflin even commissioned Berkeley to produce one of the earliest (and most popular) pictorial maps, the black-and-white version Melanie Elisabeth Leonard’s view of Cape Cod, in 1926. Catalogs, portfolios, all sorts of enclosures: the press printed anything and everything, except for larger books. (I think, but I don’t have access to any business records, though there are papers in the Phillips Library collection that I want to check out if my curiosity continues). Of course, Berkeley’s own advertising materials, like the pamphlet on decoration below in the collection of Historic New England, are the most beautiful.

The first half of the twentieth century was such an exciting time for the craft of printing as its practicioners were earnest advocates for its skills and exemplars in the face of increasing mechanization. These men (mostly) were all inspired by William Morris and his Kelmscott Press, but they went on to acquire distinct skills and attributes through their own practice, societies, and appreciation of printing history. They kept their businesses small and identified as artisans first. In Boston, the leader of the printing craft movement was clearly Daniel Berkley Updike (1860-1941) and his Merrymount Press, which produced lots of ephemera as well, but many more books than Berkeley, each one a work of art. I don’t think the contemporaries Updike and Annabale were competitors; I think they were colleagues, and both were active in the Boston Society of Printers. Annabale was definitely more interested in advertising as an art, writing quite clearly about the power of “word images.” The Berkeley Press did produce several small books, especially if there was a local connection as in the case of Joseph Ashton’s History of the Salem Athenaeum, 1810-1910, but they are nothing to get excited about. On the other hand, Annable seems extremely excited about the power of perfectly printed slogans and symbols. In the press prospectus Houseflags & Trademarks (1924—the author is not credited but this reads like all of Annable’s other copy) he compares the flags flown by New England ships a century before, when they “were such frequent travellers across the waters of the world….[that] their flags were familiar spots of color in the harbors of six continents” with the trademarks of his day: if the design was right the same “familiarity” would emerge. Though he did some printing in Salem for friends and organizations which which he was associated, and even produced some picture and postcards which he sold himself (enough that I’m wondering if there was a press at home—a really cute mansard roof cottage still standing on Willow Avenue), I think Annabale saw his professional life as existing in Boston, for over fifty years.

Houseflags & Trademarks courtesy of Bailgate Books, Ltd.

 

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May 5, 2025

My Top Ten Books on Salem’s Architectural History

By daseger

I thought I would combine my traditional spring book list with the Preservation Month of May and put together a list of my top ten books on Salem architecture in historical context. I’m a rank amateur admirer of New England architecture up to about 1840 or 1850 but a bit more focused on the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when it comes to Salem structures. While I am offended by every new Salem building which is erected there’s enough inventory from this golden era to keep me enthralled—for now: I’m not at all convinced that our city’s self-professed preservation ethic still holds. These are the books about Salem houses from which I have learned the most and to which I return the most often: some are just picture books but I find myself going back to them again and again for some reason. But this first book, Fiske Kimball’s study of Samuel McIntire, defined architectural history for me. I love Dean Lahikainen’s more recent Samuel McIntire: Woodcarver of Salem too, but Kimball is always near. I’m a big fan of Frank Cousins, of course, but I share the view of his contemporaries at the Essex Institute that his McIntire book was a bit slight—and so they commissioned Kimball. I do rely on Cousins’ (and Phil M. Riley’s) Colonial Architecture in Salem quite a bit though, so it’s number two. I’ll read anything by Frank Chouteau Brown, and the compilation Colonial architecture in Massachusetts : from material originally published as the White pine series of architectural monographs, edited by Russell F. Whitehead and Frank Chouteau Brown (1977) includes one of his classic Salem articles. Likewise, I will read anything by his fellow architect Frank E. Wallis, who came up from Boston to measure and draw Salem exteriors and interiors often in his early career. Wallis was a big contributor to a succession of portfolios of measured drawings published as The Georgian Period and edited by William Rotch Ware which were first published in The American Architect and Building News. These portfolios are GORGEOUS—my former neighbors had one and let me peruse it for a bit: I have no idea why I don’t have at least one myself!

I carry Edwin Whitefield’s books with me in the car everywhere, just because they are so charming. You never know when I will find myself in a town with one of his houses!  Albert MacDonald’s Old Colonial Brick Houses of New England, which has the long subtitle edited and published with the purpose of furthering a wider knowledge of the beautiful forms of domestic architecture developed during the time of the colonies and the early days of the republic is pretty much a picture book too, as is Halliday’s Collection of Photographs of Colonial and Provincial Houses 1628-1775. Early American Architecture by Hugh Morrison is rather old-fashioned but also very practical—it’s the only book on this list that has anything to say about construction. And finally, this is BORING I know, but if you’re interested in Salem architecture you must realize that it was written about quite a bit in early architectural periodicals, so I felt that I should include this classic bibliography.

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April 28, 2025

Salem Silk Swatches

By daseger

Periodically I dip into the papers of Salem supercargo Benjamin Shreve (1780-1839), which offer interesting and insider perspectives on Salem’s early 19th century global trade. Fortunately these sources have been digitized by the Phillips Library, but even before they were available to the general public I had access through an Adam Matthew source collection, to which the Salem State Library has subscribed for quite some time. Benjamin Shreve is interesting, as he is not from one of those old Salem families (nor is he attached to the Shreves of Crump and Low): in the Boston Weekly Magazine for July of 1804, he is described as a “merchant of Alexandria” in the notice of his marriage to Miss Mary Goodhue of Salem, but he quickly made his mark in his wife’s native city. Shreve opens a window into a world of trading logistics and trends through his meticulous commercial correspondence: he’s a numbers guy for sure but also a diplomat of sorts, negotiating the best price and quality for his Salem purchasers back home from his suppliers in South America, East Asia, and Europe. Wherever he goes, he has to fulfill large orders but also buy smaller items for all the wives of his employers back home, as well as for his own. He writes everything down, sometimes in duplicate or triplicate. If I dig into his papers for long my head will start to swirl, so I have to be pretty focused, and this time I was focused on silk. I’m in the exciting stage of research on my next book, which is on saffron in the late medieval and early modern eras, and there are some interesting parallels between it and silk, so that’s where I was coming from, but how I ended up in 19th-century Salem I do not know; I guess it’s just that persistent Salem tug on my time! Anyway, I was looking through a bound book of Shreve’s miscellaneous memoranda from 1809-30 when I came across these cool silk samples in the midst of much drier fare: I was caught!

Benjamin Shreve Papers (MH 20), Trade Memoranda, 1809-1830, Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum.

These are samples of Italian silks sent to Shreve by a friend in letter packets, with advice on how and where to buy silk in Italy. It’s 1819; Shreve has certainly been buying silk in China for a while, but he was always looking to expand his sources. I think this is so interesting because I have long thought that Salem’s trade with Europe as compared to Asia has been under-represented in the scholarship. Italy and France were great suppliers of silk so why not buy there if the price was right? And Shreve himself is also under-represented in the scholarship! Why isn’t there a book on him, using all of his amazing accessible papers? He is best represented in China Trade expert Carl Crossman’s book, The China Trade: Export Paintings, Furniture, Silver and Other Objects, 1785-1865, which was published in 1972 and reprinted several times afterwords. Crossman knew the collections of the Peabody (now Peabody Essex) Museum and its library very well and drew on them heavily—I learn a ton of stuff whenever I pick up his book. And as I was just reading about Shreve there, I found two other “Salem silk swatches” from the Shreve papers included by Crossman as illustrations: two sheets of silk samples from the Chinese merchant Eshing given by Pickering Dodge of Salem, owner of the Governor Endicott, to Shreve as a buying guide for Canton, and a letter with some strands of raw silk from Dudley Pickman to Shreve–plus a miniature portrait of our man Shreve on ivory! Crossman digs even deeper into some of the Shreve sources for his last book, The Decorative Arts of the China Trade: Paintings, Furnishings, and Exotic Curiosities (1991). Encouraged by Crossman, I went back to Shreve (for just a bit!) and found one more silk swatch among the Government Endicott papers, a sample of black “Levantine” silk. 

Not for the first time, my title is a bit deceptive: swatch books from the early modern era and after are numerous and generally refer to sample books offered up by producers rather than buyers. The Victoria & Albert Museum has several in its collection, including my favorite, a confiscated traveling salesman’s book of silk samples from Lyon, reproduced in the amazing book Selling Silks. A Merchant’s Sample Book 1763 by textile curator Leslie Ellis Miller. Shreve’s snippets of cloth, embedded in commercial paper, can’t compare to a comprehensive collection such as this, but they certainly offer some visual insights into the global trade of this conspicuous commodity in the early nineteenth century.

5 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in History, Salem

March 3, 2025

What I’m Reading, Spring 2025

By daseger

I’ve working my way through a stack of books this semester and looking forward to some notable new publications so I thought I’d put together a post to relieve everyone (including myself!) from the Revolutionary focus. As is generally the case with my reading lists, there’s no fiction here. I really, really wish I could read fiction, but I am for the most part an “information reader”: I’m looking for something or want to learn something. I aspire to read for pleasure but I’m not there yet. I’m always teaching and writing about history, so most of what I read is history too, but I have various sideline subjects: architecture, urban planning, folklore, art. I will often have a stack of books by my bed or desk which I will dip into for an hour or two, but for the past year I’ve been trying to break that habit and read through every book I pick up. I’ve been moderately but not completely successful in this aim. I’m also trying to kick my Amazon habit, but have been less successful in that goal! So here’s the list, in no particular order.

Big, sweeping cultural histories of monsters and fairy tales! I’ve been eagerly awaiting Humans. A Monstrous History, which was published just last month. I ordered a desk copy from the publisher, because if it’s as good as I think it will be, I will definitely use it in class. I think I know where Surekha Davies is coming from, because I read her first book on Renaissance ethnography, but she is really stretching it our here—“monsters” are a bit different in the medieval and early modern era. But every civilization has its monsters, and their creation tells us a lot about every civilization. I’ve had Warner’s Once Upon a Time for a while, but finally finished it, as I thought it would be a good companion book for the monsters.

American history always seems much more….tangible! I love books that can explain how just one thing—whether tangible or not, can be “revolutionary” so this book on the Franklin stove is right up my alley: I have a Franklin stove and have written about its companion technology, Rumford roasters! I have not received this book yet (I couldn’t order a desk copy as I don’t teach American history) but I am really looking forward to reading it. I have read No Right to an Honest Living and while it was a bit slow-going for me, I really learned a lot. I wanted to read it as I have thought and written about the Remond family here in Salem so much and I thought this book on Boston African Americans who lived at the same time might give me some insights into their lives, and it has.

Some women’s history (and literature) for Women’s History Month. These are two very accessible, informative, and complementary books: I read straight through them in a weekend. I am a fast reader but I also tend to “gut” books as they taught us in graduate school: you really can’t do that with either of these books. This is the anniversary year of Jane Austen’s birth so I expect we will get more Austen books but I suspect Jane Austen’s Bookshelf will do it for me: I liked this very personal window into her reading world.

A wide range of architecture. I guess I’m going for complementary reads here; I hadn’t planned on that, a pattern is emerging! Now that I think about it, I guess this is how I read. If I read an engaging book, I want more, or I want some kind of response. I’m not sure these that Inessential Colors and A Paradise of Houses will be complementary: I’ve only read the former and the latter is going to be published at the end of this month, I think. I pre-ordered it because its title gave me hope: Salem is just getting uglier and uglier with its new construction and I yearn for a reversal and “rebirth” back to urban integration and intention: do we even have a city planner anymore? Maybe this is not what Podemski is offering, but I’ll see. Works on pre-modern architecture that are not theory seem rare so I snapped Inessential Colors right up: it’s an academic book which explores the beginnings of the use of color in architectural renderings. I’ve been reading a lot of color theory for the next book I’m researching, on saffron, so it hit the sweet spot of architecture + color for me but it might be a bit specialized for most.

Different Forms of Memory. Here are another pair of books of which one (I’m showing two covers here because mine is on the left but I much prefer the right) I’ve read and the other I’m waiting for: I should have subtitled this post “books I planned to read.” I’m really interested in statues and other forms of public commemoration: Fallen Idols was an ok overview but it didn’t quite do it for me. I think I’ll read Erin Thompson’s Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America’s Public Monuments next. I’ve really become interested in Revolutionary remembrance because of my deep dive into the Revolution last year and this year’s commemorations. The Memory of ’76 looks like it’s going to answer a lot of questions I have about this topic, so I wanted to include it here as a reminder—it’s coming out in July.

Lightening (Liquoring) up. I have the occasional habit of posting my Friday cocktail creations to Instagram, and was rewarded with several books on alcohol this past Christmas! Kind of embarassing, but both of these gin books have some great recipes and Austen + alcohol—what could be better? I write quite a bit about the cordial consequences of early modern distillation in my book The Practical Renaissance, but Camper English has a much more accessible and expansive take on this trend: Doctors and Distillers is a really enjoyable book.

Would love some suggestions for engrossing historical fiction and public art marking history!

13 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in books, Culture

January 13, 2025

A Bewitching Bicentennial Book

By daseger

Salem has been a tourist city for more than a century, so there has been a succession of guide books spotlighting the city’s landmarks and attractions from their particular chronological perspectives. I think I’ve referenced every guide book here, with the exception of the one I am featuring today: The Illustrated Salem Guide Book. Beyond Witch City, published for the Bicentennial in 1976. If you read all the Salem guides in chronological order, two themes are readily apparent: the increasing commodification of history and creeping witches crowding everything else out. The bicentennial book is an exception to both of these trends: it’s a breath of fresh air, guiding its readers to a more cohesive Salem 1976 rather than just downtown “attractions,” and its “Beyond Witch City” subtitle is accurate. It has wonderful illustrations and writing: the efforts of my neighbor Racket Shreve, a well-known maritime artist, and Robert Murray, respectively. It’s just a very special little book: I really love it. It actually makes me nostalgic for a city I never lived in!

One of the key differences between The Illustrated Salem Guide Book and its predecessors and successors is that it was published by the Salem Bicentennial Commission rather than a tourist agency. So the focus is much more on hospitality and non-profit attractions than salesmanship. As you can see above, it proudly bore the (competition-winning) Bicentennial logo as well as a Samuel McIntire swag on its back cover. Inside, we read that “This Guide Book is intended both as a portrait of Salem—an evocation of Salem, old and new, as well as a practical directory for How, What, Where and When.” The combination of aims makes for a thoughtful and accessible book; in its own words, “practical and irreverent.” This book was only one of Salem’s Bicentennial projects: the Commission also organized Visitor Hospitality Centers (in all of Salem’s churches—staffed by volunteers), the development of Fort Lee & Fort Pickering as natural preserves (1976 must have been the last time anyone paid attention to these sites), work on a Salem bikeway, the reconstruction of Samuel McIntire’s Washington Arch (recently restored), “Operation Sail” focused on the waterfront, and several Salem Symposiums “examining Salem’s Past, Present and Future.” This was a very ambitious and engaging agenda. It’s the evocative mission that I’m the most interested in, and while that quality is probably best illustrated by Racket’s illustrations, Robert Murray’s writing is also essential towards realizing this aim: On Oliver Street, an old clockface, empty of hands, hangs on the coach house behind No. 31, its gold numerals luminous at Noon. Attached to the rear of No. 5, two identical carvied friezes, attached side by side upon a stable wall: a touch of Federal surrealism. Beneath the friezes, a sign: Beware of Dog. Murray is particularly good on the history of Salem’s churches: I learned quite a bit. Racket provides some great illustrations of these buildings, and then they both take us all around Salem–not just to the “pretty” spots.

There’s a lot of Salem pride in this book. I was really happy to see a sentiment that I discovered when I was writing about urban renewal for our forthcoming book: an assertion that Salem had “triumphed” over urban renewal, and transformed all those Federal dollars into an initiative that actually focused on renewal rather than destruction. Murray emphasizes  the “imaginative” choice by the Salem Redevelopment Authority to substitute historic renovation for demolition. Salem has won national recognition for its adaptation of its old glories for its modern needs. This is true, and not appreciated sufficiently. Present-day witch-pitching people spin the story that witchcraft tourism “saved” Salem, but I don’t know, 1976 Salem looks pretty dynamic: all of the Essex Institute houses are open, as is its Phillips Library, there’s an ongoing archaelogical dig at the Narbonne House, “a group of rusty oil tanks huddle together aware that they are disliked and soon to be removed” for Pickering Wharf, Pioneer Village is deemed “an excellent place to begin a study of the evolution of the American home.” There were lots of restaurants: Red’s Sandwich Shop, the Lyceum, the Beef & Oyster House, In a Pig’s Eye, Strombergs, the Gutenberg Press Restaurant & Pub, and more—and if you had a party of six you could have dinner at the Daniel’s House: just phone Mrs. Gill and byob.

This little book succeeds in capturing Salem’s past and present from a 1976 perspective: it is not characterized by sickening sentimentality or boosterism. Salem emerges as a city shaped by its past and being shaped by its present. I wish its author and illustrator would create a Salem guide book now (for the 400th anniversary!), because I think it would be very interesting.

What was lost and what remains—the cement slide at Forest River Park! Below, the guide’s map and Racket’s Hamilton Hall Antique Show (a benefit for the then-Peabody Museum of Salem) covers.

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October 28, 2024

In Praise of a Handcrafted Halloween

By daseger

So here I am in Salem, supposedly the Halloween capital of the world, wondering where all the creative costumes are. I’ve tried to embrace the “holiday” (invasion) this year (well not really, but I did take several walks) but all I have seen for costumes are flimsy puritans, vampires and superheroes and a sea of those little felt witch hats: nothing original or creative or made from a natural fabric (well, maybe the hats). My stepson came down from Maine for the weekend to prowl about with his friends in a pirate costume that he had purchased from one of those Halloween superstores along the way: I said “you can’t put together a PIRATE costume yourself! He did have the cool idea of going as Tiny Tim as he is 6’5” and on one crutch because of a sprained ankle, but I have yet to see him put this costume together. I’m wondering where the creativity is? Salem is instagram city at this time of year and those cheap costumes are hardly instagrammable: more of an effort would certainly result in viral views. Dogs have better outfits out there: I’ve seen pumpkins, bees, and even avocado toast! There is certainly lots of historical inspiration for humans, including British fancy dress books and digitized fashion plates and some great photography books on Halloween. We’ll see: the big day approaches.

But what are we to wear? Some suggestions from Arderne Holt’s Fancy Dresses Described or What to Wear at Fancy Balls (1887). You can be a box of dominoes or a bowl of lemons, and also a hornet or a witch (if you must). I think the hornet costume could do double duty as a bee.

Costume books published in the US are a bit less elaborate and historical than their British counterparts in the later nineteenth century, and also more…..paternalistic (is that possible)? We will skip past all the Native American costumes and go straight to the usual Halloween suspects, with a bit of whimsy for Miss Chess and Master Chimney Sweep….plus a pint-sized Guy Fawkes. These are still pretty elaborate costumes though—I’d have to distil them down considerably in terms of detail. Masquerade and carnival: their customs and costumes (1892) also includes some from Robin Hood: perhaps the inspiration for a c. 1907 item in the collections of Historic New England?

From the same period is this incredible handcrafted “Imperialist” skirt from the John Bright Collection—a template for any political commentary surely. I am hoping for some political costumes this year but we’ll see.

When I was looking for inspiration for this post, I discovered a new book and dusted off another. The discovery is an amazing book of photography entitled Dressed for Thrills: 100 Years of Halloween Costumes and Masquerade (2002) by Phyllis Golembo.I’ve ordered this book but haven’t received it yet, so the photos below are from Golembo’s website. I can’t wait for the book to arrive so I can see every single photograph, because what I have seen is so very arresting: who knew that just photographing scraps of fabric could be so effective? We’ve all seen those photographs of early 20th century costumed revelers, from the time when tricks and masking were more important than the recognition of pop culture personas. They look eerie and odd. But somehow the costumes alone look eerier and odder still! The evil bunny mask below is frightening, and so is the Mickey Mouse costume, both from the 1930s.

The book I dusted off is a book I never opened and I have no idea when or where I got it: Jane Asher’s Fancy Dress, first published in 1983 (and later as Jane Asher’s Costume Book). It’s full of whimsical costumes modeled by British actors and actresses of the 1980s, including Terry Jones. One day last week I was showing an episode of Jones’ Crusades series to my students and the next I was looking at him dressed as a “blob”! Now these are costumes you can actually make, from around-the-house materials like cardboard toilet paper rolls (glued together to make a British judge’s wig). The little Elizabeth and peapod below are a little more involved, but this bat has wings made from a broken black umbrella!

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October 1, 2024

Salem 1774: Tea, Fire and a new Congress

By daseger

I just want to wrap up Salem’s long hot Revolutionary summer of 1774 with a finale first week of October and then I’ll be turning to Salem’s intense Halloween—I am not escaping this year because I’m working at the Phillips House and both my husband and I are so busy we can’t really handle the commute to Maine. So I’ll be going to various “attractions” and writing about them; it should be……….interesting. But today, a “tea party,” a “great fire,” and the convening of a brand new autonomous Provincial Assembly for Massachusetts, all right here in Salem in the first week of October 1774. After reading about the pre-Revolution all summer long I now subscribe completely to super-historian Mary Beth Norton’s assessment of the importance of 1774: here in Massachusetts, maybe even here in Salem, the Revolution began.

The Massachusetts Spy piece gives you a sense of what the late summer and early fall was like in Massachusetts: a ship arrived with 30 chests of tea, its purchaser confronted and cargo sent off to Halifax. Local and county meetings continue, as do congregations to prevent the royal courts to convene. Legal officials who are appointees of the Governor/King “recant and confess.” Boston is ever more fortified by Royal troops and Benjamin Franklin is America bound! You can feel it coming (but of course hindsight is 20/20). Salem remains the official port of entry (with Marblehead) and colonial capital, all the elected representatives to the General Court called by General Gage for October 5 received instructions from their communities throughout the month of September to resist royal encroachments on their liberty and call for a return to the William and Mary charter from nearly a century before. And then Gage called off the big assembly!

Boston Evening-Post, 3 October 1774.

Too much tumult! There would be no royally-convened General Court assembly at Salem on October 5: it was postponed by Governor Gage to some “distant day”.  Ultimately a more representative body will convene, but before everyone that Salem happening there were two fires in town: one very little, the other, “great.” The little one was a PUBLIC burning of tea conveyed to Salem in a cask which was loaded onto a wagon belonging to Benjamin Jackson in Boston. I find this whole story so interesting because several weeks before 30 chests of tea had arrived in Salem but people seem more upset by this little cask! An unfortunate and anonymous African-American man, “belonging to, or employed by Mrs. Sheaffe of Boston,” had requested the cask be conveyed to Salem, and it was, and he was identified as offering it for sale rather than his owner/employer: “it was taken from him and publicly burnt,” upon its arrival, “and the Fellow obliged immediately to leave town” on October 3. Some chroniclers have labeled this a “Salem Tea Party,” but I’ve read too much about tea resistance in Salem in the revolutionary Summer of 1774 so it seems like a minor affair to me.

Several days later, the long suffering Tory Justice of the Peace Peter Frye, whose statement is above, had his house and commercial buildings destroyed in the “Great Fire” of 1774, which devoured a block of buildings in central Salem. Frye had tried to find his way back to “friendship” with his Salem neighbors, but they had never been able to forget his commercial and judicial dealings contrary to Patriot proclamations. He would leave Salem for Ipswich shortly after the fire, and cross over to Britain in the next year. Salem had a bit of a reputation as a Tory town before 1774, but it had certainly lost that identity by this time.

While the fire was still simmering and smoking, representatives from across Massachusetts converged on Salem for the meeting of the General Court, even though they all knew it had been canceled by Governor Gage the week before. They wanted to meet. They made a show of waiting around for the Governor, and then met on their own, in a completely autonomous assembly, a new Provincial Congress. This body, with John Hancock as its chair, became the de facto of Massachusetts, strengthening its resolve and powers with successive meetings in Concord (October 11-14) and Cambridge. But it started in Salem.

John Hancock drawn by William Sharp.

 

Two events in commemoration of the formation of the Provincial Congress:

In Salem, October 7: 250th Anniversary of the First Provincial Congress: https://essexheritage.org/event/250th-anniversary-of-the-first-massachusetts-provincial-congress.

In Concord, October 11: Exploring Our Democracy— Our Rights and Responsibilities: https://www.wrighttavern.org/programs/#october11.

 

6 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in History, Salem

August 12, 2024

Nancy Drew & the Peabody Sisters of Salem

By daseger

What do a fictional detective and three very real women of mid-nineteenth century Salem have in common? Well, books have been written about them, and in certain editions of these books there are silhouette endpapers. That’s it, that’s the post. Well not really, there’s a bit more I want to say but mostly I want to show. When I was a girl my very favorite books after my Black Beauty and Little House on the Prairie phases were Nancy Drew mysteries. I had a whole bunch and always wanted more. Most of my Nancy Drews were later editions—1960s and 1970s I think—and they weren’t great- looking books to tell you the truth. Nancy was on the cover, in whatever setting she was dealing with in that volume, and inside were some boring oval portraits. So I didn’t really think about the books at all, just Nancy. Then someone gave me an older book, it must have been one of the first editions of the series, and inside were these amazing endpapers of orange silhouettes! I remember distinctly thinking at the time, wow, older is better, older is (more vivid, more creative, more rare, more CRAFTED) better. So then I wanted more older Nancy Drews, of course, Nancy Drew BOOKS, not just Nancy Drews. I had also become more concious of what a book was as an object, or I should say simply conscious. So I sought out the orange silhouette endpapers (and found some more red than orange), then black ones, which came a bit later, and then finally “the diggger” depictions which are not quite silhouettes but still cool.

My Nancy Drew endpaper obsession continued on for quite some time, but I progressed to other books, including Louise Hall  Tharp’s Peabody Sisters of Salem, about Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia Peabody of Salem, who had interesting Salem childhoods with their teacher parents and led quite engaging adult lives.. Elizabeth was an early childhood education pioneer and Transcendentalist, Mary was also very focused on educational reform, and wrote several books, though she is perhaps best known as the second wife of the “father of public education” Horace Mann. Sophia was an artist before her marriage to her fellow Salemite Nathaniel Hawthorne. (Sophia always seemed like the least interesting of the three sisters to me, but as she was married to Hawthorne she gets more attention). A more scholarly book on the Peabody sisters was published by Megan Marshall in 2005, but my heart belongs to the Tharp book, which I read and reread as a teenager. I was captivated by her ability to capture the sisters’ world (s), and I’ve always had a rather undistinguished copy in my bedside bookshelf. But last month, I came across a special sleeved 1980 Book of the Month Club/The American Past edition online, and promptly purchased it (books in sleeves are always a treat). When it arrived, I was thrilled to see its beautiful Salem-silhouette cover, but inside, a big surprise: endpaper silhouettes of the entire Peabody family! Apparently these are from a selection of  “Dr. Nathaniel Peabody & Family. Profiles drawn from life Nov. 8, 1835” in the collection of the former Essex Institute/current Peabody Essex Museum. I just love them: a special summer surprise.

3 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in books, Culture, Salem

June 24, 2024

Reverential Restoration

By daseger

I was browsing through the Flickr photographs of the Salem State Archives and Special Collections the other day, when I came across several photographs of crowds in and around the Gardner-Pingree House on Essex Street. This is one of the Peabody Essex Museum’s houses, and it is seldom open, so these crowds caught my eye. It’s also one of my very favorite houses in Salem, so every time I see it, in reality or in print, I stop and look. The photographs were from the Salem Evening News, which is my new favorite collection at Salem State, and they were part of the coverage of the reopening of the Gardner-Pingree after a substantive, source-based restoration in 1989. I didn’t live in Salem then, but I moved here not too long after, and one of the first things I did was go into this recently-restored house which I had heard, and read, so much about. It was absolutely stunning to me; I can still remember being shocked by the colors and patterns and detail. At that point in my life I was finishing my dissertation, then starting my teaching career, but at the same time I was increasingly obsessed with historic interiors. I had all the magazines and books, and they were like carrots that got me through all the work I had to do. My obsession is part of the reason I moved to Salem, and seeing this house just reinforced my instinct that it was the right place for me. After my first tour I bought a poster in the gift shop of the Essex Institute, and it still hangs on the wall: in my first Salem house it had pride of place, and now it dwells in a third-floor bathroom, but I still gaze upon it from time to time. I remember thinking when I bought it: this will be the inspiration for my own decoration–high standards indeed!

Unattainable standards obviously. If the colors above look blueish, be asssured they are not; there are layers of the most beautiful greens in that photograph. There must be 100 different shades of green in that house! I was impressed immediately, and my first instinct thereafter has always been to paint a room green. Our present house is north-facing, and green is not really the best choice, so I’ve used what I always think of as “Gardner-Pingree yellow” in several rooms. I tried to use what I think of as “Gardner-Pingree pink” in the double parlor but my husband objected so we have a compromise peachy salmon pink (although he would object to the label “pink”.)  It wasn’t only the colors–it was the slipcovers, the cream painted “fancy chairs,” the Brussels carpets, the fire buckets in the back hall: I could go on and on and I’m kind of ashamed to admit that whenever I’ve been in this house I notice the decoration more than McIntire’s woodwork. And I’m not the only one: this restoration certainly received acclaim from curatorial and preservation professionals but it was also featured in a cascade of shelter magazines and decorating books. Chalk paint pioneer Annie Sloan focused intently on one Gardner-Pingree green and that perfect pink, which is in the kitchen.

Just a few books which feature the Gardner-Pingree House.

It was a very important and influential restoration, and not just from my personal perspective. In several articles discussing its process and inspiration, then Essex Institute Research Curator and Project Director Dean Lahikainen (who later wrote the definitive book on Samuel McIntire, Carving an American Style) always seems slightly (though politely) appalled by the preceding restoration of the 1930s in which all the woodwork was painted white according to the dictates  of the Colonial Revival style which was so prevalent at the time. Fifty years later, Lahikainen and his team took their cues from historical sources rather than contemporary preferences, creating an interior that seemed both “refreshed” and restored. The house was  reopened this very week after a five-year restoration, and all the recorded visitors’ reactions run along these lines.

Stories from Lynn Daily Item and Boston Globe, June 1989 and 1990; photographs from the Salem Evening News, June 1989, Salem State Archives and Special Collections. The “formal English garden” photograph is of my garden! (Now not quite so formal) The last photograph above is of the small exhibit on the house which was in its carriage house, I believe.

You can see my photographs of the house from the last time I was inside, in 2017, in this post, and also here. Below are a few more, but I really don’t have very many good ones: every time I’m in this house I’m kind of overwhelmed and aware that I have this rare opportunity and I don’t focus on what I want to capture. On my past two spring break road trips, I thought that the Read House in New Castle, Delaware, and then Kenmore in Fredericksburg, Virginia might have supplanted the Gardner-Pingree as my very favorite house, but looking at these pictures again, I think not.

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